Krauthammer On Hamas & Fatah, Challenges & Bench Marks

Charles Krauthammer sees the challenges and opportunities in the clarification of Hamas Fatah scenario, as well as noting how Israel, with the hands on the controls of Gaza's water, gas and electricity has Hamas by its radical Islamic short hairs:

Gaza is now run not by a conventional political party but by a movement that is revolutionary, Islamist and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army (among others) in Iraq and the Alawite regime of Syria.

This Islamist mini-replica of the Comintern is at war not just with Israel but with the moderate Arab states, who finally woke up to this threat last summer when they denounced Hezbollah for provoking the Lebanon war with Israel. The fall of Gaza is particularly terrifying to Egypt because Hamas is so closely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the chief Islamist threat to the secular-nationalist regime that has ruled Egypt since the revolution of 1952. Which is why Egypt has just invited Israeli, Jordanian and moderate Palestinian leaders to a summit next week -- pointedly excluding and isolating Hamas.

The splitting of Palestine into two entities is nonetheless clarifying.

. . . The policy implications are obvious. There is nothing to do with the self-proclaimed radical Islamist entity that is Gaza but to isolate it. No recognition, no aid (except humanitarian necessities through the United Nations), no diplomatic commerce.

Israel now has the opportunity to establish deterrence against unremitting rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli villages. Israel failed to do that after it evacuated Gaza in 2005, permitting the development of an unprecedented parasitism by willingly supplying food, water, electricity and gasoline to a territory that was actively waging hostilities against it.

With Hamas now clearly in charge, Israel should declare that it will tolerate no more rocket fire -- that the next Qassam will be answered with a cutoff of gasoline shipments. This should bring road traffic in Gaza to a halt within days and make it increasingly difficult to ferry around missiles and launchers.

If that fails to concentrate the mind, the next step should be to cut off electricity. When the world wails, Israel should ask, what other country on Earth is expected to supply the very means for a declared enemy to attack it?

Regarding the West Bank, policy should be equally clear. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas represents moderation and should be helped as he tries to demonstrate both authority and success in running his part of Palestine.

But let's remember who Abbas is. He appears well intentioned, but he is afflicted with near-disastrous weaknesses. He controls little. His troops in Gaza simply collapsed against the greatly outnumbered forces of Hamas. His authority in the West Bank is far from universal. He does not even control the various factions within Fatah.

But the greater liability is his character. He is weak and indecisive. . .

Moreover, his Fatah party is ideologically spent and widely discredited. Historian Michael Oren points out that the Palestinian Authority has received more per capita aid than did Europe under the Marshall Plan. This astonishing largess has disappeared into lavish villas for party bosses and guns for the multiple militias Arafat established.

The West is rushing to bolster Abbas. Israel will release hundreds of millions in tax revenue. The United States and the European Union will be pouring in aid. All praise Abbas as a cross between Anwar Sadat and Simón Bolívar. Fine. We have no choice but to support him. But before we give him the moon, we should insist upon reasonable benchmarks of both moderation and good governance -- exactly what we failed to do during the Oslo process. Abbas needs to demonstrate his ability to run a clean administration and to engage Israel in day-to-day negotiations to alleviate the conditions of life on the ground.

Abbas is not Hamas. But despite the geographical advantages, he does not represent the second coming, either. We can prop him up only so much. In the end, the only one who can make a success of the West Bank is Abbas himself. This is his chance. His last chance.

Read the entire story here. Finally, some benchmarks we can get behind. This sounds perfectly appropriate and far more sound then just opening the spigots. We may have to force Fatah to succeed as a nation - rather then subsidize opulence for its war lords. Perhaps, given their recent fate in Gaza, we may find Abbas and his gang a bit more willing this time.

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Is The Hamas Coup A Plus Or Minus?

This is musing and speculation on some of the ramifications of the Hamas coup in Gaza. I solicit your thoughts.

1. Hamas is no longer the legitimate government of the Palestinian people, Abbas having dissolved the government and appointed a new Prime Minister under emergency conditions. But, Hamas now, for the first time, has full responsibility for all aspects of governing the Palestinians in Gaza. Western aid will immediately flow to the West Bank and the new Abbas government but Gaza will see little if any of that. I cannot see Hamas, wholly surrounded by an unfriendly Egyptian government and a mortal enemy in Israel, being able to do much for the residents of Gaza - beyond imposing security and Sharia law.

2. Hamas is in a position of extreme weakness. Gaza’s water and electricity is controlled by Israel. Even with all the economic support in the world from Iran, no water and no electricity in a small plot of land with over 1,500,000 people is a disaster but a flick of some switches away. The next rocket coming across the border could send Gaza’s living conditions into the tank. Israel need not invade Gaza to hold life and death control over the society and to make any offensives by Hamas untenable.

3. While a majority of people in Gaza voted for Hamas, does that mean that they look forward to the mini-caliphate that they now find themselves under? Hamas ran on two prongs – one, providing services to Palestinians compliments of foreign funding, and two, not being as corrupt as Fatah. They did not run a campaign about imposing Sharia law of which I am aware. And how will they treat the concept of democracy in Gaza now that they have power? Palestinians in Gaza subject to decades of secular rule have just had it come to an end. It will be interesting to see how the populace takes to this in the long term, particularly if the West Bank Palestinians begin to thrive in a freer secular environment.

On a related note, there are about a thousand alleged Fatah supporters camped at the border crossing with Israel who are seeking to go to the West Bank. "Israel’s deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, told Israel Radio that those whose lives were deemed in danger would be taken out through Israel. But he added, about the others, "No one knows for sure who these people are. We can assume they are people who don’t want to be in Gaza. Pretty soon there will be 1.5 million people who don’t want to be in Gaza."

4. Hamas by itself will not get the aid dollars they need to stay afloat. This will seriously strain the already troubled economy Hamas’s major patron, Iran. And how long will Iran support Hamas if Hamas does not take an active role in attacking Israel?

5. Abbas, though no friend of Israel, has, to his credit, long been a vocal opponent of the second intifada but lacked the strength necessary to challenge Hamas and the more radical elements. Now, with control over Palestinians in the West Bank and a much stronger security posture compliments of the IDF, Abbas may actually have a chance to develop a true Palestinian alternative with a viable economy. The flip side is that Iran, Hamas, Syria and possibly others will be intent on doing all they can to prevent this from happening. Expect the next round of suicide bombings in Ramallah.

6. If there is a real and lasting split between the Hamas contingent and Palestinians interested in developing an economy and a life, this would be a great disaster for many of the surrounding countries who have long used their influence and money to grossly manipulate the Palestinians for half a century. Indeed, "Abbas is already under pressure from some Arab governments, in particular the Saudis, who mediated the national-unity government at Mecca, to take Hamas at its word and try to recreate a shared government. In a speech on Friday to an emergency meeting of the Arab League, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia said, "The Palestinians have come close to putting by themselves the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian cause." To the extent that the "Palestinian cause" is the one defined by the Muslim Brotherhood and the salafists of Saudi Arabia – to support suicide bombers, to keep the Palestinians in poverty, to claim Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as the cause of all misery in the Middle East, etc., then one can only hope that Faisal is accurate.

Feel free to chip in with your thoughts. All in all, in the world of unintended consequences, the Hamas coup has the potential of being a very positive event for Israel and West Bank Palestinians and a real problem for Hamas and Iran.

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