If, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, diplomacy is war by other means, then just as armies are called upon to concentrate their efforts and resources where they can do the most good for their cause, so governments must utilize their diplomatic resources - whether plentiful or scarce - to advance their most important national interests.

The Palestinians and the Iranians have formidable diplomatic resources at their disposal. Both the Palestinians and Iran can expect to receive the support of automatic majorities at the UN for everything they do. And today most international diplomacy is conducted under the aegis of the UN or its affiliated bodies. Understanding their strength, the Palestinians and the Iranians use the UN and its affiliated organs to advance their most important goals. In the Palestinians' case, UN-based diplomacy is used to delegitimize Israel. In the Iranian case, UN-based diplomacy is used to facilitate the mullocracy's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Over the past week, both the Palestinians and the Iranians enjoyed strategic victories in their diplomatic campaigns.

Last Friday, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning Israel in every possible way for asserting its sovereignty over its capital city and for defending its citizens against wanton, massive, unprovoked and illegal terror from the skies emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The resolution represented a massive achievement for the Palestinians. It referred Israel to the Security Council with the recommendation that Israel's leaders be tried as war criminals before international tribunals. That is, the UNHRC's resolution effectively delegitimized Israel's right to exist by denying that it has a right to defend its territory and its people from illegal aggression carried out by an illegal terrorist organization.

Then on Wednesday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's virulently anti-Israel chairman, announced a deal has been reached between Iran and the US, Russia and France regarding Iran's nuclear program. The deal - which the parties initialized in Geneva after just three days of talks - legitimizes Iran's nuclear weapons program and effectively transforms the US, the EU and Russia into facilitators rather than opponents of that program.

According to news reports of the accord, the US agreed to send American personnel to Iran to upgrade a research reactor in Teheran that was provided to the Shah in the 1960s. Russia agreed to increase enrichment levels of Iranian uranium from their current level of 3.5 percent, to 19.75%. And France agreed to transform the higher-enriched uranium into metallic nuclear fuel.

Until Wednesday, in accordance with three binding UN Security Council resolutions, the US, Russia and the EU refused to accept the legitimacy of Iran's uranium enrichment activities. Their refusal stemmed from the fact that by enriching uranium, Iran stands in breach of its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Wednesday's accord ignores this inconvenient fact and so whitewashes Iran's illicit behavior, effectively accepting Iran's right to enrich uranium.

And that isn't all. According to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, by agreeing to enrich Iran's uranium from 3.5%, to 19.75%, the US, Russia and France have provided Iran with a solution to its technical deficiencies. Citing a report in the Nucleonics Week trade journal, Ignatius wrote last week that Iran has apparently been unable to enrich uranium beyond 3.5% and its current "supply of low-enriched uranium... appears to have certain 'impurities' that 'could cause centrifuges to fail' if the Iranians try to boost it to weapons grade."

Jack Wakeland, an engineer employed in the nuclear power industry, expanded on Ignatius's revelation at The Intellectual Activist Web site. Wakeland explained that the metallic fuel Iran will receive in this deal "can be converted back to highly purified uranium hexafluoride very, very easily."

That is, the deal allows Iran to surmount the scientific hurdles it reportedly now faces, clearing the mullahs' path to acquiring the weapons-grade uranium.

For their part, the Iranians haven't wasted a moment pushing the diplomatic envelop still further. As the Americans, French and Russians were offering them more than they could have ever imagined possible - including the prospect of US personnel serving as human shields against a possible Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear installations - back in Teheran they ratcheted up their demands.

On Tuesday, Abdolfazl Zohrehvand, who serves as an adviser to Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief negotiator at Geneva, told Iran's IRNA press agency, "Circumstances may arise under which Iran will require uranium enriched to 63%."

Then on Thursday Iran said it isn't willing to accept a deal that would take all of its enriched uranium out of the country. This is not a deal breaker since the accord the US, France and Russia initialized Wednesday only foresees removing 80% of Iran's known supply of enriched uranium to Russia. But still, it signals that the Iranians have only begun extracting concessions from the Americans and their partners.

