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Kumbaya moment? Warring Palestinian factions have put aside their guns. Now what?

FOREIGN POLICY: Why were the Palestinians fighting each other?

Aaron Miller: For the first time since Palestinians returned to the West Bank and Gaza under the guise of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian politics are real, but now divisive and violent. When Arafat was in charge, he kept a tight rein on meaningful politics using money and guns, and through participating in a reasonably successful [peace] process between 1994 and the second Intifada at the end of the Clinton administration. As a historically legitimate figure, Arafat could co-opt, preempt, and not only threaten, but act, if he got the sense that Hamas was directly threatening the interests of the Palestinian Authority.

With Arafat’s death, the emergence of [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as] Abu Mazen, the peace process going south, Iranian support, Hezbollah’s successes, and Hamas’s electoral success, Hamas is doing well. It is now better organized, less corrupt. It has managed to attract a significant amount of the Palestinian public, either by ministering to its needs better than the dysfunctional Palestinian Authority could or through resistance against the Israelis. You have a real clash between two different visions of Palestinian society for the first time.

The Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy was all tied to the successful pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process brokered by the Americans. Now that that has collapsed, Hamas perceives an opening. And they’ve done remarkably well, given their own dysfunction, the lack of international support, their identification with Iran, and the boycott that has essentially been imposed on them politically and economically.

FP: Let’s talk about the Mecca agreement that was recently brokered by the Saudis between Hamas and Abu Mazen. Some analysts are saying that Saudi Arabia, out of fear of Iran’s influence, has essentially taken control of the Palestinian Authority. Is that your impression?

AM: No. I think that the Saudis, understanding the emotional and political dangers inherent in a civil war between factions in Gaza—against the backdrop of Iraq, which concerns them greatly—wanted to end the most severe violence by effecting a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. The purpose of this agreement was not to set the stage for negotiations with Israel. Its purpose was local: Abu Mazen had to find a way to end the factional violence. And both sides could not leave Saudi Arabia, given the Saudis’ importance and financial leverage, without an agreement.

It was not done, as the Americans and the Israelis hoped, to create a basis on which Hamas could meet the three conditions of the Quartet: Recognize Israel’s right to exist, abandon violence, and accept all agreements previously signed by the Palestinian Authority. So Mecca, I think, disappointed the administration and clearly frustrated the Israelis.

FP: Do you think the Mecca agreement, by empowering Hamas, torpedoed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s recent three-way meeting with Olmert and Abbas?

AM: I don’t think it torpedoed it. Even if you didn’t have a Hamas problem, the secretary’s mission was excruciatingly difficult. You’ve got several problems that will continue to impede the prospects of a serious break.

Number one, you’ve got weak leaders. Both Abu Mazen and Ehud Olmert are prisoners of their constituencies. Arab-Israeli peacemaking is difficult enough when you have strong leadership. It took Begin and Sadat five years to complete an Israeli-Egyptian agreement, and this was basically territory for peace, with very little emotional, religious, or even security consequences in comparison to the Golan or the West Bank.

Second, the gaps betweens Israelis and Palestinians on the issues that Condoleezza Rice wanted to make progress on—Jerusalem, borders, and refugees—are enormous, and those gaps have only increased since the last time we wrestled with these issues nearly seven years ago at Camp David with Arafat, Barak, and Clinton.

Finally, you do have the emergence of non-state actors functioning in non-state environments—Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon—that have demonstrated not only a capacity to undermine central authority, but to defeat or create tremendous problems for far superior military powers.

These three factors make her mission excruciatingly difficult.

FP: So what, if anything, came out of Rice’s meeting that was positive?

AM: The situation today is more difficult than it was a month ago. Factional fighting has ended between Palestinians, even though political maneuvering has not, and you have a commitment on the part of Israel and the Palestinians to enter into discussions. The secretary may have launched a secret back channel with American participation so that the two sides, with our help, will begin to meet quietly. But there’s one basic reality you can’t escape: Hamas has emerged as a genuine and legitimate part of the Palestinian national establishment, and efforts to either beat it in the streets or isolate and boycott it economically have not succeeded in the course of a year.