(HOST) The latest fighting between Palestinian factions has left a potential Palestinian state, seriously split into two very different parts. As commentator Barrie Dunsmore tells us this morning, this might produce some new opportunities for American diplomacy – but it also provides great challenges.
(DUNSMORE) In every discussion about a two-state solution for the Israeli Palestinian dispute, the Palestinian State that is envisaged has two distinct parts: the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The two areas are separated geographically by the State of Israel.
Following last week’s bloody battle for power in Gaza they are now totally split politically as well.
Gaza is now controlled by the militant Islamist group Hamas which won last year’s Palestinian parliamentary elections. The West Bank is nominally being run by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the secular Fatah Party. I say nominally, because unlike Gaza, the West Bank is still under Israeli military occupation.
With Fatah’s defeat by Hamas in Gaza last week, President Abbas dissolved the so-called unity government and created an emergency cabinet of technocrats and his own party members.
The initial response of the United States, the European Union and Israel has been to enthusiastically support Abbas who, as President George W. Bush put is this week, is “president of all the Palestinians.” That support is being translated into hundreds of millions in economic aid – some of it frozen when Hamas was elected last year – because it was deemed a terrorist organization that refused to recognize or make peace with Israel.
On its face, this policy may seem reasonable. But once again, the situation is much more nuanced than simply good guys versus bad guys. For example, Fatah may be “moderate”, but after forty years it is riddled with corruption and it has radical and violent factions of its own. Even the extent of its real power in the West Bank is open to question because Israel still calls all the important shots there.
As several respected analysts have noted this week, the time to support Abbas was two years ago, after he had been overwhelmingly elected president of the Palestinian Authority. If the U.S. had then urged Israel to make political concession to him releasing Palestinian detainees, freezinng Israeli settlements and generally making life more tolerable for the Palestinian people Hamas may never have won the parliamentary vote. However, to puff up Abbas now may simply make him look like an American-Israeli puppet, there-by nullifying his influence with his own people. Actually, there are already those who think Washington instigated the internecine battle for Gaza to create this new situation.
Focusing now on West Bank Palestinians while isolating Hamas controlled Gaza may be enticing. But dividing the Palestinians further reduces chances for a credible Palestinian-Israeli peace because that requires a viable Palestinian state – meaning both the West Bank and Gaza must accept and be part of it. It will also, almost certainly, further radicalize Palestinians in both camps.
Perhaps the Bush administration will show the skills to negotiate this new diplomatic minefield and the president himself will finally get seriously involved and apply American pressure when it is needed. But given the record of the past six and a half years – that somehow doesn’t seem very probable.
Barrie Dunsmore is a veteran diplomatic and foreign correspondent for ABC News, now living in Charlotte.