Analysis: Helping Abbas climb down the high tree

PA president wants to resume talks, but "doesn’t want it to look as if he has succumbed to the pressure,” says Ramallah official.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
abbas mitchell 311 (photo credit: AP)
abbas mitchell 311
(photo credit: AP)
If anyone sought proof that President Mahmoud Abbas was planning to return to the negotiating table with Israel in the near future, it was provided by the results of “public opinion” polls published in the past few days by a number of Fatah-controlled media outlets and an interview he gave to Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
The polls are seen by many Palestinians as an attempt to prepare local public opinion for the possibility that the Palestinian Authority will soon resume the stalled peace talks with Israel.
One poll went as far as claiming that 65 percent of the Palestinians living under Hamas in the Gaza Strip support the resumption of the talks and believes in peace with Israel.
In the interview with the Guardian, Abbas hinted that he was inclined to accept the latest proposals from the US regarding the resumption of negotiations with Israel. Abandoning its previous demand for a total and unlimited cessation of settlement construction, Abbas said a three-month suspension would be sufficient to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat explained that Abbas’s new stance stemmed from his conviction that the Israelis and Palestinians would be able to reach agreement on all final-status issues, such as Jerusalem, refugees, water, settlements and borders, within three months.
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The assessment that Abbas would agree to the resumption of the talks was reinforced on Monday when the PA president announced, following a meeting in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said that the Palestinians would return to the negotiating table if Israel “halted settlement construction” and accepted the 2003 road map for peace in the Middle East.
Abbas did not repeat his earlier condition for a complete and unlimited cessation of construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Nor did he repeat his previous demand that the international community recognize the June 4, 1967, boundaries as the future borders of a Palestinian state.
Since Israel has already suspended settlement construction in the West Bank and has no objections to the road map, Abbas will have no problem justifying a decision to resume the talks.
Later this week, he is scheduled to give his final response to the latest “ideas” presented by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell regarding the revival of the peace talks.
PA officials have described Mitchell’s proposals as “positive,” sayingthey could pave the way for Abbas to start his descent from the talltree he had climbed when he set a series of conditions for returning tothe negotiating table.
According to the officials, the latest American “ideas” include placingadditional territories in the West Bank under the exclusive control ofthe PA, the release of Fatah prisoners from Israeli jails and haltingIDF “incursions” into PA-controlled communities.
The officials said that Abbas was under heavy pressure from theEuropeans, Americans and some Arab countries to accept Mitchell’sproposals and resume the peace talks with Israel.
“The president wants to resume the peace negotiations, but he doesn’twant it to look as if he has succumbed to the pressure,” said oneofficial in Ramallah. “The resumption of the peace talks needs to bedone gradually and one idea is to begin with low-level or indirecttalks between the two sides.”