And the Americans will no doubt be willing to concede still more. After all, now President Barack Obama can brag that he has an historic, Nobel Peace Prize-worthy deal with Iran. He cannot be expected to give it up just because the Iranians use it as a new path for building nuclear bombs.

Until Wednesday, Israel refrained from publicly attacking the US's decision to seek an accommodation with Iran. This made sense. Israel had no interest in being perceived as pre-judging the outcome of a process on which the Obama administration staked its prestige. But now that the administration has agreed to an accord that effectively transforms America into a facilitator of Iran's nuclear weapons program, the time has come for Israel to start voicing its objections.

Unlike the Palestinians and the Iranians, Israel has no great diplomatic assets. It can assume that it will always be condemned by the UN.

The EU, with its member-nations' own anti-Jewish baggage, a burgeoning and radicalized Muslim minority, and an addiction to Arab oil cannot be expected to stand with Israel.

Western NGOs are largely funded by anti-Israel governments and leftist philanthropists and so use their resources to advance the causes of Israel's enemies.

Under the Obama administration, the US is charting a diplomatic course that places it directly in the anti-Israel camp. Indeed, while the US voted against the UNHRC's resolution against Israel last week, it made no significant effort to convince other countries to follow suit and had no problem with Britain's and France's decision not to cast a vote despite the dangerous precedent the Goldstone Report and the UNHRC's resolution set for US forces fighting terrorist foes in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world. Worse still, the US has refused to announce whether it will use its Security Council veto to block a referral of Israel's military and political leaders to the International Criminal Court.

In the current climate, Israel's diplomatic resources are limited to popular opinion in the US, and shared interests on specific issues with a number of governments throughout the world. In light of Israel's diplomatic assets, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who in recent months has been travelling the globe to cultivate bilateral ties with countries in South America, Africa, Central Asia, and Central Europe, should be congratulated for his efforts.

On the public diplomacy front, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, his cabinet ministers and the Foreign Ministry should use every opportunity to discredit the latest deal with Iran. They should point out its dangers and call for an end to this diplomatic catastrophe before more damage is done to the cause of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Such a campaign would probably fail to derail the current talks. But if successful, it would prevent the deal from being used as a means to delegitimize Israel's right to militarily strike Iran's nuclear installations.

As for the Palestinians' diplomatic triumph with the risible Goldstone Report and its attendant UNHRC resolution, Israel's response to date has been misguided and self-defeating. This week, the government began considering forming a commission of inquiry into the IDF's handling of Operation Cast Lead.

Judge Richard Goldstone has been claiming that if Israel conducts an investigation into his allegations that our soldiers committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israel can avoid prosecution of IDF personnel at the International Criminal Court. Lawyers like Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz have latched onto Goldstone's statements and the media are atwitter with rumors that Netanyahu may agree to form such a commission.

That would be a wrong move for several reasons. First of all, Goldstone is in no position to negotiate. Once he submitted his libelous report to the UNHRC, Goldstone's writ of authority was a thing of the past. Even if he now wants to get Israel off the hook he placed it on, he has no power to do so. And the officials at the UNHRC who gave Goldstone the mission of proclaiming that the IDF committed crimes against humanity have no interest whatsoever in crediting any internal Israeli investigation or ending the organization's hounding of the Jewish state.

Beyond that, any investigation Israel could launch into the IDF's conduct of Operation Cast Lead would be perceived internationally as an admission of guilt. If that commission were to conclude truthfully that the IDF conducted its operations in full accordance with international law, its findings would be dismissed as a whitewash.

In response to the UNHRC resolution and the Goldstone Report itself, the government announced this week that it will seek changes in international law to strengthen the ability of democracies to fight against terrorism. This move is also deeply misguided. The fact of the matter is that Israel did not break international law in Operation Cast Lead. It is simply the victim of its enemies' cynical use of the rhetoric of international law as part of their diplomatic war against Israel. That is, the problem is not the law. It is the law's distortion for political purposes by Israel's diplomatically powerful foes. By announcing that it plans to work to change the law, the government missed this central point.

