One quick note before I get to my main point about the role of the interwebs in observing war. The ever increasing availability of news reporting on the web has meant that both sides of the conflict have a higher volume of images coming out of the war, if and only if you go looking for it. Images from both sides media envoys create a pretty stunning side by side of a air strike, and I'm sure that if Hamas had the tech for aerial war porn like the IDF, we'd have the same contrast coming out of the towns in Southern Israel. That Isreal choice to ban most media from Gaza has made this process more interesting this time around, because reporters were either Palestinian citizens, folks like al-Jazeera, or embedded reporters with the Israeli army. View point is important folks.
OK on to my main point. The quiet story on both sides of the conflict is the political motivations for the states in the region that are motivating the actions of both sides of the conflict. Below is my analysis of both the internal Israeli politics, and the broader Arab politics that are driving the process.
Israel
For those not tracking Israeli politics, elections are scheduled to elect a new Knesset, following the disgrace of Ehud Olmert (who had been looking willing to negotiate with Hamas before hes fall from power) over the summer, and Tzipi Livni's (current Foreign minister who was elected head of the Kadima party back in Sept.) failure to form a ruling coalition.The current leader in the polls (actually hes been ahead most of the fall) is Likud party head and former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Known for his hawlish stance on the occupied territories, he resigned from Sharon's government back in 2005 due to his objections to the plans for Gaza disengagement. His thoughts on the current fighting are here, but the short verision, (surprise surprise) is that he supports the "just, necessary actions" of the government, and in general has preserved his hawkish rhetoric. Its also pretty clear that the war has benifited his polling numbers more then any other canadate... ironic when you consiter taht he's not even a part fo the current government.
Livni has long been considered dovish, and one of the things that has been pointed to as a cause of her failure to attract the orthodox parties into coalition back in the fall was her fairly moderate stance on resuming negotiations with both the Hamas and Fatah factions of the PAs leadership, particularly over the status of Jerusalem. Given her recent defeat, she knows that she needs to make up ground in public opinion if she wants to beat Likud at the polls.
The last of the challengers? the Labour Party leader, Ehud Barak, ousted as Prime Minister back in 2001 for being to dovish in the face of the second intifaad. His current job? Yep, hes the minister of defense. I'm sure no memory of his political defeat could be driving his hard line rhetoric now.
So now the two more liberal candidates, who have historically been more willing to negotiate with groups like Hamas, are looking at losing power to a man who's strongest selling point has always been his hard line stance on Israeli control of the territories. It seems pretty inconceivable that their wish to remain politically viable isn't informing their newfound inner hawks.
It's also deeply problematic that the two most powerful ministers in the government have a strong incentive to not present a unified public face. While Livni's harsher rhetoric makes sense in her role as party leader and candidate, in her role as Foreign Minister it makes little sense for her to be making threats that the Defense Minister isn't backing up. Public Diplomacy only works when a government is able to send consistent messages to a population. Instead, listeners, including the new American special envoy and the residents of Gaza and the West Bank, are having to read the current polls to decide which minister's view is most likely to become reality.
Gaza
Of course Gaza itself is struggling to understand the political ramification of the war. Honestly, I havent been able to follow the complexities of this enough to write a lot on this but the short version is it seems like Hamas has lost a good deal of public support, but that no group has successfully managed to gain political colt from it. Fatah's inability to gain diplomatic traction has largely confirmed its lack of relevance, and thus far there hasnt been a third party thats been able to take advantage of the situation.My best guess (here without elaboration or citation) is that Hamas is going to splinter, with one group remaining fairly hardline in its current mode of discourse, and another group will moderate into something that looks a bit like the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan or Egypt. I actually think that this would be a reasonably good outcome... but again thats just going to have to wait for another day.
Arab States
Beyond the occupied territories, there's also interesting regional interplay going on in the Arab world as a whole. Prof. Marc Lynch, a Middle Eastern media expert a GW (his blog on FP is one of the essentials if you want to follow ME politics, particularly issues of public diplomacy and media) has a great series of pieces on the Arab summits that were held in responce to the war.One of the most interesting points that commentators like Lynch have noted is that in countries home to 'moderate' regimes, Egypt, Jordan, and the Saudis for his purposes, popular protests have focused not on protesting Israeli actions per say, but rather criticizing their own governments lack of support for Gaza (another point he makes is the relative lack of coverage in the state run media, which I can see even just checking though the English language papers). In the cause of Egypt and Jordan (I just dont follow Saudi politics well enough to speak to that) these protests have largely been organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, with help from assorted oppositions parties. The MB's support of Hamas in and of itself isnt terribly surprising (after all, Hamas is an radical offshoot of the MB), but the massive public support they are able to gather against the host government, and the lack of repression from state authorities seems important.
