He should know

New Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

"It's about time that we know what works and what doesn't work," he said. "And it's not enough to stop at statements and pronouncements like, 'Resistance is [the] right of any occupied people.'

"We certainly are [occupied], and that certainly is a right. But I think we have to have some sense of what has happened over the past ... seven, eight years.

"Simple, basic question: Are we better off now than we were then? Then, the situation was not great, but guess what it is like today? It's catastrophic."

"What really matters to me now the most -- before money, before anything else -- is a change in attitude," Fayyad said. "If we continue in this nickel-and-dime approach to dealing with the issues, I'm afraid we are never going to get anywhere, because that has been what has been happening over the past 13, 14 years."

That sounds good. At least, it's a start to recognise the bleeding obvious. However,

"Fatah is facing a very dangerous crisis," said a senior Fatah official here. "Many Fatah leaders and activists are unhappy with the way Abbas and the Fatah leadership have been handling the current crisis. If we don't get our act together, we will lose the West Bank to Hamas."

If Fatah should collapse, what would succeed it? From worse to worst?