Of course, some of those minds neither can nor should be won. Some people from less fortunate nations hate America because it is the world’s only military and economic superpower. Others detest us because of our all-conquering culture. Others see us as godless infidels simply because we don’t subscribe to their psychotic version of Islam. There is nothing we can or should do about any of these things.

Those who carried out Tuesday’s attacks were clearly driven, in large part, by religious fanaticism. The perpetrators were Arab terrorists, linked to the Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden and his followers are zealous Muslims who regard America as the enemy of Islam, and therefore an entity of essentially metaphysical evil. There is nothing we can or should do to lessen the medieval fury of such monomania. Bin Laden’s zealots’ hatred for America is an article of faith: nothing will change it.

But as we look down the long, dangerous road that lies ahead, we must remember that there is one specific grievance that rankles in the breasts of millions of Arab and Islamic people in the world. And until that grievance is resolved, there is a greater possibility that one of those people will decide to strike a terrible blow at the United States.

The critical issue is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a conflict in which the United States plays a reluctant central role. Until a just resolution of that conflict is realized — one that provides a homeland for the Palestinian people and security for Israel — it will be far more difficult for America to put together a truly committed coalition to fight terrorism, one that is not simply held together by coercion. And there is a far greater chance that military action against Islamic states will backfire, inflaming a significant portion of the world’s population against us and breeding thousands of terrorists where there once were dozens.

This is bin Laden’s master strategy. We cannot allow it to succeed.

To ensure that it does not, America must boldly take the lead in the Middle East. We must pressure Israel to take the concrete steps necessary to provide justice for the Palestinian people.

The Israeli government is incapable of taking such steps. The latest evidence came Friday, when, incredibly, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cancelled scheduled peace talks with Palestinian Authority president Yassir Arafat at the same time that he was launching Israel’s most aggressive military action in the last year against Palestinians. These are the actions of a man more interested in scoring political points by letting his adversary twist in the wind than in searching for peace. The Bush administration, which in the aftermath of the attacks had asked Sharon to get the peace talks moving again, was left in the usual American posture — wringing its hands impotently.

It’s time for this to change.

It is legitimate to ask whether shifting America’s Mideast policy, in the aftermath of a horrific terrorist attack, would not signal to terrorists that they had won. The answer is no. This is not appeasement, nor a surrender to our enemies. Moving toward a just resolution of the Middle East crisis, one that preserves Israel’s security while providing a nation for the Palestinians, is simply the right thing to do — as it was before Black Tuesday, and as it will be after we hunt down and bring to justice the evil men who made a cold-blooded decision to kill thousands of innocent people. The difference is that after Tuesday, doing the right thing has acquired a different urgency.

For far too long, the United States has pretended to stand on the sidelines of a conflict in which we are not neutral, passively endorsing a situation in which bottled-up Palestinian rage has grown and grown until it has exploded in a terrible paroxysm of violence, bringing horror to Israelis and Palestinians alike. And every day that the situation remains unresolved plants the seeds of more Arab and Islamic hatred — of Israel, and of Israel’s best friend, the United States. Tuesday’s horrific attack might have taken place even if Israel and the Palestinians were at peace. Nor would Mideast peace assure us that no more terrorist attacks would take place. But this we know: as long as millions of Islamic and Arab people hate America because of its Mideast policies, we will be in danger.

The plight of the Palestinians is the single most important issue to most Arabs. Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland conducted a poll in which citizens of five nations — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates — were asked how important the Palestinian issue was to them personally. In four nations, 60 percent said it was the most important. In Egypt, reviled throughout the Arab world as the state that made peace with Israel, 79 percent said it was.

Nor are such sentiments confined to the Middle East. In small anti-U.S. demonstrations Sunday in Rawalpindi, Pakistan — the Muslim nation that is the key to our diplomatic and military efforts to apprehend bin Laden — demonstrators chanted slogans attacking the U.S. over the Palestinian issue.

What does this have to do with America? Everything. It is difficult for Americans, thousands of miles away from a conflict for which they feel no responsibility, to realize how people in the Middle East — indeed, in much of the Third World — view us. For many, perhaps most Arabs — including those in the moderate states, as well as that vast majority of the Arab world that is well disposed to the American people — America is virtually indistinguishable from Israel. The bitter joke in the region is that Israel isn’t a client state of the United States — the United States is a client state of Israel. The refugees in the squalid camps in Gaza may not know that Israel is the primary recipient of our foreign aid, receiving $2 billion annually in military aid, but they know Israel could not do what it’s doing without us. The jets that fire missiles into Palestinian buildings, the tanks and helicopter gunships that enforce Israeli control of the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza, might as well have big pictures of Uncle Sam painted on the side.

And people ask, “Why do they hate us?”

