The many Israelis already prone to swings between despair and complacency regarding Palestinians will likely have been particularly confused by events of the past two weeks. A rich Arab ruler turned up in Gaza bestowing cash gifts and breaking the diplomatic blockade on Hamas; rocket fire from the narrow strip resumed; and Israel’s nominal diplomatic partner, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, sank deeper into insolvency and aimlessness. 

For now, Israel finds the status quo acceptable and thinks it can be maintained. But over the long term, Israel could pay a high price for having done so. In the meantime, though, Israel will likely escape diplomatic pressure and serious security threats.

For its part, the Gaza leadership is still bottled up, despite the Qatari amir’s visit. Hamas members who hoped the rising tide of Islamists in the region would lift their boats have been thus far disappointed. Earlier this year, the leader of a think-tank sympathetic to Islamists in the region publicly voiced his frustration that they were too busy “reassuring the West more than they should have.”

But this leaves Israel’s best hope an indefinite maintenance of the status quo—and most of its leaders seem to have reacted as if it is time for crisis management rather than conflict resolution. From time to time, a few lonely Israeli voices come up with a clever tactical response or trot out an old one: perhaps Israel should agree to renegotiate the peace treaty with Egypt in order to get President Mohammed Morsi’s signature on a document. Or maybe the country could unilaterally determine its borders, reverting to the strategy of the Sharon government when it withdrew from Gaza.

When the long-term trends now at work in the region finally wreak their effects on the conflict between Arabs and Israelis, the strategy of procrastination may seem in retrospect to have been a short-sighted approach indeed.