The Bush administration's long fade-out is highlighting not only its mistakes but also its weakness. And nowhere does that seem clearer than with the crisis in Gaza. With little credibility left anywhere in the world, President Bush can not lead, and his pronouncements on Gaza have been weak and decidedly unhelpful. Even if Israel were right in its massive assault on Gaza - and it is not - Bush's endorsement does little except inflame Arab hostility.

Gaza, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned earlier this week, has descended into "a full-blown and major crisis in humanitarian terms." The media are reporting the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians - many of them children - homes reduced to rubble, hospitals overwhelmed and running out of medical supplies and power.

"We are completely devastated," a UN official in Gaza told the Washington Post. "There is nowhere safe in Gaza."

It is the Palestinians in Gaza who are suffering most right now, and who are getting the world's attention, but there has been far too much pain on both sides. Israelis have been under siege for years. They, too, have lived in terror and mourned the deaths of loved ones - children, spouses, parents.

Where do we start placing the blame? Hamas leaders continue to insist that Israel has no right to exist. Its militants use civilians as shields and store military supplies in schools. Hamas refuses to stop its attacks on Israel. (And while its rockets haven't been as lethal as Israel's attacks on Gaza, Hamas didn't launch them merely to make noise.)

The Israeli government has refused to put an end to the illegal settlements in the West Bank, making the promise of a separate, independent Palestinian state hollow. The blockade of Gaza has created extreme shortages of food and medical supplies. Palestinians can't get to jobs. Poverty and unemployment are widespread.

Writing on HuffingtonPost earlier this week, Marty Kaplan set out the trauma affecting both sides. "I wish I didn't believe that the events now unfolding in the Middle East are too complicated for unalloyed outrage," wrote Kaplan. "I wish the arguments of only one side rang wholly true to me. I am the first to accuse myself of paralyzing moral generosity - the fatal empathy that terrorists prey on. But ambivalence is not the same as moral equivalence, and holy war, no matter who is waging it, makes my flesh crawl."

As Israel's assault on Gaza continues, people in many parts of the world do feel unalloyed outrage. Israel's assault has to stop. There has to be a ceasefire. Israel's response to the Hamas attacks is not only disproportionate, as many have said, but it seems certain to make matters worse.

The Palestinians are divided, Hamas against President Mahmoud Abbas. The Israeli attacks will not weaken the support for Hamas; they will inflame even the most moderate Palestinians. They are fueling Arab hatred of Israel in other countries, and they're feeding support for terrorist groups. And ominously, protests are taking place in Arab countries that have been friends of Israel: Egypt, for instance.

"This will have historic consequences," Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery writes in The Progressive. "A whole generation of Arab leaders, a generation imbued with the ideology of secular Arab nationalism, the successors of Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, Hafez al-Assad, and Yasser Arafat, may be swept from the stage. In the Arab space, the only viable alternative is the ideology of Islamic fundamentalism."

In the United States, we're still nearly two weeks away from the inauguration of a new president. But Barack Obama must be prepared to move definitively on January 20, joining France's Nicholas Sarkozy and other world leaders in pressing for an end to the hostilities and a resumption of the peace process.

A continuing crisis in Gaza could end hope for a two-state solution for the foreseeable future. And that will almost certainly mean more years of conflict and more pain for both sides.