False Antithesis in Palestine

For the Bush administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the factional violence between Hamas and Fatah may have been God-sent. This is in the sense that it has severed the links between Hamas, which both the US and Israel still call a terrorist organization, even though it won a democratic election and formed a government last year as a result, and Fatah, whose leader and Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas is seen by both as a negotiating partner.

The resultant split from that factional violence has given rise to two separate Palestinian territories in Gaza, where Hamas is in total control, and the West Bank, where Mahmoud Abbas has declared his readiness to establish a separate government, which will operate by decrees, after he announced the dissolution of the Hamas-led government yesterday. Buoyed by out-right declaration of support from both the US and Israel, Abbas issued a decree in which he annulled a law that required legislative approval before his appointment of a prime minister could stand as legitimate. Hamas has not wasted time to dismiss his actions and decrees as irrelevant.

The logic in Mr. Abbas’s moves is that both the US and Israel will open up to him with aid and other forms of support. To what extent will an Abbas-led factional Palestinian government be able to truly carry the majority of Palestinians and sympathizers of their cause in an engagement with Israel? The answer to this question cannot be a definitive Yes! In which case, the unfolding scenario is therefore irrelevant as far as the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis is concerned. If the desire on the part of the US, Israel, and even the EU is to suspend the crisis in the sort of precarious limbo that stokes anarchy, then the gamble that is unfolding by way of aid and support to Mr. Abbas and squeezing of Hamas is well-aimed. But if the intention is to enable a situation that would entail peace between the Palestinian antagonists, on the one hand, and between the Palestinians and Israel on yet the other hand, then, aiding Mr. Abbas and squeezing Hamas is false antithesis. All the squeezing that was directed at Hamas since it won the elections last year didn’t come to much. It didn’t seem to have weakened it at all. There has to be a better way of forging US policy amongst the Palestinians if at all the ultimate desire is to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.