Hamastan and Fatahstan

The United States and Europe restored direct aid to the Palestinians this week in a show of support for President Mahmud Abbas, who set up an emergency government when his Hamas rivals seized power in Gaza last week after days of brutal bloodletting.

Islamist group Hamas however accused the West on Tuesday of playing politics with Palestinian aid while their Gaza bastion remains under Israeli blockade.

"By announcing their political and financial support for the Palestinian Authority, the West is backing an illegitimate government," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

EU and US support for the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was "an attempt to manipulate the Palestinian people and distance it from Hamas," he charged, adding that the strategy would not work.

Hamas is not alone in its criticism of the West.

"The international community shares the guilt for the escalation in the Middle East," said Udo Steinbach, director of the GIGA Institute of Middle East Studies in Hamburg.

Hamastan and Fatahstan

After months of fighting, Hamas and Fatah had agreed in February to set up a joint government, with Saudi Arabia acting as a mediator and bringing the two groups together in a symbolic Mecca meeting. Meanwhile, the United States backed Fatah by providing security training and arms, and Israel froze Palestinian tax funds for fear that Hamas would use the money to finance terror attacks.

"By turning against Hamas, the United States and Israel delegitimated the Saudi attempts to mediate," Steinbach said. The result was politically divided Palestinian territories, derisively called "Hamastan" and "Fatahstan."

The US has pushed for movement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict to curry favor with moderate Islamic countries, such as Syria and Jordan, which Washington wants as allies against Iran's nuclear ambitions. At the same time, Arab states also use the conflict to further their own foreign policy agendas, with Syria and Iran presumably supporting Hamas with weapons and funding. But the Arab states also pursue differing aims.

"We don't only have a clash of cultures, but also a conflict between Sunnis and Shiites within Islam," political scientist Christian Hacke of the University of Bonn pointed out.

Germany fails as EU president

Germany, too -- which since January has held the rotating EU presidency -- has failed to lead the way.

"The German EU Council presidency was weak when it came to Middle East policy," Steinbach said. It didn't help to find a way for the region to get beyond the impasse, he said. "For peace between Israelis and Palestinians, there needs to be a clear plan as to where things should go," he added.

Currently, the European Union appears too busy with its own affairs to shift its focus to the Middle East, bogged down as it is by the crisis over a new institutional treaty for the bloc, and, in terms of foreign policy, crippled by changes in government in France and Britain.

Political vacuum

With Hamas and Fatah fighting, Iraq in the midst of civil war, Lebanon even more instable than it was a year ago, and Iran possibly striving to develop a nuclear bomb, there's little hope for peace at the moment. And a route towards an end to conflict in the Middle East is unlikely to come from the region itself.

"At the moment, we have a political vacuum of moderate, visionary powers among all parties," Steinbach said. "The downward trend in the Middle East is far from being brought to a halt," he added.