News Flash: Fatah Doesn't Recognize Israel
According to Mohammad Dahlan, former Fatah Security Chief and current "special advisor" to Abu Mazen, Fatah has never recognized "Israel's right to exist" and said Hamas shouldn't either. "For the one thousandth time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist," he said in a Palestinian television interview cited by The Jerusalem Post. It was the PLO, the umbrella organization, which did so, he said, not Fatah the subsidiary, and Fatah is not bound by the decision.
So?
"Well," say the indignant, "Israel can't possibly make peace with people who don't recognize its right to exist. The U.S. demands, Mrs. Clinton demands, I say, DEMANDS that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel in order to have a Unity Government with Fatah so the U.S. can pour in a billion U.S. tax dollars, put the onus of 'making peace' on Israel and get to the Two State Solution."
It is time to repeat the mantra of an American general. "Don't tell me what to do, tell me what you want to have done." Find the end game and then decide how to use resources to get there. In this case, however, the United States is promoting two mutually exclusive end games: a Hamas-Fatah Unity Government and the so-called Two State Solution.
For the first, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Fatah is conceding points to what it considers the senior player. To have unity, one side has to give up the contested issues; Fatah, being weaker, did so. That was inevitable result of the United States, Israel and Egypt elevating Hamas to the role of central political player without whom nothing can be done, after Israel had enormously degraded its role as central military player with whom nothing can be done. In that sense, Hamas won and Fatah lost the Gaza war, and as Machiavelli wrote, peace is the set of conditions imposed by the winner on the loser of the last war. Peace/unity between the two is a function of Hamas's conditions.
But that is inconsistent with the administration's vision of the Two State Solution: a secure Israel living next to a unified democratic Palestine. The current reality is either that Fatah accepts Israel's legitimacy and Hamas doesn't so there will be no Unity Government, or to believe Dahlan, there is unity in their rejection of Israel. In neither case will a Unity Government accept the legitimacy of Israel's sovereignty in the region. Furthermore, a Unity Government under Hamas is inconsistent with the American determination that Hamas not receive U.S. taxpayer dollars. A Unity Government under Hamas is inconsistent with the American training of Palestinian security service/military forces loyal only to Abu Mazen and fighting "terrorism" against both Fatah and Israel.
The incoming Israeli government, led by Likud, has said that the Two State Solution is not presently feasible, putting it on the path to direct confrontation with the United States. It would be wise of the Obama Administration to review its inconsistent policies on unity and statehood, and try to find common ground with Israel on security and economic development for the Palestinian people and for Israel.
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