but, the discussion on israel demonstrates how important it is to have a policy wonk in this position rather than a pr person, and i hope this is corrected in the next administration. i'm not sure if she got this job as a favour or because the administration legitimately wanted a pr person. but, being unable to express the administration's position on this matter is a point of failure that has no end point but confused messaging.
whatever your views on the conflict (and i'm far more empathetic to the palestinian struggle than the reporters in this room), the logic underlying the line of questioning is beyond warped. it's ultimately rooted in the base assumption that the united states has sovereign control over palestine. one could not coherently arrive at these questions without this core imperialist assumption. the logic suggesting that the state department can provide incentives by dropping support is the kind of thing that makes sense in the context of like the american civil war or something, and even there is going to come up against dramatic opposition from states rights supporters. the key is sovereignty. washington had sovereignty over virginia. it doesn't have sovereignty over palestine. trying to apply this kind of model to the behaviour of an independent, sovereign state (and this applies equally well to some of the questions about syria) is the kind of warped nineteenth century logic that led to the first world war.
the american position here - and this goes back to at least carter - is to try and engage the "moderate" palestinians, for the precise reason that it's well understood that completely cutting them off is going to send them to the arms of hamas. you cut the funding, that's what's going to happen. not less rocket attacks, but more of them. and without getting into the hypocrisy in too much detail, it's worthwhile to point out that it doesn't seem to have even crossed anybody's mind that the same logic applies to israeli attacks on palestine, which are always considerably more catastrophic. the more you isolate israel, the worse the attacks become. both of these things are demonstrable from shifts in policy over the last fifty years.
so, yes, you have to engage with the "technocratic government" if you want to prevent them from working with hamas. cutting them off will force them to work more closely with hamas, because it will then become their only option. that's the entire fucking point of the strategy.
and, it's imperative that the state department can put somebody in this position that can explain that, rather than let the hare-brained analysis of these dipshit reporters stand up without challenge.