Hizbullah May Succeed in Joining With Hamas Against Israel

Palestinians in Gaza are singing the praises of Hizbullah. Some Hamas leaders are expressing interest in negotiating with Israel only with Hizbullah at the table. Israelis are talking privately about settling now with Hamas to divide the causes. Abbas, now out of the lime light, is quietly attempting to broker a peace that now may be a long ways off.
Hizbullah has strengthened the hand of Hamas politically by sacrificing the blood of it's own people in south Lebanon. And public opinion in Islamic countries world wide swings to the "heroic Hamas". Hizbullah may well force the US to show its hand and prevent it from any brokering role in the Middle East because of it's carte blanche support for Israel despite 600 innocent civilian deaths in Lebanon.
Quite a sophisticated political hand if it works: "Bomb us into the ground and we'll return, stronger than ever!" The US and Israel maybe politically out of their league. We'll see.

Newsweek

As Hizbullah was holding its ground in southern Lebanon, Arab public opinion seemed to be coalescing around the group. At least some Israelis and Americans were beginning to wonder whether it might be a good idea to make a separate peace with the Hamas leadership in Gaza—attempting to break the tightening bond between Hamas and Hizbullah by working out a prisoner exchange for Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured near Gaza. Indeed, such a deal seemed more likely today as Abbas told reporters that Shalit’s release may be imminent. Meanwhile, Hizbullah is still holding two other Israeli soldiers after capturing them in a July 12 cross-border raid that precipitated Israel’s attack on the group.


A senior Israeli security official, who did not want to be identified discussing sensitive negotiations, told me that he thought it was "in everybody's interest to sever as many connections as possible [between] Hamas and Hizbullah. Whatever we can do to weaken these ties makes sense." Daniel Kurtzer, who up until about a year ago was the U.S. ambassador to Israel, agrees. "I would do that deal first," Kurtzer told me. "You cannot, under any circumstances, allow Hizbullah to deliver Shalit."


[...]Some Hamas leaders were wary of striking a deal. "Nobody wants to negotiate without Hizbullah," says Mahmoud Musleh, a Hamas parliamentarian in Ramallah. "To do it in isolation would be a betrayal." When I finally tracked down Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas foreign minister who has been in hiding since Israeli aircraft leveled his Gaza City office, he didn't seem eager to negotiate separately with the Israelis. Hizbullah's performance in Lebanon was "impressive," Zahar said, looking a little worse for the wear in a brown pinstriped suit. "I'm not talking about good or bad.