THE US IS ONLY TRYING TO HELP. This is what is supposed to help:

Embattled Mahmoud Abbas got a major boost in his increasingly bellicose showdown with Hamas on Saturday, with a U.S. diplomat saying he expects a crippling 15-month-old foreign aid embargo to be lifted once the Palestinian president appoints an emergency government without the Islamic militants.

And by rights it should--just another example of US largesse and aid. The question is whether US aid and support for Abbas up to this point is a large part of the reason for the mess that Abbas is in now:

US-backed efforts to undermine the Hamas-led government over the past 16 months have failed, largely because most Palestinians clearly do not regard Fatah as a better alternative to Hamas. In the aftermath of its defeat in the 2006 election, Fatah failed to draw the conclusions and get rid of all the icons of corruption among its top brass. Moreover, Fatah did not engage in any kind of internal reforms, and representatives of the young generation remained marginalized.

Even if free and democratic elections were held tomorrow in the Palestinian territories, it is highly unlikely that Palestinians would vote for the same people they voted out in 2006. Besides, many Palestinians would argue that Hamas did not fail in government; from day one, no one actually gave them a chance to rule.

By openly embracing Abbas and Fatah, Washington has caused them grave damage. The weapons and funds that were supposed to boost Fatah ahead of a confrontation with Hamas have only increased Hamas's popularity on the streets of the Gaza Strip. The public support for Fatah made Abbas and Muhammed Dahlan look, in the eyes of many Palestinians, like Antoine Lahad, the former commander of the pro-Israeli South Lebanon Army. And when a Palestinian sees that the Americans are trying to bring down his democratically-elected government, his sympathies go straight to the government and not to those allegedly involved in the conspiracy.

Adding Israeli support into the picture is hardly going to improve matters. Allahpundit adds his 2 cents and puts it this way:

Needless to say, having the Zionist enemy come in, crush the locals, and reinstall the corrupt king on the throne isn’t going to do much to repair that credibility, especially now that Abbas has signaled he’s willing to abandon Gazans to their fate and deal with Israel separately. That carrot had better be awfully tasty or else the “solution” here, such as it is, may be a reoccupation of Gaza with Israel the only authority in the area.

Just how much of a solution would that be?

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Palestinian Civil War.