Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Cornering a Brave Palestinian Man of Peace
By Nicola Nasser*
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stands now at a
crossroads of his people’s national struggle for liberation and independence as
well as of his political life career, cornered between the rock of his own
rejecting constituency and the hard place of his Israeli occupying power and
the US sponsors of their bilateral negotiations, which were resumed last July
29, despite his minesweeping concessions and backtracking “on all his
redlines.”
Unmercifully pressured by both Israeli negotiators and
American mediators, the elusive cause of peace stands about to loose in Abbas a
brave Palestinian man of peace-making of an historical stature whose demise
would squander what could be the last opportunity for the so-called two-state
solution.
To continue pressuring Abbas into yielding more
concessions without any reciprocal rewards is turning a brave man into an
adventurer committing historical and strategic mistakes in the eyes of his
people, a trend that if continued would in no time disqualify him of a personal
weight that is a prerequisite to make his people accept his “painful”
concessions.
The emerging, heavily “pro-Israel” US-proposed
framework agreement “appears to ask the Palestinians to accept peace terms that
are worse than the Israeli ones they already rejected … that it would all but
compel the Palestinians to reject it,” Larry Derfner wrote in The National
Interest on this February 3.
Abbas “rejects all transitional, partial
and temporary solutions,” his spokesman Nabil Abu Rdaineh said on last January
5, but that’s exactly what the leaks of the blueprint of the “framework
agreement” reveal.
Reportedly, the international Quartet on
the Middle East, comprising the US, EU, UN and Russia, meeting on the sidelines
of the Munich security conference last week, supported US
Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to commit Palestinian and Israeli
negotiators to his proposed “framework agreement.”
However, The US envoy Martyn Indyk said on last January 31
that Kerry will be proposing the “framework agreement” to the Palestinian and
Israeli negotiators “within a few weeks,” but the State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki on the
same day “clarified” in a statement that the “contents of the framework” are not
“final” because “this is an ongoing process and these decisions have not yet
been made.”
Historic versus Political Decisions
Israeli President Shimon Peres on last January 30, during
a joint press conference with the envoy of the Middle East Quartet, Tony Blair,
said that there is “an opportunity” now to make “historic decisions, not
political ones” for the “two-state solution” of the Arab – Israeli conflict and
that “we are facing the most crucial time since the establishment of the new
Middle East in 1948,” i.e. since what the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé called the “ethnic cleaning” of the Arabs of Palestine
and the creation of Israel on their ancestral land.
Peres on the same occasion said that he was “convinced”
that Abbas wants “seriously” to make peace with Israel, but what Peres failed
to note was that “historic decisions” are made by historic leaders and that
such a leader is still missing in Israel since the assassination of late former
premier Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, but already available in the person of President
Abbas, whom Peres had more than once confirmed as the Palestinian peace
“partner,” defying his country’s official denial of the existence of such a
partner on the Palestinian side.
Abbas’ more than two – decade unwavering commitment to
peace, negotiations, renunciation of violence and the two –state solution has
earned him a semi-consensus rejection and opposition to his fruitless efforts
among his own people. He is defying his own Fatah-led Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) constituency, let alone his Hamas-led non-PLO political
rivals, who have opposed his decision to resume bilateral negotiations with Israel
“Abbas is perhaps the last Palestinian
leader today with some measure of faith in the diplomatic process,” Elhanan
Miller, wrote in The Times of Israel this February 3. Palestinian
“pressure” is mounting on him even from members of his own Fatah party and
“his negotiating team crumbled” when negotiator Mohammed Shtayyeh resigned
in November last year. In an interview recorded especially for the conference
of Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies in the previous week,
Abbas “indicated he may not be able to withstand the pressure much longer,”
Miller wrote.
“Abbas is in an unenviable
position these days. As negotiations with Israel enter the final third of their
nine-month time frame,” the Palestinian president stands “cornered” between a
Palestinian rejection “and an Israeli leadership bent on depicting him as an
uncompromising extremist,” according to Miller, who quoted the Israeli
Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz as describing Abbas in the previous week
as “the foremost purveyor of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli venom.”
Similar Israeli “political” demonization of an historic figure like
Abbas led Jamie Stern-Weiner, of the New Left
Project, writing in GlobalResearch online on last January 11, to expect that, “It’s possible that Abbas will
get a bullet in his head!” Jamie was not taking things too far in view of Kerry’s
warning, reported by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, that Abbas could
face the fate of his predecessor Yasser Arafat.
Israel’s
chief negotiator, Tzipi Livni, stated on last
January 25 that Abbas’ positions are “unacceptable to us” and threatened the
Palestinians “to pay the price” if he sticks to them.
“This is a
clear threat to Abbas in person and it must be taken seriously," the PA
Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told reporters soon after. “We will distribute Livni's
statements to all foreign ministers and the international community. We can't
remain silent towards these threats,” he added.
