The Latest from Israel-Gaza-Palestine (2 March): The Donors' Conference

Update (1:50 p.m.): Hamas has set out a defiant position in the face of the donors' conference support for aid via the Palestinian Authority and for direct assistance to the PA. Spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said, "To bypass the legitimate Palestinian authorities in the Gaza Strip is a move in the wrong direction and it deliberately undermines the reconstruction."

Hillary Clinton's statement to the conference offered little more than general platitudes: "We cannot afford more setbacks or delays -- or regrets about what might have been, had different decisions been made....It is time to look ahead."

Update (9:25 a.m. GMT): Well, here's a start on our questions below about the politics of this supposed assistance: "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will pledge $900 million for the Palestinians at a donors' conference in Egypt, but only a third of that is earmarked for Gaza, a U.S. official said on Sunday....About $200 million of the U.S. pledge would help cover budget shortfalls of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) and the remainder was for economic reforms, security and private sector projects run by the PA."

The headline event today will be the meeting in Cairo of representatives from "Western" countries and the Arab world, pledging money to the reconstruction of Gaza.

This is a non-story in some respects. We already know the amounts that individual countries will put forward, for example, $900 million from the US, and we know the formula will be that aid goes through the UN and the Palestinian Authority, with Hamas being ostracised. Shrewder readers will also know that the impact of the aid will be symbolic unless 1) there is a workable arrangement on the ground for the PA to be involved in delivery of assistance and, more importantly, 2) Israel allows the aid through the border crossings.

No, this is primarily a political event. So watch for the extent to which the Palestinian Authority is exalted by the delegations, indicating how much support there really is for an attempt to put Fatah at the head of Gazan politics, and the extent to which Hamas is condemned. That should give an indication as to whether there is a hope, beyond this conference, of an engagement with all parties on the Israel-Palestine issue.

Without that acceptance, which has to include rather than exclude Hamas, today's event will be posture rather than a practical way forward (or even a maintenance of a decent status quo) in Gaza.

UPDATED Obama and Iran: Engagement, Muddle, and Hysteria

Update: Iran's Foreign Ministry has replied to Mullen's comment, ""All these statements regarding the production of a nuclear bomb are very baseless. It is baseless from a technical point of view and has propaganda connotations."

On Friday, after President Obama's speech on Iraq and its recommendation for talks with Iran and Syria, we wrote, "Watch the manoeuvres of those who are hostile to any engagement not only because they don’t like 'rogue states'."

And so it goes.

In a travesty of an interview on Sunday, CNN's John King led Admiral Mike Mullen (pictured), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, down the sensational road to Mullen's statement that Iran "has enough fissile material to make a nuclear bomb": "And Iran having a nuclear weapon I’ve believed for a long time is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world."

Unsurprisingly, those sentences have become bold-letter headlines this morning. Here, though, is the essential context for what was either 1) an Admiral being manoeuvred into a very silly mistake or 2) another example of the US military trying to bump others in the Obama Administration into a harder line.

Near the end of an interview which was devoted mainly to Iraq and Afghanistan, King and Mullen stood in front of one of those multi-coloured plasma maps that CNN uses as eye-candy as the CNN anchorman said, "If we come down to the right here, Iran, obviously, the International Atomic Energy Agency said last week they think that they were wrong in the past, that Iran might now have enough fissile material to make a bomb. Does Iran have enough to make a bomb?"

King, who has risen through the CNN ranks because of chiseled looks and broad shoulders rather than any detail of knowledge, had asked an question based on a falsehood. The IAEA did not say "they were wrong in the past". Their report explained that quantities of Iran's enriched uranium were one-third higher than previously stated because the amounts were verified by observation rather than estimates. And the IAEA, while saying that Iran might soon have a quantity of uranium sufficienct for one bomb, also said that the uranium was not of sufficient quality (it is enriched to 4% and 90% is the magic number needed).

Mullen could have said, "The Administration is currently conducting a review of policy towards Iran" (or, in a dream world, "John, you're a mannequin posing as a reporter"). He could have left it at that, as there was little time left in the interview. Instead, he nodded at King and the multi-coloured map and said:

We think they do, quite frankly. And Iran having a nuclear weapon I’ve believed for a long time is a very, very bad outcome for the region and for the world.

And that was it for Tehran. CNN spun the lights and the geography to North Korea so King could ask about their bomb, to which Mullen gave a more sensible response, one guaranteed not to make headlines:

Secretary Gates and I have made no recommendations. But it’s -- it’s an area that we watch with great concern. And I would hope that North Korea would not be provocative.

