The Palestinian plight

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Forty years ago this month, Israel stunned the Arab states in six days of war whose consequences are yet to be resolved. Hamas' version of its own six-day war has created new political realities that may be with us for some time to come. Negotiations, conferences and meetings of diplomats and pundits flying around the world will do very little to undo the new realities if we dither and lose the opportunity this crisis presents.

The Palestinian people have paid, yet again, an incalculable price for the decisions of their leaders. The world will stand sanctimoniously by judging the barbaric behavior of a people reduced by degradation, poverty and incarceration. We will hear, as we already have, about the Palestinians losing their moral right to a state because of the abominable acts of the combatants. A mean-spirited public debate will do nothing but fuel hatreds and diminish serious prospects for solutions.

The essence of the historic compromise for peace cannot be anything but a state of Palestine alongside Israel. Israeli and Palestinian rejectionists have consistently frustrated the realist moderates and found ways to block their efforts to bridge the gap between the two peoples in search of a compromise. The right-wing militant Israeli rejectionists have been aided greatly by the violent actions of Palestinian militants, by leftist nationalists in the past or Islamists more recently, to justify and maintain the disasters that the occupation inflicted on the Palestinian people.

Polarizing extremist forces on both sides have understood, but not discussed, the tactical coordination that served their strategies. They both believe that time is on their side, and not that of their opponents, in their exclusive claim to the whole land. The only chance that moderate realists of both sides can achieve a compromise is by having their own tactical coordination. Without hope of a political settlement, violence, in the name of religion and resistance, will polarize and pay off in political dividends. Those Israelis who wanted to maintain the occupation, and to expropriate the land, could not think of better partners than violent Palestinian militants. These militants provide the rationale for the facile argument that there is no Palestinian partner. The danger in their actions lies in the fact that Israel occupies Palestinian land.

Since there is no military solution, the occupation can only end through political means. Winning the hearts and minds of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples for compromise is a strategic tool for peace, while scaring or alienating them is a recipe for continued conflict and occupation. There will always be a constituency amongst both peoples for an exclusive claim to the land. This is the constituency for war and so far it has done well for itself.

The events that happened in the last few days in Gaza are the most significant since the Oslo Agreement. They exposed the gap over the two fault lines that divide the Palestinians: a political one between the moderate realists and the religious absolutists and a geographic and cultural one between Gaza and the West Bank.

Desperate attempts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to the point of exposing himself to ridicule, and accusations of weakness and indecision have failed to prevent the rupture. In a brutal fratricidal battle, marred by acts of savagery that reveal deep psychological wounds, Hamas routed Fatah and the forces of Mr. Abbas. Abandoned by their military leaders, they were outgunned and outdisciplined and went down to a speedy, humiliating defeat.

Gaza and the West Bank will be governed by two different systems in the immediate future. However, in the long run their fate is one and the same. Gaza has no future by itself and has no choice but to be part of Palestine. Israel has walked away from it and Egypt does not want it. However, in the short run it will be run by Hamas. In a few months, the people of Gaza will be comparing their lives with their cousins in the West Bank: Are they safer, freer, better off? Hamas will have to provide worldly answers to the most densely populated place on the planet with one and a half million people. It has to deal with issues like food, water, electricity, security, schools, and yes -- a budget with money in the bank to pay to keep these people alive. It also must deal with its neighbors and the rest of the world.

There should be no doubt that even the most heartless in the international community should not allow the Gazans to starve or suffer extreme want and need. The international economic blockade is unlikely to be lifted soon. Calls for renegotiating with Fatah and Mr. Abbas to reconstruct the unity government or any such device will go unanswered for some time. Hamas will have to fend for itself in Gaza with no other Palestinian partner to provide it cover.

In the West Bank, licking his wounds, Mr. Abbas has taken action. He asserted his constitutional responsibility and dissolved the unity government which he desperately tried to hold together for three months, fired its Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, and asked the respected Salam Fayyad to form an emergency government. By so doing he removed the cover of legitimacy from the mutineers of Gaza and freed his government from the political and economic boycott imposed on Hamas. He at last did what he vowed he would never do: He jumped without a safety net in hopes that the West, Israel and the Arab governments will shoulder their responsibilities. Now that he has confronted Hamas he can legitimately claim his role as a genuine partner with Israel and the international community and enter into serious negotiations to end the conflict about Palestine.