Moreover, by ignoring the fact that the problem is not with the law itself but rather with the distortion of international law by hostile actors for political gain, the government failed to recognize that even if it succeeds in changing the law, in all likelihood the new law will be similarly distorted by its enemies to advance their political war against Israel.

For that matter, the government's very announcement that it wishes to change international law will be pounced upon by its enemies as proof that it broke the law.

Israel's enemies are making adept use of their vast diplomatic power to advance their most important goals. Israel should use its meager diplomatic powers to do the same by going on a public diplomacy offensive against the criminalization of Israel and against the international community's surrender to Iran. A good first step in that direction would be to stop using our limited powers in a manner that expands our enemies' advantages over us.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Below is a recent video from my brilliant team at latma in which Mr. Tawil Fadiha, the Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage explains the importance of honor to the Islamic world. We hope you find it entertaining and instructive.

The following was just sent to me by a reader and I thought you might get a kick out of it. I certainly did.

    John was in the fertilized egg business.
    He had several hundred young layers (hens), called 'pullets,'
    and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.

    He kept records, and any rooster not performing
    went into the soup pot and was replaced.

    This took a lot of time, so he bought some tiny bells
    and attached them to his roosters.

    Each bell had a different tone, so he could tell from a distance,
    which rooster was performing.

    Now, he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report
    by just listening to the bells.

    John's favourite rooster, Barry, was a very fine specimen,
    but this morning he noticed Barry's bell hadn't rung at all!

    When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing
    pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, could run for cover.

    To John's amazement, Barry had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't
    ring.

    He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
    John was so proud of Barry, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair
    and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.

    The result was the judges not only awarded Barry the No Bell Piece
    Prize but they also awarded him the Pulletsurprise as well.
    Clearly, Barry was a politician in the making.

    Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the
    most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at              
    sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren't
    paying attention.

    Vote carefully, the bells are not always audible.

Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.

It isn't that Ankara's behavior changed fundamentally in recent days. There is nothing new in its massive hostility toward Israel and its effusive solicitousness toward the likes of Syria and Hamas. Since the Islamist AKP party first won control over the Turkish government in the 2002 elections, led by AKP chairman Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the Turks have incrementally and inexorably moved the formerly pro-Western Muslim democracy into the radical Islamist camp populated by the likes of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, al-Qaida and Hamas.

What made Turkey's behavior this week different from its behavior in recent months and years is that its attacks were concentrated, unequivocal and undeniable for everyone outside of Israel's scandalously imbecilic and flagellant media.

Until this week, both Israel and the US were quick to make excuses for Ankara. When in 2003 the AKP-dominated Turkish parliament prohibited US forces from invading Iraq through Kurdistan, the US blamed itself. Rather than get angry at Turkey, the Bush administration argued that its senior officials had played the diplomatic game poorly.

In February 2006, when Erdogan became the first international figure to host Hamas leaders on an official state visit after the jihadist group won the Palestinian elections, Jerusalem sought to explain away his diplomatic aggression. Israeli leaders claimed that Erdogan's red carpet treatment for mass murderers who seek the physical destruction of Israel was not due to any inherent hostility on the part of the AKP regime toward Israel. Rather, it was argued that Ankara simply supported democracy and that the AKP, as a formerly outlawed Islamist party, felt an affinity toward Hamas as a Muslim underdog.

Jerusalem made similar excuses for Ankara when during the 2006 war with Hizbullah Turkey turned a blind eye to Iranian weapons convoys to Lebanon that traversed Turkey; when Turkey sided with Hamas against Israel during Operation Cast Lead, and called among other things for Israel to be expelled from the UN; and when Erdogan caused a diplomatic incident this past January by castigating President Shimon Peres during a joint appearance at the Davos conference. So, too, Turkey's open support for Iran's nuclear weapons program and its galloping trade with Teheran and Damascus, as well as its embrace of al-Qaida financiers have elicited nothing more than grumbles from Israel and America.