Israeli demonization was not confined to
Abbas; it hit also at Kerry as “hurtful,” “unfair,” “intolerable,” “obsessive,”
“messianic” and expects Israel
Minesweeping
Concessions
Abbas’
demonization was the Israeli reward for the minesweeping concessions he had
already made to make the resumed negotiations a success, risking a growing
semi-consensus opposition at home:
* Abbas had backtracked on his own previously proclaimed
precondition for the resumption of bilateral negotiations with Israel, namely freezing
the accelerating expansion of the illegal Israeli Jewish settlements in the
Palestinian territories, which Israel militarily occupied in 1967, at least
temporarily during the resumed negotiations.
* Thereafter, according to Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, writing in The
Jewish Press on this February 3, Abbas “has essentially backtracked on all
his redlines, except for” heeding Israel’s insistence on recognizing it as a
“Jewish state,” which is a new Israeli unilaterally demanded precondition that
even the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, considered “unacceptable” on
this February 2 despite his country’s peace treaty with Israel.
* In his interview with The New York
Times on this February 2, Abbas reiterated his repeated pledge not to allow
a third Intifada, or uprising: “In my life, and if I have any more life in the
future, I will never return to the armed struggle,” he said, thus voluntarily
depriving himself from a successfully tested source of a negotiating power and
a legitimate instrument of resisting foreign military occupation ordained by
the international law and the UN charter.
* In the same interview he yielded to the
Israeli precondition of “demilitarizing” any future state of Palestine Israel
* Further compromising the sovereignty of
any future state of Palestine, Abbas, according to the Times interview, has
proposed to US Secretary Kerry that an American-led NATO force, not a UN force,
patrol a future Palestinian state “indefinitely, with troops positioned
throughout the territory, at all crossings, and within Jerusalem;” he seemed
insensitive to the fact that his people would see such a force with such a
mandate as merely the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) operating under the NATO flag
and in its uniforms.
* Abbas even agreed that the IOF “could
remain in the West Bank for up to five years” -- and not three as he had
recently stated – provided that “Jewish settlements” are “phased out of the new
Palestinian state along a similar timetable.”
* Not all “Jewish settlements” however. Very
well aware of international law, which prohibits the transfer of people by an
occupying power like Israel from or to the occupied territories, Abbas
nonetheless had early enough accepted the principle of proportional land
swapping whereby the major colonial settlements, mainly within Greater Jerusalem
borders, which are home to some eighty percent of more than half a million
illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank, would be annexed to Israel. This
concession is tantamount to accepting the division of the West
Bank between its Palestinian citizens and its illegal settlers.
* Yet, what Abbas had described as the
“historic,” “very difficult,” “courageous” and “painful” concession Palestinians
had already made dates back very much earlier, when the Palestine National
Council adopted in 1988 the Declaration of Independence, which was based on the
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution No. 181 (II) of 29 November
1947; then “we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the
territory of historical Palestine - on all the Palestinian Territory occupied
by Israel in 1967,” he told the UNGA in September 2011.
* Accordingly, Abbas repeatedly voices
his commitment to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which stipules an “agreed
upon” solution of the “problem” of the 1948 Palestinian refugees. Israel
On September 29, 2012, Abbas “once again”
repeated “our warning” to the UNGA: “The window of opportunity is narrowing and
time is quickly running out. The rope of patience is shortening and hope is
withering.”
Out of Conviction, Not out of Options
Abbas is
making concessions unacceptable to his people out of deep conviction in peace
and unwavering commitment to peaceful negotiations and not because he is out of
options.
One of his options was reported in an
interview with The New York Times on this February 2, when Abbas said
that he had been “resisting pressure” from the Palestinian street and
leadership to join the United Nations agencies for which his staff “had
presented 63 applications ready for his signature.”
In 2012 the UNGA recognized Palestine as an observer non-member state; reapplying for
the recognition of Palestine as a member state
is another option postponed by Abbas to give the resumed negotiations with Israel
Reconciliation with Hamas in the Gaza
Strip is a third option that Abbas has been maneuvering not to make since 2005
in order not to alienate Israel and the US away from peace talks because they
condemn it as a terrorist organization.
Suspension of the security coordination
with Israel
Looking for other players to join the US in co-sponsoring the peace talks with Israel is an option that Abbas made clear in his
latest visit to Moscow Russia , the
European Union, China
Abbas’ representative Jibril al-Rjoub on
January 27 was in the Iranian capital Tehran Iran Iran Tehran
Opening up to
erstwhile “hostile” nations like Iran
and Syria
However his
strategic option would undeniably be to honor his previous repeated threats of
resignation, to leave the Israeli Occupation Forces to fend for themselves face
to face with the Palestinian people whose status quo is no more sustainable.
Speaking in Munich , Germany Israel
The loss of Abbas by resignation or by nature would for
sure end Kerry’s peace mission and make his warning come true.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir
Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com
