BEIRUT — With little sign that the soon-ending Bush administration will press Israel to halt the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, diplomats and political leaders throughout the Middle East and Europe scrambled to find ways to bring an end to the violence.
But as the weekend drew to a close, the frenetic diplomatic activity appeared to have made scant progress.
The United States used its U.N. Security Council veto to block a cease-fire deal that did not include guarantees sought by Israel, and Europe and even some Arab states held back from applying strong pressure on Israel to end its escalating offensive against Hamas, which is widely perceived as a client of Iran and Syria.
"Part of this war is a regional contest between the camp of Syria and Iran and the camp of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia," said Paul Salem, a Beirut-based analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. "The region is divided. There's a lot of regional diplomatic activity, but the region has no leadership."
Images of bloodied Palestinian civilians continued to spark anger across the globe and put pressure on world leaders, especially in Middle Eastern and other Muslim nations, where protesters have demanded that their governments take action.
On Sunday, tens of thousands poured into the streets of Istanbul, Turkey, and demonstrators clashed with security forces near the U.S. Embassy north of Beirut, after sometimes violent protests across the world Saturday.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival, is scheduled to travel to the U.N. headquarters in New York today to press for a Security Council or General Assembly vote addressing the conflict.
Europe, home to large and sometimes restive Muslim minority populations, attempted to step up diplomatic efforts. European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, calling for a cease-fire in an interview with the BBC as he departed for a four-day trip to the Middle East, said Europe was ready to send monitors to Gaza to oversee a truce.
Russia and France, both veto-wielding members of the Security Council, called for a cease-fire, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy heading to the region.
International diplomacy is focusing on crafting a mechanism that can assure that Hamas won't be able to shoot rockets into Israel, or be resupplied with rockets and other arms through Gaza's porous southern border with Egypt.
