It may work, but it ultimately depends upon being willing at a certain moment to confront those who are not willing to play by the rules. Historically, those who have rejected peaceful coexistence and used violence to prevent it have not been delegitimized or confronted. Arafat did crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad in 1996 after four bombings in nine days created a crisis in Israel, bringing him under enormous pressure from the United States to take action lest there be no further peace process. But the arrests proved temporary, and he did not delegitimize the perpetrators in order to maintain the possibility of using them for his own benefit in the future.

Whether Abu Mazen is prepared, systematically, not episodically, to crack down on militants remains to be seen. But it is also clear that much of what he assumed has not materialized. First, he has found it far harder than he realized to transform the security organizations into professional forces. Last December, Mohamed Dahlan, the former head of preventive security in Gaza, told me it would take six months to build a professional security capability and a clear chain of command among the security organizations. Yet, as of summer 2005, and despite Abu Mazen's replacing the senior commanders of the forces and reducing on paper the number of different forces from 13 to three, very little has changed on the ground. The forces resemble rival cliques with arms more than capable and disciplined professionals. While there are many serious and professional officers among the different services who know what is required, the political will to foster a real chain of command, the confidence of knowing orders given will be obeyed, and the certainty that reinforcements will be there if one force gets into a firefight are all lacking, so much so that even reimposing law and order among Palestinians has not happened to date--not to mention that when Islamic Jihad has violated the ceasefire on a number of occasions, it has paid no price.

Unfortunately, this has convinced the Israelis that they can take only minimal risks on security. Notwithstanding Sharon's promise at the February 8 summit meeting with Abu Mazen to withdraw from five cities on the West Bank, the Israelis, as of July, had withdrawn from only Tulkarem and Jericho--and that was done soon after the February summit. The Israelis point to the lack of any Palestinian action against a list of 495 fugitives who were supposed to be disarmed and not permitted to travel, in return for an end to the Israeli practice of targeted killings, as one reason for the halt to Israeli withdrawals. That Israel felt the need to arrest 52 members of Islamic Jihad--including many in a sweep of Tulkarem, after it had been responsible for killing several Israelis in the West Bank in June--suggests that even if the withdrawals resume, they will have limited impact in the eyes of the Palestinian public.

And, here, of course, is a deeper problem for Abu Mazen. Palestinians had expected to see travel restrictions, at least within the West Bank, dramatically eased. They have not been. There has been some improvement, but the main checkpoints, though relaxed from time to time, still basically inhibit Palestinian movement throughout the West Bank. Again, Israelis cite the absence of Palestinian moves on security as the reason that they cannot do more to ease the restrictions on movement. The same concern has bedeviled the efforts to coordinate the Israeli disengagement with the Palestinians. The critical nexus is between security and access in Gaza. If the Israelis are not satisfied with the steps the Palestinians take on security, even with a third-party role at the passages and crossing points, there will inevitably be problems, and they will limit access into and out of Gaza. In such circumstances, it will prove difficult to improve the economic conditions within Gaza--and certainly the international community and the private sector will limit their investments in Gaza as a result.

The absence of meaningful economic improvement to date in either Gaza or the West Bank is yet another area where Abu Mazen made assumptions that have not been fulfilled. The key to his strategy of co-optation was that life would demonstrably improve, that people would go back to work and that they would have a reason to be more hopeful. The more they saw his way working, the more his authority would grow and the higher the costs would be for Hamas and Islamic Jihad to resist his program. But since his election, there have been only marginal changes for the better, with donor assistance still largely taking the form of pledges and materializing at this stage only in meeting the recurrent costs of the administration. And certainly those who could have provided more aid more quickly, such as the Saudis, have not done so. In fact, while the Saudis have met their pledge of $7 million a month since 2002, they have not increased it, even though their export revenues have grown $5.5 billion a month since that time. Polls now show that nearly three-quarters of the Palestinian population believe that the economic situation is either the same or worse than when Abu Mazen became the ra'aes (president). If nothing else, that should be a wake-up call to the international community--reminding international leaders that the labor-intensive jobs that could improve day-to-day conditions and create a sense of hope and possibility are not materializing.

To date, Abu Mazen's personal support remains high, and this suggests that the Palestinian public still hopes he can bring about change. But support for Hamas is growing, reflected in both polling and its victories in many of the municipal elections. The appeal of Hamas is not its political agenda of an Islamic state and rejection of Israel, but its image of being non-corruptible and its ability to deliver services. By contrast, the Palestinian Authority and Fatah--which are basically one and the same--are seen as both corrupt and unable or unwilling to respond to the needs of the people. Abu Mazen must preside over the remaking of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, revitalizing both before the elections--lest Hamas emerge as a full partner and tie his hands in anything he can do with Israel.

Ironically, Hamas has a stake in preserving the calm not only through the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza but also through the elections. The Hamas leadership knows that the Palestinian public does not support the violence now, and they see themselves doing well in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council. Indeed, when Abu Mazen postponed these elections from July 2005 to January 2006, Hamas initially declared that the calm was tied to the elections. Hamas believes it can use Abu Mazen's strategy of bringing it into the political system to increasingly gain power and ultimately supplant Fatah. Thus, preserving the calm serves its interests for the time being. While the danger of Islamic Jihad or others disrupting the calm should not be underestimated, the odds are that Abu Mazen will have at least until the end of the year to begin to demonstrate that his way works and that he, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority can begin to deliver on a better life.

Disengagement, Israel and America

Abu Mazen certainly needs outside help to succeed. However, what Israel, the United States and the international community do cannot be a substitute for what Abu Mazen and the Palestinians must do for themselves. Abu Mazen must become more decisive combating corruption, bringing the young guard of Fatah into leadership positions, supporting primaries in Fatah to foster the overhaul of a revolutionary party that seems at best irrelevant to the needs of Palestinians, and demonstrating that he is producing something tangible for the Palestinian public--something that will also require much more public outreach to explain what he has done and intends to do.

Making disengagement work from the Palestinian perspective is essential. The Israeli decision to leave Gaza presents the Palestinians with an opportunity and a problem. If Palestinians can show that they can govern themselves and fulfill their obligations responsibly, including on security, they will prove to the world and the Israeli public that the Gaza model is sound and should also be applied to the West Bank. If they fall into a pattern of generalized chaos or chaos in certain bounds, without fulfilling their obligations internally or externally, who in the international community--other than apologists for them--will press for responding to Palestinian aspirations in the West Bank? Palestinians must organize themselves well enough to prove they are ready for statehood, and Gaza will offer a demonstration either that Palestinians are ready or that they are not.

For his part, Ariel Sharon made a historic decision to withdraw from Gaza and a small part of the West Bank. He split his Likud Party in the process and also saw his government dissolve. He put together a national unity government with the Labor Party to implement the policy of disengagement from Gaza, but he knows that the government is unlikely to survive long after disengagement. He, too, has an interest in seeing his policy vindicated--namely, that Gaza become a functioning reality for the Palestinian Authority and not what some have dubbed "Hamasistan." Given his domestic challenges, Sharon has focused on carrying out the disengagement and overcoming the calls from the right wing (including right-wing rabbis) for civil disobedience, for soldiers not to carry out their orders and for Likud to unseat him as head of the party. Sharon's problems, not Abu Mazen's needs or making more concessions to the Palestinians, represent his preoccupations.

Essay Types: Essay