Behind much of the Obama government’s pressure on Israel over the past four years has been the idea that concessions to the Palestinian Authority would strengthen moderates and increase the chances of peace. Of course, 20 years of such concessions have done no such thing, as even the so-called moderates are unwilling or incapable of recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. Though the U.S. split from its European allies on the question of supporting an upgrade of the PA’s status at the UN, the administration appears ready to back a new push for peace in the coming year aimed at boosting PA President Mahmoud Abbas against his Hamas rivals. But as Khaled Abu Toameh reports, a shift in the strategy employed by Abbas’s Fatah may render the president’s plans moot.
As Abu Toameh writes in his blog for the Gatestone Institute, Fatah and Hamas may be working together in the coming months rather than against each other. Their common goal will be to capitalize on the “victories” won by Hamas in its military standoff with Israel and Fatah at the UN by launching a new round of violence whose purpose will be to heighten Israel’s diplomatic isolation. If this is true, it won’t silence those who will persist in believing that Israeli settlements or other distractions from Palestinian intransigence are the real obstacle to peace. But it will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the president to sell the Israelis on the idea that Fatah is a partner for peace.
As Abu Toameh writes:
Emboldened by the “victories,” Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal recently reached a secret agreement on the need to launch a “popular intifada” against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources in Ramallah revealed.
The two men believe that such an intifada at this stage would further isolate Israel and earn the Palestinians even more sympathy in the international arena, the sources said.
Abbas and Mashaal are aware, the sources noted, that the Palestinians are now not ready for another military confrontation with Israel — neither in the West Bank nor in the Gaza Strip.
That is why the two men agreed that the best and only option facing the Palestinians these days is a “popular intifada” that would see Palestinian youths engage in daily confrontations with Israeli soldiers and settlers, especially in the West Bank.
The Palestinian leadership knows they are best served by televised violence that pits a powerful Israeli military against seemingly helpless Palestinians rather than by terror attacks or missile strikes. But it isn’t likely that their concerted campaign of low-level violence won’t soon escalate to the sort of attacks on Jewish targets that have always bolstered the popularity of the Palestinians groups that carry them out.
Nor is it likely than even a re-elected Barack Obama, who would no longer need to fear a backlash from Jewish voters over Israel, would be able to sustain a diplomatic campaign against a re-elected Benjamin Netanyahu while Fatah and Hamas were engaged in a competition over which presented the toughest approach to the Israelis.
The motivation for Abbas to join forces with Hamas is clear. As Haaretz reports today, a new poll shows Abbas would lose an election against Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh if an election were held. While Abbas, who is currently serving the eighth year of a four-year presidential term, may have no intention of allowing a free vote that would give the Islamist dictators of Gaza a chance to run the West Bank too, the poll shows Hamas’s violence gives it a crucial electoral advantage. The same survey said that were Haniyeh to face Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader serving multiple life-in-prison terms for the murders he ordered during the second intifada, he would lose.
As Abu Toahmeh writes, Hamas and Fatah do have different short-term goals. Fatah hopes to force Israel to retreat from all of the territory it won in 1967, including in Jerusalem and its suburbs where they would hope to create an independent Palestinian state, albeit not one prepared to end the conflict. On the other hand, Hamas still believes it can destroy Israel altogether.
This demonstrates the foolishness of the discussion on the left about the need for the U.S. to join Egypt and Turkey and recognize Hamas. But it should also illustrate the folly of a new diplomatic initiative whose Fatah beneficiaries have made common cause with the so-called extremists of Hamas. The illusions that many Israelis harbored about Fatah’s peaceful intentions were exploded by the terror of the second intifada. It remains to be seen whether the fantasies of foreign liberals, including those in the administration, will survive a third.
Obama sees another intifada as an outsourcing of his anti Israeli policies to Hamas and the PLO. He will be totally accepting and in line with them. Another intifada would not hurt him in the least as this would present him another opportunity to apply more 'pressure' on the Jews. Most people seem unwilling to get this but Obama is willing to fatally wound Israel if it means bringing something like the Muslim Brotherhood more power in the region.
