After Abbas: Political Turmoil in the West Bank, Dilemma for U.S. Policy

Is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ threat to resign sincere, or is he lobbying the United States to extract more concessions from Israel? Getty Images

Is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ threat to resign sincere, or is he lobbying the United States to extract more concessions from Israel? Getty Images

by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Associates of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were quoted this week as suggesting that political turmoil could be just around the corner because Abbas is considering resigning soon as head of the PLO, head of the Fatah Party and president of the Palestinian Authority.

Were that to happen, other Palestinian leaders may also quit, plunging the Palestinian administration in the West Bank into turmoil.

But Stephen P. Cohen, author of the book, “Beyond America’s Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East,” said Tuesday after speaking by phone with Palestinian leaders that he did not believe Abbas would resign but that he was determined not to seek re-election.

“He has been trying to get the United States to push Israel for a long

time without success and he has given up,” Cohen said. “And the Egyptians are angry. They no longer believe that it is possible for Abu Mazen [Abbas’ nickname] to rule given what [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and Hamas are doing. ... Everybody is angry at Netanyahu for pushing things to the point where this has happened; they all blame him.”

Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom termed Abbas’ decision not to seek re-election “a big mistake.”

“We would like to see him with [Palestinian Prime Minister Salam] Fayyad run the Palestinian Authority,” he said in a phone interview with The Jewish Week. “But if he thinks the Americans will now bring concessions from Israel [to reverse his decision], he is wrong.”

Shalom said also that Abbas decided to quit “without even negotiating” with Netanyahu when he realized he could not extract concessions from Netanyahu in advance. Netanyahu has called for talks without preconditions. Shalom added that if Abbas does not run, Israel is prepared to negotiate with “every Palestinian leader, but of course not with Hamas.”

Cohen said negotiations were under way to allow Fayyad to succeed him in all three of his posts. The problem is, he said, that Fayyad would like to appoint primarily technocrats to his cabinet and the Fatah Central Committee is demanding that the majority of appointees be Fatah members.

“The negotiations now are to see if he [Fayyad] will remove that condition,” Cohen said. “That’s why we are in a very uncertain situation now. ... Abu Mazen would like to move to Amman. He has built himself a house there.”

But Abbas’ statement last Thursday that he would not run in the January 26 election might just be a ploy, according to Moshe Maoz, a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“My own sense is that this is a signal to the United States to rush its efforts to restart negotiations and exercise pressure on Israel [to make concessions],” he said. “It is sending a signal to the United States that if it does not intervene immediately, things could get bad and undermine American interests in the region.”

Maoz said he has heard other analysts suggest that if Abbas resigns, the Palestinian security apparatus that has been trained by American Gen. Keith Dayton “would collapse. There is then a danger that Hamas would come into the West Bank or that there would be another intifada because of the frustration of the Palestinian people.”

But Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said he believes Abbas’ departure from the political scene “may be positive for both Palestinians and Israelis. .... It is the best chance for Palestinians to promote a newer, more realistic leadership.”

“As long as he is there, there is not going to be the kind of leadership change that is necessary in the post-Arafat period,” he explained. “The Palestinian political process is frozen by [Palestinian President Yasir] Arafat’s legacy. Abbas’ appeal to foreigners is that he says the right things to them, doesn’t wear an army uniform like Arafat did, and usually doesn’t use the kind of inflammatory rhetoric Arafat used.

“But Abbas has shown that he has no constituency and no fire in his belly in the sense of being able to lead the Palestinian public to make the serious compromises they need for peace. We hear the same rejectionist positions on refugees and Jerusalem. ... In terms of what he tells the Palestinians, he has not moved them at all from Arafat’s legacy. That is why the peace talks are stuck exactly where they were five years ago [when Abbas succeeded Arafat].”

Ghassan Khatib, director of the Palestinian government’s Media Center and coeditor of bitterlemons.org, an Israeli-Palestinian Web site, wrote that Abbas’ “possible absence from the scene could have serious implications for the peace process.” He argued in his bitterlemons column that Abbas is the “cornerstone of the Palestinian peace strategy” and the last of “what are known as the historical leaders ... [who] have carried enormous symbolic and popular weight.”

“If Abbas goes, there is no one of a similar stature, and consequently the battle to succeed him will be tense and destabilizing,” he added.

Although Cohen said he believes Abbas would like Fayyad to succeed him in all three of his posts, Said Zeidani, a political science professor at Birzeit University, said in his column that “there are no emerging leaders who can occupy the two positions [PLO and PA presidencies] together.”

He said he also believes that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority “will not be radically affected.”

But Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy Israeli Defense Minister, said Abbas’ departure is “good news for anyone who fears a solution to the conflict,” and a wake-up call to those who “understand the world in which we live, and who fear for the fate of the Jewish state.”

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Sneh called Abbas “the most courageous partner we have had,” and he blamed Israel for Abbas’ failure to craft a peace agreement.

On the other hand, it was Israel that sought to bolster Abbas in the eyes of the Palestinian people by removing roadblocks and helping to strengthen the Palestinian economy, according to Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

“The Palestinian Authority has to make a decision about what it wants,” he said. “We saw a split there [during its recent convention], and maybe this move [by Abbas] will help clarify the situation or add additional levels of complexity. You can’t afford uncertainty added to the current situation because there is a potential that things could get out of hand and be exploited by Hamas.”

Hoenlein said Abbas’ demand since Netanyahu took office that Israel cease all settlement expansion and agree to return to modified 1967 borders in advance of any talks “was just an excuse” not to negotiate.

“There were [previous] negotiations while settlements were being built and he knows that stopping natural growth is not a possibility,” he said.

With Abbas gone, the push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace process may diminish and the focus shift to initiating Syrian-Israeli peace talks, according to Fred Lazin, a political science professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

“A lot of people have been saying that we have lived with the Israeli-Palestinian problem and that although it is painful, it will continue to be a problem for a long time,” he said. “The Palestinian issue will now become less important and Syria will become more important for the Saudis, the United States and Israel.”

But Cohen, the author and expert on the Palestinians, said that with Fatah’s support, Fayyad would win the January election and then push for the renewal of peace talks with Israel. He would not insist on a settlement freeze in advance but would insist that Israel agree on negotiating a peace agreement that would see it withdraw to modified 1967 borders.

The Saudi peace proposal would be the foundation for negotiations because they promise normalized relations with all 22 Arab countries in return for the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and a negotiated settlement over the refugee issue, Cohen said.

“Israel will have to make the fundamental existential decision of whether it wants to live in peace with its Arab neighbors or take a chance and extend the conflict for another generation,” he said.
Maoz of the Hebrew University said he believes a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would also help Sunni Moslem governments in the region.

“In the last few years, Muslims all over the world mobilized with the aim of changing the status quo in the occupied territories and in East Jerusalem in order to establish a Palestinian state there,” Maoz explained. “A resolution of this issue takes away the Muslim militants’ desire to fight Israel. But as long as the problem is not resolved, there is danger to the stability of the entire region.”

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