Daled Amos focuses on one aspect of Dennis Ross’s latest, A Mideast Crisis to avert.
In a nutshell, Daled Amos points out that Ross’s argument that the West ought to bolster Abbas because he’s better than the alternatives, is a very weak argument. (Read the whole thing.)
Of course Ross believes this as a true believer in peace processing, which is premised on the outdated belief that Fatah is moderate regardless of the endless examples of terrorism, extremism, corruption, and bad faith demonstrated by Fatah over the past fifteen years. Daled Amos focuses on this paragraph from Ross.
She [Rice] should identify the options in advance, line up Arab support for Abbas staying in office — something that should not be hard to do since Arab leaders are likely to fear both a Palestinian leadership void and the prospect of Hamas filling that void — and then finalize the approach with Abbas.
Ross is a bit behind the times. Not only don’t Arab leaders fear Hamas filling the void they’re actively preparing for it:
For Hamas, of course, the Jordanian move is welcome toward dialogue, since it seems to represent the gradual acceptance by the Arab political mainstream of its growing power among the Palestinians. This acceptance derives not from ideological factors or sentiment: pragmatic, pro-Western, monarchical Jordan and Islamist Hamas with its links to Iran could not be more natural adversaries. Rather, the move points to a de facto acceptance of the fact that Hamas’s rivals in the Palestinian camp are too weak to dislodge it, and that no one else seems keen to take on this task.
I don’t advocate engaging Hamas, but propping up Abbas after his term expires will only reduce American influence. Better to leave bad enough alone and see if someone reasonable emerges to succeed Abbas. But there may be no good solutions here.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
