Thursday, June 14, 2007

The Six-Day War

That Egyptian general who said that neither side in a Palestinian civil war could win a decisive victory seems to have been widely off the mark. At least in Gaza, anyway. According to Reuters, Hamas is basically conducting mopping up operations in the Gaza strip after routing Fatah security forces in six days of fighting. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has dissolved the Hamas-Fatah unity government and declared a state of emergency. But "it was gun law not the constitution that held sway in Gaza."

So after coming so close seven years ago to forging a two-state solution to the Arab-Palestinian tragedy, it now looks likely that there will, in fact, be a three-state nightmare: Israel surrounded by two Palestinian entities, one moderate and the other militant.

Counterintuitively, this might actually simplify the situation. The Israelis now have every incentive to deal with Abbas and turn the West Bank into a "model" of what an Israeli-Palestinian arrangement could look like, the better to isolate Hamas in Gaza. And Abbas seems to have more room to iron out a final status agreement now that he no longer needs to worry about throwing red meat to the militants.

Here's hoping, anyhow.

Posted by Judah in:  The Middle East   

Comments (0)

e-mail  |  del.icio.us  |  digg