Initially, this week Israel sought to continue its policy of making excuses for Turkish aggression against it. On Sunday, after Turkey disinvited the IAF from the Anatolian Eagle joint air exercise with Turkey and NATO, senior officials like Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and opposition leader Tzipi Livni tried to make light of the incident, claiming that Turkey remains Israel's strategic ally.

But Turkey wasted no time in making fools of them. On Monday, 11 Turkish government ministers descended on Syria to sign a pile of cooperation agreements with Iran's Arab lackey. The Foreign Ministry didn't even have a chance to write apologetic talking points explaining that brazen move before Syria announced it was entering a military alliance with Turkey and would be holding a joint military exercise with the Turkish military. Speechless in the wake of Turkey's move to hold military maneuvers with its enemy just two days after it canceled joint training with Israel, Jerusalem could think of no mitigating explanation for the move.

Tuesday was characterized by escalating verbal assaults on the Jewish state. First Erdogan renewed his libelous allegations that Israel deliberately killed children in Gaza. Then he called on Turks to learn how to make money like Jews do.

Erdogan's anti-Israel and anti-Semitic blows were followed on Tuesday evening by Turkey's government-controlled TRT1 television network's launch of a new prime-time series portraying IDF soldiers as baby- and little girl-killers who force Palestinian women to deliver stillborn babies at roadblocks and line up groups of Palestinians against walls to execute them by firing squad.

The TRT1 broadcast forced Israel's hand. Late on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry announced it was launching an official protest with the Turkish Embassy. Unfortunately, it was unclear who would be coming to the Foreign Ministry to receive the demarche, since Turkey hasn't had an ambassador in Israel for three weeks.

TURKEY'S BREAK with the West; its decisive rupture with Israel and its opposition to the US in Iraq and Iran was predictable. Militant Islam of the AKP variety has been enjoying growing popularity and support throughout Turkey for many years. The endemic corruption of Turkey's traditional secular leaders increased the Islamists' popularity. Given this domestic Turkish reality, it is possible that Erdogan and his fellow Islamists' rise to power was simply a matter of time.

But even if the AKP's rise to power was eminently predictable, its ability to consolidate its control over just about every organ of governance in Turkey as well as what was once a thriving free press, and change completely Turkey's strategic posture in just seven years was far from inevitable. For these accomplishments the AKP owes a debt of gratitude to both the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as to the EU.

The Bush administration ignored the warnings of secular Turkish leaders in the country's media, military and diplomatic corps that Erdogan was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Rather than pay attention to his past attempts to undermine Turkey's secular, pro-Western character and treat him with a modicum of suspicion, after the AKP electoral victory in 2002 the Bush administration upheld the AKP and Erdogan as paragons of Islamist moderation and proof positive that the US and the West have no problem with political Islam. Erdogan's softly peddled but remorselessly consolidated Islamism was embraced by senior American officials intent on reducing democracy to a synonym for elections rather than acknowledging that democracy is only meaningful as a system of laws and practices that engender liberal egalitarianism.

In a very real sense, the Bush administration's willingness to be taken in by Erdogan paved the way for its decision in 2005 to pressure Israel to allow Hamas to participate in the Palestinian elections and to coerce Egypt into allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in its parliamentary poll.

In Turkey itself, the administration's enthusiastic embrace of the AKP meant that Erdogan encountered no Western opposition to his moves to end press freedom in Turkey; purge the Turkish military of its secular leaders and end its constitutional mandate to preserve Turkey's secular character; intimidate and disenfranchise secular business leaders and diplomats; and stack the Turkish courts with Islamists. That is, in the name of its support for its water-downed definition of democracy, the US facilitated Erdogan's subversion of all the Turkish institutions that enabled liberal norms to be maintained and kept Turkey in the Western alliance.

