Condi’s Savage War on the Palestinians

An Excellent Piece
By Tony Karon

".... But any honest assessment will not fail to recognize that the increasingly violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah is not only a by-product of Secretary Rice’s economic siege of the Palestinians; it is the intended consequence of her savage war on the Palestinian people – a campaign of retribution and collective punishment for their audacity to elect leaders other than those deemed appropriate to U.S. agendas. Moreover, the fact that the conflict is now coming to a head is a product of Rice’s micromanagement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s political strategy – against his own better instincts.

Rice’s siege strategy was premised on the belief that the economic torture of the entire Palestinian population would either force the Hamas government to chant the catechism of recognizing Israel-renouncing violence-abiding by previous agreements (again, Israeli leaders have to giggle at that one!) — or else, preferably, force the Palestinian electorate to recant the heresy of choosing Hamas as its government in the first place. Frustrated by the failure of this collective punishment to produce the desired results — and mindful of the need to quickly reorder Palestinian politics in order to satisfy the urgent need of the increasingly marginal Arab autocracies that Washington seeks to mobilize against Iran — she has stepped things up a notch, cajoling the hapless Abbas to take steps to toppled a government democratically elected only 11 months ago and beefing up the forces of the Fatah warlords dedicated to taking down Hamas in order to restore their own power of patronage......

Anyway, thanks to Conflicts Forum, we now know also that Elliot Abrams, the last of the Likudniks in senior Bush Administration positions, has spoken openly of the need for the U.S. to fund, arm and train Fatah activists to launch a “hard coup” against the elected Hamas government (Abrams, of course, is a veteran of Reagan -era Latin America policies, so he has some experience in these things.) This is more berserk social engineering from the neocon Likud crowd, and most of the U.S. government (as well as the Israelis) know that the extensive effort to promote a coup are doomed to fail, but fail bloodily.

Even Middle East experts and State Department officials close to Rice consider her comments about Palestinian violence dangerous, and have warned her that if the details of the U.S. program become public her reputation could be stained. In fact, Pentagon officials concede, Hamas’s inability to provide security to its own people and the clashes that have recently erupted have been seeded by the Abrams plan. Israeli officials know this, and have begun to rebel. In Israel, at least, Rice’s view that Hamas can be unseated is now regularly, and sometimes publicly, dismissed.....

Abbas is a man of good intention, but has no political base of his own. His power is derived from two constituencies: The remnants of a Fatah organization in steady decline over the past decade, and all but shattered by its defeat in the January 2006 elections, its only organized formations now being squadrons of gunmen answerable to various warlords, and the bureaucracy of the PA. And the United States, at least to the extent that it represents the only game in town for the realization of Abbas’s preferred strategy of patient diplomacy in pursuit of Palestinian statehood, because it’s the only party capable of delivering Israeli compliance. That, of course, is an abstraction, because no matter how capable the U.S. is of delivering Israeli compliance with a peace deal, it has no intention of doing so — not under the Bush Administration, and I have to say, I’m pessimistic about the chances of the Democrats doing it, either. Still, Abbas has no alternative but to jump through whatever hoops Washington places before him, because once he gives up hope of a U.S. mediated solution, his own political role is over.

Curiously enough, in this instance the interests of the U.S. Administration and those of the corrupt and self-serving Fatah warlords and bureaucrats coincide entirely. So entrenched was the sense in Fatah’s leadership of entitlement to rule over the Palestinians that its activist leadership had been pressing Abbas, from the moment the election results were announced, to move to topple Hamas. The fact that Fatah had been repudiated by the people would have demanded a thorough reorganization and democratization, a political “long march” in which the organization restored its standing among ordinary Palestinians by standing by them, working for them, listening to them and articulating their aspirations, as Hamas had done so successfully. Instead, the Fatah leadership demanded that Abbas make a coup and reinstate them, restoring their power of patronage.

And Condoleezza Rice, in her typically callous arrogance (remember those “birthpangs of a New Middle East” that shook Beirut last summer?) supported them: The Palestinian people would have to pay for their folly in defying her and electing Hamas, and would have to keep paying until they were ready to recant.

Abbas, still mindful of the national interest, sought a unity government with Hamas, based on a compromise document forged between Fatah and Hamas prisoners held in Israel. But Rice was having none of it — it didn’t require Hamas to grovel sufficiently and apologize for disrupting the Bush administration’s somnambulent stroll in Middle Eastern fantasy — and pressed Abbas to abandon the plan, and instead seek national unity on terms less acceptable to Hamas.

And then, together with the venal warlords and corrupt bureaucrats of Fatah, Rice finally prevailed on Abbas to threaten to call new elections — which he did three weeks ago, touching off the latest bout of violence. Hamas is unlikely to accept the call — why would it, since it has been forced on the Palestinians from outside — and any election held without their participation would be meaningless. No matter, the U.S. appears to be pressing ahead in forcing Abbas into a violent confrontation with Hamas. (Was it just a Freudian slip that Abbas made clear on Saturday in declaring Hamas’s militias in Gaza “illegal” that he had, earlier in the day been on the phone with Condi?) So, Gaza will bleed. And it will starve. And it will burn. Until the Palestinians are ready to rue the day they ever dared to choose their own leaders over those chosen for them by Rice, and Bush and Blair."