Making The Case For The Palestinian Authority

Well, it's a dirty job, but I guess somebody's gotta do it.
As it turns out, that person is Barry Rubin--addressing the Palestinian Arabs:

First, only the Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the West Bank, is capable of making peace with Israel because Hamas does not want to do so and demands total victory and Israel's extinction. But without a negotiated peace, the conflict will go on forever and the vestiges of occupation will not end. There will not be a Palestinian state.

Even if you believe the world should pressure Israel into major concessions, Israel will not give way even under the greatest pressure if Hamas is involved because that would be suicidal. And with Palestinian leadership divided into two regimes, no negotiation can succeed any way.

If Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, progress toward peace is impossible. No peace, no dismantling of settlements (on the West Bank, they've already been dismantled in the Gaza Strip. Remember? When Israel withdrew completely and turned the Gaza-Egypt border over to the Palestinians?]. No peace, no Palestinian state. No peace, no serious economic construction and stability. No peace, no resettling of Palestinian refugees in a country of their own.

Second, Hamas is a disaster for Palestinians as a ruler. It is creating a repressive Islamist state where freedom will be extinguished, women treated as third-class citizens, and children will be brought up to be suicide bombers. While Hamas has had social welfare programs to recruit supporters and support the families of those it has ensured would be martyrs, it has no interest in educational, health, infrastructure, and job creation or anything but waging war.

In addition, Hamas will never get much, if any, economic support from the international community whereas with a PA government, as has been shown previously, billions of dollars of aid money has been given. The resources Hamas gets are mainly plowed into waging war. For Hamas, Palestinians are instruments for waging jihad, privileged to become martyrs to the cause. If the Palestinians were to get their own state or enjoy higher living standards, Hamas fears they will become content with the status quo and abandon the struggle. For Hamas, that is a fate for Palestinians worse than death--their deaths.

Read the whole thing.

The fact that there are only 3 reasons--and 2 of them are not to make the case for the Palestinian Authority but against Hamas--shows that Rubin's work is cut out for him.

I suppose the next step is to make the case for the PA being Israel's peace partner...

Technorati Tag: Israel and Fatah and Hamas.