Playing favorites undermines Palestinian national unity.
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December 19, 2006
News Analysis
JERUSALEM, Dec. 18 — The call for early elections by Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian Authority president, is part of a Western-backed effort to revive the Middle East peace process in hopes of driving the radical Hamas party, which favors Israel’s destruction, out of power.
But Mr. Abbas today is a weak reed, with little power to carry out his decrees or his will. Two years after he was elected president, after the death of Yasir Arafat, opinion polls show that Mr. Abbas is perceived by a majority of Palestinians as a great disappointment, having brought little reform to his Fatah movement or improvement to their lives, while appearing to carry water for Israel and the United States.
Mr. Abbas made a great drama on Saturday of announcing these early elections, but they seem unlikely to happen. Hamas has promised to boycott and disrupt new legislative elections, seeing them as an attempted coup. So even if there were some form of voting, a Hamas boycott would make it hollow.
It may therefore be too late for Mr. Abbas and Fatah to be bolstered very effectively, even by a new American and British aid effort of the kind Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, here to support Mr. Abbas on Monday, seemed to foretell. Mr. Abbas is standing on shaky constitutional principles. It seems clear that he has no legal right to dissolve parliament without its consent. Not that constitutional principles are so holy here, but Mr. Abbas also lacks the power to carry out what he has decreed.
At the same time, Hamas would welcome the resignation of Mr. Abbas, which would mean an early presidential election, letting the movement try to defeat him and take full control over the Palestinian Authority.
By STEVEN ERLANGER
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