<div dir="ltr">
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<font size="1"><a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210602-palestinians-demand-the-removal-of-abbas-from-his-leadership-positions/">https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210602-palestinians-demand-the-removal-of-abbas-from-his-leadership-positions/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Palestinians demand the removal of Abbas from his leadership positions</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Fayez Abu Shamalah - June 2, 2021<br></div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-post-content"> <p>The
Palestinian people have the right to live in the kind of democracy that
the West and the East are talking about repeatedly. With over 60 per
cent of the population being made up of young people, they also have the
right to be led by younger people, with the elders who have been shown
to be incapable in terms of their policies and practices, and less aware
politically, stepping aside. The current leaders have less influence
over the course of events than the resistance movements.</p> <p>The
Palestinian people are fed up, and are refusing to have their
capabilities shackled by the decisions of an aging president, while
seeing their land usurped even as the same president's "sacred" security
cooperation with the Israeli occupation authorities continues. The
people refuse to be silenced when they hear false claims of
achievements, and they will not be silent while their homeland is being
stolen by Jewish settlers.</p> <p>The people have been very patient as
they have waited for change. Now the time has come to take action and
bring about that change, using all of the cultural, academic, political,
organisational, popular, institutional and familial means at their
disposal. The call has been made for the removal of Mahmoud Abbas from
all of his leadership positions in the Palestine Liberation
Organisation, Fatah and, of course, the Palestinian Authority. The
people must be allowed to decide who will lead them on the path to
freedom, to end the occupation and remove its agents who have insulted
Palestine's history, resistance, cause, people, future and destiny.</p> <p>Thousands
of Palestinian individuals have thus signed a petition, the contents of
which reflects the conscience of the people. The text is as follows:</p> <p>We,
the undersigned Palestinian intellectuals, academics and public
figures, address the Palestinian people including all of its active and
struggling forces with this petition in order to strip what remains of
the legitimacy of President Mahmoud Abbas, and demand his resignation or
immediate dismissal from all his leadership positions: the Presidency
of the Palestinian Authority, the presidency of the Palestine Liberation
Organisation, and the presidency of the Fatah movement. We call on them
to support the national campaign to rebuild the Palestine Liberation
Organisation, and the election of an alternative leadership for the
Palestinian people.</p> <p><strong>READ: <a title="Palestinians are defeating the Oslo culture typified by bumbling Abbas" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210601-palestinians-are-defeating-the-oslo-culture-typified-by-bumbling-abbas/">Palestinians are defeating the Oslo culture typified by bumbling Abbas</a></strong></p> <p>The
recent glorious Jerusalem Intifada has revealed the resounding
impotence of the president, his policies and his authority, and the
Palestinian public have had enough. Since the start of the intifada in
the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, and then its expansion to include
Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem, then Gaza, the West Bank, the occupied Palestinian
territories and diaspora, the president has been the most prominent
absentee. After the end of the battle, Abbas added to his political
record another failure represented in the absence of moral solidarity
with the suffering of the Palestinian people as a whole, even at its
minimum levels. He did not bother visiting the families of martyrs in
Gaza and the West Bank or to seize this opportunity as the beginning of
the end of the division. Instead, the Jerusalem Intifada revealed the
extent of the self-paralysis in which the president placed himself, and
even restrained a longstanding national movement with a great history
like Fatah and froze it, if not destroyed it, along with the PLO, its
leadership, and its representation of the Palestinian people, which
unfortunately was the second most notable absentee in the Jerusalem
Intifada.</p> <p>The call to dismiss Abbas provides a quick inventory of
the past three decades, which indicates that the path of the "peace
negotiations" achieved nothing but a mirage. In the absence of real,
effective national institutions that would be able to hold accountable
those responsible for political failure, such as the Palestinian
National Council, the Palestine Liberation Organisation or the
Palestinian Central Council, it has become imperative for everyone in
the nation to raise their voices clearly and demand the removal of the
failures, headed by Mahmoud Abbas himself.</p> <p>The petition summarised the sins of Mahmoud Abbas in the following points:</p> <ul><li>Three
decades of utter failure by this president, the decline of the
Palestine issue with him, and the erosion of Palestinian rights.</li><li>His continued declaration of hostility towards the resistance and the uprising.</li><li>His shameful absence from the last Jerusalem Intifada.</li><li>Freezing and impeding the Fatah movement, and paralysing the effectiveness of its organisational institutions.</li><li>Freezing
the PLO and keeping it completely absent from the struggle and
representation of the Palestinians, and not listening to the calls of
all sectors of the people for it to be reformed.</li><li>Transforming
the interim Oslo process and its dangerous gamble into a permanent
regime, based in its essence on providing security services to the
Zionist occupation.</li><li>Transforming the Palestinian
Authority into a dictatorial institution ruled by a single individual,
with laws issued according to Abbas's own mood, under the guise of
presidential decrees, without any oversight or accountability.</li><li>Cancelling
the Palestinian legislative election, which was scheduled for last
month, and thereby solidifying the absence of any electoral or militant
legitimacy that can be referred to.</li><li>Continuing
to try the same things over and over again, with the same lack of
results, and his mad commitment to the negotiations path, that he has
been committed to for the past three decades, without listening to the
mood of the people or their advisory bodies.</li><li>His
submission to the sponsorship of the US, which is in the same trench
with Israel and its Zionist project, and then accepting the US as an
"honest" broker.</li><li>His failure to bear the
responsibility of taking serious measures to end the divisions given his
capacity as the leading figure for the Palestinian people.</li><li>His neglect of any serious and real unitary struggle project or horizon.</li></ul> <p>In conclusion, the signatories said:</p> <p>We
declare that this president no longer has any political or national
legitimacy, and he must resign immediately, or be removed from the three
leadership positions he controls. We call upon our Palestinian people
to join this call, and to turn over a new leaf based on the unity of the
struggle, the unity of the people, and the unity of the land, and to
begin rebuilding the PLO in a unitary and representative manner for all.
We also call for launching popular resistance in the entire occupied
land.</p> <p><strong>READ: <a title="PA: Israeli escalation in Jerusalem tests US position on Palestine" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210527-pa-israeli-escalation-in-jerusalem-tests-us-position-on-palestine/">PA: Israeli escalation in Jerusalem tests US position on Palestine</a></strong></p> <p>The
Palestinian people no longer have the luxury of time to waste with a
president who has proven his failure and has no project, while our enemy
is devouring our land and our rights every day. The truth must be told
as it is, without any niceties or hesitation.</p> <p>I signed this
petition in a personal capacity, and I call upon the Palestinian masses
to take action against this tyrant, who has destroyed the foundations on
which our Palestinian cause was and should be based.</p> <p>The views
expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily
reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>