As for the Obama administration, since entering office in January it has abandoned US support for democracy activists throughout the world, in favor of a policy of pure appeasement of US adversaries at the expense of US allies. In keeping with this policy, President Barack Obama paid a preening visit to Ankara where he effectively endorsed the Islamization of Turkish foreign policy that has moved the NATO member into the arms of Teheran's mullahs. Taken together, the actions of the Bush and Obama White Houses have demoralized Westernized Turks, who now believe that their country is doomed to descend into the depths of Islamist extremism. As many see it, if they wish to remain in Turkey, their only recourse is to join the Islamist camp and add their voices to the rising chorus of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism sweeping the country.

Then there is the EU. For years Brussels has been stringing Turkey along, promising that if it enacts sufficient human rights reforms, the 80-million strong Muslim country will be permitted to join Europe. But far from inducing more liberal behavior on the part of Turkey, those supposedly enlightened reforms have paved the way for the Islamist ascendance in the country. By forcing Turkey to curb its military's role as the guarantor of Turkish secularism, the EU took away the secularists' last line of defense against the rising tide of the AKP. By forcing Turkey to treat its political prisoners humanely and cancel the death penalty, the EU eroded the secularists' moral claim to leadership and weakened their ability to effectively combat both Kurdish and Islamist terror.

At the same time, by consistently refusing to permit Turkey to join the EU, despite Ankara's moves to placate its political correctness, Brussels discredited still further Turkey's secularists. When after all their self-defeating and self-abasing reforms, Europe still rejected them, the Turks needed to find a way to restore their wounded honor. The most natural means of doing so was for the Turks writ large to simply turn their backs on Europe and move toward their Muslim brethren.

FOR ITS part, as the lone Jewish state that belongs to no alliance, Israel had no ability to shape internal developments in Turkey. But still, Turkey's decision to betray the West holds general lessons for Israel and for the free world as a whole. These lessons should be learned and applied moving forward not only to Turkey, but to a whole host of regimes and sub-national groups in the region and throughout the world.

In the first instance it is crucial for policy-makers to recognize that change is the only permanent feature of the human condition. A country's presence in the Western camp today is no guarantee that it will remain there in the future. Whether a regime is democratic or authoritarian or somewhere in the middle, domestic conditions and trends play major roles in determining its strategic posture over time. This is just as true for Turkey as it is for the US, for Iran and for Sweden and Egypt.

The loss of Turkey shows that countries can and do change. The best way to influence that change is to remain true to one's friends, even if those friends are imperfect. Only by strengthening those who share one's country's norms and interests - rather than its procedures and rhetoric - can governments exert constructive influence on internal changes in other states and societies.

Moreover, it is only by being willing to recognize what makes an ally an ally and an adversary an adversary that the West will adopt policies that leave it more secure in the long run. A military-controlled Turkish democracy that barred Islamists from political power was more desirable than a popularly elected AKP regime that has moved Turkey into the Iranian axis. So, too, a corrupt Western-dependent regime in Afghanistan is more desirable than a Taliban-al-Qaida terror state. Likewise an unstable, weakened mullocracy in Iran challenged by a well-funded, liberal opposition is preferable to a strong, stable mullocracy that has successfully repressed its internationally isolated liberal rivals.

Turkey is lost and we'd better make our peace with this devastating fact. But if we learn its lessons, we can craft policies that check the dangers that Turkey projects and prepare for the day when Turkey may decide that it wishes to return to the Western fold.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

An atmosphere of fantasy pervaded US President Barack Obama's Middle East peace processor George Mitchell's meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday. In separate photo opportunities, Mitchell stood next to President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and pledged to surmount all obstacles to achieve peace not only between Israel and the Palestinians but between Israel and Syria and Lebanon and with the whole Arab world.

Mitchell's remarks were even more stunning than similar statements from him during previous visits, because this week the Palestinians launched their newest terror campaign against Israel. Like previous rounds of Palestinian terror against Jews beginning in 1929, the latest round has been precipitated by wholly fabricated claims by Muslim leaders that Israel is asserting Jewish rights to the Temple Mount - Judaism's most sacred site - and so endangering the Muslim claim to the sole right to worship at the site that was never even mentioned in the Koran.

