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A Reality Too Terrible to Admit

(Ha'aretz) Jonathan Spyer - The Obama administration's approach to the Middle East is characterized by an apparent desire to revive the sunny illusions of the 1990s peace process - in an era that is far more uncertain and dangerous. In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, international discussion of the conflict is now more detached from reality. It is now over four years since Hamas' victory in elections to the Palestine Legislative Council, and nearly three years since the Hamas coup in Gaza. It is therefore past time to acknowledge that a single, united Palestinian national movement no longer exists. Since this is, apparently, a reality too terrible to be admitted, the U.S. and the Europeans have chosen to ignore it. The fiction that the West Bank Palestinian Authority speaks in the name of all Palestinians is politely maintained. The West has now decided that a new Palestinian leadership must be created and defended, manifested in the meteoric career of Salam Fayyad, who was first imposed upon Palestinian politics as finance minister in 2002 by Condoleezza Rice, and is today PA prime minister. Fayyad is working closely with Western representatives to build up the institutions and the economic prosperity that are supposedly going to transform Palestinian political culture into something with which the world can do business. In the Palestinian territories, however, the anti-Western element is flourishing, and has state backers in Iran and Syria. It would probably quickly consume Fayyad, were he to cease to be cradled in the arms of the West, like the pleasant, well-dressed leaders of the March 14 movement in Lebanon - who have now been devoured by Syria and Hizbullah. The writer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.
2010-03-26 09:42:52
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