Fewer allies, less influence: US struggles in Middle East

WASHINGTON: The U.S failure to secure a firm ceasefire in the Gaza Strip despite two weeks of intense diplomacy reflects new regional dynamics in which the world’s most powerful actor has diminished influence and fewer allies.
When Secretary of State John Kerry left Washington on July 21 on a mission to try to halt the latest Israeli-Palestinian war, more than 400 Palestinians had been killed, mostly civilians, along with 20 Israelis, 18 of them soldiers.
Nearly two weeks later, after Kerry’s extensive face-to-face diplomacy in Cairo, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Tel Aviv and Paris and scores of telephone calls, the death tolls have tripled, two ceasefires have collapsed and the violence rages.
Israel declared a 72-hour Gaza ceasefire over on Friday within hours of its taking effect, saying that Hamas militants breached the truce soon after it began and apparently captured one Israeli officer while killing two others.
Renewed Israeli shelling killed more than 70 Palestinians and wounded some 220, hospital officials said, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas and other militant groups they would “bear the consequences of their actions.”
Beyond the animosity of the two sides – neither of which seem close to achieving its aims – Washington’s diplomatic challenge has been made more complex by the erosion of its standing in the Middle East.
Other contributing factors include tensions among big Arab players, who see the conflict as a proxy war against Hamas and its Islamist allies, some clumsy U.S. diplomacy, including bad timing, and strains between the United States and Israel.
“There is no question that U.S. influence has diminished” in the Arab world, said Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt now at Princeton University.
U.S. credibility has also been undercut by its reluctance to intervene in Syria’s civil war; Kerry’s failed push for wider Israeli-Palestinian peace, which collapsed in April; and Iraq’s instability despite a decade of massive U.S. intervention.
U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran have also fanned Arab fears of a rapprochement between Tehran and Washington.
“It doesn’t convey a sense that the U.S. has a full grasp of the complexities of the region,” Kurtzer said, suggesting that a perception has begun to take hold among some countries in the region that they can defy Washington without paying a price. (Reuters)