Palestinian chaos?
There are two quite opposite potential outcomes of the threat of Pres. Abbas not to run in the January 2010 PA elections. Either the PA will collapse and there will be chaos in the Palestinian territories, or they will get themselves together and unilaterally declare a Palestinian State. There does not seem much likelihood of anything stable happening in between.
Of course, if Abbas goes thru with his threat to step down, then he will have shown his political cowardice, and without any obvious succcessor in Fatah, he will have given rise to pure chaos, "apres moi la deluge!" He is clearly trying to blame Israel for his political failure, but while he never made any preconditions to negotiations with PM Olmert over a period of years, his sudden need to have a freeze of all Israeli building in the West Bank before any negotiations with PM Netanyahu can be seen only as a failure of the Obama approach.
Since Hamas has announced it will not allow the elections to proceed in Gaza, and Israel will prevent elections in East Jerusalem, it will only be the West Bank that will be thrown into instability. But, since political nature abhors a vacuum, we can expect Hamas to try to take over the West Bank, or for a unity government to be formed with a more radical element in Fatah.
PM Salam Fayyad (neither Fatah nor Hamas) has published his own plan for Palestinian statehood in two years, after establishing transparent working institutions. But, the trouble with this plan is that Fayyad has only 4% support in the West Bank (up from 2%) and the organization of transparent, working institutions in the PA is a pipe dream. Also, unilateral establishment of a Palestine State, without the agreement of Israel, is contrary to the Olso Accords that established the PA, and could result in the total abridgement of the PA and the return to the status quo ante with Israeli occupation of all the West Bank to prevent it's slide into chaos, not a situation that either the Palestinians or the Israelis really want.
It would take us back to the turbulent situation before there was a PA, before Arafat returned from Tunisia at the behest of Yitzhak Rabin (one of his major political mistakes), except that Hamas will continue to rule in Gaza and will seek to extend their control to the West Bank. Therefore expect stormy times ahead.
Of course, if Abbas goes thru with his threat to step down, then he will have shown his political cowardice, and without any obvious succcessor in Fatah, he will have given rise to pure chaos, "apres moi la deluge!" He is clearly trying to blame Israel for his political failure, but while he never made any preconditions to negotiations with PM Olmert over a period of years, his sudden need to have a freeze of all Israeli building in the West Bank before any negotiations with PM Netanyahu can be seen only as a failure of the Obama approach.
Since Hamas has announced it will not allow the elections to proceed in Gaza, and Israel will prevent elections in East Jerusalem, it will only be the West Bank that will be thrown into instability. But, since political nature abhors a vacuum, we can expect Hamas to try to take over the West Bank, or for a unity government to be formed with a more radical element in Fatah.
PM Salam Fayyad (neither Fatah nor Hamas) has published his own plan for Palestinian statehood in two years, after establishing transparent working institutions. But, the trouble with this plan is that Fayyad has only 4% support in the West Bank (up from 2%) and the organization of transparent, working institutions in the PA is a pipe dream. Also, unilateral establishment of a Palestine State, without the agreement of Israel, is contrary to the Olso Accords that established the PA, and could result in the total abridgement of the PA and the return to the status quo ante with Israeli occupation of all the West Bank to prevent it's slide into chaos, not a situation that either the Palestinians or the Israelis really want.
It would take us back to the turbulent situation before there was a PA, before Arafat returned from Tunisia at the behest of Yitzhak Rabin (one of his major political mistakes), except that Hamas will continue to rule in Gaza and will seek to extend their control to the West Bank. Therefore expect stormy times ahead.
posted by Jack Cohen at 2:14 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home