Hamas Rules Out PM Job for Salam Fayyad

Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) said in an e-mail to me last night, “This is predictable, of course. Fayyad was never acceptable to Hamas. This, among other things, made the late April unity announcement highly suspect.” He explained that now “the stakes are higher. Take the World Bank’s endorsement of a Palestinian state. It hinges on two things: continued state-building, and the continued flow of international donor funds. Without Fayyad, state-building stops. He’s the architect. And without the architect, funding dries up.” …

Well, first we need to ask what state is that — one run by terrorists now eager to return to the Yasser Arafat-style of corruption? Perhaps if giving to terrorists does not faze the French and British, then maybe giving to crooks will. Cliff May of the FDD reflected on whether “the Europeans support a Hamas/Fatah government without even the veneer of technocrats.” He cracked: “I don’t play poker with guys named Doc, and I don’t bet on Europeans standing up for principle in the current era.” Perhaps, but if the U.S. would cut off aid to the PA, that would at least make it a tad more uncomfortable for the Europeans to plunge the knife into Israel’s back. …

Mark Dubowitz, who’s been a key figure in developing the Iran sanctions program, remarked to me, “We do billions of dollars of business with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which practices gender apartheid and uses its petroleum wealth to try and turn the world’s Sunni Muslims into hateful, violent, anti-Semitic bigots.” But that’s the relationship we’re nervous about harming.

So it should not be surprising that Obama wouldn’t dream of threatening the PA, which is instigating the U.N. gambit, for forcing him to exercise the veto. It’s clear why Obama isn’t demanding a repudiation of the unity government as a condition of talks. He plainly finds it much easier to savage Israel than to stand up to the Arabs’ threats. And of course, in his view, Israel is the stronger power, so it must give up more to level the playing field. As Dubowitz put it, “In the choice between a democratic, pro-American Israel and her enemies, who are also America’s enemies, how many Western leaders have the courage to say what Canada’s prime minister, [Stephen] Harper, said this weekend at his party’s convention: ‘Moral ambiguity, moral equivalence are not options, they are dangerous illusions.’ ” None, it seems.