Can Fatah Succeed?

Shmuel Rosner worries that Abu Mazen is too old to change his stripes:

He didn't make a decision; he was pushed into it. And this decision cannot endure for very long. "While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared an end to the national unity government, I have little doubt that he will be talking to Hamas in the relatively near future," wrote Dennis Ross, former special U.S. envoy for the peace process who knows Abbas as well as anyone in the West. "We should not be fooled by Abbas' rhetoric. Sooner or later he will be forced to pursue new power-sharing arrangements between Hamas and Fatah and restore unity among Palestinians," wrote Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller, two other former members of the Clinton team, who rarely agree with Ross.

Yet that same Dennis Ross sounds a more hopeful note in USA Today:

[T]o prevent the West Bank from becoming dominated by Hamas as well, it is time for Fatah to carry out reform and remake itself. In talks I recently held in Ramallah, Abu Dis and East Jerusalem, I saw a readiness for the first time to organize Fatah at the grassroots level and respond to the social and economic needs of the Palestinian public. In effect, the younger generation of Fatah appears committed to showing it can embody social justice and fight the corruption that has plagued the movement. With Salaam Fayyad as the new prime minister, the donor community — including specifically the Saudis — needs to focus on a strategy for working with Fayyad to bolster those who will provide services and programs and who will enhance the credibility of Fatah. If the Saudis don't want Iran to be able to exploit the Palestinian conflict, they need to ensure that Hamas does not come to dominate the cause in a way that guarantees enduring struggle.