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What Will the Palestinian Authority Do With All That Money?

[Slate] Shmuel Rosner - Encouraged by the U.S., the international community is pursuing a neatly crafted policy in the Palestinian territories: help the PA to reform its institutions; show the people a "political horizon" via negotiations with Israel; strengthen the position of Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayad, to a point where they can control their subordinates effectively; turn the area they control in the West Bank into a model to which all Palestinians will aspire - thus making the people more receptive to undoing Hamas rule in Gaza. Good luck with all that. Arafat made an art of putting troublemakers on the payroll in order to keep them quiet. Pursing this strategy is much easier than creating new jobs - and much more helpful if there is another round of fighting with Hamas. It doesn't help, though, if one is serious about building institutions for a state. Building institutions will not be easy for many reasons. Hamas is strong enough to make it difficult for Israel to ease restrictions, strong enough to make it hard for any Palestinian negotiator to compromise in the dialogue over the political horizon, strong enough to tighten control over Gaza and laugh off the naive notion that "if we only showed them a better future, the people would get rid of Hamas." In sum, strong enough to make the dream of one healthy, reformed, Palestinian state into a reality of two weak Palestinian ministates. The money poured into Abbas' PA can buy him time, but can it also buy a solution for the disruptive force of Hamas in Gaza? When I interviewed Tony Blair last month in Washington, he was mysteriously silent whenever the question of Gaza was raised.
2007-12-28 01:00:00
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