The New York Times had a symposium on Mahmoud Abbas’s resignation. Three of the participants, Rashid Khalidi, Fawaz Gerges, and Daoud Kuttab took the approach that Abbas had his authority undermined by the Americans and has no partner among Israelis so his moderate approach had run its course. An Israeli professor, Menachem Klein looked at things in much the same way. Ronen Bergman attributes it to the Obama administration’s missteps. David Makovsky doesn’t think he’s really resigned.
But no one in this group actually questions the premise if Abbas is really the moderate (implicitly) supposed by the question. (To Gerges and Khalidi, presumably he was too moderate.)
Khaled Abu Toameh though, calls the move a “big bluff,” and puts much of the onus on Abbas for his own weakness.
Fatah’s failure to come up with new faces is also seen by many Palestinians as evidence that the faction is not serious when it comes to implementing reforms. With candidates like Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and Nabil Sha’ath, Fatah is certain to lose the vote once again. Decision-makers in the US and the EU have clearly forgotten that these three men were part of the Fatah list that lost the elections to Hamas in 2006. And they appear to have forgotten that Barghouti, who is often described by mainstream media in the US as a popular and charismatic leader, was the head of that list.
(My impression is that Hamas isn’t all that popular right now as it hasn’t succeeded in doing much but making the people of Gaza more miserable.) And of course, how seriously could Abbas’s commitment to fighting corruption be, when his sons benefit from a cellular franchise? This is the way Fatah always did business, giving the favored few, lucrative business deals?
But it is Evelyn Gordon who really blows the lid off Abbas. She actually recalls his record!
Indeed, Abbas’s total lack of interest in a deal was evidenced by his handling of Ehud Olmert’s (overly) generous September 2008 offer, which included 94 percent of the territories, 1:1 territorial swaps to compensate for the remainder, international Muslim control over the Temple Mount, and absorption into Israel of several thousand refugees. Last week, Abbas said that he and Olmert “almost closed†a deal, implying that the current impasse stems from Olmert’s replacement by Benjamin Netanyahu. But in reality, Abbas never even bothered responding to Olmert’s offer until nine months later, long after Olmert had left office — and even then, he did so via a media interview rather than directly. And, most important, he rejected the offer, saying “the gaps were wide.â€
Even Abbas’s vaunted opposition to terror has proved false. In 2005, his one year in sole control over the PA before Hamas’s electoral victory, Palestinians killed 54 Israelis and wounded 484, while 1,059 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from Gaza. Yet not only did Abbas never order his forces to combat this terror; he explicitly and repeatedly refused to do so. He first cracked down on Hamas only in 2007, after its violent takeover of Gaza convinced him that Hamas threatened him, not just Israel. And he recently agreed to end this clampdown under a reconciliation agreement with Hamas.
Now go back, if you wish, and read the New York Times “debate” and you’ll realize it was a less a debate than an agreement (from different perspectives) for more Israeli concessions to an unworthy political hack.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