If this were a case of good vs. evil, the righteous Israelis fighting for their survival against the evil Arabs, it would be a cause worth America enduring the hatred of millions of people. But it is not. No one in the world, aside from some segment of the Israeli public and, apparently, the U.S. government, believes this. The Third World doesn’t believe it. The United Nations doesn’t believe it. Our European allies don’t believe it. And most Americans don’t believe it — although in the horrifying spasm of mindless anti-Arab sentiment that is gripping the country now, who knows if that will continue to be true.

Let us be absolutely clear: if Israel is not a moral exemplar, neither are the Palestinians or the Arab states. There are no heroes and villains here. Nothing can condone the Palestinian terror attacks against Israel, any more than anything can condone the intransigence on both sides that has led to them. The day has long passed when anyone could seriously look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as anything but a train wreck, a horrifying collision in which every noble impulse and belief immediately runs into its opposite.

A people persecuted for thousands of years, subject to the most horrifying act of genocide visited upon any group in human history, finally finds a homeland where they can be free — only to discover that another group of people, with equal claim to the land, was already there.

Another impoverished and oppressed group of people, driven from their ancestral homes by an occupying force into wretched refugee camps, or left on the margins of the society created by that occupying force, turning in their desperation to religious fanaticism and suicidal violence.

On both sides, leaders without the courage to make peace. Decent men and women on both sides driven to hopelessness and hatred. And endless blood.

That is the situation. But it may still be possible to find a way out of this tragic deadlock — if America has the courage to step in. Only the United States has the power to broker a deal that will provide lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. Hitherto, we have lacked the will to do so. Perhaps Tuesday’s horrific events will provide the impetus to find that will.

Exactly what the final form of a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians should or will take is impossible to say. Nor is ultimate success assured. The hatred and mistrust is deeper than ever; perhaps a point of no return has been reached. But the effort must be made. And the crucial initial step is obvious, as it has been for many years: Israel must immediately stop building new settlements in the occupied territories.

Freezing construction of new settlements is the critical step called for in this spring’s Mitchell Report on Mideast violence — a reasonable, even-handed document that assigned blame to both Israel and the Palestinians and was completely ignored by all parties, most glaringly the only one that had the power to make it happen, the United States.

Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied territories taken in the 1967 war violates international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which, in the language of the Mitchell report, “prohibits Israel (as an occupying power) from establishing settlements in occupied territory pending an end to the conflict.” U.S. administrations from Reagan to the present have opposed the settlements. Their existence is the first point brought up by Palestinians in conversations about Israel.

It is true, as the Mitchell Report acknowledges, that the Palestinians bear their share of the blame for continuing to launch attacks against Israel. But playing the blame game at this point is a sterile exercise, and the stakes are Israeli and Palestinian lives. To break the cycle of violence a bold step must be taken. A freeze — or, better still, a freeze combined with a dismantling of existing settlements — would be the single most positive step Israel could take toward restoring trust between itself and the Palestinians. As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said, “A government which seeks to argue that its goal is to reach a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians through peaceful means, and is trying at this stage to bring an end to the violence and terrorism, must announce an end to construction in the settlements.”

There should be no illusions that this by itself would bring peace. Although most Israelis agree that no new settlements should be built, months of bloody terror have eroded their trust in the Palestinians. And they are led by Ariel Sharon, a hard-liner who knows no response to terror but counter-terror. Sharon has refused to stop building the settlements, saying he does not want to reward Palestinian violence and citing security concerns. But until the Palestinians are given genuine hope, there will be no security for Israel.

Faced with this stalemate, the Bush administration has done nothing — not only on the settlement issue, but on anything relating to the Middle East. Fearing it will humiliatingly fail as the Clinton administration failed before it, it skulks haplessly on the sidelines. The mightiest country in the world is reduced to mumbling earnestly, “The cycle of violence must stop,” as bombs keep exploding and people keep dying.

It’s time for America to start throwing its weight around — not just with the Islamic states like Pakistan that offer second-hand harbor to terrorists, but with Israel. There should be no great difficulty in getting the Israelis to do what we want: Just tell them that if they don’t, we won’t give them any more money. It’s remarkable how persuasive $3 billion a year can be, the total amount of military and civilian aid we lavish on our Mideast partner.

At the same time as we lean on the Israelis, we also must squeeze Arafat. The Palestinian leader and those who follow him must be told that further outbreaks of violence will abrogate the whole deal. And he must also be told that at the end of the day (and it’s going to be a very short day) the Palestinian people are not going to get significantly more than what they almost got at Camp David — that tragic missed opportunity for whose failure, as incisive articles in the New York Times and the Aug. 9 New York Review of Books have demonstrated, Arafat, Barak, and Clinton must all shoulder the blame.

