{"id":244,"date":"2007-02-17T08:10:13","date_gmt":"2007-02-17T13:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=244"},"modified":"2007-02-17T14:39:38","modified_gmt":"2007-02-17T19:39:38","slug":"ice-from-rice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=244","title":{"rendered":"The Ice in Rice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Language\" content=\"en-us\" \/> <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=windows-1252\" \/><title>To my knowledge<\/title>To my knowledge, nobody has explicitly linked the Saudi-brokered &#8220;unity  government&#8221; deal between Fatah and Hamas to Saudi royal factionalism.\u00c2\u00a0 And  I&#8217;ve seen no news reports to suggest that any royals have criticized the deal.<\/p>\n<p>Give it time.<\/p>\n<p>The US response to the deal&#8211;signaled by Secretary of State Rice in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jpost.com\/servlet\/Satellite?c=JPArticle&#038;cid=1170359868096&#038;pagename=JPost\/JPArticle\/ShowFull\"> comments earlier this week<\/a> as she departed for the region&#8211;was quite icy.<\/p>\n<p>This is not a White House initiative sponsored by the office of the Vice  President.\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=215\">These are not Cheney&#8217;s Saudis.\u00c2\u00a0 These are Baker&#8217;s Saudi&#8217;s<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The unity deal between Fatah and Hamas appears to mark a major victory for  &#8220;unreconstructed,&#8221; Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hamas leader  Khaled Meshaal.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0By <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailystar.com.lb\/article.asp?edition_id=1&#038;categ_id=5&#038;article_id=79497\"> some accounts<\/a>, Saudi King Abdullah appears to neither to have pressed for  nor received many &#8220;pro-Zionist&#8221; concessions from Hamas, least of all the  recognition of Israel or the renunciation of violence as a tool in the struggle.\u00c2\u00a0  Others suggest Hamas <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ynetnews.com\/articles\/0,7340,L-3365397,00.html\">may have  given a nod<\/a> toward implicit recognition.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, the Mecca agreement appears to represent a successful Saudi effort  to undermine the Bush administration&#8217;s Fatah-backed war against the Hamas  government.<\/p>\n<p>Regional reconciliation is, in essence, a Baker\/Abdullah initiative.\u00c2\u00a0  And it aims to include all players&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/world\/middleeast\/articles\/2007\/02\/12\/putin_saudi_king_meet_in_landmark_visit\/\">including  Putin<\/a>&#8211;in the classic Right Arabist collaborative initiative.<\/p>\n<p>Regional rivalry is the Cheney plan.<\/p>\n<p>So, has Cheney lost his Saudi&#8217;s?\u00c2\u00a0 Or are they just laying low and  deferring to Abdullah for the moment.<\/p>\n<p>The Cheney plan provides for a &#8220;regional realignment&#8221; that explicitly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ynetnews.com\/articles\/0,7340,L-3363991,00.html\">links the  US, Israel and the Saudis<\/a> in confrontational alliance to battle Iran and  Syria via proxy wars within the Palestinian Authority (support for Mahmoud Abbas  in a civil war with Hamas), Lebanon (support for Fouad Siniora in a civil war  with Hezbollah), and Iraq (support for a campaign against alleged Iranian  influence), if not support for an outright military confrontation against Iran  itself.<\/p>\n<p>So far, the Saudis royal family appears to be trying to hold together amidst  US pressure to pick a side.<\/p>\n<p>How long will that last with Cheney working overtime to cultivate Saudi  allies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To my knowledgeTo my knowledge, nobody has explicitly linked the Saudi-brokered &#8220;unity government&#8221; deal between Fatah and Hamas to Saudi royal factionalism.\u00c2\u00a0 And I&#8217;ve seen no news reports to suggest that any royals have criticized the deal. Give it time. The US response to the deal&#8211;signaled by Secretary of State Rice in comments earlier this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,6,9,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}