Abbas: Second coming?

Hamas's stunning eviction of Fatah from the Gaza Strip might be a huge setback for the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), but it has provided President Mahout Abbas with an opportunity to prove his mettle over the coming weeks.

This week, the United States, Europe and the Arab world will open up the money taps for Abbas. This will provide his Fatah party with some much-needed cash, and reinvigorate the patronage network that has suffered since the party lost the legislative elections in January 2006. Israel will also release withheld tax revenues.

Rewarding moderation

Abbas's portrayal as the face of Palestinian moderation in the West is a boon. He can count on US and EU support -- even though he has signed a decree of dubious constitutionality changing clauses in the Basic Law to enable him to rule without parliamentary approval.

He may find the political climate more expedient than in 2005, when he secured the presidency after Yasser Arafat's death. Then, he moved sluggishly and Israel and the United States gave him too little to work with. He could neither consolidate political control over Palestine nor win the kinds of concessions from Israel -- and to some extent from the United States -- that would persuade Palestinians to embrace a negotiated solution. He now has a chance to shed the reputation he acquired as a lacklustre leader.

Israel will reward Abbas's 'moderation' by starting peace talks.  The Palestinian president will call on Israelis to help him by making precisely the kinds of concessions they have refused to date, notably:

• freedom of movement into and out of (as well as within) the West Bank;
• prisoner releases; and
• land concessions.

He will also argue that Israel needs to give him space to 'work' on issues such as hate speech and acts of violence by Fatah-affiliated militias. Israel will do what it can, but remain wary of a Palestinian negotiating strategy that demands material concessions and delivers only words.

The short straw

Abbas has drawn the short straw with the complicated West Bank. Gaza is free of Jewish settlers, water disputes, and border and barrier controversies of the kind that bedevil negotiations. They are all in play in the West Bank.

In the longer run, change is likely to be less dramatic than it now appears. Abbas will not renounce his legitimate sovereignty over Gaza. Neither will he successfully conclude peace negotiations with the Israelis.

Eventually, West Bank and Gaza leaders are likely to reach an uncomfortable modus vivendi that, at least in theory, brings the two territories  back together. More immediately, Hamas is almost certain to try to spoil Abbas' honeymoon by activating terror cells in the West Bank. Such moves will mean that  the 'new conditions' prove far less cut and dried  than Israel, the United States -- or the Palestinian Authority government -- would like.