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We must hope that Monday’s summit meeting between Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority can move the region closer to the setting up of a Palestinian state, peace between that state and Israel and a significant improvement in the life of ordinary Palestinians.

The fact that this summit has been called by Mubarak of Egypt so quickly after last week’s takeover of Gaza by Hamas suggests that the only party caught out by Hamas’ military victory was Hamas itself.

Mubarak has described Hamas’ takeover of Gaza as a “coup” and warned that the militant group’s conflict with the moderate Fatah movement could lead to the creation of two Palestinian entities. He has reassured the Fatah leader, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, of Egypt’s support. Many commentators however, have expressed either caution or hostility to the ‘West Bank first’ approach by which Fatah and the West Bank would be bolstered by the West while Hamas would be isolated.

While Charles Krauthammer believes that:

Israel now has the opportunity to establish deterrence against unremitting rocket attacks from Gaza into Israeli villages.

and states that:

The splitting of Palestine into two entities is nonetheless clarifying.

others are not as optimistic. Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller state bluntly “‘West Bank First’: It Won’t Work“, siting the fundamental problem with the approach:

It is premised on the notion that Fatah controls the West Bank. Yet the West Bank is not Gaza in reverse. Unlike in Gaza, Israel’s West Bank presence is overwhelming and, unlike Hamas, Fatah has ceased to exist as an ideologically or organizationally coherent movement. Behind the brand name lie a multitude of offshoots, fiefdoms and personal interests. Most attacks against Israel since the elections were launched by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the unruly Fatah-affiliated militias, notwithstanding Abbas’s repeated calls for them to stop. Given this, why would Israel agree to measurably loosen security restrictions?

Malley and Miller further suggest:

They [the US and others] should resist the temptation to isolate Gaza and should tend to its population’s needs. And should a national unity government be established, this time they should welcome the outcome and take steps to shore it up. Only then will efforts to broker credible political negotiations between Abbas and his Israeli counterpart on a two-state solution have a chance to succeed.

Of course, Israel and the West must ensure that the humanitarian requirements of Gaza’s population are met, while doing what they can to ’strongly dissuade’ Hamas from continuing their of rocket attacks and other terrorist activities against Israel. Nevertheless, Malley and Miller’s article underplays Hamas’ hatred of Israel, which is institutionalised in their charter, and their close alliance with the Iranian regime, who are also no friends of Israel. If a Palestinian unity government is established, it’s as likely to be allied to Iran as to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the West, and that would make ‘credible political negotiations’ with Israel even less likely to succeed.

Gaza and the West Bank are two pieces in the growing power struggle between Iran and the more Western facing Arab nations. Egypt and Jordan are both well aware of this and both could have significant roles to play in both Palestinian regions. I await the outcome of Monday’s summit with great interest and as much hope as I can muster.

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