What the escalating Palestinian-Israeli crisis means for Middle East relations

John Yang:

For more analysis on the war in Israel, we're joined by Shibley Telhami. He's a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy, and the Anwar Sadat professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.

Shibley, thanks so much for joining us. And we begin with the wish and hope that your loved ones and family in the Middle East are safe and well after yesterday.

Shibley Telhami, University of Maryland: Thank you.

John Yang:

You and I have talked a lot in the past few years about how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was a tinderbox. But this seemed to come out of nowhere. why now, why did this did Hamas Act now?

Shibley Telhami:

This is a really good question. The surprise, honestly, is not why they acted. Now, the surprise is that they had such a capability to do what they did. Frankly, that is the big surprise. And that's the shocker. And then the Israeli military inability to stop them that that's the shocker.

Now, the timing, when you look at it, there are a number of things that are going on at the same time. The first is that there is a lot of despair in the West Bank, particularly but also in Gaza, because nothing has changed 56 years of occupation, they exploit that to their benefit politically.

Palestinians feel there's no one paying attention to them, the international community's ignore them, ignoring them, might be peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia that ignores them further. So they exploit that they get attention and credit, as well as marginalized their opponent, the Palestinian Authority.

So they have the timing really is not particularly surprising. There's also been talk of possibly Israel, and many of the far right ministers in Israel have been calling for a large attack on Gaza. In fact, Hamas itself claimed that they had information the Israelis were going to do it anyway, after the holidays, whether they're using that as an excuse or not, it's hard to know. But nonetheless, there was some expectation that.

John Yang:

You say the capability was surprising. Do you think they got help from their backers in Iran?

Shibley Telhami:

Well, obviously Iran supports them. Iran is clearly a menace to America's interest and have supported Hamas but I sincerely doubt that this is being done for Iran. In fact, I you know, the U.S. has already said there's no intelligence that says that and they, you know, it's improbable the relationship between Hamas and Iran is very close and cooperative but it's not like Hezbollah and Iran where Hezbollah can get instruction from Iran.

I'm not even sure this is a perfect time for Iran, honestly, because they want to perhaps use their allies in case they go to war with Israel and the U.S. down the road. I think, you know, Hezbollah isn't eager, for example, to enter into this fight right now, although they might be drawn into it. Nonetheless.

John Yang:

You mentioned the talks about normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. What does this do to that?

Shibley Telhami:

Well, it we shuffled the deck, there's no question that the Arab governments have had their own strategic interest and that have not been necessarily in harmony with the interests of the Palestinians, that has been taking place and the Saudis obviously have their own strategic interests that they were intent on moving forward.

But what they didn't expect is that this issue would rise to the top of the agenda in the Middle East reshuffling of the deck in ways that were anticipated and they're public, even if the government's don't care about policy. Aciar (ph) public cares in the Saudi public particularly cares a lot about the Palestinian issue. And this obviously puts it right at center stage.

So it limits the possibilities and freedom that governments have with regard to making a deal with Israel, especially knowing now that as Israel has declared war, we're likely to be at this for, unfortunately, many, many, many weeks.

John Yang:

Why do you think Israel missed this? The intelligence didn't pick up the planning? They seemed unprepared. The Hamas seem to get a peep their men into Israel very easily. Why do you think that is?

Shibley Telhami:

Well, you know, I think this is something that everybody's going to be asking. And frankly, I think part of the finger pointing, you know, Iran or something like that, in this particular case, is intended to, you know, divert attention from the failure.

I mean, there's been an incredible failure that have taken place. And it's hard to do understand. I mean, I've been watching Israeli television very closely the last two days. And I think this is not a question they want to get into now, because they have business to do. It's fully understandable.

There's a lot of innocent civilians that have been hurt that have a major, you know, challenge that the likes of which you haven't seen in years. So they need to deal with this now. And they're putting off the question of trying to investigate what went wrong, but I think there is, you know, I've investigated the '73 war, just as you know, this happened the day after the 50th anniversary of the 73 Arab-Israeli war, where in fact, Israel was shocked by the Egyptian and the Syrian attacks, to try to liberate their territories.

And that attack was happened, in part because Israel felt secure. These countries had been thoroughly defeated by Israel just six years before, and Israel was seemed to be strong and in command, and yet, obviously, it happened and this particular case is a conference that Israelis have, perhaps not taken seriously, the capabilities of their opponents may have played a role in this.

John Yang:

Shibley Telhami, Thank you very much.

Shibley Telhami:

My pleasure.