Despite situation on ground, US reaffirms backing for Fatah

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday to express her support for his leadership, even as Hamas dealt him a sweeping military defeat that appeared to wrestle away the last vestiges of his control over the Gaza Strip.

Despite the stunning new political reality on the ground in Gaza, State Department officials said they will continue to push the same policies they have pursued toward the Palestinian government for more than a year: shunning the Islamic militant movement Hamas, even if it is now in complete control of Gaza, and supporting Abbas's moderate Fatah party, which recognizes Israel but now appears to control only the West Bank.

"Secretary Rice is going to make it very clear that we continue to support those forces of moderation," said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman.

But critics said that the civil war unfolding in Gaza, and the defeat of Fatah's forces there, show that the US policy of hampering Hamas's ability to govern has failed and needs to change.

Hamas, which rejects the existence of Israel, won a parliamentary victory in January 2006. But Abbas continued to serve as the democratically elected president of the Palestinian Authority in both the West Bank and Gaza. Until yesterday, he exercised control over Palestinian security forces in Gaza.

Since the Hamas political victory, the US government has devoted much of its energy to cutting off all funding to the Hamas-led government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and encouraging Abbas to confront Hamas rather than maintain the power-sharing unity government. He dissolved that government last night.

The Bush administration, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, saw the battle between Abbas and Hamas as a fight between terrorists and progressive forces.

"It's the post-Sept. 11 paradigm," said Aaron David Miller , a former US negotiator in Israeli-Palestinian talks who is now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington-based institute.

But some critics argue that it was a mistake to take such a hard line. In Europe, some diplomats encouraged US officials to lend more support to the unity government to avoid a civil war and the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and a former mentor to Rice, met recently with Rice in her office at the State Department and urged her to adopt a new policy, according to Henry Sigman , a former State Department official who was present at the meeting.

"We urged her to recognize the unity government, we urged her to put an end to a policy that seeks to provoke a violent confrontation between Abbas and the Hamas leadership," said Sigman, a member of a group of foreign policy heavyweights known as the US Middle East Project, which includes Scowcroft, former World Bank president James Wolfensen , and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski .

"By encouraging Abbas to challenge Hamas . . . it becomes simply impossible for Abbas to come out the victor," Sigman said, adding that Abbas would soon be discredited as an American and Israeli "collaborator" if he used his security forces to defeat Hamas.

Sigman said that he and Scowcroft presented Rice with a proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian territory exchange that could serve as a basis for a new round of peace negotiations, but he came away from that meeting with the impression that Rice did not have the green light from President Bush to throw the administration's diplomatic weight behind such a drastic change in policy.

Despite skepticism from both US and Israeli officials, and after several failed attempts, Abbas and his counterparts in Hamas formed a unity government this year under a deal brokered in Mecca. That led to the recent resumption of some international aid to the Palestinian people, channeled through Salam Fayad , a trusted Palestinian finance minister who does not belong to Hamas.

McCormack cited Fayad's achievements as evidence that US policy has been working.

"There was great progress that has been made actually in regularizing and bringing up to an international standard Palestinian finances," McComack said. "That's a system that Salam Fayad and President Abbas got ahold of and have made great strides in improving, to the point now where the international system trusts their dealings with them."

Yet, McCormack's upbeat words clashed with the grim reality on the ground.

"Even someone like Salam Fayad is gone from Gaza," said Ghaith Al-Omari, a former aide to Abbas. "Gaza is completely under Hamas control."

Omari said the US support came too little, too late.

"They should have used the unity government and the Mecca agreement to strengthen some of the more moderate players," said Omari, now a fellow at the New America Foundation, a left-leaning Washington-based think tank. "The Americans decided to isolate Hamas, not allow Hamas to govern, then we were definitely moved toward military confrontation. . . . Hamas was not going to take that lying down. Why would they?"

Omari said the recent military campaign by Hamas was started by a wing that had been excluded from the Mecca talks.

As Washington buzzed yesterday with the question of "what next?", US officials appeared keen to allow Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to preside over what they assumed would be yet another round of negotiations between Hamas and Fatah.

"Everybody is looking to some of the leading states in the region that have played an active role on this issue," McCormack said.

Omari said the defeat of Fatah in Gaza might actually pave the way for a "deeper power-sharing agreement" given that the contentious issue of who will control security forces in Gaza has now been resolved.

"In the past, the negotiations always avoided who is going to be in charge of security," he said. "There was an assumption by Fatah they would continue with security. Hamas assumed they would take over security. It was all up in the air. Now we know the reality."