Why do they call Abbas an American ally?

ABC News headline: "U.S. Ally Mahmoud Abbas in Serious Trouble."

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority is in dire political trouble.

The U.S. ally is being accused by Palestinians of colluding with Israel and the United States in sidelining the controversial Goldstone report on Israel's military operation in Gaza.

Ally? Ally? Abbas is as resolutely anti-American and anti-Israel as anyone in Hamas. In fact, as I explained in January,

The only difference between Hamas and Fatah/PA is one of tactics, not of objectives. Hamas is founded on violent jihad against Israel and in theory and practice has no use for conferencing or diplomacy. This is not conjecture; Hamas has stated it plainly. Hamas only strategy is warfare against Israel.

Fatah, on the other hand, is more willing to bide its time and use the so-called peace process to advance its goals. It is probably even willing to accept a two-state solution as a temporary measure from which to gain strength, influence and international legitimacy to advance the elimination of Jewish Israel and subsume it into a future, Muslim greater Palestine.

The civil war that Hamas and Fatah fought beginning in 2006, peaking in mid-2007, was not over differences in ultimate objectives, but over, mainly, who would rule the Palestinians and by what means their common objectives would be achieved.

How on earth ABC could possibly think of Abbas as an ally is beyond me.