The U.S. must give the Palestinians muscular assurance that their basic needs as a sovereign state will be met. Those needs are summed up by Rob Malley and Hussein Agha in the New York Review of Books: “a viable, contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital and sovereignty over its Muslim and Christian holy sites; meaningful sovereignty; and a just settlement of the refugee issue.”

But just as the Israelis must give something up, so too must the Palestinians. There is no other realistic path to peace. They will not get everything they want. They must be told that they will not get universal right of return for all those Palestinians who were displaced by the creation of the state of Israel, or control of all of the West Bank or Jerusalem.

Arafat is a gravely flawed leader, torn between realism and maximalist mythology. After he failed to embrace the imperfect but viable solution offered by Barak and Clinton at Camp David, even many liberal Israelis concluded that he was not seriously interested in making peace. But he is a better partner than anyone else on the horizon. And a bold American move at this crucial moment — with Arab leaders realizing that after Tuesday, the rules of the game have changed forever — could shake Arafat, and the moderate frontline Arab states, out of their anti-American posturing and into constructive action. Neither the PLO nor any Arab state wants a future in which a deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian conflict breeds endless terrorism, which in turn unleashes the full might of American military force against the Arab world.

As for the Israelis, the deal would also guarantee that America would stand behind their core demands. Those are, again in Malley and Agha’s words, “its continued existence as a Jewish state; genuine security; Jewish Jerusalem as its recognized capital; respect and acknowledgment of its connection to holy Jewish sites.”

Would America be putting Israel at risk by, in effect, forcing it to blink first? Not if America stood behind its words. If the Palestinian Authority in the interim period towards full statehood proved unable or unwilling to control radical rejectionists, America would stand behind Israel in its retaking of the occupied territory previously ceded to the Palestinians. In effect, everything would return to the previous, bloody status quo.

And if there is some risk in the deal — so what? The situation now is intolerable.

There is, of course, no guarantee that this plan would succeed. But it would be a way of breaking the bloody deadlock in the region. It would offer hope. And, crucially, it would take place in the context of a broader diplomatic initiative to the Islamic world, a mission in which we will need every card we can play. It would make a clear and emphatic statement to the Islamic states — at precisely the moment when we might be taking military action against Islamic regimes that harbor terrorists, a move that could inspire a new generation of terrorists with an implacable hatred of America — that it is a new day, that Israel is not the tail that wags the American dog.

No one can say that stepping into the Middle East quagmire will stop future terror attacks against the United States. The world is full of angry zealots with a laundry list of grievances. Bin Laden and his maniacal ilk might continue to plot mayhem against us no matter what we do. But it could help, and it is the right thing to do.

It is also the wise thing to do. Enraged politicians, pundits and citizens are calling for America to lash out indiscriminately, to bomb states that harbor terrorists even if innocent people are killed — rabid reactions epitomized by columnist Ann Coulter, who wrote, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” That way madness lies. As we move into uncharted territory of extraordinary difficulty, hunting down the elusive and bloodthirsty foes responsible for history’s worst act of terrorism, we must ensure our efforts do not ignite a conflagration of anti-American hatred throughout the Arab world. To do this we must convince that world that we are genuinely interested in brokering a fair and comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

There will be those who point to the televised images of Palestinians celebrating the attacks as proof that these people hate us too much to ever be partners in peace. Such a reaction is understandable, but it is wrong. No one can condone celebrating the murder of innocent people. But hopeless, desperate people are driven to do ugly things. In their hearts, the Palestinians, like the Israelis, like Americans, like all the people of the world, want the same things. Peace. A country. A decent life. The little girls in Nablus lighting candles in memory of those who died in New York City are the real face of the Palestinian people. Our goal must be to act in such a way that some day, if an earthquake rocks Tel Aviv, those little girls will light candles for its victims, too.

On Tuesday, America turned into Israel. The sudden, obscene horror. The nightmarish images. The anguish of families torn apart, of cherished lives suddenly snuffed out.

On Tuesday, America also turned into Palestine. The same horror. The same images. The same anguish.

Today, the Jordan river runs through the center of every city in America. Palestinians and Israelis have waded through that river of blood and tears for decades: On Tuesday, we received our terrible baptism. Like the human beings who live in Jerusalem and Ramallah, we know we are not safe, not any more. We must finally accept that what happens in Ramallah and Jerusalem on Monday will happen in New York and Washington, or San Francisco and Chicago, on Tuesday.

If America succeeds in unifying the world against terrorism, while helping bring peace to the world’s most dangerous and intractable conflict and draining the venom from old hatreds, the unthinkable tragedy that has befallen us might yield a lasting good.

Many governments struggling with dissent appear to be using a double-barreled strategy to fight back against the so-called Facebook revolutions: classic repression and by promoting their own views using the very same platforms.

