Helena Cobban
Just two months ago, many western commentators were jubilant that Mahmoud Abbas, the U.S.-supported head of both the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the interim Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), was making a comeback and reducing the influence in Palestinian society of the Islamist movement Hamas.
(Via the Palestinian Pundit)
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Oren and Netanyahu might be feeling good about fending off this "danger". But the hardball way they – and apparently also U.S. officials – treated Abbas over this affair have considerably complicated the diplomatic game-plan that the Obama administration previously seemed to be following, which relied strongly on building up Abbas’s and Fatah’s political weight relative to that of Hamas.
ReplyDeleteThis approach will backfire. It already has. We never, ever learn. Is there no one in the Department of State with an ounce of common sense? Who in their right mind would believe the Palestinians would fall for this? The wiser approach, if they wanted to bolster Abbas, would have been to leave him out of any stalling of the report! In fact, the U.S. had no business running interference for Israel in the first place. Too dumb for words!
Confusing. What about the poll Flemming cited from August showing 28% support from Hamas and 44% support for Fatah? Has Fatah lost support since August? If so, has it gone to Hamas, Muqtafa Barghouti, or someone else?
ReplyDeleteVZA, Abbas shouldn't have stalled the UN report. America should be overtly pro Palestinian.
Some believe that Fatah engineered or encouraged the conflict between Hamas and Israel to weaken Hamas. Could this be the reason that Abbas tried to stall the UN report?
No, the idea is to brutally beat, and destroy anything that has to do with Hamas, ergo massive punishment of Gaza. To remove another area - the West Bank, create a division that seems tied to Abbas. This is supposed to make those in Gaza side with what Abbas does, because they have been so brutalized, if they ever want to approach a better life. It did not work.
ReplyDeleteWhat Obama did was to throw the "responsibility" for the rejection of the report to Abbas, to give it the apperance that even those who were the target of the massacre (Palestinians) thought the report was flawed - supposedly giving it more credence. However, all it did was reveal Abbas for the lapdog that he truly is.
So essentially what this does is unravel their entire twsited plan, no one has credibility. Down the dran goes the entire so-called strategy.