After his meeting with Israel Defense minister Ehud Barak, Gates seemed to agree that Syria is providing Hezbullah with missiles and scuds. Gates [singlepic id=179 w=310 h=230 float=right]commented saying: “Syria and Iran are providing Hezbullah with rockets and missiles of ever-increasing capabilities,” and that “Hezbullah has far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world.”

The tensions between Israel and Syria are increasing after the former threatened to respond by attacking both Syria and Lebanon if Israeli territories would be attacked with scuds.
Although President Mubarak assured for both the Lebanese and Syrian leadership that Israel is not willing to attack their countries, Israel seems to be preparing for any possible confrontation with them. The diplomatic efforts which were made by Israel to bring more support for its claims that Syria did supply Hezbullah with scuds have found success in the United States.

The possible improvement in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian authority could be an Israeli step made to separate the problems which it is facing because of its current refusal to make any development in the peace process. President Mahmud Abbas is supposed to visit the White House in the beginning of May and his visit will decide whether the Palestinians will agree to go into a new round of negotiations or not. President Abbas is facing a continuous pressure from both the central committee of Fatah movement and Hamas to prevent any kind of new negotiations. Fatah leadership insists on a complete settlement-building freeze before any new negotiations while Hamas would use any new negotiations without any real improvement to attack the political program which President Abbas is working upon.

Such dangers are preventing President Abbas from starting a new round of negotiations that would result in a new failure that would end the choice of negotiations forever. Israel would agree to some of the American demands which will enforce the American demand from the Palestinian leadership to go to the negotiations table. Such an Israeli agreement won’t be given without anything in exchange. One Israeli possible demand would be a support for an attack which it may be planning against Iran or one of its allies: Syria and Hezbullah.

The reason which may oblige Israel to choose to attack one of these attacks is the failure of the diplomatic efforts to succeed in preventing Iran from going forward with its nuclear program. Iran continues to succeed in facing the Western threatening and insists on going forward even if this would mean sanctions.

The current situation in the Middle East is nothing else but war. It may be a cold war now or even a cold peace but staying in this situation will definitely bring the whole area into a new-armed confrontation which will be hardly avoided.

Ziad Khalil Abu Zayyad

A Palestinian-Arab living in East Jerusalem, Ziad graduated from College Des Freres in Jerusalem in 2003. Ziad finished his major in International Relations and English Literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ziad is a former President of the Watan student movement at the university. He is interested in Middle Eastern political issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Founder of the Middle East Post and MEL (Middle East Future Leadership Network), he represents Palestinian youth at several international conferences.

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