Salvaging Abbas

This article was originally published here on TimesOfIsrael.com on Tuesday, July 29, 2014.

The only ways the Palestinian president has been able to keep his opponents at bay are through a corrupt patronage network, which ties West Bankers to the Palestinian Authority, and an American and Canadian trained security force that keeps Hamas down. He desperately needs both because Abbas has largely lost what is arguably the most important battle with his adversaries — the one over narratives. The Palestinian leader, who emerged after the death and destruction of the second intifada, surveyed the wreckage and asked how Palestinians had advanced their cause through violence. He counseled that suicide bombings and other kinds of attacks on Israelis did quite the opposite from their intended goal, compelling the Israelis to counter violence with violence and dig in deeper on Palestinian land.

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