Senior American officials dealing with Middle East policy speak of a “catch-22” situation. On the one hand, they perceive an unprecedented opportunity to tackle radical Islam and Hamas in the aftermath of the Gaza war with a coalition of pragmatists; on the other hand, they do not believe that the Israeli partner for such an arrangement is on board.

A new regional strategic configuration necessitates dealing with the Palestinian predicament. Such a strategy must strengthen Fatah at the expense of Hamas in the form of long- and short-term progress toward Palestinian statehood. That said, a strategy must also end the Israeli occupation and its fueling of fundamentalist growth. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority all feel threatened by the current wave of radical Islam. They are committed to fight it by force, as seen in Egypt, but also through political, security and economic cooperation.

Israel, while sharing common interests, is a partner in this coalition only insofar as it holds the key to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Gaza war proved to the leaders of the pragmatic countries how dangerous the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to their own stability, given domestic pro-Palestinian public opinion.

The equation for stabilization, in the eyes of the pragmatists, is the creation of a Palestinian state under Fatah leadership, within the 1967 lines, and in return for normalization of relations with Israel and cooperation against terror. In other words — the Arab Peace Initiative. Both the pragmatic Arabs and the US administration know that implementing the full initiative is presently impossible. State Department and senior officials are unsure of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They see him as distancing himself from a realistic two-state solution.