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,
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
A photo released by the Israeli government Press office on February 19 showed both leaders leaving another futile meeting in
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
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
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
If Abbas, however, tried to rethink his relations with Hamas, he would be abandoned by
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of 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,
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