Beginning last week, convicted felon Raed Salah - who served a prison sentence for his Israeli Islamic Movement's northern branch's financial and other ties to Hamas - began inciting Israeli and Palestinian Muslim worshipers to make war against Israel. As he does every few months, Salah claimed falsely that Jews were committing the unforgivable "crime" of seeking to worship on the Temple Mount during Succot. Succot, which we observed this past week, is of course one of the three harvest festivals in which Jews are commanded to go up to the Temple Mount. This time, Salah's lies were accompanied by similar ones from Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders alike.

As is their standard practice, Palestinian leaders used known euphemisms in their declarations of war. Rather than openly call for Jews to be slaughtered, they called on Muslims to defend the Temple Mount from fictional Jewish assault. Wheelbarrows of rocks were found stockpiled on the Temple Mount on Monday. The rocks made clear the intention of Muslim leaders to reenact the 1990 stoning of Jewish Succot worshipers at the Western Wall. That Muslim assault precipitated a steep increase in Palestinian terror during the months that followed.

This week's riots similarly recall the 1996 Palestinian onslaught. That aggression was justified by the false Palestinian allegation that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to open the Western Wall archeological tunnel was part of a secret plot to dislodge the Aksa Mosque. Yasser Arafat used his manufactured libel as an excuse to order his US-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian security forces to open fire at IDF soldiers. In the violence that followed some 15 soldiers were killed.

The most violent exploitation of fabricated claims of Jewish aggression against Judaism's most sacred site to date, of course, came in September 2000. Then Arafat and his deputies in Fatah supported by Hamas and the Israeli Islamic Movement claimed that then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon's September 28, 2000, visit to the Temple Mount - a visit that had been coordinated in advance with the PA - was an act of war against the Palestinians and against Islam as a whole. More than 1,500 Israelis were killed in the seven years of terror war that followed.

Perhaps the most overt call for a renewal of jihad against Israel this week came from Fatah leader and titular PA President Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview on Yemenite television, Abbas said, "The second intifada erupted because of Sharon's visit to [the Temple Mount] and... it lasted seven years. This time, therefore the matter of Jerusalem requires a much greater effort [by the Palestinians], something more practical. It's not enough to talk about Jerusalem in books, or to give sermons in mosques. There is a need to work for it."

THE NEWEST round of violence has been building up for the past month. According to data released by the IDF, over the past month, the volume of terror attacks nearly doubled, from 53 attacks in August to 95 in September. This week's spike in violence caused IDF commanders to warn of the possibility that the violence will spread throughout Judea and Samaria. With the near seamless integration of Arab Israeli leaders in the incitement of violence, there is good reason for concern that Arab Israelis will play a prominent role in the newest round of jihad against Israel.

Abbas and his prime minister Salaam Fayad have augmented their violent attacks against Israel with a renewed diplomatic assault against the Jewish state. Fayad and Abbas have both called for the US and European governments to condemn Israel's imaginary provocations and moves to "Judaize" the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Rather than condemn these Fatah leaders for their key roles in inciting violence, the Europeans have been embracing them. Led by Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, European governments have demanded that Israel end its provocative behavior.

For its part, rather than dismissing these obviously false allegations out of hand, the Obama administration demanded that Israel give an accounting of its actions to prove that it is not provoking Palestinian violence.

How long the newest Palestinian campaign lasts, and how many Israelis will be killed is still unknown. Due in large part to their military training provided by the US under Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, Fatah forces in Judea and Samaria are today better trained and equipped than ever before. In Gaza, Hamas is preparing for a new round of war by housing poor Palestinians along the border with Israel to make it difficult for Israel to defend itself without killing Hamas's civilian shields. At the same time, the IDF remains stronger than these Palestinian forces. So Israel's eventual victory over this new terror campaign is a foregone conclusion, contingent only on the political courage of its leaders.

SINCE THE Palestinians must know that their new terror campaign will end in an Israeli victory, it is worth considering why they have anyway decided to launch it. Four explanations come to mind.

