The Palestinian Authority and Hamas strike a deal in Beijing
The Biden Administration has been consistent: The Palestinian Authority must rule Gaza after the war. The White House dismisses Israel’s protests that the PA supports terrorism and is too feeble to resist Hamas as domestic political pandering. The only way to defeat Hamas in Gaza, says the U.S., is to hand the keys to Mahmoud Abbas and a “revitalized" PA.
Good thing Israel didn’t take Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s word for it. On Tuesday the PA’s many factions signed an agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to form a unity Palestinian government. Oh, and they did it in Beijing, with China’s foreign minister presiding over warm handshakes with the perpetrators of the Oct.
7 massacre. The plan is to form an interim reconciliation government for Gaza and the West Bank, where the PA has been losing ground to Hamas. But the agreement lacks a timetable for implementation and faces many obstacles.
Hamas slaughtered Mr. Abbas’s party comrades in Gaza in 2007, and experiments in unity since then have been abortive. At this stage the agreement is notable primarily for what it says about the parties involved.
The deal is a way for the PA to signal solidarity with the “resistance." Though the Biden Administration ignores the broad popularity of Oct. 7 among Palestinians, Mr. Abbas can afford no such illusions.
Hamas’s atrocities are glorified and its decision to launch the war earns about 70% support in Palestinian polls. The PA is a husk. The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates reportedly called it “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" at an April meeting with Mr.
Blinken. But this month the U.A.E. said it could join a stabilization force for postwar Gaza if the PA invites it.
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