Regardless of the final status of a negotiated solution regarding Israel and a Palestinian entity (or entities, with the West Bank and Gaza going separate ways), there will doubtless be compromises on both sides that will outrage significant constituencies on both sides of this dispute.

Whether one is talking about East Jerusalem, the “Right of Return”, water rights, transit rights, etc., it there will be provisions that people on one side or the other will not be happy about.

If one, for the moment, ignores the substance of these compromises, and agrees to the existence of these compromises, it raises an interesting question: Is there actually anyone in the Palestinian community who can negotiate such a deal and survive long enough to make it stick?

We know that the compromises of Michael Collins with regard to the 6 northern counties or Ireland were directly responsible for his death at the hands of anti-Treaty faction of the IRA.

The important thing to remember in the case of Michael Collins is that despite his death the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was a done deal, and remained a done deal.

While there is a a real possibility of political assassination, as a result of successful negotiations, it has already happened with Rabin in Israel, but on the Palestinian side there is a real possibility that with the assassination and/or the overthrow of of whoever signs such a deal will abnegate whatever deal that is signed.

Hamas is for the foreseeable future without the institutional imperatives to even enter into such a negotiation, and on the PA side, Mahmoud Abbas carries the moral weight of Hillary Duff.

He’s a party apparatchik who survives through appeasing the various factions and playing them off one against the other, and as such it is unlikely that he would have the political ability to survive a successful final status negotiation.

So, the question is how does one create an environment that will facilitate the creation a movement and/or leader in the Territories that will have the political and moral infrastructure to allow for a successful negotiation?