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Each of the networks followed up with a mideast backgrounder.
NBC's Richard Engel was assigned to cover the response to the fighting in the Arab World. The regional news media have been "playing this story 24/7 for the last several days and they are seeing much more violent images that the ones that have been broadcast in the United States." He judged that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt "all find Hamas to be something of a dangerous entity, a rogue state," a view not shared by the Arab populace on the street, as the saying goes.
From Washington, ABC's John Donvan surveyed the desultory progress along the road map to peace--"more process than peace"--while noting that President-elect Barack Obama has "promised nothing except to remain a friend to Israel." Mideast diplomacy is never easy, he mused: "On the one hand, there are expectations, usually disappointed, that Israel will do whatever the United States tells it to. On the other hand, there are suspicions that never go away that America, as a mediator, always favors Israel."
CBS' Sheila MacVicar in London looked at how Hamas came to power in Gaza. It filled "a vacuum" caused by Israel's unilateral end to its occupation three years ago and followed up with an electoral victory. She counted 6,000 rockets fired by Hamas into southern Israel since 2005 before asserting that "the violence was not one-sided. Israel carried out targeted killings and, more importantly for the people of Gaza, they imposed and tightened an economic blockade that cut off supplies of food, medicine and even electricity. The theory was that would encourage Palestinians to reject Hamas. That did not work."
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