BY HASAN ABU NIMAH
The resignation of the Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) on September 7 should have surprised no-one. His appointment was part of a scheme that was no more than an artificial arrangement intended to serve far more hidden, dangerous purposes than those sanctimoniously declared in the so-called "Road Map to Peace".
It was artificial because Abbas was neither the choice of the Palestinian people nor of the Palestinian Authority and its president Yasser Arafat. Abbas was imposed by Washington and Israel to implement a plan which was harmful to the cause of peace, harmful to Palestinians' interests and contradictory to its patrons' claims of introducing democracy and reforming Palestinian institutions.
Under intense pressure, even threats, from US and Arab governments, the Palestinian leadership succumbed and offered a tepid welcome to the Road Map. But, with the exception of the tiny and opportunistic minority who stood to make petty personal gains, most Palestinians were neither happy nor convinced. They feared its outcome would be another alarming attempt to circumvent their rights.
Abbas' duties were packaged for him, mainly by the Israelis and the Americans. He was chosen for the job because he was considered the most suitable for such an assignment. Abbas' assigned duties were as bizarre as they were impossible to achieve; he had neither the strength nor the necessary means, or even the opportunity, to advance one step along that heavily mined path. The inevitable outcome was the quick collapse of the intrinsically flawed plan.
Three built-in factors were fundamentally responsible for the fast demise of the Abbas cabinet. The first was the "sponsors" of the Abbas project — the US and Israel — whose intention was to have him gradually marginalise and eventually replace Arafat. Arafat was declared "irrelevant" by Israel and the US in 2002, even though he is the legitimately elected leader of the Palestinians.
US President George Bush in June last year stated: "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror."
Arafat, accused by Israel and the US of supporting terrorism, or not doing enough to stop it, was totally embargoed and all contacts with him have been severed since. When the Palestinian elections to elect the new prime minister required by Bush could not be held on time due to the Israeli occupation and had to be indefinitely postponed, Washington had to impose its own choice for leader, and that was Abbas.
Abbas may not have entertained the ambition of replacing Arafat when he accepted the tricky assignment. To avoid any possibility of others seeing his appointment in that way, he took every possible precaution and spared no gesture to emphasise his correct and respectful dealing with Arafat. It is hard to believe that Abbas, whose limited influence, political power and national standing, depended entirely on Arafat's support, would knowingly take any step that could be misconstrued as defiance of Arafat's authority. Yet, it was Abbas' acceptance to occupy the PM's position, at a very sensitive and critical time, that created confrontation and hostility between the two leaders. Arafat, seeing Abbas as not only his rival but as his replacement, ensured that Abbas' job would not be easy. The tensions broke into the open just before Abbas' resignation.
The second factor was the Road Map's sponsors' assumption that Abbas would rush to meet their primary demand: a decisive confrontation with the Palestinian resistance groups to disarm them, dismantle their infrastructure and end their existence before any meaningful promise of change would be made. Abbas was required to implement his commitment to end the second Palestinian intifada (uprising) in all its forms.
Abbas did not do any of that. The Israeli and US governments accused him of being unable to deliver. At the same time, Abbas' opposition to the intifada, coupled with his regime's hesitant measures to appease Israel, further distanced him from his people and his meagre credibility collapsed.
The undertakings to which Abbas was committed could never have been fulfilled because they were not part of an integral, authentic peace plan based on ending the Israeli occupation. Throughout Abbas' brief tenure, Israel's occupation forces pressed on relentlessly with their campaign of oppression and assassination against the Palestinian people and leaders. Israel made no reciprocal gesture towards the Palestinians' June 29 ceasefire, which virtually ended violence against Israel.
It was madness to expect any Palestinian leader to do the dirty work of the Israeli government against their own occupied people, who are constantly under attack by a powerful military power intent on confiscating and colonising the very land they exist on.
The third factor in Abbas' fall was the suspicious environment created by the unprecedented Israeli and US support for the Abbas regime. It was hard to believe that such support was not based on Washington's and Tel Aviv's expectation, and probably the promise, that Abbas would concede to the Israelis more than any previous Palestinian leader.
With Palestinians already appalled at the erosion of their rights as a result of their leaders' continuous concessions to Israelis, they could not tolerate any further descent along this dangerous path. Palestinians feared that Abbas would accept a humiliating settlement dictated by Israel, including the scrapping of their claim to Jerusalem (which he had already agreed to exchange for the small neighbouring village of Abu Dis), abandoning the rights of Palestinian refugees, accepting the Israeli settlements and accepting a chopped-up mini-state under Israel's control.
In such a stormy sea, the Abbas ship was bound to sink. From the beginning it was clear that the chances of success for such a foolhardy scheme were zero. It is strange that anyone could have seen it differently, including Abbas himself.
The chances of the new Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, are not going to be any better. He will be served with the same impossible-to-fulfill demand of turning against his own people to solve Israel's "security" problems. His failure to act will turn the Americans and the Israelis against him, while his concessions to Israel at the expense of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people will distance him from the people. It is the same failed formula.
Qureia is the chief architect of the disastrous 1993 Oslo deal, the source of all the troubles that followed since. In that respect, he is not very different from his predecessor. He will probably make one full turn in the cycle before he will find himself on the same cliff from which Abbas recently jumped.
Many voices in the West have claimed that the fall of Abbas marks the end of the Road Map. While it is hard to imagine how a totally powerless leader of an occupied, powerless "authority" could determine the destiny of the Road Map, this claim, in an adverse sense, may still be true. Abbas could have saved the Road Map, which Israel's amendments rendered completely useless, by reducing the legitimate rights of Palestinians to match the little the gutted plan had to offer.
However, this is no recipe for peace. It is, on the contrary, the very prescription for more injustice, more instablity and bloody, endless violence.
[Hasan Abu Nimah is a former Jordanian ambassador to the United Nations and a regular contributor to the Electronic Intifada (visit ).]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, September 17, 2003.
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