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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’).
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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).