In choosing to divide the liberation movements while nothing is on the table that benefits the Palestinians, Abbas may have authored his own demise, writes Ayman El-Amir* Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has won a dubious victory at Sharm El-Sheikh's summit conference against his rival partner -- the democratically elected Hamas government. With US and Israeli encouragement, which he called "promises from the American and Israeli sides", Abbas succeeded in isolating Hamas by cornering himself in the West Bank. As he rushed to France to market the promises he believed he had won, Israel rewarded him with the only treatment it reserves for the Palestinians -- it stormed Nablus in the West Bank, killed one militant of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and arrested dozens. The overwhelming view in the Arab world is that Abbas has reached this pinnacle of power on the tip of US-Israeli spearheads and at the price of splintering the Palestinian movement. This may prove to be his nemesis. When the two-day conference at Sharm El-Sheikh wound down every one of the four participants was looking at the conclusion from a different perspective. For Israel and the US, Hamas was roundly de-legitimised, isolated and confined in Gaza -- a paradoxical victory for them and for Abbas. He will now be more malleable and more dependent on the Israeli purse that holds Palestinian tax revenues. He will also be more dependent on US-Israeli goodwill for solving the Palestinian problem. While Abbas put himself on public record as a maximalist advocate of Palestinian rights, from the right to an independent state to the right of return, this amounts to little more than grandstanding. For Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the strident policies of Hamas will be stifled and a workable Palestinian "peace partner" found at a bargain price. Nonetheless, Olmert was quick to quash expectations of a breakthrough. He did promise to consult with his cabinet on the token release of 250 of the 11,000 Palestinians hauled up in Israeli jails and detention centres. Meanwhile his officials were reluctant to say if they were prepared to remove roadblocks and other West Bank restrictions before Abbas does more to curb militants. For Jordan's King Abdullah it was important to bolster Abbas's rule to counterbalance the contagious influence of Hamas on the restive Muslim Brotherhood group in Jordan. For the summit conference's host, President Hosni Mubarak, it was not only an opportunity to uphold the authority of Abbas against what he viewed as a coup by Hamas against his legitimate authority, but also to urge the US to reactivate the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had laid that peace process to rest, and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa sounded its death knell. A resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is as far away today as it has ever been. Abbas may have been prompted into this gamble by much despondency. Because of the democratic election of Hamas, the majority of the Palestinian people -- more in Gaza than in the West Bank -- were choking under the strangulating grip of the US, Israeli and the European Union (EU) blockade. Abbas was facing dissension among the Fatah ranks he inherited from predecessor Yasser Arafat, which was riddled with corruption, scandals and favouritism. The EU estimated that Fatah senior officials skimmed nearly $700 million from aid funds earmarked for the Palestinian people. That was a major contributing factor to Hamas's landslide victory in the legislative elections that brought it to power in 2006. But corruption was not the only grievance. Abbas was democratically elected too, albeit by a Fatah- dominated electoral machinery, but he was inexorably losing power over the mainstream Palestinian body politic. Fatah cadres were encouraged to resist ceding power positions, particularly in the security sector, to rival Hamas that had legitimately earned the right to reshape the entire government machinery. A parallel situation has to be recalled. Before Abbas, Arafat rushed into the shoddy 1993 Oslo Accords because the Palestinian resistance movement was slipping out of his hands, taken over by the first Intifada of 1987. He wanted to come back to Gaza to control the situation at the price of a make believe Palestinian Authority that promised nothing for legitimate Palestinian aspirations. Abbas went even further. He divided the Palestinian movement into two warring camps in order to retain personal power, abetted by US-supplied arms and security training, and meagre Israeli financial rewards. It is a major miscalculation. It is conventional wisdom that no US politician or administration attempts a bold Middle East initiative in a presidential election year once the heat of the race has started. Former president Bill Clinton broke the rule, although he was no longer a presidential candidate. In 2000 Clinton staked his personal prestige on the Camp David negotiations in the hope of emulating the 1979 accomplishment of former president Jimmy Carter. But the initiative failed to achieve a breakthrough and the failure was blamed on Arafat's so-called "lack of flexibility". In 2007, George W Bush is not Bill Clinton and Mahmoud Abbas is not Yasser Arafat. Olmert is too hobbled by domestic challenges to be able to make the meaningful decisions that are necessary to resuscitate the peace process. During 40 years of illegal occupation Israel has refused to commit itself to withdrawal to pre-1967 War lines, has not accepted the right of the Palestinians to self-determination on their own land, has refused to return occupied East Jerusalem to Arab control, and has denied the Palestinians' right of return -- principles that are all enshrined in international law. For the foreseeable future, Israel will be under no pressure to change its fundamental position except, perhaps, for cosmetic purposes. And over time, this poor deal will become unrewarding to both Fatah's militants as well as to Hamas's loyalists. The US and Israel will reward Abbas with the partial return of the Palestinian people's tax funds and a reinforced security force, to the extent that Israel would be comfortable with. They will continue to strangle Gaza in the hope of winning its population over to the ranks of Abbas, who has rejected any negotiations with Hamas. By isolating Hamas and undercutting its popularity, Abbas will feel more confident to call for new legislative elections that, he hopes, would return his loyalists to power, both in the Legislative Assembly and to government. It is a high stakes gamble that uses the suffering the Palestinian people as chips and could lead to a third Intifada. Abbas's scuttling of the Mecca Accord that sought reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah will hardly please the Saudis, who stayed out of the Sharm El-Sheikh conference clearly because of a conflict of interest. President Mubarak probably invited King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for a briefing to assure him that Egypt was not trying to undermine the Saudi peace initiative and that reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah remained a target. The question is: On whose terms? Abbas may have gone too far in dividing his nation and in sowing the seeds of Palestinian civil strife to be able to mend the rift. It is a disastrous mistake. The bottom line is that the $120 million of Palestinian tax money Israel has transferred to the coffers of Abbas and the promises he may have received will fall far short of former Israeli premiere Ehud Barak's so-called "concessions" at Camp David II that reportedly included territorial swaps, a partial return of refugees and a shared but complex administration of Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the deal at the time because it did not spell out the full return of occupied East Jerusalem. This time the price tag offered by Israel will be much higher. Abbas risks turning decades of Palestinian national liberation struggle and sacrifices into a small power struggle he may eventually lose. * The writer is a former correspondent for Al-Ahram in Washington, DC. He also served as director of UN Radio and Television in New York.