The good Fatah/ bad Hamas game was always a ruse. The idea that Fatah is a secular alternative to Hamas's Islamic fanaticism was always useful to diplomats and especially Jewish "conservatives intellectuals" who have never had the cajones to declare Oslo was a deadly trap that Israel fell into. Now that the two Palestian terror groups are groping for common ground, it's become more obvious that they both have always shared the the same objective – to wipe out Israel. The real question is when will so-called "friends of Israel" end their complicity in this lethal charade?
Yes, that some in the Commentary crowd have jumped on the two-state final solution wagon has been absolutely dismaying. But I guess it would have been hard to land a job as a foreign policy advisor in the Bush administration (or if there had been one in a Romney administration) if one had openly rejected it. Just look how Commentary and other neo-cons jumped on Gingrich when he rightly called the Fakistinians an invented people. Certainly, an invitation to a Likud policy conference or institute in Israel would have been equally hard to obtain, since even large sections of the Israeli right eventually went along with Oslo, with even Bibi shaking the bloody and infected hand of Yassir Arafat.
If you're saying Israel shot itself more than once in the foot, you'll get no argument from me.
the Nazis were not an "invented" invented people–they were genuine Germans. n nwith an embellished pedigree and incurable rabies. n nand? n nThe Palestinians might seem a little less "invented" if their population base had not been displaced. It doesn't matter. Fighting endlessly unsuccessful wars against the Jews has consequences even if you are the really realest people on the face of the earth. n nDon't worry–Israel will turn a "popular" intifadah into a military confrontation right proper quick– all those foreign TV cameras can get their footage of Merkavah tanks rolling over the Presidential compound of President for Life Abbas, fat lot of good that will do them or Abbas. n nNobody has time to screw around with this bs any more.
I wonder what Barghouti thinks. n n
he's wondering why no followers in his Twitter account . And going for his prison MBA in Hotel Administration. Hey , you never know.
an Intifada is what Obama wants: some people will die and Obama will be able to force a UNSC intervention where he will NOT VETO A UNSC RESOUTION
no, Obama doesn't want the intefada for any Security Council intervention. n nIt's obvious that Obama's administration is soon going to launch a full-scale nuclear attack against Israel to wipe it out. n nYeru– you and all the other collaborators with the US are traitors to israel. you and the other America-firsters are no better than anti-Semites. n nshame on you.
Even if so, won't matter. Obama mostly wants to hang with celebrities and be cool.
— " Of course, 20 years of such concessions have done no such thing, as even the so-called moderates are unwilling or incapable of recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. "— n n no evidence needed. Tobin's opinion is all that's necessary.
No evidence would convince Dub. If he hasn't seen it or read about it, it didn't happen.
aha, evidence does tend to convince…. the absence of it ….is less convincing. n nin this particular case, Tobin's statement is absurdly overblown and saying that there aren't moderates who accept Israel's legitimacy and that there aren't further concessions that would increase acceptance is obviously incorrect and flat dumb. n n nthere are great numbers who will never accept Israel as "legit" but to say that they are the entirety is sheer garbage.
What do you expect, Jonathan? If Israel refuses to accept a Palestinian state without Israeli settlement in it then why should Palestinians accept an Israeli state without Palestinians being able to come and settle in it? You can't have it both ways.
Actually, I had noticed, 'ahadhaamoratsim', but these are Arabs, or decendents of Arabs, who were there long before Israel became a state, whereas few, if any, Israelis in the West Bank are actually from the West Bank – or even from Israel. n nPalestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza and in camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere, many of who have relatives who are Israeli Arabs, have far more of a claim to Israel than the many Jews, especially converted and European Jews, who seem to think they have some kind of 'historical claim' to the lands in the occupied territories. Few Jews, whether Israeli or from the Diaspora, can make such a claim for the West Bank or the Gaza Strip.