Abbas and aides misjudged impact of decision

I met Palestinian President Mahnmoud Abbas in Amman on Saturday, one day after he took the decision to defer forwarding the Goldstone report to the U.N. General Assembly for further action against Israel and Hamas, both found as possibly guilty of war crimes during the recent Gaza war.
Abbas was disturbed by the uproar against his decision fueled by Hamas and al-Jazeera satellite television accusing him of treason for burying the report and withdrawing support for further action.
The Palestinian president tried to explain in an exclusive interview his position, insisting he did not withdraw support of the report but that he simply agreed to go along with the position of all other state members of the Human Rights Council to defer a vote for action in March.

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"Two days ago, the Americans, Russians, China and the Europeans proposed a delay until March. We said if the rest of the states accept, we will not object to the delay. We asked the rest of the states, they said they don't mind, so the report was delayed," Abbas said in the intereview.

It was obvious that neither Abbas nor his close aides had anticipated the impact of the deferral decision. The entire Palestinian society, including the Fatah leadership and the PLO's Executive Committee criticised Abbas' decision. This was the first time Abbas faced strong criticism across the board. Voices calling on him to step down are coming from every direction.
People lashed out at Abbas and his top negotiator Saeb Erekat in what seemed like suppressed anger and deep frustration over the failure of peace talks with Israel, futile pace policies over the years, and Abbas' decision-making system.

Abbas' misfortunes came after the Palestinians' strong disappointment with U.S. President Barack Obama's abandonment of his demand that Israel halt all settlement construction before final status peace talks resume.
The Palestinian leader who emerged strong after the Fatah elections lost his standing among his people after agreeing to comply with Obama's demand to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York.

Palestinians are wondering, why can't Abbas say no to America. When Abbas became prime minister in 2003 and since he took over the presidency from Yaser Arafat, Abbas, accused of being America's man has felt he has not been supported enough by the U.S.
Even he is asking: What has America given me? I asked for weapons and equipment for the security forces but they have still not complied."
Abbas' top negotiator Saeb Erekat asked U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during talks with her in Washington last week why the U.S. was punishing Abbas who was implementing all his obligations required by the roadmap, which include security and incitement.
"What is the president doing wrong," Erekat asked Clinton.
"Nothing," she was quoted as saying by a senior official close to Abbas.

Then, why is it hard for Abbas to say "NO" to America and why is he bearing responsibility for all the mistakes and repetition of mistakes committed by each and every U.S. adminsitration. Why is he not listening to the sound of his own street?

The Palestinian president is expected to address his people in a nationwide speech in which he would apologize for the mistake of agreeing to defer action on Goldstone's report. This was a miscalculated step that is not yet behind him. It's repercussions will spiral and nobody knows where it could lead.

It could be a lesson, but fateful decisions await the Palestinian leadership and Hamas.
Senior Palestinian officials said after the New York summit between Abbas, Netanyahu and Obama during which Obama urged the Palestinians to enter peace talks with Israel without any preconditions, that Arab states encouraged Abbas to refrain from angering Obama and to give him a chance.
Abbas will no enter peace talks without a clear basis and end game, and a timeable for implementation, senior officials said.
The Palestinians feel abandoned by the Arabs whose interests in countering Iran precede those of preserving Jerusalem, and they are divided to the point of self-destruction.
The political collapse has accelerated and both Hamas and Abbas need to study what the next steps are, to look inward and ask themselves, now what?

Is State with provisional borders Obama's plan?

The sense of "High Hopes" that followed U.S. President Barack Obama's election victory has been quickly replaced with "Big Frustration".
Palestinian negotiators and officials who met Obama and other U.S. officials in New York last week returned home depressed and disappointed.
They came back from those meetings with a vague idea of the outlines of the long-promised Obama peace plan. They say the U.S. administration is pushing for relaunching peace talks without any preconditions, without clear terms of reference and the plan is to get the Israelis and Palestinians to open negotiations on the borders, and lean on the Palestinians to accept a Palestinian state with provisional borders, without an agreement on Jerusalem or the refugees.
A state with provisional borders is an option stated in the U.S.-backed roadmap for peace and has been repeatedly rejected by Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas.
The meeting with Obama was cordial but the Palestinians were told Washington tried but failed to get the Israelis to accept a one-year settlement freeze. The U.S. would nevertheless continue to push for a nine-month freeze. They were also told there is no agreement on clear terms of reference for future final status talks.
"We were told that principles mentioned in Obama's U.N. speech are the new terms of reference. We said at least go back to the roadmap, to (former U.S. President Bill) Clinton's parameters as a basis for peace, for a land swap of some 2 or 3 percent of the land, they said no, go back to the negotiations and discuss the terms," one senior Palestinian official said.
Another Palestinian official said Abbas told Obama he could not return to negotiations on those terms.
The Palestinians are in a new dilemma.
Palestinians today start bilateral talks with the Americans in Washington to try to secure clear terms of reference of future talks with Israel, but they know without American pressure on Israel, they will get nowhere and they will enter into a new vicious circle that will not lead to an end of the conflict or even to stability.
The Palestinian leadership is contemplating not returning to negotiations if they don't get this time clear terms of reference for those talks. They are also considering what type of pressure Obama's adminsitration will exert on the Palestinian Authority if they don't.
If they return to negotiations with nothing agreed and with new settlement construction plans announced every day, the Third Intifada will this time be directed towards Abbas and his Authority, not against Israel.