First, it is notable that the calls for jihad are being sounded three weeks before Hamas and Fatah leaders are scheduled to meet in Cairo to reinstate their unity government pending a new round of parliamentary and presidential elections next year. It is possible that in inciting a new terror war against Israel, Abbas and Fayad and their comrades in Fatah are signaling Hamas that they will be willing collaborators in a Hamas-dominated government.

Then, too, since Hamas is favored to win both of those elections, Fatah leaders may be using their calls for jihad to increase their popularity among Palestinians ahead of a possible bid to cancel the elections or in anticipation of the likely derailment of the negotiations toward a unity government. Whatever the case, the looming talks between Hamas and Fatah no doubt figure prominently in the new round of anti-Jewish violence.

The second reason for the renewal of Palestinian violence against Israel and the use of false allegations of Jewish provocations on the Temple Mount as a justification for that violence is that Fatah leaders believe that they can use their campaign to convince the Obama administration to redouble its pressure on Israel to make massive concessions to the Palestinians even before any "peace" negotiations begin. This was Arafat's goal in inciting the 1996 violence. At that time, his gambit was wildly successful. Then-US president Bill Clinton responded to the Palestinian violence by blaming Netanyahu and forcing him to begin negotiating the IDF's redeployment from parts of Hebron.

There is also the possibility that Raed Salah - the most visible force behind this week's Temple Mount riots - is using them to jockey for a more powerful position in the Israeli Arab-Palestinian leadership hierarchy. Inspired by the Hamas takeover of Gaza and Hizbullah's chokehold on the Lebanese government, Salah may have decided that the time is ripe for Israeli Arabs to raise their profile in the jihadist pecking order.

The fourth possible explanation for the current round of violence is that it is being incited by the Syrian and Iranian governments who together control Hamas and are influential in Fatah and Israeli Arab circles. Iranian and Syrian interest in provoking such violence now is clear. If the Netanyahu government and the IDF are kept busy contending with Palestinian terrorism, it will be more difficult for them to address Iran's nuclear weapons program either diplomatically or militarily.

All of these possible causes of the violence shed light on how events are likely to progress. Future events, after all, will in large part reflect the interests of the parties involved in inciting the current attacks against Israel.

BY THE same token, the European and American responses to Palestinian calls for violence against Israel and Jews show how the newest round of Palestinian aggression against Israel is likely to be greeted by the West. In its easy willingness to accept false Palestinian accusations about imaginary Israeli provocations, the EU is demonstrating that a transformation has taken place in its policy toward the Arab conflict with Israel. Whereas in the past the EU has been a more or less neutral actor in the region - officially refusing to support either side, while unofficially siding with the Palestinians against Israel - the European position on the Palestinian violence over the past week has been indistinguishable from the Arab League's position. Europe's newfound willingness to openly side with the Palestinians against Israel makes clear that the EU's role in the violence to come will be qualitatively different from the role it has played in past Palestinian terror campaigns. Israel's ability to launch a relevant and coherent diplomatic campaign to defend itself is contingent on the Foreign Ministry recognizing that a transformative shift has taken place in Europe's treatment of Israel.

And this brings us back to George Mitchell in Jerusalem. What Mitchell's absurd statements about peace breaking out in the region in the near future show is that the Obama administration is perfectly willing to pretend away the Arab violence against Israel. Whether motivated by naivete, an overarching desire for international peace conferences, a plan to align US foreign policy with that of Europe, or hostility toward Israel, the fact that Mitchell can talk about peace when the Palestinians have just declared war makes clear that the Obama administration is uninterested in playing a constructive role in quelling the violence. It certainly isn't interested in helping Israel to secure the lives of its citizens.

Israeli officials have sought to play down the significance of the events this week in Jerusalem. This is a mistake. If the newest round of violence is to end quickly and at a minimal cost in lives, it is essential for Israel to stop defensively humoring Mitchell and move quickly to offense, both militarily and diplomatically.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.