[LCM Articles] Meet Your Enemies

[Loai Naamani]

July 22, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor


Meet Your Enemies 


By ROBERT MALLEY

Washington

THE United States must rekindle the kind of diplomatic activity that befits
its status and furthers its interests. Of the six players most directly
involved in the confrontation - Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Iran and
the elected Palestinian government - the only one with which we talk is the
one with which we agree. As a result, the United States, facing one of the
more severe crises in decades, has been missing in action. Watching the
United Nations from the sidelines, it has subcontracted diplomacy in a
region it deems vital to a party it doesn't trust. 

American diplomacy should focus on immediate reciprocal and verifiable
cease-fires, prisoner swaps, preliminary steps toward Hezbollah's
demilitarization and, on the Palestinian side, allowing the Hamas government
to govern by easing the financial boycott. This cannot work without engaging
Syria and Iran and renewing efforts to establish a comprehensive peace. None
of this will be easy or tidy. But it is certainly preferable to a policy
that in one breath tells innocent civilians that our thoughts are with them,
and in another that the time for a cease-fire has not yet come. Our thoughts
they can do without. It's action they need.

- ROBERT MALLEY, the director of the Middle East Program at the
International Crisis Group

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