WASHINGTON — For years, Democratic leaders excoriated the Bush administration for what they saw as its long neglect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, vowing that should they win the presidency, they would play a far more active role in brokering Middle East peace.
Now, as President-elect Barack Obama and his secretary of State-designate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, prepare to take office, they confront a Middle East in deepening distress. The Gaza Strip is smoldering amid a 3-week-old Israeli military offensive, America's moderate Palestinian allies have been critically weakened, and Israel may soon choose a prime minister markedly less enthusiastic about a peace process.
The latest Middle East crisis will swiftly test Obama's national security team, which is still struggling to fill key positions and has yet to work out many of the basics of its diplomatic approach.
Clinton is weighing whom to name as "super envoy" for the Middle East, and whom to pick as assistant secretary of State for Near East affairs, traditionally the chief diplomat in the region.
The general contours of the Obama approach are clear: The new administration will reach out to Syria, seek to foster continued Israeli-Palestinian talks and try to make a new opening to the Muslim world that will strengthen its diplomatic position.
But decisions await. Officials haven't decided, for example, to what extent they will follow the Bush administration's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, or what gestures they will make to show that they are more deserving of Arab support than was outgoing President Bush.
"There's so much they haven't worked out," said one advisor, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue. "This will take time."
Middle Eastern diplomats have been urging the Obama team to take care in its approach to the Gaza crisis because the ramifications are so broad. A perceived victory by the Islamic militant group Hamas would strengthen its allies in Iran and Lebanon and weaken the Palestinian Authority and the moderate Arab governments that have been criticized as being too passive in the face of the Israeli offensive.
Gaza "is on a seam line of a series of conflicts," Martin Indyk, a former Clinton administration official and Middle East advisor to Hillary Clinton, said recently. Obama promised during the campaign to make resolving the Palestinian issue a priority of his presidency, but the outbreak of war has changed the magnitude of the challenge.
