Why U.S. Support for Palestinian President Abbas May Backfire
Still, the Hamas challenge doesn't leave much of an alternative
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK—He is the public face of Palestinian moderation, but President Mahmoud Abbas is a flimsy bulwark against the masked Islamist radicals of Hamas. Their quick, ruthless armed takeover of the impoverished Gaza Strip raised the specter that their "coup" will spread to the more populous West Bank, presenting a greater threat to neighboring Israel and to secular Arab leaders in places like Egypt and Jordan who fear the rise of political Islam.
So the urgent business at hand for the Bush administration, the Israeli government, and some Arab leaders is to try to strengthen the cautious, presentable 72-year-old Palestinian Authority president. The strategy now is for the United States and European Union to give Abbas a lot of money to spread around the West Bank's 2.5 million people and for Israel to ease a bit its harsh military control in that area, enabling Abbas to show his people some tangible benefits. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced he will host an emergency summit this week that includes Abbas, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to offer Palestinians a diplomatic course toward statehood in contrast to the international isolation brought by Hamas, which refuses to accept Israel's right to exist. At a news conference in the Oval Office, President Bush, seated next to the visiting Olmert, praised Abbas as "a reasonable voice amongst the extremists in your neighborhood."
Rule by gun. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, the reality is more complicated, as demonstrated by the armed men belonging to Abbas's nationalist Fatah movement who went on a rampage. They shot to death a teacher and a security guard who supported Gaza's new rulers, kidnapped scores of other Hamas sympathizers, and torched the fundamentalist movement's charity offices, schools, libraries, and homes. Being Fatah members as well as employees of the feared Palestinian Authority security forces, these enforcers can expect to be among the first in line when Abbas starts distributing American and European largess.
The weeklong attacks illustrated the gulf between the grandfatherly Abbas's mild words and his record as chief enabler of the violent mercenaries who run the West Bank. The scenes also demonstrated why Fatah has steadily alienated the people it once led almost unchallenged—and why Hamas has been going from victory to victory. Moreover, the vengeful outbursts by Abbas's men against civilians and social institutions allied with Hamas show why the American-led plan to strengthen him is being panned by many of the very people it's intended to persuade. "These guys will just steal the money again, and Hamas will become even more popular," said a student and secular nationalist in his late 20s named Hassan, watching a sparsely attended but defiant rally by Fatah activists in Ramallah's central Manara Square.
Aside from its corrupt, lawless rule over the West Bank, Fatah poses one other embarrassing problem for Abbas's western sponsors—its terrorism against Israel. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which gained notoriety for bombing and shooting up Israeli cities in past years, remains Fatah's strike force. Abbas sought to constrain its young gunmen by hiring them for his security forces, but they are only successfully countered by Israeli Army commandos. Of late, al-Aqsa has formed an alliance with Islamic Jihad, an even more extremist outfit than Hamas; the two organizations took joint "credit" for killing three people at an Eilat bakery in January, the most recent suicide bombing to hit Israel.
This is not the first time the Bush administration has tried the Abbas option. After Abbas spoke out publicly and repeatedly against the terrorism of the intifada, the administration pinned its hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace on him, backing him in the PA presidential election held in 2005 after Yasser Arafat's death. Winning easily, Abbas promised to end the mafia-style rule that Arafat had brought to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but there were simply too many thugs in the PA with too many guns and too much seniority.
Backlash. Good intentions or not, Abbas carried on where Arafat left off, and the Palestinians, whose intifada had been broken by Israeli military might, grew bitter and turned to the uncorrupted Hamas—less out of enthusiasm for Hamas's religious calling than out of revenge against Fatah. The Bush administration's attempt to bolster Abbas in the January 2006 legislative elections backfired when Hamas upset Fatah, and its subsequent policy to boycott the Hamas-led Palestinian government and train Abbas-allied troops to take back Gaza's streets resulted in a bloody fiasco.
The curse of the Palestinian territories is that Hamas and Fatah are the only contenders. Abbas may have used his emergency powers to appoint a largely independent, technocratic government, with internationally respected World Bank veteran Salam Fayad as its prime minister, but the guns, patronage, economic monopolies, intimidating reputations—the instruments of power—remain in Fatah's hands.
The Mideast often falls victim to the law of unintended consequences, and all the international attention on Abbas risks having just the opposite of its intended effect—as happened with the parliamentary elections. The more the United States and Israel show their support for Abbas, the more he appears to many Palestinians as a collaborator with the enemy. "Bush is turning him into a CIA agent," said a currency changer at Manara Square.
For now, Hamas doesn't have the firepower in the West Bank to overthrow Fatah as it did in the Gaza Strip. But if Fatah doesn't transform itself, it risks facing a future Hamas-inspired popular revolt in the West Bank. And Abbas has shown that he is no transformative leader. "The era of militias is over," he has declared. "We will impose law and order in all the Palestinian territories." One thing about Abbas—he's always been good with words.
This story appears in the July 2, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.