In successfully manipulating the failure of the Palestinian unity government and the subsequent bloody clashes between the Hamas and Fatah, Israel has realized its wildest dreams. But for the Hezbollah factor, the Palestinian movement lies in a shambles; there is nobody to challenge Israel now.

Ramallah and Gaza now stand not only physically but also politically separated and alienated. While President Mahmoud Abbas proved no problem for the western supported Israeli plans, the isolated Hamas now face a choice between submission or death by suffocation.

The Oslo process and the Basic Laws are all but dead; the Palestinians themselves having violated not only the provisions of the law but their basic spirit too.

The West Bank having been subdued, thanks to President Mahmoud Abbas and his newly installed Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, the Hamas in Gaza are now the last pocket of defiance. But walled out and ghettoized, Gaza is now virtually at the mercy of Israel and its western friends. Nobody cries foul at Israel's bombardment on Gaza and occasional forays into the territory by its troops at their will. Gaza is fully in Israel's grip it can bombard the place, arrest any body, deny food and other essential supplies to the residents. Gaza's entire infrastructure is in Israel's control; it can cut off fuel and food supplies, switch off power and plunge the people into darkness.

Israel, it seems, has been planning to tighten the vice on the Hamas gradually while at the same time effectively cutting them off from the fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and from the Arab states. Israel recognizes Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' regime in Ramallah but has declared Gaza 'a hostile entity'. The reason Israel has given for this treatment to Gaza is 'firing of rockets by Hamas into Israeli territory,' though the real reason is Israel's bigger plan for political isolation of the Hamas.

Having thus got a Palestinian leadership of their choice safely ensconced in the West Bank under their total control, Israel and the United States are now poised to resume the 'peace talks' that had stalled in 2001 , in order to resume their pet plans for 'a roadmap to peace in the Middle East'. In fact, the two sides are now in the process of laying down 'principles' for the future accord. The only opposition that Israel finds to their desired 'peace accords with the Palestinians' are the Hamas whom it hopes to tackle militarily.

The most regrettable aspect of this scenario is the almost complete silence of the international community, especially of the Arab and Muslim Countries at, the virtual enslavement of the Palestinian Authority and the strangulation of the Hamas faction by the Israeli government.

Never in the history of their independence struggle, have the Palestinians been so badly fragmented and isolated from the international community as now. But for the Hezbollah factor, the Palestinian freedom movement is at its lowest ebb.

The world community has been a silent spectator of the situation in which only three players seem to have been left - the Israeli government, the United States and the beleaguered and divided Palestinians.

The Arab and other Muslim states in the United Nations, or more preferably the QIC, should wake up to this potentially dangerous situation which has the makings of another big human tragedy in the Middle East. In the face of increasing atrocities and denial by the Israeli government, the Hamas or even the Palestinians in the West Bank may suddenly burst up to write another bloody chapter in the history of this volatile region.

The international community must stop Israel and make it to withdraw to its 1967 borders vacating all occupied Palestinian and Arab lands, to avoid a bloodbath in the region.

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