If US won't apply pressure to calm Middle East, then other powers must

World View: My Israeli diplomatic informant was specific. When the United States wants to send a message to the Israeli government it is well able to do so and Israeli leaders quite well able to recognise what is being said.

Whatever divisions may exist in the Bush administration about how to manage the current conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and Lebanon pale before their direct, effective and unified lines of political diplomacy when they have a clear message to convey.

The obverse also applies. This crisis is notable for US permissiveness towards Israel, contained within a formula of urging restraint on both sides while recognising Israel's right to defend itself against attack.

There has been minimal US involvement during the developing events in Gaza over the last month, including the destruction of a US-financed power plant and an escalating pressure on the civilian population.

This amounts to collective punishment of hundreds of thousands of people and is seen as disproportionate by most of Israel's other international partners - "harshly" so, as Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern put it. Intended to make the Hamas government elected last January "accountable" for its actions to the civilian population, it also undermines its capacity to govern - and drives many people towards more extreme solutions. Thus the international efforts to tame Hamas, force it to reject terrorism, recognise and negotiate with Israel are also undermined.

The Israeli policy is therefore self-defeating - unless it is predicated on an unstated conviction that Hamas cannot be reformed and must be discredited and destroyed.

That makes sense if the Kadima policy of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and unilateral consolidation of withdrawal/occupation on the West Bank behind the boundary wall/fence being built there is to apply.

Hamas threatens that outcome by refusing to accept its parameters and asserting a more rejectionist and Islamist approach. And Hamas not only wins elections, it can stand its ground in negotiations with Fatah over future relations with Israel, as in the prisoners' document agreed over two weeks ago, which has been overshadowed by the capture of the Israeli soldier in Gaza and the harsh Israeli response to it.

The agreement signifies a more radical political stance on the Palestinian side. But this is seen as tilted too far towards Hamas by Israeli representatives, allowing continuing violence and maintaining ambiguity about recognising Israel. A contributory cause of the present explosion has been the continued firing of rockets from Gaza at Israeli towns during Hamas's self-proclaimed 18-month ceasefire.

The lack of restraining pressure from Washington has given the new Kadima-Labour coalition carte blanche to pursue a two-pronged policy of refusing negotiations on prisoner exchange and applying a maximal security agenda. Critics say the government's lack of high profile ex-military figures makes it less able to resist maximalist demands from the Israeli armed forces and vulnerable to accusations that it was unprepared for the capture of these soldiers.

Thus the running Israeli agenda is being set by the most hardline elements in its governing class, articulated by the IDF chief of staff, Lt Gen Dan Halutz. Referring to the sudden escalation of the conflict this week, he threatened to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years" if the Israeli troops captured there were not returned. "Nothing is safe," he said, as more and more targets were hit. The return of rocket attacks on north Israeli towns in the opening of this second front has rallied an emotional Israeli public opinion. But it is torn in the longer term between supporting extended war and the desire for peace, along with a widespread realisation that this will require territorial and political compromise.

Whatever was the motivation and timing of Hizbullah's capture of these troops and reopening of their conflict with Israel this week, many comparisons between them and Hamas may be made.

They share communal, religious and political experience in dealing with more secular parties and responding to Israeli occupation. There has been a similar evolution of their political involvement. They have mutual links with Syria and Iran - and have some of these characteristics in common with the new political movements among poor Shias in Iraq. They are nevertheless separate and distinct organisations, linked culturally but not politically. And they are formidable opponents of Israel, as it learned in the lead-up to its withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and its more recent experience of Hamas.

This means they can readily be combined into a regional demonology, along with Syria and Iran, recalling the Bush administration's earlier "axis of evil" and "war against terror", constructed by neoconservative ideologues to justify its worldwide unilateral activism after 9/11.

Traces of this can be seen in Bush's remark this week, when asked how he intended to stop the violence spiralling out of control. "My attitude is this: there are a group of terrorists who want to stop the advance of peace. Those of us who are peace loving must work together to help the agents of peace."

While Condoleezza Rice called on all parties to "act with restraint to resolve this incident peacefully and to protect innocent life and civilian infrastructures" she said Syria "has a special responsibility to use its influence to support a positive outcome". A White House spokesman later warned that Syria and Iran would be held "responsible" for the Hizbullah attack and its consequences. This came as Iran's refusal to respond to proposals on its nuclear programme was referred to the UN Security Council.

Perhaps Tehran gave Hizbollah the green light to demonstrate its "strategic reach" to an overextended US? Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times yesterday, wove the demonology into a generalised Islamic assault on western civilisation.

It is nothing of the sort. But the thought that it is could drive the Middle East into a regional war. The escalation urgently needs to be cooled down and mediated by international pressure.

If Washington won't apply it other powers will have to do so. It is precisely at such moments of geopolitical transition that wars occur.