OK, now this is interesting: apparently, Israel is being encouraged to target and kill the leaders of Hamas—encouraged not by the West, but by Arab leaders. According to a report posted on Power Line,
Israel’s Maariv reports unnamed heads of Arab states that have passed diplomatic messages to Jerusalem encouraging Israel to kill Iranian funded and trained Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas’ firing of scores of rockets against Southern Israel during the current “cease fire”.What some Middle East policy analysts and diplomats in Washington may not realize with respect to increasingly optimistic Western assessments of Hamas as a diplomatic partner is that today’s news report in Israel reflects more the rule in Arab capitals than the exception. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expressed his concern to the Arab press that “Egypt shares a border with Iran following Hamas’ May 2008 rocket assault on the Israeli city of Ashkelon with Iranian manufactured grad rockets.Earlier this month Egyptian Foreign Minister Egypt’s Ahmed Abul Gheit warned that Cairo would never accept an “Islamic emirate” in Gaza—a key stated goal of Hamas. Mohammad Abdallah Al Zulfa, member of The Saudi Shoura Council said yesterday on the Arab network’s Alhurra news program that “Iran is the big threat in today’s world, supporting all the terrorists from Hamas to Hezbollah to some other terrorists that we don’t know their names yet”. “Iran destabilized the region by supporting all the illegal activities and activists such as Hamas. . . .”
Sounds to me like the leaders of Israel’s Arab neighbors have figured out they’re next on the hit list and are hoping to use Israel as a proxy to do what they themselves dare not (because of the PR fallout, and the chance of Iranian retaliation).