Elliott Abrams on Salam Fayyad:

A source from Williams College in Massachusetts sent me this report (and does not want to be identified): "Elliot Abrams gave an "off the record" talk on Obama and Israel to a small group at my college today. No press or publicity; one plus is they know the man stinks like rotted meat. Interestingly, the talk turned into an hour of Neocon love for Salam Fayyad, including a substantial amount of praise for his decision to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state; his name came up more than any other person's in the the talk by a great factor. I'll admit that I was cautiously optimistic about Fayyad, but hell, there's no better way to judge a Palestinian's worth to the resistance than the love a man like Abrams has for him. Abrams' praise for Fayyad speaks for itself. He is still treating arafat as if he is alive; after Fayyad, arafat beat out even Abbas in mentions by Abrams, which I thought was odd. The best part was that he referred to Fayyad (no joke) as a Palestinian Herzl; he quoted Hertzl to summarize what Fayyad was doing and said that just as Hertzl laid the groundwork for a Zionist state, Fayyad was laying the ground for a Palestinian state. Odd to think that Palestinians, in order to have basic human rights and self determination, must go through the work that the Zionists did in order to justify taking away those rights. Either way in Abrams' mind Fayyad=Hertzl. He stated that he felt that a west bank under fayyad had the potential to be a 'shining beacon' in the middle east, whatever that means. Most of the talk was standard neocon talking points; said that Obama and Bush are making the same mistakes in the Palestine, meaning relying on talks and what they should be doing is allowing Palestinians to construct their own state apparatuses under occupation. In essence, he was pushing for normalizing the defacto apartheid. Praise for Dayton, praise for Palestinian police forces. He did say that settlements east of the apartheid wall would have to be dismantled. The Fayyad obsession is something that I've seen from people like Friedman but not from anyone like Abrams. This Fayyad as a Palestinian Hertzl thing, though, is quit a new one."