In light of the plan for Abbas to go to the UN General Assembly to get recognition for a "Palestinian" state in the West Bank, it may be appropriate to ask who would control such a state.
It would not be Fatah.
Khaled Abu Toameh asks Will the West Bank Become the Next Islamic Emirate?
Those who think that Hamas and other Islamic groups do not have a strong presence in the West Bank are completely detached from reality.
True, these groups are lacking in arms and ammunition in the West Bank, but they still enjoy broad public support among Palestinians.
Toameh notes the extent of Hamas influence beyond Gaza into the West Bank itself, where Hamas operates in hundreds of Islamic charities and organizations as well in most Palestinian universities and colleges in the West Bank, under different labels such as the Islamic Bloc and Islamic Union.
This is without taking into account the influence Hamas worked in the mosques.
And Hamas is not alone in challenging the Abbas regime.
Toameh writes there is also the Hizb-ut-Tahrir [Party of Liberation], a group more extreme than Hamas whose goal is to unify all Muslims under a caliphate, ruled by Sharia:
In the past few months, in Ramallah and Hebron, Hizb-ut-Tahrir held two major rallies calling for and Islamic caliphate; they attracted tens of thousands of supporters. Neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority was able to stop the organization from holding them.
Hamas, Hizb-ut-Tahrir and their political and ideological allies in the West Bank have been emboldened by the "Arab Spring," which has seen the rise of Muslim Brotherhood to power in a number of Arab countries, including Tunisia and the largest Arab country, Egypt.
Can we agree now that the "Arab Spring" has not performer as advertised?
In any case, aside from Abbas's incompetence, corruption, encouragement of genocidal hatred of Israelis and the financial collapse of the proposed state -- we can now add the collapse of the Abbas regime and its replacement by an extreme Islamist entity as another reason not to be in a hurry to grant Abbas his request when he comes to call at the UN next month.
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