The Bush administration seems to be placing quite a bet on the new Palestinian Arab prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. In a March 14 interview with Al-Jazeera, the president’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said, “We believe that the chances for a Middle East peace have been improving significantly with changes in Israel and especially with what we see as very positive signs of reform in the Palestinian Authority. To have a prime minister who has real authority to run the day-to-day affairs of the government, to have someone who is a respected leader among the Palestinian people, is a very big plus for peace.”

Then, in a speech Sunday night in Washington to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, Secretary Powell said, “Today, we have reached a hopeful moment, when progress may again be possible.…The Palestinian Legislative Council has created the office of prime minister for the Palestinian Authority. As written and passed, the law gives the prime minister real power and authority, and provides direct accountability to the legislature that elected him.” Mr. Powell also said, “We will be watching very carefully to see how the new Palestinian prime minister exercises his authority, which is so important for Palestinians’ hopes for a better future.”

If the administration had been watching carefully so far, it might not be so hopeful. There’s been some debate over whether Mr. Abbas is actually in power yet. It seems to us that he took office March 19, but either way, he’s clearly been tapped by Yasser Arafat, who is still the real power in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Even before Ms. Rice’s Al-Jazeera interview, Mr. Abbas had told the newspaper Alsharq Al-Awsat, in an interview published March 3, “We didn’t talk about a break in the armed struggle.” He said, “It is our right to resist. The intifadah must continue and it is the right of the Palestinian people to resist.”

On Friday March 21, the official Palestinian Authority television station broadcast a sermon at the Sheikh ‘Ijlin Mosque in Gaza, delivered by Palestinian Authority preacher Sheikh Ibrahim Madeiris. According to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, the broadcast said, “Allah will drown the little pharaoh, the dwarf, the pharaoh of all times, of our time, the American president. Allah will drown America in our seas, in our skies, in our land. America will drown and all the oppressors will drown.” The sermon went on,” Oh, people of Palestine, Oh, people of Iraq. The crusader, Zionist America, has started an attack against our Iraq, the Iraq of Islam and Arabism, the Iraq of civilization and history. It opened a Crusader Zionist war against Iraq.” The sermon said,” America will be destroyed, Allah willing, and Palestine, Iraq, and the Middle East will become a cemetery for oppressors.”

It took nearly a decade of terrorism and provocation for the American executive branch to decide that Yasser Arafat wasn’t a peacemaker. Prime Minister Sharon’s foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, after meeting with President Bush Monday at the White House, said “If Abu Mazen will not take the right measures against terror when he comes to office in his first or second month, he won’t be able to do it after it.” We’d like to think a lesson has been learned, and that Washington’s and Jerusalem’s timeline for assessing the new Palestinian leader’s behavior is one of months rather than years.