Word: fatah
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What about Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' proposed vote on a plan to recognize Israel's pre-1967 borders? More than before, "the Palestinian street is furious with Israel," says an official in Abbas' Fatah bloc. Through that lens of anger, Abbas' plan looks too conciliatory , and peace seems an ever dimmer prospect...
...Among ordinary Palestinians, the dispute between Abbas and Hamas is viewed as a power play, in which the already dangerous divisions between Fatah and Hamas - which find increasingly violent expression on a daily basis in Gaza - stand to be exacerbated over an entirely hypothetical issue. Referendums on political agreements, after all, are usually conducted once such agreements have been reached, not before any negotiations have been held. And while a majority of Palestinians continue to favor a two-state solution, they are under no illusion that Israel is ready to accept returning to its 1967 borders, never mind accept...
...many Palestinians watching a fratricidal war escalate between gunmen of Fatah and Hamas in Gaza, the question seems almost absurd: why should the Palestinians inflame tensions among themselves over whether to accept a position rejected by the government of Israel...
...that adopting the prisoners' plan will negate Israel's claim that it has no Palestinian negotiating partner, making it more difficult for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to move ahead with plans to unilaterally redraw Israel's borders. But there's clearly a domestic political agenda, too: The grassroots-level Fatah warlords on whose support Abbas is increasingly dependent have, ever since they lost the January election to Hamas, agitated for an aggressive strategy to topple the new government...
...motivations of these Fatah leaders, many of whom surround Abbas, are less political and ideological than they are about restoring lost power and its ensuing privileges. Indeed, Fatah has shown little inclination to digest the real reasons for its electoral defeat - the fact that ordinary Palestinians see many of its leaders as incorrigibly corrupt and self-serving and view the movement as having no political vision for achieving Palestinian national goals. This view of Fatah is what prompted an electorate committed to a two-state solution to nonetheless vote Hamas into power, as a clean and more responsive alternative. Even...