Is Hamas showing some statesmanship? According to recent reports, its security forces have arrested a member of the terrorist organization thought to be holding captive the BBC reporter Alan Johnston. If Hamas manages to impose order on the lawlessness that has engulfed Gaza for years, the international community will have little option but to acknowledge its rule. Acknowledging this fact would not necessarily be synonymous with recognizing Hamas (or opening diplomatic relations with it). But it bears noting that while Hamas is trying to restore order in Gaza—its own brand of brutal Islamist order, of course—the Palestinian government the West has chosen to recognize and support looks more and more inept. Fatah is dependent for its survival on Israel’s continued presence (to say nothing of future Israeli military mop-up operations in Gaza to vanquish the party’s bitter rivals).
The international community, naturally, could not have done otherwise than throw its weight behind Fatah: given what it stands for, it had to support Abbas and reject Hamas. It has no alternative now but to focus on the West Bank and help Abbas extricate himself and his followers from the current morass. Still, it is remarkable that only six weeks ago Abbas (with the support of the international community) was decrying Israel’s round-up of Hamas leaders in the West Bank. Now, nobody seems to mind those arrests. Were it not for Hamas’s significant weakening in the West Bank—to say nothing of Israel’s continued military presence there—it might have overrun Ramallah too. One should be under no illusion about the ability of Fatah to assert its authority.
Four years too late, Abbas has begun to implement the clauses of the road map that the Palestinian Authority had so far ignored, attempting to impose one law, one army, and one authority over its own territory. (Abbas’s shorthand for this objective—“one gun”— says a great deal about political means and ends among the Palestinians.) It is tragic that Abbas has begun this work only now. But the point, surely, is this: as soon as Hamas emerged victorious in its Gaza takeover, it proceeded to establish its authority, whereas the PA under Fatah studiously avoided doing so, even when it still had the capacity to govern the territories, quell the intifada, and disarm Hamas. This situation raises an impossible dilemma for the international community: the Palestinian government it would like to see in charge is ineffectual; and the Palestinian government with a real chance to impose law and order on the territories is completely unpalatable.
What will come of this increasingly disastrous situation? Abbas and his new prime minister, Salam Fayyad, will move to re-establish their credentials and authority with calls for a return to the Mecca accords and attempts at reconciliation. Given the language they have been using against one another, and the spilled blood of recent weeks, it is hard to believe that Fatah and Hamas could restore any sort of relations. Fatah will end up looking still more ineffectual. Hamas, ever dependent on Iranian help and therefore at the mercy of Tehran’s whims, can survive only if it continues to do Iran’s bidding (i.e., to prosecute its campaign against Israel) in exchange for lavish financial and military support.
And what should the international community do? Having supported a corrupt and ineffectual government for many years, it should now hold Hamas to the clear performance benchmarks the road map sets for the Palestinian Authority. (Direct military aid to Fatah would not be wise: weapons recently delivered to Abbas’s government somehow ended up in Hamas’s hands.) However unlikely it is that Hamas will meet these benchmarks, waiting and hoping are, sad to say, the only real options left.