It is notable that Mullen did not say a word about Iran in his other Sunday interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News. And it's even more notable that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates slapped down Mullen's claim when he talked with David Gregory on NBC's Meet the Press:

[The Iranians are] not close to a uranium stockpile. They’re not close to a weapon, at this point, and so there is some time.

Indeed, Gates' much-longer answer on Iran is the one that deserves to be dissected this morning. He effectively laid out the "engagement" strategy. Negotiate with Tehran --- if the talks aren't satisfactory, then Washington has the cause for tougher economic sanctions:

GATES: I don’t think that either the last administration or the current one have been distracted from the growing problem with Iran and its nuclear program in the least over the last number of years. We worried about it well before even the Bush administration.
So I -- I think that there has been a continuing focus on how do you get the Iranians to walk away from a nuclear weapons program?
They’re not close to a stockpile. They’re not close to a weapon, at this point, and so there is some time.
And the question is whether you can increase the level of the sanctions and the cost to the Iranians of pursuing that program at the same time you show them an open door if they want to engage with the Europeans, with us, and so on, if they walk away from that program.
Our chances of being successful, it seems to me, are a lot better at $35 or $40 oil than they were at $140 oil because there are economic costs to this program, they do have economic challenges at home.
GREGORY: You do see the need, though, for a -- some kind of strategic relationship between the U.S. and Iran?
GATES: Well, I think that -- that’s really up to the Iranians. I’ve been -- as I like to say, I’ve been in this search for the elusive Iranian moderate for 30 years. I’m still looking.

Unfortunately, it's Mullen who has played into the more-established, if inaccurate, media line that Iran is about to get The Bomb. And with newspapers like The Times of London running hysterical campaigns on the Tehran threat --- see analyst Bronwen Maddox's Friday scenario of an Iranian invasion of Bahrain and Sunday's article claiming Tehran is funneling missiles to the Taliban --- it is that wave that could sink the Obama strategy of engagement.

The Latest on Israel-Palestine: Lull Before the Diplomatic Flurry? (1 March)

Update: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned of "a sharp, painful, and strong respone" if the firing of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel does not stop. Nine rockets were launched this weekend.

On the eve of the Gaza donors' conference, which is more of a political dance than a significant effort to rebuild the area, and the tour of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (pictured) of the Middle East, there are a lot of meetings for show but no substance...yet.

After the Cairo discussions on Palestinian "reconciliation", including Hamas and Fatah delegations, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has tried to re-seize the initiative with a declaration that all aid for Gaza must go through his organisation. It is a call that may be supported by the donors' conference --- European Union representative Javier Solana immediately pledged allegiance after seeing Abbas on Saturday, "I would like to insist in agreement with the president that the mechanism used to deploy the money is the one that represents the Palestinian Authority."

In Palestine, however, Abbas' declaration may have little significance unless the Palestinian Authority can shore up its ebbing support in Gaza and, indeed, the West Bank. And that in turn probably rests upon some significant Israeli concession to allow goods and materials into the Strip.

Abbas supported his power play with a declaration that any Palestinian unity government must recognise Israel. Hamas in turn refused any recognition in advance of negotiations with Tel Aviv on other issues. "We reject any pre-conditions in the formation of the unity government. Hamas will never accept a unity government that recognizes Israel," said its spokesman Ayman Taha.

Abbas's statements follow his meeting on Friday with US envoy George Mitchell. The American gave away little on Washington's position in advance of Hillary Clinton's visit.

More intriguingly, Ha'aretz has reported US military assurances to Israel in advance of any negotiations. The head of US European Command, General John Craddock, met Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli military commanders to discuss how to improve Israel's missile interception capabilities, not primarily against Hamas but against Iran.

Gaza: Olmert Rejected Hamas Overtures To Avert War

The Observer of London reveals today that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (pictured) rejected a Hamas approach for secret talks before the Gaza War in December.

The go-between for Hamas' messages to Tel Aviv from 2006 to 2008 was Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who contacted senior Israeli officials and communicated with Prime Minister via a member of Olmert's family. Hamas said it was prepared to discuss not only conditions for an extended cease-fire and opening of border crossings but also the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Baskin said he was involved in three attempts to establish talks since Shalit's capture in 2006. Olmert's office rejected the first approach immediately, saying it was not prepared to negotiate with terrorists. Hamas blocked the second, rejecting any discussion of Shalit that was not linked to an end to the Israeli siege of Gaza.

And the third time? Baskin was told by the Olmert family member that he would "need to find another messenger". In Baskin's view, "At this point war had already been decided on."