Peace Talks

The Khaleej Times reports on the ongoing Egyptian cease fire talks, saying that while Egypt is eager to end the fighting and Israel has shown interest in signing the current plan, Hamas leadership from Damascus and Gaza are having a tough time coming together and signing the agreement.  

The Cairo talks involve five Hamas delegates, three from Damascus and two from Gaza.  

Meanwhile, Qatar has requested an emergency Arab League summit to find a solution to the conflict, to which no Arab countries have as of yet signed on to.  Some are afraid that the meeting will prove ineffective, making Arab states look helpless, while others can't get passed certain divisions in the Arab world, a Reuters report makes clear.  

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are opposed to Hamas militants, while Syria and Qatar are sympathetic to them.  Egypt sees Qatar's announcement as a means of embarrassing or undermining talks in Cairo.

Protesters in Syria, Yemen and Iran have excoriated Egypt's refusal to open their border crossings with Gaza to allow civilians to flee the war torn area.  Egypt won't do it without support from the PA government in the West Bank.  

European Sentiments

The CS Monitor reports that pro-Arab sentiment throughout Europe, once dominated by French diplomacy, is dwindling.  

Support for the Palestinian plight, once seen as a struggle for independence and a right of return, is now seen in "shallower emotional and humanitarian grounds . . . forgetting the old issues of substance and Israeli occupation," said one European diplomat.  

Among other factors, many contribute the decline to the friction caused throughout much of Europe in the past decade or so brought on by abrupt increases of Arab and Muslim immigration into Europe, as well as a reaction to 9/11.  

Some are rehashing the "Clash of Civilizations" theory put out by Samuel Huntington, as if this were an inevitability. For those unschooled, please read Huntington's 1993 Foreign Affairs article "The Clash of Civilizations."

I think the thing to remember is that there are moderate groups and extreme groups in every civilization, and there is a fundamental common humanity that need not clash; this is the basis of diplomacy.  

Anyway, read the CSM article, an excellent piece on the worldview of Gaza.