Mahmoud Abbas Dropping Out of Palestinian Elections
Reports are out that Mahmoud Abbas is telling people he won’t run for re-election as head of the Palestinian Authority: “The aides said Abbas received calls earlier today from Israel’s president and defense minister, the president of Egypt and the king of Jordan, all asking him to reconsider.”
People want Abbas to reconsider, because him declining to run could be a disaster for the peace process which, in turn, would be a disaster for the remaining credibility of the four figures in question. But note that among those begging Abbas to reconsider is not Israel’s prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, who loves the idea of isolating and discrediting Palestinian moderates in order to bring Palestinian radicals to power and thus have the pretext he wants to avoid peace negotiations. The question is why the United States has been helping Netanyahu do this. The Obama administration’s decision to back-track on its initial demand of a settlement freeze, followed by the catastrophically counterproductive pressure that was brought to bear on Abbas to disavow the Goldstone report have massively undermined his political position. The upshot has been another set of victories for the Hamas-Likud partnership that’s been ruining things in Israel/Palestine since the wave of suicide bombings that brought Netanyahu to power in the first place in the 1990s.
44 Responses to “Mahmoud Abbas Dropping Out of Palestinian Elections”
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November 5th, 2009 at 11:23 am
Who could just walk away from that kind of power?
November 5th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Agree except for the fact that Abbas and his cohort have been basically running on fumes since Arafat died, which is a large part of the reason Hamas has looked so much more appealing. Fatah needs new leadership and new ideas in the worst way. No one comes to mind (which is the problem) but maybe this is an opening for Mustafa or Marwan Barghouti to step up, or someone we haven’t heard of yet. Clear out the dead wood and see who comes forward.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:25 am
It doesn’t matter what Abbas does. Palestinians have no power, nothing to offer or demand. Israel can do whatever she wants, even kill hundreds of civilians, and continue ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Obama won’t lift a finger, and the Congress will keep on sending billions in “aid”.
Abbas doesn’t matter, and he understands that.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:27 am
It would be beneficial for the peace process if Abbas dropped out. The only Palestinian groups that could make peace with Israel are hard line groups, because they are the only groups that have the credibility to enforce a peace treaty.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Apropos of the Fatah leadership crisis angle, here’s a lecture by Ahmad Khalidi on that topic as well as the general decline of the whole Palestinian national movement. Pretty devastating stuff.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:28 am
After the Goldstone report fiasco, what little credibility Abbas had is long gone.
I’m sure DTM or Joe for Lowell will be by soon enough to tell us how this is all part of some master plan on Obama’s part.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am
“why the United States has been helping Netanyahu do this”
Because Obama would rather look weak than risk looking really weak.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Agreed on your points about Goldstone. But I think you overstate the case to which Abu Mazen’s departure would hurt the “peace process.”
Abbas has been a remarkably ineffective leader over the last few years, and the “peace process” is pretty much dead regardless of what he decides to do. Netanyahu’s intransigence makes sure of that.
If Abbas departs, there’s an opening at the top of the PA. Maybe someone more effective — and better-respected by the Palestinian people — steps up to fill the void.
The outlook for Israeli/Palestinian negotiations is really bad right now, but Abbas’ departure is pretty low on the list of reasons why.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:33 am
“…Bibi Netanyahu, who loves the idea of isolating and discrediting Palestinian moderates in order to bring Palestinian radicals to power and thus have the pretext he wants to avoid peace negotiations. ”
As opposed to avoiding peace negotiations with no pretext, or manufacturing another one, etc.
IIRC, this was a guy who sh*t all over the Oslo accords.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
The question is why the United States has been helping Netanyahu do this.
We know why the politicians and the media help Netanyahu. A more interesting question is why non-zionists are so passive on this issue. Particularly when the US supports such an immoral project.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I thought Abbas lost the last election and is now a usurper. Did a majority of voters actually elect him to anything?
November 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am
You have to wonder what Hillary is saying to the WH.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:40 am
The fact is that any Palestinian leader who genuinely desires a deal with Israel will have to drop the demand for resettling Palestinian refugees in that state. Since dropping the demand is unacceptable to the Palestinian masses at this poihnt in time, there is zero chance of such an individual coming to power. That includes Salem Fayad, Sari Nussibeh, or Mr. Yglesias’ hero, Mustafa Barghouti. In fact, if Hamas leader Haniyeh advocated such a position, he wouldn’t last 2 minutes in his current position and would be most fortunate to escape with his head.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:55 am
SLC
Isn’t interesting how, whatever the evidence, the conclusion is always that the Israelis and the Palestinians can’t even begin to talk? Obviously, this conclusion benefits the Israelis, since without talking, the side with more military might wins. One has to wonder whether you draw it in good faith.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:58 am
There is no peace process, no intelligent or honest one anyway. We should disavow ourselves of this notion, that there is a peace process and Israel is a well-meaning participant, and speak frankly about the issue.
