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"President Bush pledged more aid today for the Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas and called for an autumn meeting of Israel, Palestinians and their neighbors to help restart peace talks.
Mr. Bush said Palestinians faced a stark choice: freedom and progress under Mr. Abbas and his Fatah-led government, or “chaos and suffering” and endless violence under Hamas, the radical movement that Mr. Bush said had “betrayed the Palestinian people.”
“The international community must rise to the moment,” Mr. Bush said, calling on other countries in the Middle East to help realize the vision of an Israel and a Palestinian state living in peace and security. He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would head the autumn session, whose location he did not specify.
It was not immediately clear who would attend the session. Mr. Bush urged Israel’s Arab neighbors to open talks with Israel and show leadership by “ending the fiction that Israel does not exist, stopping the incitement in their official media and sending cabinet-level visitors to Israel,” words apparently meant for America’s closest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, Mr. Bush did not sound as though he was extending an invitation when he mentioned Iran and Syria, calling them “Hamas’s foreign sponsors” and accusing them of sowing discord in Lebanon as well. The president urged Arab nations to live up to the example of Anwar Sadat of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan, whom he called “peacemakers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/washington/16cnd-prexy.html?hpU.S. Bet on Abbas For Mideast Peace Meets Skepticismhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501184_pf.htmlIntelligence Reports Cast Doubt on Strength While Warning of Tenacity of Rival Hamas<
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"Several intelligence assessments have warned that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the man U.S. policymakers hope can help salvage the Middle East peace process, may not be politically strong enough to achieve that goal, according to U.S. officials.
The assessments have also cautioned that his opponents in Hamas -- the Islamic movement that is being shunned by Abbas, Israel and the United States -- will not be easily marginalized.
The White House is now betting that Abbas, replenished by the return of aid from the West and tax revenue withheld by Israel, can create a stable enclave in the West Bank and resume peace negotiations with Israel, a view reiterated yesterday by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. He said on ABC's "This Week" that President Bush today will publicly discuss "what we are going to do to support
. . . financially, diplomatically."
The administration intends to continue politically isolating the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. Abbas dismissed the Hamas government, which was democratically elected and has refused to recognize Israel, after it routed his security forces in Gaza.
The "West Bank first" strategy is the White House's biggest and potentially riskiest policy departure in its dealings with the Palestinian Authority since it was created in 1994. The administration is moving into uncharted territory in trying to aid Abbas even though he and his Fatah political party control just a portion of the Authority.
Intelligence reports over the past month, since Hamas's seizure of the Gaza Strip effectively split the Palestinian Authority into two parts, have assessed Abbas's position as vulnerable even in the West Bank. Hamas's popularity has dropped slightly since the split, but a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research taken a week after the fissure said that Hamas was still more popular than Fatah among more than one-quarter of West Bank Palestinians."