“The thought police already have a presence online in these countries,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “And they have a very heavy presence on Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks. They go out there and intimidate people. And they accuse people of being heathens. And call for their heads.”

Jeffrey Ghannam, a media lawyer and analyst in Washington, thinks the propaganda strategy will win out over subjugation.

“It’s my sense that Arab governments will focus less on control, filtering and blocking — though those efforts will not completely disappear — and begin to assert their own views in the Arab cyberspace,” he said.

“Consider the cases of so-called Bahraini twitter trolls and the Syrian cyber attacks that go after critics of these respective Arab regimes. The official Arab government view is increasingly in the mix,” he said. “Another example is the way the SCAF (Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces) uses Facebook and Twitter. It may not be beautifully done, and it does draw tens of thousands of critical remarks online that are viewable, but the SCAF is contributing its views. These are all significant developments and point to increasing government engagement in the Arab cyberspace.”

Some of the official efforts smack of classic public relations techniques.

In Bahrain, the government launched an online campaign called “We Are All Hamad,” asking supporters to post pictures of Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s ruler, on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

In Tunisia, government officials, including President Moncef Marzouki (@Moncef_Marzouki) have joined Twitter. The royal family in Jordan, as well as the mayor of Amman, Jordan’s capital, also use Facebook and Twitter to speak directly to constituents.

These regimes, however, have a long history of using heavy-handed tactics and are apparently not about to give up on old habits. Many, in fact, have learned that social media can help identify potential targets of their crackdown.

This nascent trend, however, has not led authorities in these countries and elsewhere to give up old habits. Many have continued to opt for the more traditional and heavy-handed response.

Last month, for instance, Moroccan authorities arrested 18-year-old college student Walid Bahomane on charges of “defaming Morocco’s sacred values” by posting unflattering pictures and videos on Facebook that poked fun at King Mohammed VI. Authorities also convicted another student, Abdelsamad Haydour, 24, earlier in the month for criticizing the ruler in a video posted on YouTube.

These developments have taken place in a country largely praised for its response to citizen discontent over the past year. In November, Morocco held peaceful parliamentary elections as part of a governmental reform process initiated by the king that also included a new constitution.

In Saudi Arabia, 23-year-old journalist Hamza Kashgari faces charges of blasphemy, an offence that carries the death sentence, for tweeting an imaginary conversation he was having with the Prophet Muhammad. The uproar over Kashgari’s comments prompted the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul-Azeez ibn Abdullaah Aal ash-Shaikh, to issue a fatwa against Twitter, which he told “real Muslims” to avoid as a “platform for trading accusations and for promoting lies,” according to an article in The National.

And in Jordan, a masked assailant on Feb. 20 stabbed university student Enass Musallam after he published a blog post that criticized a member of the Jordanian royal family.

Authorities in the region are now also turning to old laws — such as emergency laws, anti-terrorism laws and press laws — to justify the arrest, fines and incarceration of individuals for online expression.

“When the internet and social media blogs were just starting to become popular, press laws were only applied to the mainstream media. But that’s no longer the case as these media platforms continue to converge,” said Courtney Radsch, program manager for the Global Freedom of Expression Campaign at Freedom House in New York.

Earlier this month, for instance, authorities in the United Arab Emirates arrested pro-democracy activist Saleh al-Dhufairi for tweets criticizing the UAE’s decision to deport Syrian expatriates who demonstrated outside their consulate in Dubai without a permit.

“Saleh al-Dhufairi has been arrested on accusation of spreading ideas by speech, writing and any other means that provoke strife, hurt national unity, and social peace,” a spokesman for Dubai police said in a statement.

Al-Dhufairi’s arrest is a scare tactic by a government that is itself scared of any significant dissent, CPJ’s Abdel Dayem.

“Events are occurring that are of monumental political weight and have very far reaching implications. So what happens in Tunisia matters in the Gulf and what happens in Syria matters in the Gulf,” Abdel Dayem said. “These are obviously separate political entities and separate states but there is a Pan-Arab media consumed across borders, so journalists, bloggers, regular citizens and everyone else is exploring these new found venues for expression.”

“They are testing government tolerance for criticism, not just in Libya, Egypt and Yemen where there was an actual change in the political arrangement, but also in countries where there hasn’t been change.”

And these governments in turn are testing their responses, said popular UAE commentator Sultan Al Qassemi, who has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter.

“What we are seeing today is part of the teething process of accepting social media as an avenue of communication and criticism of society and government in the Gulf,” Qassemi said. “As the adoption of social media tools grows in the Gulf there will naturally be a larger output of opinions, some less agreeable to the authorities than others.”

Citizen journalists, bloggers and average citizens who run afoul of the law for expressing their opinions online must also contend with inadequate legal representation.