Ultimately, Israel expects to win by military force, and will kill as many as necessary, their current calculus 9 Palestinians for every Israeli life, to ensure the momentum of events leads to the desired conclusion.
Unfortunately, this is not wise wishful thinking on their part, and will inevitably lead to even greater tragedy, as hubris nearly always does.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I think Palestinians have figured out that there is no partner for peace in Israel. Until Israelis elect a government interested in peace, there is not much that can be done.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I thought I heard one of the Palestinian leaders saying yesterday that with this impasse, the two state solution is dead and that the Palestinians will pursue a one state solution within Israel with Palestinians demanding full Israeli citizenship. I think a threat of that will have Bibi running for a full bearhug with Abbas and immediately start negotiations for a two state solution.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
If peace were just around the corner it might make sense to think that it is a tragedy that Abbas is out. But the reality is that if peace comes it will come from a new direction. And a PA leader who actually has the respect of the Palestinians would seem to be a step up in this regard. The people who want him to run do not want to rock the boat. But given the situation there, rocking the boat is not such a bad thing.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
TH,
The Palestinians elect the President and the parliament in separate elections. Abbas was elected President in the last such elections. I think the new elections are overdue, but it has not actually been possible to hold elections and not clear how possible it will be to hold the coming elections with Hamas trying to prevent some Palestinians from voting and Israel trying to stop others.
Abbas’s party got stomped by Hamas in the last parliamentary elections and so Haniyeh is Prime Minister. Later Abbas appointed a different Prime Minister who might be the “usurper” you are thinking of.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
the Hamas-Likud partnership that’s been ruining things in Israel/Palestine
No, it was Kadima that launched the Lebanon war and Kadima that launched the Gaza War. Of course both of those were motivated by domestic political pressure from Likud and Likudnik ideology widely spread in the Israeli political elite, but that doesn’t excuse the many awful results of those two wars of aggression.
Suggesting that Likud and Hamas have been conducting affairs to their mutual benefit so as to exclude some moderate factions on each side from taking power is wrong. That argument might have held water in 2000 or even 2004, but not now, and the realization that there is nobody decent among Israeli policy-makers is a big reason why some of us are pretty fed up with Israel as an idea.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Re alex
Excuse me, Mr. alex has it backwards. It’s the Palestinians who are demanding that Israel freeze settlement activity as a precondition for resuming negotiations while Bibi has not demanded that the Palestinians renounce their resettlement demand as a precondition. Rather, Bibi has called for the resumption of negotiations with no preconditions by either side.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Re Marshall
That argument might have held water in 2000 or even 2004, but not now, and the realization that there is nobody decent among Israeli policy-makers is a big reason why some of us are pretty fed up with Israel as an idea.
Gee, Mr. Marshall means decent leaders like Khalad Maashal and Ishmeil Haniyeh.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
The peace process has been a complete farce for quite some time and everyone knows it. We just go through the same bullshit motions, year after year, while the Israelis, with their permanent get out of jail holocaust card, continue to take over the remaining territory by brute force, all the time beating their breasts about what victims they are and how god promised them their homeland and Lebensraum. I’m fed up with the players in Washington. Their hypocrisy stinks worse than a garbage dump.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
The only leaders of Palestine that are worthy of the name, and will survive amongst their own, are tough SOBs that will not appear attractive to us in the West, and so it is, it’s not our decision, though it is our shared destiny, sooner or later.
Israel is what it is, our 5th regiment and threat to the people of the Middle East to keep their heads down, there is no other way to honestly explain the whole nuclear and other hypocrisy that is allowed to thrive, let alone the undeniably evil 9:1 life calculation.
To some, this is like moving out the Indians and the Mexicans, no matter what it takes, through the momentum of time, space and events, two centuries later.
It wasn’t right then, it isn’t right now, but some like to justify their actions, no matter what, so are compelled to moralize it as right, whatever it takes, and this is the essence of evil, if you properly understand the notion.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
when Marwarn Barghouti wins election as head of Fatah, and then goes on to win the general election, he will (eventually) form a unity government with Haniyeh, and rebuild the Palestinian Resistance movement. that means purging the likes of Dahlan, getting rid of the corrupt quislings who infest the PA bureqacracy, and putting the vereterans of the Intifada into positions of leadership within Fatah. it will be a long, hard, ugly struggle, but like Mandela, Barghouti knows the importance of unifying all the elements, inside and out of Fatah, into one armed struggle to defeat apartheid.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
In other words, evil obscures the good, deceives those who would pursue the good, who would live the Golden Rule and respect justice – the ultimate value, the foundation of Western civilization and notions of humanity – while suffering and brutality are not evil, just natural conditions of the cosmos, predictable expressions that we seek to organize against.
