Sharon's Game

PIER PAOLO CITO/AFP/GETTY
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

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It is too early to tell what effect Israel's missile attacks on Hamas leaders has had on the organization. Defiantly, Hamas leaflets last week threatened every Israeli with death and warned non-Israelis to "leave the Zionist entity immediately to preserve their lives." But some Hamas leaders went to ground. Even those who have been accessible in the past don't sleep in their homes and have stopped using their cell phones, which can reveal their whereabouts. But whatever the Israeli crackdown has or has not done to Hamas, it has surely weakened Abbas' position. The central plank of his program to advance the road map a cease-fire from all the Palestinian terrorist groups looks less and less likely. While that trend continues, Abbas will be marginalized. "He's active in making phone calls and receiving them," says a Palestinian Cabinet minister. "The Palestinian government, these days, is a telephone."

Having invested so much in Abbas, Washington might be expected to help him. Indeed, Administration officials have been attempting, without obvious success, to persuade Saudi Arabia and Jordan to help silence Hamas. And Washington has said it intends to enhance the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus so it could stop the bombings itself.

Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staff member on the Middle East, thinks the Administration should go further. "The U.S.," says Leverett, "needs to weigh in with Sharon to give [Abbas] the space he needs." Easier said than done. Even if Sharon thought Abbas the most wonderful Arab leader the Middle East has ever seen, it would matter little. Since Israel's creation, Sharon has believed that if it is attacked, it must attack back. There's not the slightest reason to think he is going to change his mind now.