“This is a new realm for many lawyers in these countries. It requires training and requires a level of experience with the technology and that’s lacking in many countries if not all,” Radsch said. “Certainly, in the U.S. where you’ve had a longer history with internet-based content you have some more sophistication there.

But in many of these countries, blogging really just got going in 2004 and 2005.”

“With the advent of TV, you saw fewer cases against broadcasters at the beginning because it was still new and they were figuring things out, but you’re going to continue to see this battle between governments and citizens play out,” she said.

This time, however, the very nature of the internet and social networking might be enough to break the cycle.

“One thing is different,” Radsch said. “There are a lot more stakeholders and users of social media. The mainstream media is owned by a few and provides jobs for a few more but the vested interest across the broad swath of the public using social media could mean far more stakeholders could fight for the right to keep this space open.”

In the past few weeks, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon have all held high level meetings in Jerusalem. Barak is scheduled to meet with Panetta and with Vice President Joe Biden. Peres will meet with President Barack Obama, as will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will fly to Washington for a much anticipated meeting on March 5.

The subject at hand is nuclear Iran — not the movie version, and not even the proxy war version, which has seen the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, the attempted assassinations of Israeli diplomats, and genial computer viruses attack Iranian nuclear installations, making centrifuges spiral out of control, as in Hollywood’s imagination.

On the eve of the Israelis’ Washington visits, there is a divergence of opinion between the United States and Israel regarding the utility of the recently hardened sanctions on Iran, and a growing apprehension on both sides about what the other may be prepared to accept from the Islamic Republic’s leadership.

Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel bilateral relations who holds posts at Bar Ilan University and at the University of Southern California, said the situation is stark and in some ways unprecedented.

“The Obama administration has little trust in Netanyahu and vice versa. The new sanctions that have been imposed have produced economic hardship in Tehran, but this does not mean they are working. To work, they have to change the Iranian government’s policy toward nuclear development, and this has not yet happened.”

“The UN Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has just announced that Iran has substantially increased enrichment, which seems to contradict American statements that have appeared in all the media suggesting that Iran has not yet made the decision whether to develop nuclear weapons.”

Two points of dispute stand out in creating what Sen. John McCain, also on a visit to Israel last week, called the “daylight” between the two countries regarding Iran’s nuclear plan.

The first is the question of what constitutes unacceptable progress toward the manufacture of an armed nuclear device, or, in Barak’s words, Iran’s entry into a “zone of immunity.” The other is the extent of uranium enrichment at a nuclear site near the holy city of Qum, which was highlighted by the IAEA report.

The United States and Israel agree that the secret underground structure is better protected from a possible military strike than other known Iranian facilities. But from that point of agreement, different conclusions are drawn.

Israeli analysts believe Iran is moving fast toward a nuclear military option, and taking advantage of the pressure of sanctions and the time granted by European offers to negotiate in order to assemble all the parts necessary to build a bomb. The United States, which is in the midst of an election year, meanwhile, thinks sanctions may yet bring Iran — “if it is behaving as a rational actor,” in Gilboa’s words — to negotiate.

“The process is preparing everything for the building of bombs, with the aim of creating all the parts and then needing only a very short period of time to assemble a weapon. So it is just playing with words if we say that we don’t know whether they have made a decision. If you produce all the parts, it is obvious that means you intend to produce a bomb,” Gilboa said.

“I think that what Obama wants from Netanyahu next week is a commitment not to strike Iran at least until the American election, to give heavier sanctions a chance and not to surprise the United States.”

Gilboa does not believe Israel would attack Iranian nuclear installations without notifying the Americans beforehand.

Still, he points out, “The current situation is unprecedented. The U.S. has never before asked Israel to refrain from military action, and Israel has never before asked the U.S. for permission. This is all new ground.”

The 1981 Israel Air Force attack on Osirak, Saddam Hussein’s French-built nuclear reactor is now ancient history. In that campaign however, only eight jets were involved.

The New York Times estimated that at least 100 Israeli fighter planes would be needed today for a crippling attack on Iran. At the time of the Osirak strike, the United States angrily condemned Israel. But in 2005, former President Bill Clinton said, “Everybody talks about what the Israelis did at Osirak in 1981, which I think, in retrospect, was a really good thing.”

The current disagreement between Israel and the United States seem not to be on the substance of Iran’s nuclear program, or even on the possibility of a necessary, last-resort, military strike, but on the timetable and method of response to the threat.

Many Israeli analysts believe the Obama administration and Europe are not convinced that the full effect of sanctions has yet been felt. Israelis are concerned that by the time they are felt, possibly by next summer, when Europe’s oil embargo on Iran is scheduled to go into effect, it might be too late.

“What Obama would like is to put the crippling sanctions to the test. He thinks that the sanctions being used this time, alongside the oil embargo, will actually have an impact,” said Tel Aviv University professor Uzi Rabi, the director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.

