EDITOR'S NOTE: There is no sovereign state of "Palestine". The author, for reasons known only to him, has chosen to call territory won by Israel in a defensive war with this name.
Gaza is now run not by a conventional political party but by a movement
that is revolutionary, Islamist and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client
of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of
Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army
(among others) in Iraq and the Alawite regime of Syria.
This Islamist mini-replica of the Comintern is at war not just with
Israel but with the moderate Arab states, who finally woke up to this threat
last summer when they denounced Hezbollah for provoking the Lebanon war
with Israel. The fall of Gaza is particularly terrifying to Egypt because
Hamas is so closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the chief Islamist
threat to the secular-nationalist regime that has ruled Egypt since the
revolution of 1952. Which is why Egypt has just invited Israeli, Jordanian
and moderate Palestinian leaders to a summit next week — pointedly excluding
and isolating Hamas.
The splitting of Palestine into two entities is nonetheless clarifying.
Since Hamas won the parliamentary elections of January 2006, we've had
to deal with the fiction of a supposedly unified Palestine ruled by an
avowedly "unity" government of Fatah and Hamas. Now the muddle has undergone
political hydrolysis, separating out the relatively pure elements: a Hamas-ruled
Gaza and Fatah-ruled (for now) West Bank.
The policy implications are obvious. There is nothing to do with the
self-proclaimed radical Islamist entity that is Gaza but to isolate it.
No recognition, no aid (except humanitarian necessities through the United
Nations), no diplomatic commerce.
Israel now has the opportunity to establish deterrence against unremitting
rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli villages. Israel failed to do that
after it evacuated Gaza in 2005, permitting the development of an unprecedented
parasitism by willingly supplying food, water, electricity and gasoline
to a territory that was actively waging hostilities against it.
With Hamas now clearly in charge, Israel should declare that it will
tolerate no more rocket fire — that the next Qassam will be answered with
a cutoff of gasoline shipments. This should bring road traffic in Gaza
to a halt within days and make it increasingly difficult to ferry around
missiles and launchers.
If that fails to concentrate the mind, the next step should be to cut
off electricity. When the world wails, Israel should ask, what other country
on Earth is expected to supply the very means for a declared enemy to attack
it?
Regarding the West Bank, policy should be equally clear. Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas represents moderation and should be helped
as he tries to demonstrate both authority and success in running his part
of Palestine.
But let's remember who Abbas is. He appears well intentioned, but he
is afflicted with near-disastrous weaknesses. He controls little. His troops
in Gaza simply collapsed against the greatly outnumbered forces of Hamas.
His authority in the West Bank is far from universal. He does not even
control the various factions within Fatah.
But the greater liability is his character. He is weak and indecisive.
When he was Yasser Arafat's deputy, Abbas was known to respond to being
slapped down by his boss by simply disappearing for weeks in a sulk. During
the battle for Gaza, he did not order his Fatah forces to return fire against
the Hamas insurrection until the fight was essentially over. Remember,
too, that after Arafat's death Abbas ran the Palestinian Authority without
a Hamas presence for more than a year. Can you name a single thing he achieved
in that time?
Moreover, his Fatah party is ideologically spent and widely discredited.
Historian Michael Oren points out that the Palestinian Authority has received
more per capita aid than did Europe under the Marshall Plan. This astonishing
largess has disappeared into lavish villas for party bosses and guns for
the multiple militias Arafat established.
The West is rushing to bolster Abbas. Israel will release hundreds
of millions in tax revenue. The United States and the European Union will
be pouring in aid. All praise Abbas as a cross between Anwar Sadat and
Sim?n Bol?var. Fine. We have no choice but to support him. But before we
give him the moon, we should insist upon reasonable benchmarks of both
moderation and good governance — exactly what we failed to do during the
Oslo process. Abbas needs to demonstrate his ability to run a clean administration
and to engage Israel in day-to-day negotiations to alleviate the conditions
of life on the ground.
Abbas is not Hamas. But despite the geographical advantages, he does
not represent the second coming, either. We can prop him up only so much.
In the end, the only one who can make a success of the West Bank is Abbas
himself. This is his chance. His last chance.
© 2006 WPWG
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