Passive aggressive Abbas

In a perfectly bewildering column Jim Hoagland blames President Obama and Judge Goldstone for undermining Mahmoud Abbas. In It’s up to Netanyahu he writes:

No one could accuse President Obama or Judge Richard Goldstone of South Africa of harboring ill will toward the president of the Palestinian Authority. But their separate worthy initiatives have resulted in pushing Abbas into a political dead end that complicates the chances for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

In the first case:

But the Arab mood has darkened significantly in the interim. The Arabs say that the encouraging rhetoric of Obama’s Cairo speech in June has been washed away by his failure to deliver a total settlement freeze that includes East Jerusalem — a condition that the new Israeli offer will not meet. A total freeze has become an Arab precondition for resuming negotiations with Israel.

Israelis, on the other hand, are newly confident of U.S. support, which rattles the Arabs even more. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu got a cold shower from Obama and congressional leaders when he visited Washington in May. He was told that he should accept the principle of a Palestinian state, which he grudgingly did last summer.

In the latter:

Whatever the Goldstone report’s merits — and they are lessened by its deliberate demonization of Israel’s motives and milquetoast exculpations of Hamas’s actions — it seems to have been written with no feel for the political consequences it would bring for the peace process. The report also ignored the concern that it would create at the Pentagon and in other Western military headquarters with forces fighting guerrillas who use civilian populations and infrastructure as shields in modern asymmetrical warfare.

On Capitol Hill, misgivings about Netanyahu were buried in a reflexive gathering around Israel under U.N.-inspired attack. The Goldstone fracas also helped push the politically sensitive Obama White House back toward a more supportive, traditional U.S. attitude toward Israel. Abbas — not glimpsing the quagmire he was lurching toward — went along with Washington’s request to ask the United Nations to delay taking up Goldstone’s report, only to back down when Jordan and Egypt joined Hamas in unleashing ferocious criticism of Abbas in their media.

Hoagland is giving way too much credit to Goldstone. As I’ve written, the whole report was conceived in sin. Of course it didn’t take political consequences into account, it was meant to demonize Israel – as even Hoagland recognizes. And it was supported by even such moderates as Egypt and Jordan. The point of Goldstone was to aid those who wish to isolate Israel.

Abbas continues to be passive aggressive. This has been the hallmark of his career. Being Arafat’s #2, he really had to be careful not to be too ambitious. With Arafat gone, he believes the way to get ahead is to do nothing and let others pressure Israel.

But what’s really odd about the column is the way that it treats Abbas – not the peace process- as sacrosanct. If Abbas was interested in peace wouldn’t he have accepted Olmert’s offer last year? Would his PA still be publishing anti-Israel (if not antisemitic) propaganda if he were interested in peace?

Barry Rubin looked at much the same information back in October anc concluded that the Palestinians were not much interested in peace. Hoagland concludes that it’s up to Netanyahu to make concessions to keep Abbas in power.

Israel’s long occupation of Palestinian territory has helped produce the cynicism and weak leadership on both sides that confound would-be international shapers of peace and moral rectitude. Outsiders cannot resolve this conflict: Only an Israeli decision to end that occupation in fast order can lead to the security Israelis need and deserve, and to the dignity that Palestinians seek through a state of their own. That is the broader, more vital decision that Netanyahu needs to make.

If the Palestinians want a state of their own they need to build. It’s 16 years past the point where anyone should still be maining the illusiong that a Palestinian state is the responbility of others.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad