By Ted Belman
There is every reason to believe that the plan announced by Bush today is just whistling Dixie. There is far less reason to believe it will work now then five years ago when first announced.
Mort Zukerman laid out reality for us yesterday in A Risky Bet on Fatah
The prospects are grim—in fact, worse than they look. The brutal Hamas coup is the first Islamic takeover of an Arab country in the past 35 years and the first in that period by military putsch: It was not a conflict waged or won by a majority of the population but one fought by a tiny armed faction with the political will to destroy a fragile government. The fear in the region is that it is a harbinger of turmoil affecting Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan. The takeover has already destroyed the Mecca agreement mediated by Saudi Arabia between Fatah and Hamas, undermined the moderating role of Saudi Arabia, and sabotaged the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