“He is in effect saying to Israel, don’t surprise us. We want to be updated from A to Z. The second thing, I think Israel is being asked is to play down the shadow war and really just let sanctions work. If the sanctions are going to be fully implemented it could inflict a lethal blow on the Iranian regime, and since what we are talking about is the survival of the regime itself, this could be very effective.”

As to Israel, Rabi says, “It would like to make sure everybody knows that from its point of view, a nuclear Iran is unbearable. This combination of ayatollahs and power is something that poses an existential threat to Israel, and it is something Israel is really afraid of. What Israel thinks is the right thing to do is to make sure the military option is not only on the table, but actually feasible.”

Not many in Israel think that Iran, even with a nuclear weapon in hand, would attack Tel Aviv.

“Based on rational thinking, which is not one of the strongest characteristics of the Middle East, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it would be tantamount to suicide were they to use them. Iran would be wiped out by Israel’s second strike capability and by American nukes,” Gilboa said.

“I think they want them in order to acquire hegemony in the Middle East. By becoming a nuclear power they can threaten anybody. The power of threat is much more than the power of destruction.”

Gilboa predicts that next week Netanyahu will ask Obama how he plans to ensure Iran’s non-nuclear status in the event sanctions fail to cripple the nuclear program, and that Obama “will evade the answers.”

Rabi says “Israel is afraid to be left alone. I don’t think Iran would attack Israel. But their actions provide a source of inspiration for lunatic radical movements like Hamas and Hezbollah, and the fact that they are attacking Israelis in Baku, Delhi and Tbilisi, though ineffective for now, show that this is a state that could act in accordance with the modus operandi of a terrorist group. This has very negative implications for the stability of the Middle East.”

Not all Israeli experts see in the commotion of transatlantic visits and consultations evidence of tension between the United States and Israel. Shlomo Shpiro, vice chair of the Department of Politics at Bar Ilan University, believes those claims to be overstated.

“I think there anxiety among some in the U.S. administration who fear that a powerful Israeli military action against Iran could have an impact on the election in November. I don’t think there is tension. A whole range of senior American officials have been visiting Israel almost on a weekly basis.”

“I think the threat assessment is very similar in Washington and in Jerusalem,” he adds. “I think Obama is very concerned about the possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons. Both are very worried, and both countries agree the process is moving quickly. The disagreement is only about how to prevent or delay it.”

Any Israeli military option, Shpiro says, would be a “last resort.”

“But if it comes to a last resort, I think Israel’s leadership will not hesitate. It all depends on the progress of Iran’s nuclear program and on information that the U.S. and Israel obtain about that program.”

For now, the war of nerves will play on, with Israel pressuring the U.S. and Europe to fully implement severe sanctions as soon as possible, and demanding assurances, perhaps impossible to give, about what the West will do if sanctions do not deter Iran.

The psychological warfare, many say, may lead Iran to believe it can “safely assume it can continue with its plan to build nuclear weapons without much interference,” Gilboa said. “There is a possibility the Iranians are laughing at everybody. For example, why announce sanctions and then say you’ll impose them only in six months?”

“The Iranians are the only ones producing consistent statements, and this is our problem. Too many of the statements coming from the West are confusing and could be interpreted in any number of ways.”

Hezbollah has enjoyed enormous popularity across the entire region, perceived by many as the champions of the Arab world, successfully standing up to the bully in the playground, Israel. There was a time when the portrait of Hassan Nasrallah hung on the walls of homes and cafes from Baghdad to Casablanca. Yet, following a relatively cool reception of Nasrallah’s speech on the 16^th of February , one got the distinct impression that the Lebanese resistance leader may not enjoy the same popularity he once did with the Arab masses.

A simple explanation might be Hezbollah’s unequivocal support for Bashar el-Assad’s regime in Syria.  In a speech broadcast by al-Manar on May 25^th 2011, Nasrallah declared his group’s strong support for the Assad regime. He hailed Syria for its support of the Resistance movement in Lebanon and Palestine. Many have been unable to comprehend why the former champions of the resistance would side with the regime against the people, especially considering Hezbollah’s unreserved support for the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain. This has eroded the party’s popularity not only among Sunnis in Syria, who dominate the opposition, but also in the Arab world at large as regional tensions intensify between Shi’ite Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab states.

Ironically, the very cause which won Hezbollah respect from thousands across the region, also, lost them the support of their own people. Throughout the 1990s, the Lebanese, regardless of sect, were united by Hezbollah’s resistance to the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and again in 2006 when Israel threatened reinvasion. However, critics point to Hezbollah’s reluctance to disarm as the main source of national instability. Lebanese political leader Samir Geagea asserting that “The ones who are involving Lebanon [in crises] are those wielding power outside the Lebanese state” and demanding that Hezbollah put down its arms and integrate itself with the official Lebanese army and government.

