This was a busy week on the Palestinian political front. On Monday, Hamas released a new political document that, while not superseding its charter, appeared to concede that its historical approach is not working. On Wednesday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with President Trump at the White House in what was a remarkable optic for Abbas so early on in Trump’s term. Neither the move made by Hamas or the Abbas visit were primarily about the peace process, but were rather jockeying for position in the scrum of internal Palestinian politics. Despite the similarities, however, there is one important difference between the dueling approaches, which is that Hamas is using internal moves to strengthen its external position, and Abbas is using external moves to strengthen his internal position.
Starting with the Abbas visit, this was an amazing turnaround in his fortunes. Abbas’s popularity has been waning at home as he is increasingly perceived as an out of touch leader who has hung around far past his expiration date, and who has not been able to translate his longevity into tangible accomplishments for the Palestinians or a wider audience on the world stage. It did not initially appear as if Abbas was going to get any boost from the Trump White House, which early on reportedly would not provide an address for Palestinian Authority entreaties and appeared to want to avoid the Palestinians entirely. This was supposed to be in contrast to the Obama administration, which took a call from Abbas on the first day in office and was perceived as tilting toward the Palestinians in many ways. The concern in Ramallah toward the new Trump presidency was palpable in its early days, and the idea that Trump would be felicitous toward Palestinian interests was dismissed.
Yet only a little more than 100 days into Trump’s tenure, Abbas finds himself in the Oval Office and being praised by Trump for working toward peace and denouncing terrorism. While Prime Minister Netanyahu got the Trump White House grand tour first, so far the treatment of the two leaders has been on the same playing field. The domestic political benefits of this for Abbas cannot be overstated, as he will get to coast on the afterglow of being treated as an honored guest by Trump rather than as an afterthought. Not only that, Abbas had a White House platform to emphasize all of the core Palestinian positions – a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital – while getting an unexpected bonus from Trump as he extolled the virtues of Palestinian security cooperation with Israel. Not only does Abbas get to look like a strong leader at home who has the ear of the American president, one of his core political weaknesses – the deep unpopularity of security cooperation with the IDF, which Abbas must maintain as it also keeps him in power – was specifically pointed to as a great virtue in the eyes of the man who is now raising expectations that he will be the midwife of an independent Palestine. As things stand now, there are few things Abbas could do that would give him more breathing room at home than the new relationship he has established with Trump. It will be exceedingly hard for anyone to challenge his primacy or relevance after yesterday’s events, particularly if Trump is reluctant to push him too hard early on.
Hamas’s own political move this week is being driven by a different calculus. Few entities have seen their fortunes take such a hit over the past few years as Hamas, which rules over an increasingly tenuous situation in Gaza, has been squeezed by Egypt due to its Muslim Brotherhood origins, lost an important political ally as it found itself forced to renounce Bashar al-Assad, and has had to navigate tensions with its primary patron Iran. All of this is on top of Hamas being very unpopular among Gazans, whose situation under Hamas rule has not improved one iota, and facing competition not only from Fatah but from even more radical challengers. Isolated in the world and unpopular at home, Hamas has been looking to do something to break out of its box, while at the same time it becomes even further split along the dividing lines between the political leadership in Qatar and the military leadership in Gaza. Unlike Abbas, who is using foreign relations to improve his domestic position, Hamas is doing the precise opposite in using domestic moves to improve its foreign relations.
The new policy of accepting a provisional Palestinian state in 1967 borders without giving up the larger fight for the entire land between the river and the sea, and purposely leaving out any mention of Hamas’s Muslim Brotherhood origins and ties, is aimed solely at external actors. Hamas’s hope is that by appearing to back down from a previously uncompromising position, it will give cause to those who argue that Hamas’s eventual moderation is inevitable and reverse the trend of international isolation on the group. The silence on the Muslim Brotherhood connection is designed to get back into Egypt’s good graces, which has taken less of a hardline tack toward Hamas in recent months as it recognized that it shared an interest with Hamas in stamping out ISIS in Sinai and other radical jihadi groups that are beginning to challenge Hamas’s primacy in Gaza. The Muslim Brotherhood is the Sisi regime’s brightest redline, and Hamas views muddying its own links to the Muslim Brotherhood as the key to better footing with Egypt.
