The brief // by Ben FrankelPalestinian missteps; Assad may need a mid-course correction
Over the past four years, since Salam Fayyad became prime minister of the Palestinian Authority on 15 June 2007, the Palestinians have made steady progress toward realizing their dream of self-determination; Fayyad openly said that his plan was to emulate the way the Zionist movement, from the turn of the last century until the declaration of Israel’s independence in 1948, worked diligently to build the economic, social, political, and educational infrastructure of the state so that when the state did come it would have solid foundations; he has been successful, adding to his success the fact that the level of mutual confidence and cooperation between the Palestinian and Israeli security services has never been higher; in September, the UN will recognize Palestine as a state and accept it to membership; all these achievements may be derailed by the dramatic announcement on Wednesday of a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation; further north, in Syria, the Assad regime is using ever-increasing violence to suppress the anti-government protests; the question is what will happen first: the end of the protests, or the refusal by the military to continue to kill 100-200 unarmed civilians a week
The Middle East continues to supply the headlines, with this week seeing a dramatic announcement about a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, and escalating violence in Syria. Here are two comments.
1. Less is more
Abba Eban, the foreign minister of Israel from 1963 to 1974, was known for his dovish views on the Arab-Israeli conflict and for his eloquence (in several languages, too). He was the master of the pithy, and often biting, turn of phrase. One of his more well-known one-liners, coined in December 1973, was that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
The announcement on Wednesday of a reconciliation between the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas is proof of Eban’s observation.
During the past four years the Palestinians have made impressive strides toward realizing their aspiration for self-determination (or, as Eban called it, achieving the conditions which would allow the Palestinians to “exercise their particular vocation”). Under the sure-handed guidance of U.S.-educated Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas, Austin), Arafat’s corrupt cronies were swept aside, and hundreds of millions of international aid money, rather than finding their way to Arafat’s personal Swiss bank account, were invested in infrastructure projects, small businesses, and educational institutions. Fayyad openly said that his plan was to emulate the way the Zionist movement, from the turn of the last century until the declaration of Israel’s independence in 1948, worked diligently to build the economic, social, political, and educational infrastructure of the state so that when the state did come it would have solid foundations.
Except that Fayyad did not plan on investing fifty years in the process. In 2009 he announced that in two years – in September 2011 – the Palestinians would ask the UN to recognize Palestine (in the 1967 borders) as an independent state and accept Palestine as a member of the UN (at last count, 133 of the UN’s 192 members would support both requests).
Fayyad also increased the cooperation between the security forces of Israel and the PA, and an unprecedented level of mutual confidence and cooperation has been achieved.
Fayyad came to power on 15 June 2007, following the Hamas take-over of the Gaza Strip. During 2005, the Bush administration, in the face of objections by the PA and Israel, insisted that Hamas, the fundamentalist Palestinian off-shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, be allowed to participate in the January 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories. In
