Jeff Rigsby

Recent Activity

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  Jeff signed the petition | 9 days ago

  Free Nigerian Activists and Prisoners of Conscience
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  Jeff signed the petition | 8 months ago

  Stop a New Oil Pipeline Across the Midwest - Deadline June 6
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  Jeff signed the petition | about 2 years ago

  Tell US Govt to Oppose Uganda's Anti-Gay Legislation to Save Lives
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  Jeff commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Rally Behind Palestine's Abbas, Israel's Best Hope

  I wouldn't agree with a great deal of what Nadir Q says, but he does make an important point.

  
  

  Focusing too much on the role of Abbas implies that the success of the peace process depends on having the right leadership in Palestine -- which it does. But it also depends on having the right leadership in Israel.

  
  

  Forgetting about intra-Palestinian politics for the moment, I think it's pretty clear that there won't be any progress as long as Yisrael Beitenu forms part of the ruling coalition in Israel.

  
  

  If Obama doesn't want to spend political capital unnecessarily, I think the right way for him to approach the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is by giving it a very low priority for the time being. Nothing positive is going to happen as long as Netanyahu's government is in power, regardless of who leads the Palestinian Authority. If Obama doesn't recognize this, he's in danger of setting up the perception a few years down the road that the US has somehow "failed" to achieve peace in the Middle East.

  
  

  Sometimes the smartest approach is not to try.

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  Jeff commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  Rally Behind Palestine's Abbas, Israel's Best Hope

  Hmm. Not sure I agree on this one.

  
  

  The best comment I've seen so far on Abbas' decision has come from Nathan Brown, in a guest post on the "Foreign Policy" blog of Marc Lynch (formerly Abu Aardvark):

  
  

  http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/26/brown_asking_the_wrong_questions_about_palestinian_elections

  
  

  Money quote: "The chance of the elections being held as decreed is virtually nil—Israeli permission is needed for polling in Jerusalem; Hamas’s participation is needed in Gaza. Neither is likely, and for both Israel and Hamas to decide to cooperate is unimaginable in current circumstances. ... It is simply the wrong time to be asking questions about Palestinian elections."

  
  

  Apart from the fact that Abbas' announcement looks pretty meaningless in this context, I think it's also important to keep an eye on the internal dynamics inside Gaza, where Hamas is now under pressure from the AQ-affiliated group Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Companions of God). Jund Ansar Allah has been involved in armed clashes with the Hamas authorities at least since June, leading most recently to the siege of a Gaza mosque in mid-August in which the group's leader and a number of other people were killed:

  
  

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jund_Ansar_Allah

  
  

  It's worth noting that Hamas has accused Fatah (under Abbas' leadership) of supplying weapons to this group in an effort to destabilize the government of Gaza. There's no particular reason to trust what Hamas says, but it wouldn't be surprising either. During the 1980s the Israelis gave financial support to Palestinian Islamist groups -- the predecessors of Hamas itself -- in an effort to split the resistance to Israel and undermine the secular leadership of the PLO. It's hard to believe Abbas doesn't remember how effective this strategy turned out to be.

  
  

  Even if Abbas hasn't been arming Al-Qaeda's allies in Gaza, this does suggest that putting all our eggs in the Fatah basket would be a mistake for the Obama administration.What the clashes between Hamas and Jund Ansar Allah really show, I think, is that you can't run a functioning government based on fanatical rhetoric alone. When you do that, you're simply opening yourself to attack from other groups willing to claim that you're not extreme enough -- and if the Hamas leadership has any sense, they may realize the implications for their own strategy going forward.

  
  

  By lifting the economic blockade against Gaza and showing some willingness to deal with Hamas under the right circumstances (they did win a free election, remember), the US has some chance of steering Hamas in a more moderate direction and establishing real two-party politics in Palestine.

  
  

  Treating Fatah as the only hope for peace, on the other hand, would essentially put Washington at the mercy of Abbas' illegitimate regime, and bolster the argument that the US has never really cared about Arab democracy in the first place.

  
  

  The Israelis have already made the wrong decision on this point, and it's up to Obama to make sure the US doesn't blindly follow their lead.

  
  

  (For more background see the Jund Ansar Allah coverage on www.jihadica.com, one of the best analytical sites on salafi-jihadi movements in Palestine and elsewhere)