At one point, the administration urged Egypt to send troops into the
Gaza Strip to save Fatah, according to Middle East Newsline. Officials said the regime of President Hosni
Mubarak refused, and the administration then pressed Abbas to launch a
full-scale offensive against Hamas.
"Palestinians are going to have to sort out their politics and figure
out which pathway they want to pursue — the pathway toward two states
living peaceably side by side or whether this sort of chaos is going to
become a problem," White House press secretary Tony Snow said.
Officials said the Fatah collapse has angered those in the
administration who felt Israel had withheld military and financial support
from Abbas. They said President George Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice had planned to press Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to
agree to numerous concessions during the latter's scheduled visit to the
White House on July 19.
"There will be a lot of bad feelings during the meeting," the official
said. "Bush saw an Israeli-Palestinian peace process as having the potential
to become a major achievement during his last 18 months in office."
Over the last three months, Israel and the United States disputed the
resilience of Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip. Israel warned that Hamas had
formed a military force that could easily defeat Fatah in the Gaza Strip.
The administration disagreed. On May 24, U.S. security coordinator Lt.
Gen. Keith Dayton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Abbas's
Presidential Guard and National Security Forces fought well during clashes
throughout the Gaza Strip last month.
On Wednesday, the administration, for the first time in nearly two
years, sought to distinguish between Hamas's political leadership and the
military wing. The State Department said Hamas politicians were not involved
in the offensive in the Gaza Strip.
"It is this so-called military wing of Hamas that launched these
attacks," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "started these
rounds of violence that has swept up innocent civilians in firefights and
gunfights and the shelling and the mortaring just as Egyptian envoys were
working to try to bring together elements of Hamas and Fatah — political
elements of Hamas and Fatah to come to some sort of political accommodation
so they can lower the violence."