Are Palestinians disappointed with Obama already?

A U.S. official told me one day after U.S. President Barack Obama hosted a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York that the demand for a total settlement freeze ahead of reviving peace talks was a "dream".
"This would bring down Netanyahu's government," the official said.
The Palestinians believed, or wanted to believe, that Obama's administration would stick to its demand for a full settlement freeze and would twist Israel's arm into complying before talks on permanent status were renewed. The international community leaders echoed Obama's demand for a total settlement freeze, but the minute the U.S. special envoy George Mitchell and his team agreed to negotiate with Israel on specifics of the settlements issue, by accepting that some construction had to continue, some can be frozen for a few months, and some simply can't be stopped, they fell in Israel's trap.
The settlements issue is no longer the key issue blocking the relaunching of the talks.
Again, the Palestinians want to avoid a clash with the U.S. administration by agreeing to meet while settlements continue.
Actually, the Palestinians are surprised by the speedy and sudden change in American officials' language towards the settlements issue.
Now they know that Barack Obama's impatience with the slow pace of talks that pave the way to final status peace talks will mean they have to accept entering new talks without a settlement freeze.
Abbas and his negotiators are now trying to go to those talks with at least agreed terms of reference, something they tried to do before the launching of the Annapolis talks in 2008, but failed.
Abbas is insisting that Israel respect the Oslo peace deals, the roadmap, the Arab peace initiative, and other past agreements so the sides don't start all over again from scratch.
That is why Palestinian negotiators are insisting that the New York meeting did not mean talks have been revived, and that is why they are seeking a written and clear agreement on the terms of reference of future talks which the U.S. is anxious to announce soon.
In his speech at the U.N. General Assembly today, Abbas urged Israel to accept all past agreements, including the Arab Peace Plan and the roadmap as clear terms o reference of any future, meaningful peace talks.
A Palestinain official said the Palestinians were disappointed with Mitchell and Obama's change of heart on the settlements issue, and they made it clear in meetings with Obama and U.S. officials in New York they seek a clear understanding on the basis of future talks because this time they want those talks to lead to the establishment of a state on all lands occupied in 1967 -- the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and in Gaza Strip.
Abbas and Netanyahu went to the New York reluctantly, each for his own reasons.
Time is running out, and with time there is less common ground between Israel under Netanyahu and the Palestinians.
There are more and more Israelis and even more Palestinains who believe that the conflict would never be resolved if left up to the two parties. Only strong pressure on Israel from its ally the U.S. could bring about a solution. Obama's determination to promptly deal with the Middle East crisis and demand for a total settlement freeze was a sign he might be different from his predecessors who tried and failed. But after failure on the settlements issue, will he also fail on setting clear terms of reference for upcoming talks? Will Obama want peace talks more than the parties themselves?

Hamas' students

Twenty people were killed and some 120 were injured during a deadly confrontation between Hamas security forces and gunmen from a militant Salafi splinter group, Jund Ansar Allah after the group's leader declared on Friday his neighbourhood in Rafah an Islamic emirate.
The battle at a mosque in Rafah started early Friday and ended Saturday with Hamas declaring the end of the operation that killed Abdel Latif Moussa, leader of Jund Asar Allah, an al-Qaeda-inspired organization.
The group has carried out attacks against Israel, but Hamas chose to ignore their presence until the Salafi group did what Hamas did to Fatah: accused it of being infidels and of eagerness to please the West.
Dismissed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said after the military operation ended that Jund Ansar Allah took advantage of youth and infused them with “strange ideas” based on acting against so-called atheists in a violent way.
When Hamas violently took over Gaza, Palestinians I interviewed were shocked to see bodies of Fatah men killed by Hamas masked gunmen dragged on the streets and spit at by Hamas gunmen as "athiests". Fatah so-called "infidels" were thrown from rooftops. Others were beaten with sticks until their bones were broken. Nails were drilled in the legs and knees of some Fatah men I spoke to in 2007.
Hamas crushed the Salafi militant group hoping the World would consider it a moderate, Islamic movement that seeks international legitimacy and an authority that can crush pro-Qaeda radicals. Its members have said that the World should engage with Hamas that can impose law and order in Gaza Strip.
A Palestinian businessman in the West Bank city of Ramallah said the fighting between Hamas security forces and Jund Ansar Allah gunmen showed that Hamas' rule in Gaza was no different from any other Arab police state that would stop at nothing to survive.
A politician said it was scary to see how the situation in Gaza, the rule of Hamas, the isolation, poverty and siege, have created militant, radical groups that make Hamas look like a moderate movement.
Since Hamas seized Gaza Strip in June, 2007 by force, it has slowly and cautiously been turning Gaza into an Islamic emirate. It has imposed restrictions on the work of the press. Many journalists simply don't report human rights abuses taking place in Gaza.
Human rights activists say their reports show human rights abuses and cases of torture in the West Bank as well, but violations in Gaza were more systematic.
What happened in Gaza with Jund Ansar Allah may be just the beginning of Hamas' problems with similar hardline Salafi groups that have emerged originally from Hamas disenchanted grassroots.

