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Good JBA post on meeting Abu Mazen:
Finally, he quoted back to the group the old adage that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. While that may have been true about the Palestinians at one time, he said, today it’s the Israelis who are missing the opportunity – not simply for a two-state solution but for comprehensive peace under the Arab Peace Initiative.
I think he is right.
Last night said clearly to me that there is a partner for peace. Now the question is whether there are two.
Shots fired. Any sincere effort to marginalize Hamas has to involve strengthening Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad. (I recognize the folly of basing a strategy around people and not institutions, but we’re in dire straits here, and the PLO is the alternative that exists.) Either you take their outstretched hands or you let Hamas gather strength. Those are the actual choices on offer.
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I think the earlier people in Washington realize that Abu Mazen is done the better. He is now, not without reason, perceived as a corrupt Israeli stooge who is more interested in protecting Israel than he is in making life easier for Palestinians or getting Israel to stop settlements. I like Fayyad, but I’m one of the only people outside Washington I know who does. Abu Mazen was pushed way too far by the US and Israel, and now he’s lost any legitimacy that he had left.
I think the PA is on its last legs. Fatah and the PLO might still be salvaged, but it will only be under the leadership of new leadership, possibly Marwan Barghouti, who’s still in an Israeli prison.
If the US and Israel keep things up, the Palestinians will further disintegrate politically, and Hamas will be considered the reasonable wing of the Palestinian movement, with the rest of power split amongst small armed Islamist groups who will likely be more interested in a pan-Islamist project than Palestinian nationalism.