ABSTRACT
The profound process of Palestinian fragmentation described in the preceding two chapters occurred at a time when international engagement and multilateral assistance to the Palestinians were at their highest levels in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also took place within a diplomatic framework where the dominant role was assumed by the United States by virtue of its staunch military, political and economic support to Israel. It is one of the main arguments of this book that the relative diplomatic weakness of other third-party actors, coupled with their desire for participation and visibility, played itself out in part at the level of ‘low’ donor politics, in the hope that this would in turn influence the Israelis’ and Americans’ ‘high’ diplomatic politics.
