ISRAEL’S dramatic incursion into Gaza last night plunged the region into the biggest crisis it has faced since the Lebanon invasion in the summer of 2006. It sparked anger among some Islamic states but drew support from America.

One European government was swift to back the Israeli action, blaming Hamas, the militant Islamic group that runs Gaza, for provoking the Jewish state with its rocket attacks on civilians. “We understand this step as a defensive, not an offensive action,” said Jiri Potuznik, the spokesman for the new Czech presidency of the EU.

It was clear in Washington that Israel had the full support of the administration. Earlier President George W Bush blamed Hamas for the crisis.

Barack Obama carefully avoided becoming embroiled. “The president-elect is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza,” said Brooke Anderson, his national security spokeswoman. “There is one president at a time and we intend to respect that.”

The invasion will exacerbate deep divisions across the Middle East as western-allied states scramble to balance their reluctance to support Hamas against popular anger at home.

Moderate, secular leaders of countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan face an axis of radical states led by Iran and Syria who urge retaliation against Israel. Their rhetoric suits the mood on the street, but is deeply unrealistic.

The western-oriented states share worries about the influence of Iran and the rise of political Islam, which fuels their own domestic oppositions.

“Israel’s attack on Gaza puts all the regimes in the anti-Iran camp in an embarrassing situation,” said Nadim Shehadi, an analyst at Chatham House, the London think tank. “This highlights their incapability of doing anything.”

Militant Islamic groups were leading protests against the Israeli attacks and their own rulers’ inaction. Egypt, the first Arab state to sign a peace agreement with Israel, came under particularly virulent criticism for refusing to open its border to Gaza to allow Gazans to flee the invading force.

“Israel would not have hit Gaza like this without a green light from Egypt,” said Hamdi Hassan, a Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament, furious that Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, met Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, shortly before the invasion.

The unusually blunt attacks on Hamas by some Arab ministers last week showed their desperation. At an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, blamed Palestinian feuding for the crisis.

In 2007 Hamas ousted the forces of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and leader of the secular Fatah movement, from Gaza in vicious fighting. Syria and Iran back Hamas, while the more moderate states see it as a barrier the Arab-Israeli peace process.

“This terrible massacre would not have happened if the Palestinian people were united behind one leadership, speaking in one voice,” Faisal said.

Abbas will join Arab foreign ministers in New York tomorrow to seek help from the United Nations security council.

Syria suspended talks with Israel, and allowed Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, unrestricted access to its airwaves.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah organisation in Lebanon, which was seen as victorious in the 2006 war with Israel, called on Hamas to “inflict the biggest possible losses on the Israeli enemy”.

He did not follow his words with action. Hezbollah has Iranian-supplied missiles in southern Lebanon that reached far into Israel in the summer of 2006, but Israel’s northern border was quiet last night.

“The Israeli assault has weakened the legitimacy of all the moderate Arab states, because it has shown they are powerless to confront Israel,” Shehadi said. “The political impact will be a radicalised Middle East.”

The invasion presents Obama with an unwelcome hot potato as he moves his family to Washington today. Already faced with America’s daunting domestic economic problems and wars in Iraq and Afghani-stan, he has no wish to become embroiled in another Middle Eastern morass.

The outgoing administration had failed in its attempts to secure a comprehensive peace deal, not least because a bitterly divided Palestinian leadership gave it no one with real authority to negotiate with.

The current administration showed no sign of wishing to stop Israel’s incursion and in his radio address yesterday Bush chose to deliver a fierce attack on Hamas. “This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel’s destruction,” he said.

London protests

More than 10,000 protesters gathered in Trafalgar Square, London, to voice their opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The crowd, which included the singer Annie Lennox and the Jewish comedian Alexei Sayle, burnt the Israeli flag and threw fireworks. There were violent clashes later outside the Israeli embassy, in Kensington, west London, where 200 riot police were pelted with missiles. Several protesters were hurt in the confrontation. Police made 15 arrests.

Eyewitnesses claim that children were among those thrown to the ground during clashes in the underpass at Hyde Park. The Respect MP George Galloway, who was there with his daughter, claimed protesters were “attacked repeatedly”.

Thousands also took to the streets in protests in 18 other cities.

Times Recommends

• Tehran cannot live up to its rhetoric
• The new unicycle that will ‘change the world’
• We cannot wish away Iran’s bomb