Abbas’s appointment of Salim Fayyad as his prime minister to replace the Hamas member who was elected to that position by the Palestinian people is seen by Washington as a guarantee of honesty. But even though Fayyad might be honest, it’s impossible to argue that this is true of Abbas and Fatah, whose legendary thievery made the Islamist murderers of Hamas look like a band of Abraham Lincolns.
Nor is there any reason to imagine that the Fatah Party’s own armed contingents will give up terror when it is their own Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade that has committed the majority of terrorist acts against Israel in the period that Abbas has been in power.
The problem here is not just that the Palestinians won’t easily change their ways. It is that this U.S. aid and the Israeli concessions on security and prisoner releases will, inevitably, be portrayed as insufficient.
No matter how much help he is given, Abbas’s weakness and character flaws will be blamed on Israel and the United States, not himself.
Given that Gaza is now the moral equivalent of Afghanistan before the overthrow of the Taliban – an Islamist terror state – it’s understandable that Washington is prepared to do anything, even backing a sure loser such as Abbas, to fight it.
Bush deserves credit for going further than any American president has ever gone to state that Israel’s survival as a Jewish state (which is an implicit rejection of the Palestinians so-called right of return) is a principle of U.S. foreign policy. And the terms he has set for Palestinian statehood are, in theory, entirely appropriate.
But wishing for a viable alternative to Hamas is not the same thing as actually having one.
For its own reasons, Israel’s government wishes to prop up Abbas as much as possible.
But American friends of Israel, mindful of the potentially disastrous costs of American diplomatic and military failures elsewhere in the region, have an obligation to point out that a refusal to accept reality isn’t good for Israel, the United States, or any chances for peace.