In a similar vein, Hezbollah has alienated many followers by becoming embroiled in a petty tit-for-tat exchange with the March 14 coalition over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq el-Hariri.  Many, regardless of their politics, had respected Nasrallah for his commitment to his cause and ability to avoid entanglement in party politics.

Though not Hezbollah’s fault, as such, the persisting devastation of the socio-economic condition and infrastructure of southern Lebanon has also served as a harsh reminder, to the organisation’s critics, of the consequences of war with Israel

In the Asia Times, Sami Moubayed, points out Hassan Nasrallah’s total withdrawal from public life in Lebanon in recent years; choosing to address his supporters on live television rather than the massive public rallies for which he has been famed. His disappearance has been due to security fears. However, this has made it difficult for followers to connect with him. It is, also, now harder to draw in new supporters from across the Arab and Islamic worlds.

Despite their somewhat dented popularity, Hezbollah is still massively important on a strategic level, with regard to predicting the outcome of unrest in Syria.

In a speech broadcast by al-Manar on the 25^th August 2011, Nasrallah named Syria as a very important ally in the region “The Syrian support has been crucial. A great part of the Iranian support comes through Syria. If it had not been for the will of Syria, even the Iranian support would have been blocked”.  So, it is reasonable to assume that the fall of the Assad regime would serve a tremendous blow to Hezbollah, but also, act as catalyst to a power struggle within the country. A regime in Syria based on the Sunni Muslim majority would most likely be more friendly to Hezbollah’s local rivals in the March 14 coalition. Such a regime would also have good relations with regional powers that have severe disagreements with the Hezbollah movement over sectarian and political issues.

Prof. Joseph Bahout at Sciences Po in Paris notes that, in such a situation, Hezbollah would be faced with two alternatives, if faced with waning support from Syria “will Hizballah gradually become more flexible in terms of Lebanonization and civilianization? Or, on the contrary, will it increasingly pursue a radical position and bitterly defend its share of the Lebanese system while echoing Tehran’s dictum that Assad’s rule in Syria is a red line?” Judging by Hezbollah’s stern rhetoric over the past few months, the leadership has already decided on the latter and will continue to stand by the Assad regime.

Perhaps, most dangerously, Hezbollah also play an extremely important strategic role in what has been suggested as an imminent conflict between Israel and Iran. Would Israel be capable of conducting an aerial battle with Iran at the same time as defending itself against Hezbollah, closer to home?

Ha’aretz commentator Yoel Marcus thinks not, saying that a strike on Iran would be out of Israel’s league and points to cautions issued by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan against attacking Iran, amidst concerns that such a move would drag Israel into a regional war, which would involve Hezbollah, Hamas and possibly Syria.

Tensions have been escalating between Israel and Iran for some time, recently, heightened following attacks on Israeli embassies in India, Thailand and Georgia. An official for the Israeli counter terrorism bureau, quoted in Ha’aretz warned Israelis of further attacks and noted that Nasrallah’s threats of revenge for the 2008 assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughaniyeh were being taken into account.  Nasrallah categorically denied any involvement in the explosions in his speech on February 16^th.

But what would such a conflict mean for the Arab world at large? It seems unlikely that Egyptians, Jordanians or, the Palestinians, all not so embroiled in the sectarian debate, would support Israel in any conflict against Muslims whether they be in Lebanon or, in Iran. However, countries in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) might have more to gain from a weakened Iran.

The GCC have been concerned about Iran’s capabilities, behavior and intentions for a long time, but it takes on an additional importance in light of the Arab Spring. This has certainly been the case in Egypt and Bahrain, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, possibly in Yemen, and now in Syria.

GCC countries have repeatedly accused Tehran of attempting to destabilise their internal security, and attempting to instigate sectarian strife. Iran has rejected these accusations, and pointed to the GCC’s appalling treatment of Shi’ite citizens. Particularly, concerning the brutal suppression of the largely Shi’ite uprising in Bahrain against the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy, a struggle which was obviously covered up by Gulf sponsored media such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya.

Tensions have also been rising over Iran’s ability to developing nuclear weapons, something that is already of great concern to the GCC. Without a nuclear advantage, the Gulf far outguns Iran in terms of military capability, although, Iran is not reluctant to use its geopolitical position and has threatened to close off the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes, if pressured.

When placed in the context of a larger regional conflict between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah plays an absolutely crucial part as an ally of Iran, especially in the absence of Syria. Yet, when the financial might of the GCC is also turned against Iran, Hezbollah, which is ultimately a financially dependent arm of Iran, becomes inconsequential.

