THE ABBAS EXPERIMENT: Unlike like most experiments, Barry Rubin's suggestion is to avoid creating a Frankenstein:

What is needed as an experiment is limited cooperation based on practical issues. The message should not be: “Let’s save that wonderful moderate Abbas who is eager for peace.” But rather: “Mr. Abbas and colleagues, you are on the verge of extinction. Give us some reason to save you if you want our help.”

What can Olmert and Abbas do now?

By Barry Rubin

In completely objective, totally detached terms, there is a really great policy available in the aftermath of Hamas’s seizure of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Authority (PA) and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah-dominated government in the West Bank could present their people with an attractive alternative. Cease terrorism, really purvey moderation (as an actual policy and not just in interviews with Western correspondents), and make a comprehensive peace agreement with Israel to create a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem. Huge amounts of aid are pledged internationally, the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip is isolated, and everybody—outside of the Gaza Strip at least—lives happily ever after.

Sounds good. But of course it isn’t going to happen even though one might well argue that it “should” happen.

And the reason it won’t happen is not due to anything Israel and its government thinks, says, or does.

It isn’t going to happen for reasons that should, but sadly aren’t, obvious to anyone. Abbas is still weak and passionately committed to the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, a sign of bad intentions and a deal-killer in itself. Fatah is still in love with extremism. The PA is still incompetent and corrupt. Most of the organization is deeply committed to total victory and Israel’s destruction, wedded to terrorism and violence as their principal tactics. To a large extent, Fatah is still Hamas without the Islamism.

Is this terrible shock of humiliating defeat enough to begin a transformation into something else? It should be but that is rather doubtful the way Palestinian politics work. After all, it is hardly the first humiliating defeat, exactly of the kind that outside observers keep predicting will bring change.

Indeed, that concept was precisely the one at the root of the failed peace process which only brought more war and suffering. Remember it was Arafat’s backing for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the cutoff of Arab aid to the PLO, and the defeat of Iraq that was supposed to provide the humiliating defeat and near-death which would make Fatah and the PLO become moderate! And in the end it was the peace process itself that brought disaster.

This dose of reality brings us to Plan B. Forget about grandiose plans and don’t be intoxicated with wishful thinking. It is in the common interest of the West, Israel, and certainly Fatah itself to keep the current regime in power in the West Bank. Of course, this is premised on two things. First, the reality that there is nothing better available as an alternative since there is no real moderate force of any importance in Palestinian politics.

Second, there is the very large possibility that Fatah, or at least large elements in it which Abbas will not even try to control or persuade otherwise, will continue to view attacking Israel as its top priority and indeed principle reason for existence. Third, there is a very high likelihood that Fatah will once again act in a suicidal manner, a pattern which has characterized its history.

What is needed as an experiement is limited cooperation based on practical issues. The message should not be: “Let’s save that wonderful moderate Abbas who is eager for peace.” But rather: “Mr. Abbas and colleagues, you are on the verge of extinction. Give us some reason to save you if you want our help.”

The way this issue is being presented in Washington and Jerusalem, however, would make one believe that Abbas is so wonderful that he is doing everyone a favor by accepting their money and support. Such a fantasy will lead to a continuation of Fatah’s habitual blindness and smugness, guaranteeing its intransigent behavior and eventual downfall.

Aid should be contingent. Stop incitement in the PA media which Abbas controls; act decisively to stop cross-border attacks, and on that basis help can be provided. What happens if Fatah elements, including the al-Aqsa Brigades, continue cross-border attacks on Israel? Will politicians desperately fight to preserve the idea that Fatah is moderate even if this is a myth?

To test the new strategy even more stringently is what Hamas will do on the West Bank. One of several elements of chronic stupidity in forming Middle East policies also to be factored in here is that enemies are sure to seek to sabotage them. No doubt, Hamas and Islamic Jihad will redouble their efforts to launch terrorist attacks on Israel in order to sabotage Abbas’s survival. If Israel and the United States is patronizing about this—poor guy, he just cannot help it—the situation will spiral into a new catastrophe.

It is for Mr. Abbas’s own good that he be held accountable. He must clamp down on the terrorists (including members of his own group) and the incitement that makes people become suicide bombers or get the same treatment as Hamas receives from victims.

And that brings us to another key element of strategy. Hamas, which Abbas now himself labels as terrorists, must be isolated, denied aid, and treated severely. If, after all, the West coddles and seeks engagement with Hamas, this would show Palestinians, and other Arabs, that the Hamas way works and one can have both genocidal antisemitic terrorism plus intolerant Islamism along with success and Western acceptance. If that is true, who needs Abbas and Fatah?

Israel’s former national security advisor Giora Eiland is precisely right in proposing that Israel should clearly define the Hamas regime in Gaza as “an enemy political entity….If we give Gaza all it needs, and Hamas is able to keep firing and keep rearming, we are left with no leverage."

The choice for policymakers, including Abbas, is between a naïve wishful thinking and a tough-minded realism in which cooperation is based on deeds and not just words. That’s the way countries are supposed to function, isn’t it?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and author of the just-published, The Truth about Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).

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