"US State Department officials, looking to shift US Security Coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton's work with Palestinian forces to the West Bank, have begun holding discussions with Congressional staff on how to restructure an $86 million funding program previously allocated to bolster Dayton's Gaza activities......
...Now the US, caught off-guard by Hamas's speedy defeat of Fatah forces in Gaza, is scrambling for new ways to strengthen Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and isolate Hamas in Gaza.....
"There are still a number of plans that the Abbas government is formulating and [the US] will be working with them as their plans develop to determine how best we can utilize this money," he said. "But we're still conducting consultations with them and internally amongst ourselves as to how to proceed."......
Critics of US efforts under Dayton were quick to point to the events in Gaza to question whether his mission should continue. "I see no evidence that [Dayton's mission] succeeded," said Shoshana Bryen of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs of efforts to reform the Palestinian security forces and secure the Gaza crossings. "They simply didn't fight, they abandoned their posts," she said of the Fatah forces outgunned but not outnumbered by Hamas. She said, though, that the failure was larger than the battle in Gaza and stemmed from flawed American expectations that any US security coordinator could lead Fatah security services in a direction amenable to US and Israeli interests.....
Many Israeli security officials said they have been turned off from the whole Dayton enterprise since Fatah forces fell to Hamas, saying that it's now hard to take his efforts at security reform seriously and interpreting the situation as an example of American inability to grasp the realities of the Middle East......"
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