SORRY, WE CAN'T TALK TO YOU, WE'RE PRETENDING:

Salam Fayyad: Everyone's favorite Palestinian (Barak Ravid, 3/27/07, Ha'aretz)

The old-new Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayyad, took advantage of last weekend, before the new Palestinian unity government was sworn in, to say "farewell" to his Israeli colleagues. In effect, already at the end of February, when Fayyad held talks with senior Israeli officials at the Finance and Foreign Ministries, he was aware that by joining a government which includes Hamas, he - the Palestinian politician most esteemed in the West - would be added to the growing list of Palestinians Israel is boycotting. "I very much enjoyed working with you," Fayyad told one senior Israeli official during that weekend. "It is a shame that we will not be able to continue talking. I can only hope that this will change in the future."

Fayyad was not the only one who regretted the end of contacts. Many Israelis, both senior and less so, were sorry to see him leave. Everyone who met him in the past few years was enchanted by him. In Jerusalem, Washington, Paris, London and many other capitals, Fayyad became the ultimate Palestinian "icon," the ideal partner. Tzipi Livni, Ephraim Sneh and other Israeli politicians enjoyed sitting and talking with him in the captivating garden of the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, or on the terrace of the King David Hotel, in the city's west. Fayyad is the only Palestinian in whose hands they were prepared to place hundreds of millions of dollars in the belief that these monies would indeed be used to pay salaries. [...]

Fayyad is a strange bird in Palestinian politics. On the one hand, he is the Palestinian politician most esteemed by Israel and the West. However, on the other hand, he has no electoral power whatsoever in Gaza or the West Bank. Before last year's parliamentary elections he was courted by Fatah, which promised him that if he joined the party's slate he would become prime minister. But Fayyad read the political map astutely and realized that Fatah did not have a good chance at winning. Instead, he set up the Third Way Party with Hanan Ashrawi and Yasser Abed Rabbo. They won only two seats but Fayyad remained an extremely influential figure in the PA's political arena.

That'll teach their faces.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 28, 2007 6:39 AM