WHERE US POLICY IN ISRAEL HAS GOT US SO FAR. Dore Gold writes in The Wall Street Journal that the supposed moderation that was supposed to be the result of the Disengagement from Gaza never materialized. On the contrary:

Five months after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas won the Palestinian elections and formed a government. In March 2006, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the London Arabic daily Al-Hayat that al Qaeda had penetrated the area. A month later, the newspaper reported that al Qaeda operatives had infiltrated Gaza from Egypt, Sudan and Yemen.

Huge amounts of weapons and cash also poured into Gaza. And regardless of their tactical disagreements, Hamas did not fight al Qaeda but in fact joined forces with one of its Gaza affiliates, the Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam), in kidnapping Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit. In July 2007, the head of al Qaeda in Egypt fled that country's security forces to hide in Gaza.

In short, the U.S. and its Western allies thought that Israel's Gaza pullout would establish the foundations of a Palestinian state and thus reduce the flames of radical Islamic rage. Instead they got an al-Qaeda sanctuary on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Never one to learn a lesson, Condoleezza Rice is pushing Israel again and talking about concessions geared towards taking advantage of a momentum the source of which is unclear.

Maybe the problem is an overall underestimation of al Qaeda. Powerline has a post about

the view of the Washington foreign policy establishment that, though we should be concerned about the reconstitution of al Qaeda in Pakistan, we have little reason to fear that al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) will attack our homeland. Members of this same establishment believed during the 1990s that al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan posed no threat to our homeland. In their zest to see us pull out of Iraq, they seem to have forgotten how wrong they were then.

If al Qaeda in Iraq is being overlooked, what are the chances that their presence in Gaza is being played down as well--especially when the threat is to Israel and not to the US?

Technorati Tag: Israel and al-Qaeda.