By Not Opposing Israel, Says NYT, Arab Nations Are to Blame for "New Obstacles to Efforts to End the Gaza Conflict"

Nothing should come as a surprise from the New York Times, correct?

From Cairo, David Kirkpatrick reports that

Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.

“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents. 

“I have never seen a situation like it, where you have so many Arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in Gaza and the pummeling of Hamas,” he said. “The silence is deafening.”

So how does the New York Times advertise David Kirkpatrick's story on its front page?

Yes, that's right, the Arab states' new policy poses — as in, "is to blame for" —

new obstacles to efforts to end the Gaza conflict.

As Ronald Reagan said, there is an easy way to obtain peace; all you have to do is to give in, to surrender…

PS:  Incidentally, the story goes on to say that

Secretary of State John Kerry turned to the more Islamist-friendly states of Qatar and Turkey as alternative mediators — two states that grew in regional stature with the rising tide of political Islam after the Arab Spring, and that have suffered a degree of isolation as that tide has ebbed.

But that move has put Mr. Kerry in the incongruous position of appearing to some analysts as less hostile to Hamas — and thus less supportive of Israel — than Egypt or its Arab allies.

For Israeli hawks, the change in the Arab states has been relatively liberating.