Gaza Conflict Highlights Tensions Obama Faces in Mideast
This article is for subscribers only.
Israeli troops massing on the border of Gaza pose a dilemma for a U.S. administration that supports America’s closest Mideast ally while trying to defuse an escalating conflict before it deepens the instability in a changing Arab world.
The Obama administration’s prospects for containing the crisis rest largely on economically fragile Egypt and its president, Mohamed Mursi, who was drawn from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas, which controls Gaza and sparked the latest confrontation by lobbing hundreds of rockets into Israel. The U.S. and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist group.