Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

by Marc Lamont Hill

Although Hamas showed some flexibility, U.S. policy remained rigid. Even some centrist policy thinkers in Washington recognized that the argument that “the funding suspension is a deliberate, cold-hearted external veto upon the Palestinians’ free exercise of their democratic rights, revealing the insincerity of U.S. democracy promotion,” was gaining traction.63 Abbas was unwilling to yield to U.S. demands that he nullify Hamas’s victory on the basis of it being a terrorist group. This was a wise decision, as nullifying the victory would have unleashed a tsunami of fury from the Palestinian public, a natural reaction to their expressed will being vetoed. Yet Abbas’s efforts to maintain some sort of working relationship with the United States, which included attempts to create mechanisms to deliver aid to the Palestinian people without going through the official PA channels that the U.S. now refused, caused great tension within the Palestinian territories, especially Gaza.