[News] Abbas blamed everyone for his failure, except himself

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Abbas admits failure of the peace process

By 
<http://palestinethinktank.com/author/khalid-amayreh/>Khalid 
Amayreh • Nov 6th, 2009 at 13:59
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/11/06/abbas-admits-failure-of-the-peace-process/

WRITTEN BY KHALID AMAYREH
Mahmoud Abbas, the beleaguered head of the 
Palestinian Authority, has finally but belatedly 
admitted that  the so-called Peace process with 
Israel has completely failed and that the 
Palestinian people will have to seek an alternative to it.

In a speech in Ramallah Thursday evening, Abbas 
rightly blamed Israel for the collapse of the 
political process, saying that the PA had carried 
out “all our commitments and obligations” while 
Israel continued to steal Palestinian land and build Jewish settlements.

The 74-year-old Fatah leader said  he decided not 
to seek a second term as PA Chairman, citing the 
failure of peace talks with Israel and the 
Israeli refusal to end the occupation that started in 1967.

He cited America’s embrace of  Israeli 
rejectionism, especially with regard to Jewish 
settlement expansion, and the so-far unsuccessful 
efforts to reach national reconciliation between 
Fatah and Hamas, as the main reasons for his decision.

In short, Abbas blamed everyone for his failure, except himself.

Indeed, from the very inception of his 
“presidency,”!!!! Abbas sought to appease the 
Israelis and the Americans in ways that seriously 
undermined Palestinian national dignity, making 
our enemy and its guardian-ally overseas view the 
PA leadership as a quisling entity.

Abbas and cohorts  allowed an American general to 
train and “build” Palestinian “national forces” 
in accordance with a manifestly treasonous 
doctrine whereby the Palestinian struggle against 
the Israeli occupation was considered “acts of terror.”

Keith Dayton inculcated our sons with the 
poisoned belief  that Israel was the friend and Hamas was the enemy.

Eventually, the Americans cajoled and encouraged 
some ambitious and careerist-minded Fatah leaders 
to try a military coup against the democratically 
elected government in Gaza, which eventually led 
to the enduring showdown between Fatah and Hamas.

But instead of seeking genuine reconciliation 
with Hamas, the Abbas leadership stopped short of 
forging a brazen alliance with the Israeli 
occupation army against Palestinian resistance, 
mainly in order to obtain a certificate of good 
conduct from the Israelis and Americans.

We all remember that infamous treacherous 
encounter between Abbas’s generals and Israeli 
army commanders at Beit El near Ramallah in 
September, 2008, when the highest ranking 
Palestinian security commander in the West Bank 
told his Zionist colleagues that “we are allies 
against terror” and that “we have one common 
enemy, and the name of that enemy is Hamas.”

These remarks were not merely a slip of the 
tongue on the part of the Abbas’s leadership. 
They were translated and are still being 
translated into policy in every street and corner 
in the West Bank where the PA security forces 
have been waging a harsh inquisition against Hamas’s supporters.

This inquisition, which is continuing unabated, 
saw the imprisonment and torture of thousands of 
innocent people and the death of many.

The PA connivance with Israel culminated earlier 
this year during  the Nazi-like 
Israeli  onslaught against Gaza when the PA hoped 
that the Jewish Wehrmacht would finish off Hamas 
and restore the Gaza Strip to the Ramallah Junta on a silver platter.

Abbas’s sins are not confined to the post-2006 
elections plots and machinations against Hamas, 
such as encouraging the west to keep up and even 
tighten the blockade of Gaza and encouraging the 
Egyptian leadership to seal the Rafah 
border-crossing for the purpose of strangling the 
coastal enclave’s 1.5 million inhabitants in the 
hope that they would rise up against Hamas.

His management of the futile peace talks with 
Israel was decidedly scandalous. Often behaving 
like Alice  in Wonderland, Abbas on numerous 
occasion gave his people the impression that 
peace was around the corner and that Ehud Olmert, 
the hero of the virtual genocide against Gaza, was an honest peace partner.

The kissing parties involving Abbas and Olmert in 
West Jerusalem made many people in Palestine as 
well as the outside world think that Israel was 
finally coming to terms with legitimate 
Palestinian rights and that the establishment of 
a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as 
its capital was only a matter of a few months.

Needless to say, all these hectic but 
disingenuous activities, misleadingly termed 
“peace talks,” were taking place while Israeli 
bulldozers were pulverizing more Palestinian land, farms and orchards.

During these chummy chats, Abbas never really 
insisted on a full and total stoppage of Jewish 
settlement expansion, the malignant cancer 
devouring the remainder of the West Bank, nor did 
he insist on determining the end-game of the protracted process.

Hence, his stupidity, naivety and misplaced trust 
of Israeli intentions got him where he is now. He 
has none but himself to blame.

Many Palestinian and Arab leaders had advised him 
not to be duped and deceived by the Israelis into 
succumbing to a vague and lengthy process that 
would allow Israel to create more facts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

However, he nearly always refused to listen, 
insisting that the “peace process” was the Palestinians’ “only strategy.”

And when a Palestinian journalist asked him a few 
months ago what he would  do if the peace process 
failed, he shamelessly said that the alternative 
to the peace process was the peace process.

Abbas claimed in his speech that the door was 
still open for the “two-state solution.” However, 
a day earlier, Saeb Ureikat, a key political 
advisor to Abbas, was quoted as saying that time 
was becoming too late for a Palestinian state and 
that the Palestinian leadership would have to be 
honest and frank with the Palestinian masses in this regard.

It is hard to think how Abbas can redeem and 
rectify some of his blunders. Some of his sins, 
such as the security coordination with Israel, can never be forgiven.

But Abbas can still embark on some daring steps 
to salvage things before it is too late.

At the top of these steps should be the orderly 
dismantling of the Palestinian Authority under 
whose rubric the national Palestinian cause is being liquidated.

Failure to do so, under whatever pretexts and 
excuses, would only mean legitimizing the 
colonial Israeli scheme and capitulating to the status quo.

Let us get rid of the big lie and confront 
ourselves with the all too-clear  fact that the 
colonialist Zionist occupation of our country 
never really receded and that the Oslo Agreement 
was a deception from A to Z.  We must tell our 
people that the PA is not a phase toward 
liberation from Zionist tyranny, as we have been 
told, but is rather an instrument for the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.

Is Abbas willing to face reality? Or does he 
need  another15 years of deception and lies to 
realize what every Palestinian child knows thoroughly well.

<http://palestinethinktank.com/author/khalid-amayreh/>Khalid 
Amayreh is a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura.
<mailto:amayreh at p-ol.com>Email this author | All 
posts by <http://palestinethinktank.com/author/khalid-amayreh/>Khalid Amayreh




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