Negotiating by tantrum

About two weeks ago when Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said he was quitting, Daled Amos observed that this less a dramatic announcement than standard operating procedure noting 14 times that he has threatened to quit since 2003. This isn’t an ultimatum for Abbas, but standard operating procedure. Knowing that he’s perceived as an irreplaceable “moderate,” when he doesn’t get his way he threatens to quit, hoping to be induced by incentives to stay. Think of it as negotiating by tantrum.

Barry Rubin outlined the elements of Abbas’s strategy:

t’s really funny how the story about Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas supposedly-going-to-call-elections-and-resign story was covered. Everyone in the Middle East knew he wouldn’t resign and he wouldn’t call elections. It was a blatant bid to get something from the Americans and pretend that he was tough. But the Western media reported the story as if it were true.

This technique borrows from Egyptian President (dictator) Gamal Abdel Nasser after he lost the 1967 war. Step 1: Announce your quitting. Step 2: Organize big demonstrations begging you not to quit. Abbas added to this a Step 3: Get Westerners to give you goodies and demand more concessions from Israel so that you’ll stay.

So the media played along and took it seriously. In the process we were given the mainstream view of the Israel-Palestinian conflict within the framework of the Commandment: Thou shalt not criticize the Palestinian side. Well, you can knock Hamas but not the PA. In fact, the more one-sided the reporting, the better.

But it wasn’t long before it was clear he’d stay on as the PA’s head and there won’t be any elections.

If you thought it was over, it isn’t. Today Ethan Bronner of the New York Times writes:

The Israeli security establishment is in a state of alarm over the possible departure of Mr. Abbas, whom it considers a genuine moderate. Some of its top members are urging their government to make far-reaching offers — “not just lifting a few roadblocks,” in the words of one — that would persuade him to stay in power and resume negotiations with Israel on a solution that involves creating an independent Palestinian state.

Palestinian leaders are looking elsewhere for salvation. Aware of their own weakness, but also of rising disillusionment abroad with Israel over West Bank settlement growth and its war in Gaza in January, they are hoping to turn frailty to their advantage by appealing to the international community to come to their rescue.

Note how Abbas’s strategy is stated explicitly. He’s not getting what he wants so he’s using the threat to resign as a cry for help to the international community. The twist here is the “state of alarm” of Israel’s security establishment. Can it be that Israel’s security establishment really fears Abbas’s resignation? One would think like the boy who cried wolf, Abbas doesn’t have much credibility.

Later on Bronner inadvertently touches on the real problem of Palestinian leadership: there’s no real moderation there. Relatively speaking, Abbas is a moderate, but last year he rejected a peace proposal from then PM Ehud Olmert that went beyond Ehud Barak’s proposal to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000. Knowing that Olmert would soon no longer be Prime Minister, Abbas didn’t see the urgency of accepting his proposal. Instead he rejected a peace offer in hopes that the international community would pressure Israel to cede even more!

The problem is that most of the rest of the Palestinian leadership is even more extreme than he is. Here’s more from Bronner:

Mr. Abbas has not groomed a successor. The American and Israeli dream would be Mr. Fayyad, but besides having no political base, he is not a member of Fatah, so Palestinians consider the prospect highly unlikely. More possible, a few say, would be for Mr. Abbas to remain president while allowing Mr. Fayyad to carry out his reform plan.

Two former security chiefs, Muhammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, are also possibilities, although there seems to be no groundswell around them and plenty of opposition. Muhammad Ghneim, a founder of both Fatah and the P.L.O. who came to the West Bank this past summer from exile, is considered a possible place holder if the job suddenly becomes vacant. And Nasser al-Kidwa, a nephew of Mr. Arafat and former Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, is also mentioned by some as a possible future candidate.

But there is no appetite for a succession struggle as everyone waits to see whether the peace process deadlock can be broken.

Those who read Barry Rubin know that the candidate who emerged the strongest from this summer’s Fatah election was Ghneim. Here’s what Prof Rubin wrote about Ghneim (Ghanem):

Ghaneim has a definite appeal for Abbas as ally and successor. He is one of the few remaining original founders of Fatah and has wide contacts throughout the movement.

On the one hand, he possesses Arafat’s seal of approval historically but on the other hand he is so hard-line as to appeal to that powerful tendency in Fatah. In addition, as someone who has been outside the PA politics for 15 years he was seen as a neutral figure in many petty and personal disputes.

But this is not the man to choose if your top priorities were making peace with Israel and maintaining good relations with the West. He is the man you would choose if you intended to reject compromise, rebuild links to Syria and Hamas, and perhaps return to armed struggle in future.

On arrival at the Allenby Bridge crossing from Jordan on July 29, 2009, just before the Fatah Congress, Ghaneim was picked up by Abbas’ personal limousine, taken to his office, and welcomed in a ceremony.

At the reception, Ghaneim stated: “The struggle will continue until victory” and that if political means did not win Palestinian demands the movement would return to armed struggle. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 30, 2009). It is clear how Ghaneim defines victory and it is not a West Bank-Gaza state with its capital in east Jerusalem living alongside Israel in perfect harmony.

That Ghaneim would give up demands that all Palestinian refugees and their offspring must be allowed to live in Israel or that he would make any territorial compromise, or that he would end the conflict permanently in any peace agreement is extremely unlikely. These are things–all necessary for peace–that even the less extreme Abbas has rejected.

So the problem isn’t that the Israel might lose the one “moderate” peace partner, it’s that such a partner doesn’t truly exist. And even if one wants to point to someone such as Salam Fayyad, the problem is that he has no political base. There’s no real constituency for moderation in the PA.

The media and selected members of Israel’s security establishment can take Abbas’s threat to quit seriously, but in the end it really won’t affect things much one way or another. It’s just one more tantrum.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.