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Abbas Needs a Miracle
By Ramzy Baroud
29/02/08 "ICH" -- - Time is running out for Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas. Although both men are still committed to their risky
venture of marginalising Hamas at any cost, the latter’s
obduracy and recent events in Gaza point to the inescapable
conclusion — the undertaking was doomed from the start.
For Olmert the issue demographics remains. He told Israeli daily
Ha’aretz in an interview published in November 2007 that if it
didn’t agree to an independent Palestinian state, Israel would
“face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights,
and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished”.
The Apartheid analogy is of course not a new one. Leading South
Africans themselves were the first to make the comparison, and
Israel’s history of aiding and abetting the infamous Apartheid
South African governments is no secret either.
But Olmert’s belated rude-awakening aside, it is Mahmoud Abbas
who is running out of options. Unlike Olmert, Abbas has no real,
measurable powers. For one, his popularity amongst his own
people has never been high. Past quarrels with late Palestinian
Authority President Yasser Arafat during the early years of the
Palestinian Uprising singled Abbas out at an untrustworthy
opportunist. Late professor Edward Said once called him
‘moderately corrupt.’ The formidable intellectual died before
seeing the moderate corruption of Abbas morphing into a
wholesale onslaught on democracy, freedom and every noble
principle the Palestinians ever fought for. I wonder what Said
would have said after seeing the people of Gaza suffering beyond
comprehension while Abbas and Olmert meet in the latter’s
Jerusalem residence, exchanging words of praise and vowing their
undying commitment to ‘peace’.
A photo released by the Israeli government Press office on
February 19 showed both leaders leaving another futile meeting
in Jerusalem, with Olmert — aware of the cameras flashing all
around them — holding an umbrella for the widely grinning Abbas.
The post card-like scenario is of course part of the continuing
charade of peace talks, deadlines and deadline extensions,
interrupted by temporary quarrels, which are sorted out by US
envoys before resuming more talks.
But how long can Abbas and Olmert carry on with this charade?
For Olmert, the objective and endgame are clear: stall until a
‘solution’ can be finalised and imposed on the Palestinians.
This in turns depends on the finalisation of the construction of
the illegal settlements, the wall and the network of Jewish-only
bypass roads in Occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank. However,
Olmert’s poor standing among the Israeli public and the
aforementioned ‘demographic threat’ will not make it possible
for him to stall indefinitely. Still, with the US’ record of
unconditionally backing Israeli policies, Olmert will remain in
a relatively safe spot, regardless of which major presidential
candidate goes on to claim the White House.
One can hardly say the same about Abbas. His usefulness for
Israel, and thus the US administration, is entirely dependent on
his level of ‘cooperation’, which essentially means ensuring
Palestinian disunity, fighting Hamas, and remaining a pawn in
the US’ imaginative view of the entire region (whereby
‘moderates’ stand united against ‘extremists’ and ‘rejectionists’).
Yet, unlike other Arab ‘moderates’, Abbas lacks all leverage. He
‘presides’ over an ever shrinking entity, itself under military
occupation. Many of his people regularly accuse him of
‘treason’, or at best, of ‘selling out’. On top of this, his
party is falling apart. Mohammed Dahlan is already acting with
the air of presidency. Now based in Egypt, he has been gathering
support for himself amidst scattered talks about his desire to
form an alternative party to Fatah.
Worse yet, Mohamed Nazzal, a visible member of Hamas’ political
bureau in Damascus told Aljazeera.net on February 19 that
despite Hamas’ insistence on the inclusion of Marwan Barghouti
(a leading Fatah figure who is greatly supported by the
movement’s youth and strongly disliked by the old guard) in any
future prisoner swaps, Israel has removed the latter’s name from
the list, at Abbas’ behest.
Abbas’ lack of any meaningful political vision is also promoting
other members of his team to speak of political programmes
entirely inconsistent with his own style. Yasser Abed Rabbo, the
Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee told Reuters in
an interview on February 20 — views which he repeated to AFP and
Palestinian radio in Arabic — what Palestinians should consider
should talks continue to falter. “If things are not going in the
direction of actually halting settlement activities, if things
are not going in the direction of continuous and serious
negotiations, then we should take the step and announce our
independence unilaterally.”
Abbas’ answer was his intent to continue negotiating, and that
he was “optimistic and hopeful.”
It’s unclear where from Abbas’ hope originates. He stands on
very shaky grounds, not only in his conditional relationship
with Israel, the US and his own party, at home and abroad, but
with Hamas as well. His earlier rhetoric about Hamas’s ties to
Al Qaeda and the ‘forces of darkness’ are softening, but he
knows he has no mandate to reach out to his opponents. But it is
increasingly clear to the world that isolating Hamas means the
continuation of Gaza’s mass hunger and suffering. This is so
extreme that even Europeans are reportedly rethinking their
stance on Hamas, which the EU had deemed ‘terrorist’.
If Abbas, however, tried to rethink his relations with Hamas, he
would be abandoned by Israel and the US, and might find himself
a victim of a calculated coup led by his party’s strongmen. If
he continues with the charade of endless and futile talks with
Israel, the patience of his people would eventually run out.
Considering all of this — Abbas’ shared responsibly for the
plight of Gaza, his anti-democratic legacy and his inability to
reunite his faltering party — the president seems condemned to a
lose-lose scenario, one which would take no less than a miracle
to put right.
Ramzy Baroud (
www.ramzybaroud.net ) is an author and editor of
www.palestinechronicle.com . (Please visit their
website
www.palestinechronicle.com )His work has been
published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest
book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a
People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
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