A decisive turning point in the recent political history of Palestine came in June 2007, when Hamas defeated Fatah’s security forces in Gaza and took over uncontested administration of the strip. This was the moment that Palestine became divided in two with rival governments in charge—Hamas in Gaza and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in West Bank—which meant the end of a single, coherent Palestinian leadership that could negotiate with the Israelis. Afterwards, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, who has favored a two-state solution, wrote of the efforts to negotiate with Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, “The notion that the Palestinian rump authority ... can be a credible partner in negotiation defies logic.”

But if the political effects of Hamas' ousting of Fatah are clear enough, Washington's prevailing narrative about it has mostly been self-serving. In a new book, Tested by Zion, Elliott Abrams, who supervised American policy in the Middle East for George W. Bush’s National Security Council, offers the standard line, charging that Hamas staged a “coup” in Gaza because it feared that “time might bring greater strength for what Hamas saw as Fatah and we saw as the legitimate PA national security forces.” Abrams acknowledges that Hamas leaders might have believed there was “a conspiracy to crush it,” but dismisses the possibility that there actually was one, and that the United States might have played any role in it.

This account is in marked contrast with the testimony put forth independently by two journalists, Paul McGeough and David Rose, by a former British intelligence official, Alistair Crooke, who had served as a special advisor on the Middle East to the European Union, and by UN Under-Secretary General Alvaro de Soto. Key parts of the this alternative narrative have been confirmed by leaked government documents and contemporary newspaper accounts and by David Wurmser, who was Middle East advisor at the time to Vice President Dick Cheney.

This version of events is considerably more damning about Washington's role in the events leading up to the Hamas “coup”. According to the alternative narrative, the Bush administration blundered at every turn in its dealings with the Palestinians. It encouraged an election on the assumption that Abbas and Fatah would win. When Hamas was victorious, it sought to nullify the results and to block a unity government between Fatah and Hamas, even though such a government might have actually become a credible partner in peace negotiations. And the Bush administration helped arm Fatah’s security forces against Hamas, which stoked the civil war and led to Hamas taking over Gaza. According to this narrative, Hamas was basically right about American intentions.

I am not absolutely certain which version of events is right. Too much of what happened is still shrouded in secrecy. Abrams’ reputation is tarred by his admission that he withheld documents from Congress during the Iran-Contra investigation. On the other side, Rose published credulous accounts in 2001 linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. But I believe that the alternative narrative fits the outward events much better than what Abrams recounts in his book. And if this narrative is a better representation of what actually happened, it holds important lessons for American diplomacy today. While the Obama administration has generally taken a different tack in foreign policy than the Bush administration, it has not done so in its relations with Fatah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority—and it may be tempting the same kind of trouble that Abrams and the Bush administration got themselves into.