New generation leads Fatah

Around 05:30 a.m. on Tuesday I started receiving calls from Bethlehem with early results of Fatah's first leadership election in 20 years.
Early results of the the historic Fatah vote showed the group has discarded some 80 percent of its old leaders. It was a clear sign Fatah was determined to rejuvenate the group that lost power to Hamas in 2006.
It was a coup against the old guards who monopolised power for over 20 years and marginalized the local leaders of the West Bank and Gaza.
Hamas has done its best to derail Fatah's first conference in 20 years but the vote took place nevertheless.
Leaders who publicly defy Hamas' forceful control of Gaza such as Mohammad Dahlan, Tayyeb Abdel-Rahim, Tawfiq Tirawi and Hussein al-Sheikh, among others, won seats on Fatah's Central Committee, the group's highest decision-making body.
Fatah officials in Gaza said most if not all voters in Gaza voted for jailed leader Marwan Barghouthi who led the second Intifada, and a possible successor for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Well-known and influential figures from the older generation such as Ahmed Qurie had disappeared from the winners' list, early results showed.
For the first time since its inception in 1965, Yasser Arafat's Fatah is now led by the younger generation from the West Bank and Gaza. The older generation that led the movement in exile and during the past 15 years have now been forced to give way to the young, the bulk of the secular movement.

Fatah and the government

Restless Fatah candidates running for leadership positions in the secular movement huddled in their hotel rooms with friends and campaigners hours before the results of their first election in 20 years.
Most are anxiously working the phones while the clocks tick away. A few hours and the results would be announced. The fierce campaiging of hundreds of Fatah candidates is over. A new leadership will emerge soon to face challenges and key issues the previous leaders failed to resolve.
These issues include reconciliation with Islamist Hamas and reuniting Gaza with the West Bank, preparing for U.S.-sponsored negotiations with Israel, changing attitudes that led to Fatah's loss to Hamas in the 2006 election, and preparing for parliamentary and presidential elections planned for January.
But most importantly, reforming the internal structure of the mainstream group and prioritizing objectives.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was re-elected Friday as Fatah's leader, said in his speech at the launching of the Fatah Congress that one of Fatah's mistakes was losing its independence as a national movment and melting in the Palestinian Authority's institutions and structures.
Not many in Fatah share his view. Many have participated in the Fatah election hoping to strengthen their movement and regain power. Fatah, which has led the Palestinians for over 40 years, is no longer running the government in the West Bank and has been greatly weakened in Gaza by Hamas.
There were voices before and during the Fatah Congress saying the new Fatah leadership should return to power and take over the government from technocrat Salam Fayyad.
Fayyad has earned world recognition for his reform movement. Confidence in his transparent policies have won the Palestinians billions of dollars in international aid. Fatah has yet to free itself from corruption and mismanagement allegations to secure aid for the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority.
Determined to sway Fatah from pursuing actions to retake the government, Abbas has taken a decision during the Fatah Congress banning the new elected Fatah leaders from taking up governmental positions.
This decision may be contested by Fatah's new leaders. Abbas' message however was clear: The time has come to reassess Fatah's experience and learn from its defeat.

Abbas reunites Fatah, prevents splits

Bethlehem, West Bank - By constantly intervening and presenting compromise solutions, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas succeeded in preventing a split within Fatah that has been meeting since August 4 to elect a new leadership.
Rivalries between Fatah leaders from Gaza and the West Bank have threatened divisions that would strengthen the Islamists and weaken the national, secular movement.
"A month ago we were on the verge of a split. Signs of that split were beginning to emerge. The world began to mourn Fatah and said it was over...But Fatah is indivisible," Abbas told Fatah some 2,000 members in a speech that contributed to Fatah's reunion.
Abbas' mediation and resolve to prevent splits, as well as his "unity" speech have all contributed to his emergence as Fatah's undisputed leader. Abbas, viewed as a weak leader by many members of his own movement, has asserted himself as a strong leader in control of the divided Fatah group.
"President Abbas has emerged from this conference a strong leader. He has succeeded in avoiding splits and achieving unity," Fatah local leader Ahmad Ghneim said after Abbas' speech which was interrupted by applause. Tears rolled down the cheecks of many Fatah members as Abbas instilled in them a sense of pride and determination to relead the Palestinians after being trounced by Hamas in the 2006 election.
Fatah unanimously chose Abbas as Fatah leader and gave him a new mandate for pursuing his peace policies with Israel.
Today Fatah elects its new leaders. Hamas has cracked down on Fatah members in Gaza and prevented more than 450 of them from travelling to the West Bank city of Bethlehem to take part in the Congress in what Fatah said was an attempt to weaken the secular group. These Fatah members, some detained by Hamas and others placed under house arrest, will however take part in the election process by phone, Fatah officials said.
A new Fatah leadership will be elected but will the new blood reflect a new mentality?