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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/21/the-donald-trump-i-know-abbas-un-speech-and-the-breakdown-of-palestinian-politics/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/21/the-donald-trump-i-know-abbas-un-speech-and-the-breakdown-of-palestinian-politics/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">‘The Donald Trump I know’: Abbas’ UN
Speech and the Breakdown of Palestinian Politics</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/ramzy-baroud/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a> - February 21, 2020</span></div>
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<p>A precious moment has been squandered, as Palestinian
Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, had the chance to
right a historical wrong, by reinstating Palestinian
national priorities at the United Nations Security
Council on February 11, through a political discourse
that is completely independent from Washington and its
allies.</p>
<p>For a long time, Abbas has been a hostage to the very
language that designated him and his Authority as
‘moderates’ in the eyes of Israel and the West. Despite
the Palestinian leader’s outward rejection of the US
‘Deal of the Century’ – which practically renders
Palestinian national aspirations null and void – Abbas
is keen to maintain his ‘moderate’ credentials for as
long as possible.</p>
<p>Certainly, Abbas has given many speeches at the UN in
the past and, every single time, he has failed to
impress Palestinians. This time, however, things were
meant to be different. Not only did Washington disown
Abbas and the PA, it also scrapped its own political
discourse on peace and the two-state solution
altogether. More, the Trump administration has now
officially given its blessing to Israel to annex nearly
a third of the West Bank, taking Jerusalem ‘off the
table’ and discarding the right of return for
Palestinian refugees.</p>
<p>Instead of directly meeting with leaders of the various
Palestinian political parties and taking tangible steps
to reactivate dormant but central political institutions
such as the Palestinian National Council (PNC) and the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Abbas preferred
to meet with former Israeli right-wing Prime Minister,
Ehud Olmert, in New York, and to carry on regurgitating
his commitment to a by-gone era.</p>
<p>In his UN speech, Abbas said nothing new which, in this
instance, is worse than not saying anything at all.</p>
<p>“This is the outcome of the project that has been
introduced to us,” Abbas said, while holding a map of
what a Palestinian state would look like under Donald
Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’. “And this is the state
that they are giving to us,” Abbas added, referring to
that future state as a ‘Swiss cheese’, meaning a state
fragmented by Jewish settlements, bypass-roads and
Israeli military zones.</p>
<p>Even the term ‘Swiss cheese’, which was reported in
some media as if a new phrase in this ever-redundant
discourse, is actually an old coinage that has been
referenced repeatedly by the Palestinian leadership
itself, starting with the onset of the so-called peace
process, a quarter of a century ago.</p>
<p>Abbas labored to appear exceptionally resolute as he
emphasized certain words, like when he equated the
Israeli occupation with the system of apartheid. His
delivery, however, appeared unconvincing, lacking and,
at times, pointless.</p>
<p>Abbas spoke of his great ‘surprise’ when Washington
declared Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital,
subsequently relocating its embassy to the occupied
city, as if the writing was not already on the wall and
that, in fact, the embassy move was one of Trump’s main
pledges to Israel even before his inauguration in
January 2017.</p>
<p>“And then they cut off financial aid that was given to
us,” Abbas said in a lamenting voice with reference to
the US decision to withhold its aid to the PA in August
2018. “$840 million are held from us,” he said. “I don’t
know who is giving Trump such horrid advice. Trump is
not like this. Trump that I know is not like this,”
Abbas exclaimed in a strange interjection as if to send
a message to the Trump administration that the PA still
has faith in the US President’s judgement.</p>
<p>“I would like to remind everyone that we have
participated in the Madrid peace conference, and the
Washington negotiations and the Oslo agreement and the
Annapolis summit on the basis of international law,”
Abbas recounted, signaling that he remains committed to
the very political agenda that reaped the Palestinian
people no political rewards whatsoever.</p>
<p>Abbas then went on to paint an imagined reality, where
his Authority is supposedly building the “national
institutions of a law-abiding, modern and democratic
state that is constructed on the basis of international
values; one that is predicated on transparency,
accountability and fighting corruption.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Abbas emphasized, as he looked at his audience
with theatrical seriousness, “We are one of the most
important countries (in the world) that is fighting
corruption.” The PA leader, then, called on the Security
Council to send a commission to investigate allegations
of corruption within the PA, a bewildering and
unnecessary invitation, considering that it is the
Palestinian leadership that should be making demands on
the international community to help enforce
international law and end the Israeli occupation.</p>
<p>It went on like this, where Abbas vacillated between
reading pre-written remarks that introduce no new ideas
or strategies and unnecessary rants that reflect the
PA’s political bankruptcy and Abbas’ own lack of
imagination.</p>
<p>The PA President, of course, made sure to offer his
habitual condemnation of Palestinian ‘terrorism’ by
promising that Palestinians would not “resort to
violence and terrorism regardless of the act of
aggression against us.” He assured his audience that his
Authority believes in “peace and fighting violence.”
Without elaborating, Abbas declared his intention of
continuing on the path of “popular and peaceful
resistance,” which, in fact, does not exist in any shape
or form.</p>
<p>This time around, Abbas’ speech at the UN was
particularly inappropriate. Indeed, it was a failure in
every possible way. The least, the Palestinian leader
could have done is to articulate a powerful and
collective Palestinian political discourse. Instead, his
statement was merely a sad homage to his own legacy, one
that is riddled with disappointments and ineptitude.</p>
<p>Expectedly, Abbas returned to Ramallah to greet his
cheering supporters once more, who are always ready and
waiting to raise posters of the ageing leader, as if his
UN speech had succeeded in fundamentally shifting
international political momentum in favor of
Palestinians.</p>
<p>It has to be said that the real danger in the ‘Deal of
the Century’ is not the actual stipulations of that
sinister plan, but the fact that the Palestinian
leadership is likely to find a way to co-exist with it,
at the expense of the oppressed Palestinian people, as
long as donors’ money continues to flow and as long as
Abbas continues to call himself a president.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Ramzy Baroud</strong> is a journalist,
author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest
book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto
Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine
Studies from the University of Exeter and is a
Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and
International Studies, UCSB.</em> </p>
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