When Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
left Washington on July 21 on a mission to try to halt the latest Israeli offensive on Gazoo, more than 400 Paleostinians 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 Gay Paree and scores of telephone calls, the corpse counts have tripled, two ceasefires have collapsed and the violence rages.
Israel declared a 72-hour Gazoo ceasefire over on Friday within hours of its taking effect, saying that Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, fighters breached the truce soon after it began and apparently captured one Israeli officer while killing two others.
Renewed Israeli shelling killed more than 70 Paleostinians and maimed some 220, hospital officials said, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas and other hard boy 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.
Diminished Influence
"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-Paleostinian 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.
In one telling incident, and a remarkable breach of protocol, Kerry and his top aides were briefly searched with metal-detecting equipment as they arrived for a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi in Cairo on July 22.
In Israel, hostile media reports, apparently fanned by Israeli officials, harshly attacked the U.S. secretary of state as he left the region.
"John Kerry is an ongoing embarrassment, with the characteristics of a snowball. The further he rolls, the greater the embarrassment," centrist columnist Ben Caspit wrote in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv.
Several analysts said neither side seemed ready to stop fighting when Kerry began his shuttle diplomacy, suggesting his timing was off. It is now unclear when, or whether, Kerry might return to the region.
U.S. 'Does Not Control Everything'
President Barack Obama
Republicans can come along for the ride, but they've got to sit in the back...
defended Kerry on Friday even as he derided the notion that the United States had lost influence or that it can solve every problem.
"Apparently, people have forgotten that America, as the most powerful country on earth, still does not control everything around the world," he told news hounds.
"Our diplomatic efforts often take time. They often will see progress and then a step backwards," he added. "That's the nature of world affairs. It's not neat and it's not smooth."
The U.S. task has been made more challenging by the cleavage within the Arab world between Islamist forces such as Hamas and Egypt's Moslem Brüderbund and traditional powers who see them as a direct threat.
Egypt is a case in point. Al-Sisi, who was the country's top military officer, came to power after the ouster of Mohammed Morsi, a president who emerged from the Moslem Brüderbund, which has deep ties to Hamas.
"The role of Egypt has changed from being a credible intermediary to being seen as virtually a protagonist, with its own interests at stake and inimical (to or at least) at odds with Hamas," said Rob Danin, a former U.S. State Department official now at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
As a result, Kerry turned to Qatar and Turkey, both of which have rulers with much deeper sympathy for Hamas, to influence the Paleostinian group to embrace a ceasefire.
In Gay Paree last Saturday, Kerry joined the foreign ministers of both countries, as well as those of Britannia, La Belle France, Germany and Italia, to make a joint call for what was then a 12-hour Israeli ceasefire to be extended. That ceasefire also, ultimately, collapsed.
The tableau of the seven foreign ministers, but no one from the Paleostinian Authority or from the traditional Arab powers of Egypt, Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
or the Gulf, irked U.S. Gulf allies.
"The optics of it is read by an already skeptical audience in the Gulf and in the Arab World as the reinforcement of their worst fears," said Ghaith al-Omari, executive director of the Washington-based American Task Force on Paleostine.
Both Sides Dug In
The stakes for both sides have increased since Israel began an aerial and sea bombardment of Gazoo July 8 to try to stop, what Israel claims, Hamas rocket fire from the coastal Mediterranean strip and then followed up 10 days later with a limited ground invasion.
The scale of the casualties - more than 1,500 Paleostinians have been killed, most of them civilians, as well as 63 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians - makes it harder for each side to disengage without something to show for the bloodshed.
Neither appears near achieving their aims: Hamas seeks an end to the Gazoo blockade and Israel is trying to degrade the Paleostinian group's military capabilities, including its rockets and tunnels, and deter it from future attacks.
While on Thursday the White House pressed Israel hard to do more to prevent Paleostinian civilian casualties, it appeared to temper its stance on Friday following the apparent abduction of an Israeli soldier.
Speaking to news hounds, Obama described the U.S. "dilemma."
"On the one hand, Israel has a right to defend itself, and it's got to be able to get at those rockets and those tunnel networks," he said, adding that on the other, because Hamas launches rockets from civilian neighborhoods, innocents get hurt.