Abbas has no choice
Fatah realizes its only chance to compete with Hamas is agreement with Israel
I recall that Yasser Arafat was once asked why, in the Oslo Agreement, he demanded that armored vehicles and heavy weapons be supplied to the "strong Palestinian police." He raised an eyebrow and said: "What do you mean? I need to maintain law and order vis-à-vis Hamas." Today, the "Oslo armored vehicles" are in the hands of Hamas in Gaza.
The Gaza events presented Fatah in a grim light. They proved that the long years abroad and the intermingling with Europe, Israel, and the United States made it different, more realistic, and less militant. The revolutionary zeal dissipated and it turned fat and more established, just like any western organization. However, Fatah has not recognized this – it indeed wishes to be like the West, but without paying the price of joining up, such as launching a war against Hamas for example.
It is clear that the obstacle to Hamas moving over from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank is not the new armored vehicles or the thousands of rifles President Mahmoud Abbas has asked Olmert to transfer. The massive prisoner release and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are meant to "boost him financially" will certainly not bring about the desired change.
What is needed is a change in strategy and perception, and a public change at that, which will be about talking peace and making peace, and the rest will follow.
Hamas more skilled at terror
Should the Palestinian Authority continue to cling to its good old policy, where it is possible to engage in peace talks while at the same time "liberate occupied Palestine" Hamas can be calm – it will reach Nablus and Hebron too. Should Abbas continue to arrive at Olmert's office for negotiations while his men dispatch al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades cells to attack Israel, the remaining Fatah supporters in the West Bank will shift their support to Hamas.
Hamas, as we have already learned, is better at the job of armed struggled and is more skilled when it comes to terrorism. It is not worth Fatah's while to compete against it, as it will be defeated time and again.
What is happening between Fatah and Hamas in the territories in the past two years is well expressed in an ancient Arab proverb: "We taught them how to beg, and now they beat us in reaching the doorsteps first." This is it exactly. When Fatah committed itself to armed struggle, terrorism, and Israel's elimination in the mid-1960s, Hamas was far from being born. Yet slowly, Hamas learned from Fatah lessons on terrorism, to the point of threatening to overshadow Arafat's armed struggle in the late 1980s through a murderous campaign against IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians.
Two more decades have gone by, and the massacre undertaken by Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh against Abbas' and Muhammad Dahlan's people will enter the annals of Palestinian history as a terrible memorial day. The Gaza massacre will from now on be in the same category as the Kfar Qassam and Dir Yassin horrors. The monster, some say in the Palestinian Authority, has turned on its creator.
Ideological defeat
What has changed and why now of all times? Fatah and its different apparatuses sustained not only a decisive intelligence and military defeat in Gaza, but was also defeated ideologically – the defeat of the strategy that guided it since the Oslo Agreements and even before that, of maintaining a "united front."
It took them some time, but Abbas and his people have realizde they experienced a constitutive event, and from here they can either take off or sink into oblivion. They finally understand that they can no longer exist alongside Hamas.
Even the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which currently pursue wanted Hamas men in Nablus with great vigor as if they were an elite IDF force, clearly understood that the obstacle that would prevent Hamas from moving over to the West Bank is the introduction of a peace alternative that would clearly distinguish Fatah from Hamas.
On the eve of the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Fatah heads realized that their challenge now is to outline a new ideology that would make it clear to any West Bank resident, and later Gaza Strip residents, that when it comes to the fundamentalist Islamic danger, Israel, Fatah and any peace-loving Palestinian resident are on the same side.
It is not easy, but it is possible. A basic condition for that is a public declaration by Abbas on open cooperation with Israel against the common enemy, Hamas. Any other vague conduct, which would again aim to deceive Israel and the West, or enjoy the best of all worlds without investing efforts and making sacrifices, will fail. Hamas is lying in wait.
The writer served in various posts in the territories and currently researches Palestinian society at the Shmuel Neeman Institute at the Technion
