Even before it got started, the new-old US diplomatic strategy for Palestine risked coming undone. The resignation of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strikes at the heart of the Obama administration’s still-evolving plan to showcase the economic development of the West Bank to promote diplomatic progress and demonstrate the advantages of the Ramallah model over the one led by Hamas in Gaza.
How can Washington showcase the merits of economic assistance to the PA when Fayyad, whom they pressed to remain in office, has thrown in the towel in despair? With Fayyad, the US-led donors are comforted that they have “one of their own” — a Western-educated administrator and technocrat schooled in the language and practice of international development, in the Muqata. He makes the trains run on time, or would if the Palestinians had any trains, and he keeps his security forces fed and functional. Without him at the helm of the newly transparent but broke PA, Washington risks losing the European donors who already have an advanced case of donor fatigue and Congress, which has found in Fayyad the only Palestinian they love to love.