US DOES NOT FAIL TO DISAPPOINT: The US may be the only country with a worse lack of judgment than the Israeli government. From The New York Times:

Bush administration officials said Thursday that they had been discussing the idea of largely acquiescing in the takeover of Gaza by the militant Islamic group Hamas and trying instead to help the Fatah party of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, retain its stronghold in the West Bank.

And of course we all know what that means.

...Some State Department officials argue that the administration could only support such a separation if Israel agreed to make political concessions to Mr. Abbas in the West Bank, with the goal of undermining Hamas in the eyes of Palestinians by improving life in the West Bank.

Meanwhile, while it's understandable that the US does not feel that it can completely turn its back on Gaza, it would be nice if the State Department had some idea just how many Palestinians there are in Gaza:

“Nobody wants to abandon the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the Gaza Strip to the mercies of a terrorist organization,” said the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack. “We’re certainly not going to participate in extinguishing the hopes of a whole swath of the Palestinian population to live in a Palestinian state.”

If only the US had taken the key step years ago, this would never have happened--empowering Abbas.

“The solution to all this was back in 2005,” said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former adviser on Arab-Israeli relations at the State Department. “In 2005, Arafat was gone, Abbas had been freely and fairly elected, but we weren’t prepared to empower him. How are we going to take advantage of the opportunities that don’t exist now in 2007 when we wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunities when they existed in 2005?”

Can Mr. Miller suggest any steps could have been taken--without mentioning the word "Israel"? If not, then regardless of how many Palestinians voted for Abbas at the time, sacrificing one country to support the leader of another demonstrates just how weak that leader is.

If anything, the fall of Fatah shows how misguided the policy of the US--and the State Department in particular--has been all along. Which is all the more unfortunate, since we can expect a stubbornness from US policy makers of Olmertian proportions.

Technorati Tag: Israel and US and Palestinian Civil War and Gaza.