The question is whether these moves will actually fool anyone, as they do not represent real change within Hamas but are akin to putting lipstick on a pig. When the PLO faced the same dilemma a quarter century ago, it actually recognized Israel and nullified the problematic provisions in its charter, as opposed to Hamas’s laughable attempt to have its resistance cake and eat it too. Hamas’s continued terrorism will not be overridden by a change in rhetoric away from demonizing Jews and toward only demonizing “Zionist war criminals,” particularly when its odious anti-Semitic charter is still in full effect. Hamas also runs a real risk that this will further weaken it at home, as its resistance credentials can now be called into question by even more intransigent actors, and indeed it is no accident that the rollout of the new document took place in Doha rather than in Gaza. Those who already support Hamas are unlikely to be happy with the new changes, no matter how illusory they are, and those who don’t are unlikely to be convinced that this represents a new and improved movement.
Abbas and Hamas are both betting that this week’s events give them momentum, but only one of them is likely to see any real benefits. If nothing else, the contrast between Abbas being feted in Washington while Hamas pretends to back away from its ledge in order to survive will provide a lasting image of fortunes that are for now traveling in opposite directions.
Ottomans and Zionists 
PM Netanyahu and Ambassador Dermer can’t trip over themselves fast enough to insult and diss President Obama and kiss the hand of President Trump. What they don’t really get is that the policy differences between the two are scant. It is clear that PM Netanyahu prefers the GOP (and Dermer himself is/was a Republican) and that they irrationally hated Obama.
In my opinion, President Obama did fine regarding Israel, and just never got along well with Netanyahu personally (but other than Putin, who does? and look where that has gotten Israel). The constant sniping from Israeli government toward Obama was juvenile and not in Israel’s interest. The cozying up to Trump puts a big wall between Israel and many of Israel’s supporters here in the US and I would guess that Trump will do nothing more for Israel than any prior President. At the end of the day, the peace will not come if Bibi remains in office because he will always find a reason to do nothing, and Abbas doesn’t have the strength or will to do anything.
Hamas is not irrelevant, as they control quite a few tunnels and weapons, and they probably have more negative control over the Palestinians than anyone
Except Obama started off apologizing to the Muslim world, refused to identify Islam as the current number one source of world conflict and terrorism and simply did not believe in the idea of Zionism.
Trump is making gestures to Abbas but that’s fine, Abbas will not or cannot reciprocate so this is going nowhere. At that point, Trump will get mad and jettison the Palestinians.
There has been a constant chatter since President Obama’s campaign for President that he was secretly a Muslim, secretly anti israel, secretly born elsewhere (in large part advocated by President Trump at the time). You state that he “simply did not believe in the idea of Zionism”.
Do you have proof of that pretty provocative and accusatory statement? As you would guess, I disagree with that, but even more, I don’t think it is relevant to the political reality (Israel exists, has been financed and supported strongly by every US administration since 1967 if not 1947-8, and the Iron Dome was largely financed by the US).
And do you not believe that Trump will get mad and jettison PM Netanyahu when he pulls the same arrogant stuff he did with President Obama? As we see daily, Trump values loyalty above all else, and Netanyahu like Trump is loyal to himself first and foremost.
I will add that I probably agree with you on something. Though Obama didn’t break any prior US Presidential policy by not immediately going to Israel, (or even going to Israel after his famous/infamous Cairo speech early in his presidency), it would have benefitted him politically to do so.
I think Trump by going to Israel later this month will connect with the leadership in Israel (and Riyadh, and probably in Palestinian areas) just by being there. Will Trump speak in Knesset? I hope so. I don’t recall a US President ever doing so.
But to criticize Obama for not going to Israel would mean one also must criticize every US President going back in time. Only time Bill Clinton went was for Rabin’s funeral. I don’t recall either Bush going there or Reagan or Carter, Ford, Nixon, etc etc.