This is revealing a larger problem for U.S. foreign policy. The Saudis, also have their own fundie problems that they don't want to exacerbate here.

Israel's campaign in Gaza is serving to expose the strategic fault lines in the Arab and Muslim world.

The essential divide is between, on the one hand, states aligned with the West - chief among them Egypt and Saudi Arabia - and on the other an alliance led by Iran, of which Hamas forms a part. Israel's action in Gaza has led to unprecedented tensions between representatives of these rival blocs. Because of the strategic importance of Egyptian control of the Rafah Crossing, this divide also has immediate practical implications for the direction and likely outcome of the current battle.
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This month in Tehran, Iran's capital, government-orchestrated crowds of students hurled Molotov cocktails at the offices of Saudi Arabian Airlines, attacked Egypt's diplomatic mission and called for Mr Mubarak's execution as a traitor. A leading Tehran daily, Kayhan, meanwhile, blasted him for "subservience to the Zionists" and accused King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia of being "indifferent to the massacre of Gaza's Muslims." A Friday sermon broadcast on Iran's state television advised Palestinians to copy the methods of Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia party-cum-militia that fought a war with Israel in 2006.

To date, Egypt's government has escaped broad public censure for the restrictions it imposes on the border with Gaza. Last winter, when Hamas breached it, prompting thousands of Palestinians to surge into Egypt on a shopping spree, Egyptian officials countered with an information campaign to stoke nationalist resentment, warning people against an intrusion of Palestinian smugglers, counterfeiters and terrorists. The Egyptians scored points again earlier this month, when Hamas blocked the exit of Gazans headed for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, on the ground that the Saudis had granted visas only to those who had applied through the PA and not through Hamas. Egyptian diplomats, meanwhile, have sought to rally official Arab support for their view that Hamas's rule in Gaza is illegitimate, even while they have been sponsoring talks to heal the rift between Fatah and its Islamist rivals.

Egypt and its Arab allies have their reasons for keeping Gaza isolated. Their policy began under American pressure soon after Hamas won a Palestinian general election in 2006. Egypt has kept the border closed partly to please America, which props up Mr Mubarak with aid, partly because his government loathes Hamas as a branch of its own Muslim Brotherhood, and partly in the hope of forcing Hamas to cede legitimacy to the PA, thereby keeping prospects for Palestinian unity and future peace dealings with Israel alive. Moreover, fearing that Israel's long-term goal is to dump Gaza and its troubles into Egypt's lap, the Egyptians insist that Israel must remain fully responsible for the territory.
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Israeli raids on Gaza have further aggravated the same split among Arabs between Islamists and authoritarian governments. While Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia blame Hamas, many criticizes Arab governments for their passivity
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But the clamor over Gaza has underlined an increasing divide in the Middle East that pits pro-Western countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia against Syria and Iran and their allied militant groups, Hamas and Hezbollah.
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Egypt, of course, is obligated to keep that border closed with an Egypt-Israeli treaty, and the issue of the Saudis in this is tied with the Egyptians.

Saudis cracking down

Saudi police break up pro-Gaza protest: residents

Saudi police nabs Gaza supporters

Saudis are divided on whether to have right to stage public protests against Israeli blitz of Gaza Strip.

....covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme "Iran-contra 2.0," recalling that Abrams was convicted
...the rest in link...

Here's a poll thats stuck in my craw. Muslims in various Middle Eastern countries were polled on the goals of al Qaeda. Guess which one was the top one they agreed with?


PDF poll
Muslim Public Opinion on
US Policy, Attacks on Civilians
and al Qaeda

(p 17)
To push the US to stop favoring Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians
76% total
---

to

(via Yoweigh)

George Washington's warnings and U.S. policy towards Israel

Glenn Greenwald: In a democracy, one could expect that politicians would be afraid to express a view that 70% of the citizens oppose. Yet here we have the exact opposite situation: no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70% of Americans support; instead, the universal piety is the one that only a small minority accept. Isn't that fairly compelling evidence of the complete disconnect between our political elites and the people they purportedly represent?

The critical question which the survey does not address is, what do most Americans think our policy should be toward Israel and the Palestinians? Specifically, do most Americans favor the "special relationship," where we unconditionally give Israel abundant material aid and firm diplomatic backing? This policy -- which has been our actual policy for many years -- means that we back Israel to the hilt no matter what it does to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. We favor Israel over the Palestinians, and indeed, favor Israel in any conflict in which it is involved, like the Lebanon war in 2006.

The answer to that critical question is that most Americans do not support the special relationship. They are much more critical of Israeli policy than their elected representatives are and they are far more willing to support a hard-nosed approach to dealing with the Jewish state than most policymakers would be. For example, a 2003 survey conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that 60 percent of Americans were willing to withhold aid to Israel if it resisted U.S. pressure to settle its conflict with the Palestinians. In fact, 73 percent of those surveyed said the United States should not favor either side in the conflict. Two years later, a survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League found that 78 percent of Americans believed that Washington should favor neither Israel nor the Palestinians. A July 1, 2008 poll ("World
Public Opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,")
conducted by (PIPA) found that 71 percent of Americans believe that we should take neither side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; only 21%
think we should take Israel's side.