Saturday, December 16, 2006

Abbas rolls the dice

I guess there's so much a man can take, and it looks like Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has had enough. The successor to Yasser Arafat and the leader of the Fatah faction, Abbas has gotten so fed up with the impasse with Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Assembly, that he has called a snap election and is putting his own job on the line.

Didn't we see this a year ago? Fatah called an early election to consolidate their power in the fractious legislature, and although opinion polls suggested it would get a majority it was Hamas that gained the upper hand. I have to admit that Abbas has guts but if Palestinians think they're having a hard time negotiating with Israel, wait until whoever Hamas is led by this week -- as Israel has a well known policy of assassinating the Hamas leader of the week -- gets the wheel.

Five more years of war. Yikes. Last thing the Middle East needs right now unless the Jewish state has a plan to wipe out Hamas once and for all. Not that Fatah is much better ... but at least Arafat's not around anymore to kick.

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