It is possible that Hezbollah may look to find solutions to its waning popularity, and a possible run in with the GCC, by pre-emptively launching a strike against Israel. In his speech on Feburary 16^th, Nasrallah ambiguously claimed that “We have arms and they are increasing [in number]. We have well-known weapons and there are others which are hidden and unknown. We are hiding them because we need to protect our country and prepare surprises for the Israelis.” Whilst this may be an empty threat, a Hezbollah spokesman has said that the organisation would be willing to go to war with Israel, should Syria be attacked. It seems likely that the same logic would apply if an attack were to be staged against Iran.

Prof. Juan Cole has said that, in the case of a conflict with Iran, Hezbollah would almost certainly launch a rocket attack, which would threaten up to a quarter of the Israeli population. The casualties might be even worse if Hezbollah is able to target toxic gas storage in Haifa or nuclear reactors in Dimona and Nahal Sorek. Already Israel has been taking steps to shut down these facilities, in the event of an attack.

This seems to be a departure from Nasrallah’s statement in 2006, shortly after the 34 day war between Hezbollah and Israel, when he told Lebanon’s NTV that had he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers, had he known that this would lead to such devastation. However, six years on, the situation between Iran and Israel has escalated, and for Hezbollah this has become a battle for existence. In an earlier speech, February 7^th, Nasrallah admitted that the organisation has been completely dependent on Iran for “moral, political and financial support” since 1982.

Hezbollah has found itself in the unenviable position of choosing between its Iranian financial backer and its Arab popular support base. Ironically, Hezbollah’s only hope may be an Israelis attack on Iran, thus gaining it some support, once more, as the champion of resistance against the Zionist aggressor. But should the pressure on Iran be laid on by the Gulf states, Hezbollah will be left with no alternative but to cut its ties with Iran or, face complete irrelevance within the Arab world.

On the surface, the criteria that Obama outlined in his Libya speech are present in Syria: impending and ongoing massacres; a multilateral coalition led by America’s traditional allies; and an opportunity to side with the people in a crucial state in the Arab spring. For this reason, many liberal writers have called on the U.S. to intervene. Paul Berman has signed onto a conservative-led letter to the president asking him to intervene in Syria. The New Republic has an entire symposium with intellectuals (mostly) asking Obama to side militarily with the Syrian resistance. “Lead again from behind!” Leon Wieseltier exhorts. Especially powerful is a heartfelt plea for American help from a Syrian activist in Washington:

Pressure is building in Congress. Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who both serve on the Armed Services Committee, have argued for arming the Syrian rebels. Obama’s former State Department policy planning head Anne-Marie Slaughter was among the first to call for intervention. In late January, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said it’s only “a question of time” before President Bashar al Assad falls. In December, the State Department pointman said Syria’s leader was a “dead man walking.” More recently, White House press secretary said on Tuesday that “additional measures” such as rebel-arming may need to be taken if the international community keeps dithering.

There are two significant reasons the administration has not pushed for military intervention, however. First, the international consensus that existed on Libya is not present in Syria. Russia and China vetoed a Western- and Arab-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government. Imagining that they would agree to a military intervention is simply fanciful.

What hasn’t been much discussed is why China and Russia vetoed the resolution. And here we circle back to Libya. The resolution authorizing military action in Libya was limited to protecting civilians in Benghazi and other areas. NATO and its allies quickly went beyond the scope of this mandate, using airpower to assist the rebels in defeating Col. Gadhafi and his forces. Such actions may have been morally justified, but they didn’t go unnoticed by the Chinese and Russians, who are extremely sensitive to infringements on state sovereignty (lest they be targeted one day). Tellingly, foes of the proposed Syria resolution explained their decision in terms of national sovereignty. Russia’s foreign minister said that “the Security Council by definition does not engage in domestic affairs of member states.” Russia’s U.N. envoy faulted the resolution for aiming at “regime change,” even though the wording of the text notably did not call for it and the Arab states explicitly rejected Western military intervention.

The second reason Libya isn’t acting as a template for Syria is one of logistics. As Middle East expert Marc Lynch has explained, “Military intervention in Syria has little prospect of success, a high risk of disastrous failure, and a near-certainty of escalation which should make the experience of Iraq weigh extremely heavily on anyone contemplating such an intervention.” The Syrian opposition, impressive and courageous as they have been, is divided, weak and controls no territory. Air power of the sort the West can provide would not be effective in preventing civilian deaths, and the fighting is taking place in densely populated cities. For these reasons and more, a Libya-style no-fly zone simply won’t fly.

Eventually, the Syrian government’s efforts to suppress the rebellion may be so bloody that the Obama administration feels compelled to intervene. But so far, the conditions that were present in Libya are not present in Syria. It may be a double standard, and one that liberal hawks are not comfortable with, but it is one with good reason.