And here I thought Islamic law forbade gambling. Yet Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rulers of Iran--supposedly devout Muslims all--have just shaken the dice and rolled them in a fearful game where the stakes will be measured in human lives.

Resident Fellow David Frum

Hamas

Hamas is replaying an old maneuver of Yasser Arafat's from 2000: turning to war in order to escape the responsibilities of peace. Hamas had shocked itself with its victory in the January 2006 elections: 44% of the vote, 56% of the seats--and 100% of the obligations of government.

Within hours of assuming power, Hamas was slammed by economic crisis. No society on earth depends as heavily on foreign aid as does the Palestinian Authority: Fully US$300 of the average Palestinian income of US$1327 is donated, almost all of it by the United States and the European Union. Those funds support, among other things, the Palestinian Authority's huge public-sector payroll: One out of every three Palestinian families depends on a government salary, including the families of 58,000 armed police and militiamen.

Unwilling to subsidize a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel, those donors suspended or reduced their aid to the Palestinian Authority. Hamas officials at first dismissed the aid cutoff and assured their supporters that aid from their Muslim brethren would more than offset the forfeited Western funds. But that promise quickly proved illusory. By the end of April, 57.7% of Palestinians evaluated economic conditions in the PA as "bad." Unpaid gunmen loyal to Fatah began to turn their weapons against Hamas forces: By May and June, the PA seemed to be sliding toward civil war.

Hamas's response: divert the minds of the people by provoking a war against Israel instead. It allowed Hamas factions to fire rockets into southwestern Israel from the Gaza Strip. And the main Hamas armed force dug a tunnel under the border with Israel from which it launched the raid that resulted in the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit.

Of course the leaders of Hamas knew that such an open act of war would provoke Israeli reprisals. They gambled (i) that reprisals would rally Palestinian opinion to Hamas; (ii) that international opinion would restrain Israel before it utterly destroyed the Hamas regime; and (very possibly) (iii) that it was better to see its regime destroyed by Israel than to have to continue to govern the Palestinian Authority without foreign cash to pay the bills.

Apparently Hamas coordinated this gamble with a fellow terrorist group, Hezbollah, because Hezbollah followed up with an even more audacious gamble.

Hezbollah

Under international law, the line demarking Gaza from Israel is an armistice line between Israel and Egypt, not an international border. The line between Israel and Lebanon, however, is an international border--and for a Lebanese militia group to launch an invasion across the border is by anybody's definition an act of war.

Like Hamas, Hezbollah also faces a crisis. Last summer's "Cedar Revolution" pressured Hezbollah's ally, Syria, to withdraw its armed forces from Lebanon. A UN Security Council Resolution, number 1559, called upon all Lebanese militias to lay down their arms. Every Lebanese group except Hezbollah complied.

But as international pressure has mounted over the past year--not just against Syria, but also against Hezbollah's patrons and funders in Iran--Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Nasrallah also feared the deteroiration of his own political position. The son of murdered Lebanese politician Rafiq Hariri had built an effective political movement, supported not only by the U.S. and France but also by Saudi money, that seemed poised to win democratic power. Was Nasrallah worried that his state within a state would soon be curbed?

If so, that worry might explain why he too has bet his organization and his life. In 2004, Nasrallah swapped a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers for two dozen Hezbollah and 400 Palestinian prisoners: an exchange that hugely enhanced his and his group's prestige. He seems now to have gambled that he could do it again--at acceptable cost in Israeli retaliation.

Why would Nasrallah hope for such a seemingly unlikely outcome? That brings us to the third set of gamblers: the governments of Iran and Syria.

Iran

Iran's new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plainly believes in that old phrase, winning through intimidation. Having in the past threatened Israel with annihilation as soon as Iran finishes its nuclear bomb, last Friday he warned of an "Islamic explosion" if Israel pursued the kidnappers of Cpl. Shalit into Gaza. Looks like he had his plan ready: Those are Iranian-made rockets now landing on Israeli cities.

With Israel pursuing Hezbollah all the way to Beirut, Ahmadinejad has upped the ante again, threatening a "fierce response" if Israel struck at Syria.

Some suspect that Iran is doing more than intervening after the fact--that it approved and maybe even ordered up those Hamas and Hezbollah attacks in advance. Iran's motives? Perhaps it seeks to remind the U.S. of its ability to cause trouble throughout the region should the Americans strike at Iran's rapidly advancing nuclear program.

Gamble upon gamble upon gamble--and all gambles so far rolling up snake eyes.

Hamas's gamble has gone wrong: While the world community hastened to rescue Yasser Arafat again and again and again, this time, nobody is offering to rescue them. When this war ends, the PA will be more of a ruin than ever--and Hamas will have failed both on its promise of a better life for Palestinians and on its promise of death and destruction to the Jews.

Hezbollah's gamble seems to be going wrong, too. Israel is smashing up Hezbollah's carefully husbanded military force with hardly a murmur of protest from the international community. The government of Saudi Arabia--Saudi Arabia!--denounced not Israel but Hezbollah for "uncalculated adventures undertaken by elements in Lebanon and those behind them without recourse to legal authority and consulting and coordinating with Arab nations. These elements should bear responsibility for their irresponsible actions and they alone should end the crisis they have created."

As for Iran and Syria: Who likes their odds? Who now thinks that Iran can honour its commitments on nuclear power? Or that either country will ever cease its support for terrorism in Iraq? And if their proxies fail to wound Israel, that raises the question: How can they possibly inflict harm to America? And if we're not to fear Hamas and Hezbollah any more--what is it, exactly, that should deter the U.S. from acting to remove Iran's nuclear capability before today's threats of "explosion" become tomorrow's reality?

David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI.