Looks like the ‘moderate’ wing of the PA is taking some heat:
Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Sunday called for the murder of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad for “collaboration” with Israel and the US…
Fayad has been under heavy criticism from some Fatah leaders and activists, who accuse him of denying them public funds and plotting to undermine Fatah’s grip on power. — Jerusalem Post
Fatah, of course, is the basket the US has been putting all of its eggs into. And Fayad is almost singlehandedly responsible for the recent international pledges to donate more than $7 billion to the Palestinian authority.
The so-called moderate PA has not been getting much support from the Arab states lately, either. Last month at the UN,
Riad Mansour, the PA’s [UN] observer, wanted to include a clause in a draft resolution condemning Israel at a Decolonization Committee meeting. It would have expressed “concern about the takeover by illegal militias of Palestinian Authority institutions in June 2007” and called for its reversal, but under Arab state pressure this was toned down to “concern about an illegal takeover.” Mansour himself was subjected to a barrage of insults, led by the representatives of Egypt, Syria and Libya, who claimed that his initiative would be interpreted as a UN condemnation of Hamas, thereby easing Israel’s cutting of electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza. —Daniel Pipes [my emphasis]
What seems to be true is that there is very little support for the Abbas/Fayad PA except in the US State Department.
If I thought it was prepared to struggle with extremists, reach a negotiated settlement with Israel, and create a peaceful Palestine, I might feel bad about this.
But since I think that compromise with Israel is not a popular point of view among Arabs (to say the least), that Abbas and Fayad have exactly as much real support as the US will pay for, and that the PA ‘government’ is a Potemkin village, I am not heartbroken. There’s no possibility of success anyway.
I think the government of Israel knows this and is doing the only possible thing right now: killing the Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists. Why doesn’t the US understand the situation, stop wasting money on the corrupt Fatah organization, and let it fall of its own weight? Any services delivered to West Bank residents come from their local minor warlords anyway.
But, you say, “Hamas will take over!”
The only thing preventing a Hamas takeover in the West Bank today is the IDF. If the US policy continues — if we succeed in stage-managing a ‘peace’ agreement with those who, it has been said, “couldn’t deliver a pizza in Jerusalem”, and the IDF leaves the West Bank as a result — then Hamas will take over.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Fatah, Hamas, Salaam Fayed