This article was originally published by Bitterlemons.org and is republished with permission.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas-run government in Gaza, reacts during his speech honoring the top students of the Tawjihi exams in Gaza. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

Although the recent deal between Hizballah and Israel allowed an exchange of prisoners and bodies, it's not the first of its kind. There have been similar exchanges in the past between Israel and Hizballah as well as between Israel and Palestinian political organizations. This time, however, the swap has more significant and far-reaching consequences, because it took place in a different political context.

Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular are divided over the most effective approach to deal with Israel in order to achieve the common objective of ending the occupation and other forms of Israeli aggression on Arab peoples and territories. One camp promotes the political and diplomatic approach while adopting positions and demands in line with international legality. This camp includes most Arab governments, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Palestinian Authority under Fateh in Palestine.

The other camp believes that the most effective approach is resistance and conflict in addition to adopting positions and demands that are based on the rights of the Palestinians and Arabs. That includes some Arab governments like Syria, as well as highly popular and credible non-state actors such as Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. This approach seems to enjoy more public support than the first.

The two sides have been competing to secure achievements of a kind that can convince the public of the validity of their respective approaches. In this context, the exchange deal that was reached between Hizballah and Israel and the way it was implemented represented a major coup for the second camp, the "revolutionary" side. This is especially true since Hamas, which is engaged in a similar negotiations process with Israel, will sooner or later be able to ensure the release of a few hundred Palestinian prisoners.

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All this is happening in parallel with the failure of the PA, led by Fateh, and its allies among the "moderate" Arab regimes to secure any achievement in political negotiations, especially on the most sensitive and immediate issues: a freeze on Israeli settlement expansion and a release of prisoners within the context of Palestinian-Israeli relations and negotiations.

Indeed, ever since Mahmoud Abbas was elected president he has not wasted any opportunity to request Israeli goodwill gestures. Israel, in turn, has not failed to ignore them. The average person in Palestine and the Arab world will thus compare Hizballah leader Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah's public promises to secure the release of prisoners held by Israel and those of President Abbas to do the same.

The non-moderate elements in the region have made other kinds of progress in proving the efficacy of their political positions and public stance. Israel is now enrolled in different kinds of contacts and negotiations with Syria, Hizballah and Hamas. This, at a time when the "moderate" Arab representatives have been unable to move toward an end to occupation or even to ensure a reduction in those Israeli practices that serve to consolidate the occupation.

In other words, Israel is behaving in a way that only discredits and weakens the "moderate" elements on the Palestinian side. The recent intensification of Israeli raids in Nablus, for example, went beyond "security" and involved interfering in public and private institutions. This is an embarrassment for the West Bank government.

This kind of behavior also helps explain the systematic radicalization of the Arab and Palestinian publics as well as the continuing marginalization of the "moderate" elements in favor of those that have consistently held that Israel only respects the use of force.

Ghassan Khatib is coeditor of the bitterlemons.org family of internet publications. He is vice-president of Birzeit University and a former Palestinian Authority minister of planning.

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