Egypt and Jordan quietly back Abbas, too

Arab governments worry that if Gazans starve, public support may swing behind Hamas.

By Dan Murphy and Jill Carroll | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 20, 2007 edition

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Amman, Jordan, and Rafah, Egypt - – The creation of separate Palestinian micro-states last week left two of America's closest Arab allies – Jordan and Egypt, which share borders with the West Bank and Gaza respectively – groping for a new policy toward a conflict that has spilled over their borders and contributes to their own instability.

These two secular and authoritarian states have far more in common with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, which now controls the West Bank, than with the Islamist Hamas that won last week's war for control of Gaza. When Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 that were deemed free and fair, it set alarm bells ringing in Cairo and Amman; they worried their local Islamists would be bolstered by Hamas's success.

But that doesn't mean Egypt or Jordan will quickly join the US and Israel in openly supporting Mr. Abbas.

The US and Israel are rewarding Abbas – far friendlier to Israel than Hamas – in the West Bank by lifting a crippling economic embargo, while maintaining the sanctions on the much poorer Gaza Strip. Their hope is that Hamas's public support will evaporate under the weight of need, and Abbas's stature will grow as his people experience relatively more prosperity.

"Our hope is that President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad – who's a good fellow – will be strengthened to the point where they can lead the Palestinians in a different direction," President George Bush said after an Oval Office meeting Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

While that's an outcome that the Egyptian and Jordanian governments hope for, given their hostility toward Hamas, it's not one they feel they can back publicly, analysts say.

"Recent events have seen Arab publics turn on Hamas a bit, but that won't necessarily hold," says Nabil Gheishan, a columnist at Arab al-Yom, an independent Jordanian daily newspaper. "If this embargo of Gaza goes ahead, and people see massive suffering there while conditions improve in the West Bank, that will shift the public mood and take the pressure off Hamas."

He says publicly backing such an approach could easily see the governments of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah branded as participating with Israeli and US-inflicted suffering on the Palestinians in Gaza.

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