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<h2><b>Abbas admits failure of the peace process</b></h2><font size=2>By
<a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/author/khalid-amayreh/">Khalid
Amayreh</a> • Nov 6th, 2009 at 13:59 <br>
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<a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/11/06/abbas-admits-failure-of-the-peace-process/" eudora="autourl">
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/11/06/abbas-admits-failure-of-the-peace-process/<br>
<br>
</a>WRITTEN BY KHALID AMAYREH<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
In short, Abbas blamed everyone for his failure, except himself.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
Keith Dayton inculcated our sons with the poisoned belief that
Israel was the friend and Hamas was the enemy.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
This inquisition, which is continuing unabated, saw the imprisonment and
torture of thousands of innocent people and the death of many.<br>
<br>
The PA connivance with Israel culminated earlier this year during
the Nazi-like Israeli onslaught against Gaza when the PA hoped that
the Jewish <i>Wehrmacht</i> would finish off Hamas and restore the Gaza
Strip to the Ramallah Junta on a silver platter.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Hence, his stupidity, naivety and misplaced trust of Israeli intentions
got him where he is now. He has none but himself to blame.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
However, he nearly always refused to listen, insisting that the “peace
process” was the Palestinians’ “only strategy.”<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
But Abbas can still embark on some daring steps to salvage things before
it is too late.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Failure to do so, under whatever pretexts and excuses, would only mean
legitimizing the colonial Israeli scheme and capitulating to the status
quo.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br><br>
<b><a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/author/khalid-amayreh/">Khalid
Amayreh</a></b> is a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of
Dura.<br>
<a href="mailto:amayreh@p-ol.com">Email this author</a> | All posts by
<a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/author/khalid-amayreh/">Khalid
Amayreh</a><br><br>
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