Today's Situation

Point counterpoint Friday, May 26, 2006

It’s point-counterpoint as Abbas, for the first time confronting the Hamas, and the religious fundamentalist government, conduct a battle for public opinion. By all accounts, Abbas’ position, which is that the Palestinians should negotiate for a two-state solution with Israel, is the most popular in Palestinian public opinion. But the international pressure on the PA after the Hamas formed a government including an economic siege that has driven the Palestinian middle class into poverty, has broadened public support for a ruling party that won an absolute majority in the Palestinian parliament despite a two percent edge over Fateh in the popular vote. Yet despite the Hamas’ popularity in Gaza, few were happy about the appearance of masked and armed men in the streets, with isolated clashes between them and the mostly Fateh loyalists of the PA’s armed forces, still under Abbas’ control, leading to more than a dozen deaths in the last week.

Abbas surprise announcement yesterday was meant to corner the Israelis who seem to think they have won American support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s unilateral convergence plan to withdraw from about 90 percent of the West Bank, leaving only three or four densely populated Jewish settlement areas inside the fence Israel is building to separate it from the West Bank. Olmert’s plan, which has yet to be detailed to anyone, calls for the route of that fence to become Israel’s permanent borders. In many places the fence follows the Green Line, but in several key areas including Jerusalem, extends like fingers deep into the West Bank. The Americans listened to Olmert’s ideas this week during his first visit there as prime minister, and President Bush called it a ‘bold idea’ but the Americans, indeed the entire international community is loathe to accept a unilateral Israeli action to define its eastern border.

But the Abbas message was framed by his calling for a Palestinian consensus around a draft agreement formulated by the Palestinian leadership in Israeli prisons, perhaps the most respected group in Palestinian society. And while Abbas wants Israel -- or at least the international community -- to accept the Prisoners’ Document, as it has become known -- as a starting point for negotiations, indications are that Israel will call it a non-starter, because it includes a demand for a right of refugees to return to their homes in Israel. Israel is ready to allow refugees back to a Palestinian state, but regards any right of return as a move to ruin the Jewish state. It’s very much a half cup full or empty situation: the prisoner’s document can be read as Hamas moving closer to Fateh’s position, granting, for example, Abbas the authority to negotiate with Israel as head of the PLO, and accepting a two-state solution by implication, though not explicitly. But it can also be read as a move by Fateh closer to Hamas, since it not only calls for the right of return, but promotes ‘armed resistance’ -- which Israelis call terrorism -- against the occupation inside the territories captured by Israel in 1967.

Nonetheless, the Abbas speech at the national dialogue conference was greeted in Israel with one of the first moves it has taken in years to ‘strengthen’ the Palestinian leader, a move that was immediately condemned not so much for what it did, but for being announced publicly. For more than a year, the 3,000-strong Presidential Guard around Abbas has been asking Israel for permission to bring in ammunition and light arms from Jordan, something that former defense minister Shaul Mofaz and former premier Ariel Sharon dismissed out of hand. Mofaz’s political security advisor Amos Gilad, asked about it over the past year, would sarcastically comment that the Presidential Guard can buy arms in the open market for smuggled weapons in Gaza. But still political-security advisor to the defense minister, today he was on Israel Radio, defending the decision to allow Jordan and other Arab states send what apparently will be a few hundred new rifles and ammunition to the Presidential Guard. His reasoning -- the munitions are not to protect Abbas per se from assassination plots, as some media reports had stated, but to shore up his strength against Hamas. And he broke his pattern of the last two years, calling Abbas ‘courageous.’

That was the last thing Abbas needed today -- he was using al his considerable diplomatic skills to get the Hamas to bend to his will. But Israeli announcements that they were taking action to ‘strengthen’ him make him appear to be a collaborator with the occupation. His spokesmen immediately denied that they had even asked the Israelis for permission (most likely the request came from Jordan) and doubly denied that there is any threat to Abbas life (though several PA armed forces commanders have been targeted by bombs and bomb plots in the last few weeks). The Israeli Right, of course, was up in arms about the permission to transfer arms from Jordan to the Palestinians. MK Yuval Steinitz, speaking to Israel Radio, called it ‘a folly as bad as Oslo’ but he also condemned the Abbas speech as a surrender to Hamas.

The Abbas speech, the Hamas militia move, the Israeli permits for weapons transfers -- it’s all much too soon to describe any of it as a breakthrough, particularly since despite all Olmert’s promises about undertaking a serious effort to negotiate with Abbas, his main advance man, Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who has become for Olmert what Olmert was for Sharon, was on TV last night saying that no comprehensive peace with the Palestinians is possible. He and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have taken the line that any meeting between Olmert and Abbas must yield positive concrete results or it will lead to a new intifada and they seem to be saying that any meeting must be an all or nothing session.

They might want to read Arab League Amr Moussa’s interview to The Jerusalem Post today, in which he says Israel has misinterpreted the Arab peace initiative of 2002 from day one. Moussa is not popular in Israel, and the Arab League is in considerable disarray. But Moussa’s main point is that the peace initiative could be the basis for negotiations. It is not a take it or leave it proposal. Israel was in the midst of mourning 30 victims of a Passover seder terrorist outrage when the Arabs issued the initiative at Beirut, and Sharon squashed any attempt at public debate over it. But it is embedded in the Prisoners’ Document - and it offers Israel full peace and normalization with the entire Arab world in exchange for a withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. Israel’s already quit Gaza and Olmert’s plan is to quit at least 90 percent of the West Bank. If there’s a way around the right of return issue, Israel might find itself in the corner that Abbas tried to paint for it, as well as Hamas, yesterday afternoon.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation