Palestinian PM Abbas Rolls the Dice

The circular double-helix of complexities vexing the Palestinians may only be stopped if some sort of Gordian knot is severed. Prime Minister Abbas called for a Referendum on implied recognition of Israel last week, in an effort to get the hydra-headed Hamas off its stuck-on-stupid policy of non-recognition. As the Economist points out concerning the referendum document crafted by Palestinian leaders in Israeli jails:

Most Palestinians, polls suggest, would support the idea. Hamas would then be jammed between its refusal so far to recognise Israel, which has led to an international embargo of the PA, and the will of the people who elected it in January.

The "prisoners' document" is signed by senior figures from Hamas, Fatah (Mr Abbas's party) and three other groups. It talks of a Palestinian state on the land Israel occupied in 1967 and of including Hamas in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the umbrella body that includes the PA and which officially recognises Israel. By accepting, Hamas could make a concession to the world that its voters might not see as too much of a sell-out.

Yes, that would be smart, but Hamas is in far too complicated a situation to just go ahead and do the right thing.

Mr Abbas's ultimatum takes the fight back off the streets and into the political arena. It puts Hamas in a bind, and exposes differences among its multi-headed leadership—the prisoners who signed the proposal, the bosses in Damascus who look dead against it, and the government in the West Bank and Gaza, which seems torn. Hamas members have been publicly trying out various arguments against the referendum: it is legally dubious; it is expensive when the PA cannot even pay salaries; it is irrelevant because it hardly differs from Hamas's stance, or because the election was just a few months ago, or because Israel, though busy planning a unilateral withdrawal from much of the West Bank, has no intention of retreating all the way to the pre-1967 borders anyway. So far, none has really stuck. If the referendum happens and the Palestinians say yes, Mr Abbas will look much stronger.

However, his move is also very risky. Hamas can argue that even if it accepts the prisoners' proposal, that will still fall short of the world's three conditions for ending the PA embargo—that Hamas recognise Israel unconditionally, renounce violence and honour the PA's agreements with Israel—and so will achieve nothing, unless there is a reward on offer for going only part of the way, which there is not. On top of that, Mr Abbas risks looking to Palestinians like the stooge of a hostile Israel and the West, as he often has in the past. It will take some clever juggling of Palestinian public opinion and the forces within Fatah and Hamas for him to pull this one off.

But Abbas does have world opinion on his side, and I suspect some sort of Israeli support that dare not show itself just yet. Hamas did not really want to win these elections, but now that it has a legislature, it should cooperate with the executive.