Evil is about intent, and justification, and obscuring, twisting and torturing the good, i.e. what we consider to be right.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Re some guy
I always get a laugh out of morons like some guy who proclaim that Marwan Barghouti is the Palestinians’ version of George Washington. Quite the contrary, Mr. Barghouti is a Mossad agent whose current incarceration is not for the purpose of punishment (he spends his days playing chess with the prison guards) but for the purpose of keeping him out of the cross hairs of the various Palestinian factions. When the time is right, he will be released with great fanfare to assume the leadership of the Palestinian movement and make a deal with his former captors.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Wats laughable here is, I don’t care that much about this issue. Sure, the Israeli’s are evil fascistic pricks, but I know how this is going to end. So do a lot of people who actually are pro-Israel. The only people living in fairyland are SLC and his type, those folks who still think this is 1152 AD and nobody will care if they start committing genocide.
Really, thats the only way this can end: You commit genocide and learn what it REALLY means to have the entire world community against you until you all starve to death because you live in a shitty, dehydrated desert and can’t feed your own population -OR- you are forced to make reforms integrating Palestinian citizens and become a minority in your own, no longer jewish, state.
Either way, it works for me.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Abbas only had one thing going for him: He looked like a nice, subservient tailor. But, he can’t even sew on a button, so what good is he?
November 5th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
More evidence that despite the hip young multi-ethnic guy giving the speeches, in terms of foreign policy, we’re basically living Bush’s third term. The current administration might as well start talking about a “roadmap” at this point. Can you say, miserable failure?
November 5th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Rather, Bibi has called for the resumption of negotiations with no preconditions by either side.
Excuse me slc (or Gary “The fact is” Ruppert), what do you call that cunt Netanyahu’s demand that Israel be allowed to continue colonizing the West Bank? Is it perhaps a pre-pre-condition so that Israel has no pre-conditions. But then that also means that demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish racist state, blah, blah, blah are also pre-pre-conditions.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
As Pan noted at #17, Saeb Erekat has said that the two-state solution is retreating over the horizon. That’s in part a negotiating position, partly a reflection on reality. (The JPost, being a Likud rag, calls it a “threat”, which reflects a curious kind of doublethink.)
Erekat’s basic point holds, that if the US is basically going to kiss Bibi’s ring on settlements, then nothing else supposedly up for negotiating — including water, border security, roads and airspace — is actually up for negotiation.
The question for Israel is becoming one of what it chooses to call its bantustans — and for the Palestinians, one of how best to wait it out like black South Africans.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Re soullite
Mr. soullite is an example of Palestinian thinking. Time is on our side, if we wait long enough, the other side will capitulate to our demands out of necessity. I have a flash for Mr. soullite. It ain’t going to happen. As Hussein Ibish salys in his latest book, the one state solution is a mirage and a fantasy. I seem to recall that Mr. soullite is a Palestinian whose family used to reside in what is now Israel. Take a lesson from the American writer Thomas Wolfe Mr. soullite, you can’t go home again.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Re blowback
I would ask fuckface blowback what Mr. Abbas is willing to concede to Bibi in return for an agreement to stop all settlement activity. Right now, Mr. Abbas says that, in return for such a stoppage, he will agree to restart negotiations. Doesn’t sound like much of a concession to me. Thus far the give and take negotiations that have occurred over the last 18 years consist of Israel agreeing to give and the Palestinians agreeing to take.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Abbas is toast. That need not be a bad thing for peace (I suspect it is a good thing). We need to move beyond him.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
re Mrs SLC
Mrs SLC finds that anal stimulation from her Assad dildo is best combined with fantasies of slaughtered Palestinian children and cries of “Hama Rules, fuckface!”
November 5th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Lon: thanks
November 5th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
It’s not a question Matt. Israel runs our mid-east policy.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Re LCS
If fucking asshole Mr. LCS wants to be a politically correct fucking asshole, he should be using Ms. instead of Mrs.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Sorry, guys, but SLC won “Asshole of the Thread” again. I think he is probably invincible.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Re Mythbuster
To be called an asshole by a piece of filth like Mr. Mythbuster is a great honor.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
“Hamas-Likud partnership”. Yglesias manages to make his beliefs clear in other areas without this kind of invective. Not about this though.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
“To be called an asshole by a piece of filth like Mr. Mythbuster is a great honor.”
Oh, SLC, you will always be the Champion. Now you are just lapping the field.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:02 am
[...] that he will not seek reelection. Which is great news for Netanyahu, who, as Matthew Yglesias says, “loves the idea of isolating and discrediting Palestinian moderates in order to bring [...]