Re-engage the Palestinians

HAMAS AND FATAH are gearing up for a fight.

Inter-factional skirmishes and street fights are familiar sights in the West Bank and Gaza, where Hamas militiamen and security forces from the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority clash with alarming regularity.

Hamas has been smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip to bolster its 6,000-man militia and is trying to set up a similar organization in the West Bank. Moderate Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, together with Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator in the region, has been training a new presidential guard corps in seeming preparation for the looming conflict. As a way to strengthen Abbas’ hand, Israel has even considered allowing a Palestine Liberation Organization militia from Jordan, the Badr Brigade, to enter the fray in the West Bank.

Attempts to form a Palestinian unity government that would include Hamas and Fatah have been quashed repeatedly; yet without some sort of political reconciliation, violence will surge.

Some officials in Israel and the United States are tempted to simply throw up their hands in frustration and say that the Palestinians have made their bed, let them lie in it. Others think a civil war may be the best way to push the Hamas government out of power.

But they’re wrong. Unfortunately, there is no way for Israel -- or the United States -- to remain immune if the Palestinian territories are enveloped in a full-fledged civil war.

Already the political and security vacuum in Gaza has led to the resumption of rocket fire into southern Israel. A suicide bomber nearly killed an Israeli soldier at the Gaza border on Monday, and Israel just completed another large-scale military campaign to root out rocket launchers in northern Gaza. In the last month, nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli and Palestinian forces.

And if full-scale civil war should break out? The Palestinian Authority will lose what little control it has over the West Bank and Gaza. What is left of the economy will disintegrate. Palestinian civil society will take a major step backward, with family, clan and regional identities coming to the fore -- virtually ensuring the continuation of Palestinian infighting and attacks against Israel. The political vacuum will be eagerly filled by representatives of Hezbollah and perhaps even Al Qaeda.

If conditions deteriorate, Israel would not stand by and absorb attacks on its citizens and infiltration by international terrorist organizations on its border. A partial reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza would be likely. However, a Palestinian collapse into civil war is not inevitable. But avoiding it will require sustained and creative engagement on the part of the United States.

Israel and the United States are justifiably opposed to dealing with Hamas, although many Israelis, and some Americans, concede that nothing can be accomplished without including Hamas in the political process.

That’s why the United States should rethink its current opposition to a Palestinian unity government. Our first priority should be mediating a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, even if it takes a Hamas-Fatah government to achieve that.

The next step -- rebuilding the Palestinian government and economy -- requires an infusion of money. Israel is holding $150 million in Palestinian tax revenue that could be released to Abbas’ office -- out of Hamas’ grasp -- to pay government salaries. The European Union, too, could resume aid to non-Hamas sectors of the Palestinian Authority if the government shows signs of moderating.

The United States’ policy of isolating the Hamas government succeeded; Hamas has been backed into a corner, where it is resigned to make political compromises, including the idea of a unity government.

Now the United States needs to translate these gains into a dynamic political process. The renewed Saudi initiative calling for a comprehensive Israel-Arab settlement could be an effective starting point for negotiations. So could a U.S.-Israeli dialogue with Syria, as well as a renewed push toward an agreement between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government. Hamas has floated the idea of negotiating a long-term cease-fire, or hudna, which shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand either. President Bush is scheduled to meet with Olmert on Monday, and restarting the Israeli-Palestinian political process should be on the agenda.

The policy of isolating and starving the Palestinian Authority until Hamas is broken may be consistent with the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism strategy. But if it continues to the point that it helps ignite a Palestinian civil war, it will have endangered the security of the U.S. and Israel.

Can more U.S. engagement bring Hamas and Fatah out of their self-destructive spiral? Perhaps not. But preserving hope for a political process may be the only way to bring both sides back from the brink.

It is already apparent that internal Palestinian clashes lead to attacks on Israel, which are followed by Israeli retaliatory strikes -- a cycle of violence that takes lives on both sides and further harms the U.S. image throughout the Muslim world. It is essential that the United States do everything in its power to alter that calculus.