[News] Abbas blamed everyone for his failure, except himself
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Fri Nov 6 10:47:40 EST 2009
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 Americas 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 Abbass 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 Abbass 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 Hamass 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.
Abbass 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 enclaves 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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