PA leadership in crisis

PA President Mahmoud Abbas is aware of his sinking legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinians.

By GERSHON BASKIN
PA President Abbas and PM Fayyad 370 (R) (photo credit: Fadi Arouri / Reuters)
PA President Abbas and PM Fayyad 370 (R)
(photo credit: Fadi Arouri / Reuters)
The Palestinian leadership is most definitely in crisis. There is no peace process, there are no negotiations with Israel and there is no political horizon.
There is no process of reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. There is no coherent strategy for advancing Palestinian interests. Palestinian political movements are not functioning. The Palestinian Authority (PA) administering the West Bank is on the verge of financial collapse. Being a Palestinian leader in the summer of 2012 is a thankless task and they seem to have no friends and no fans.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas is the man most committed to the two-state solution I have ever met. He knows that there is no other solution to the conflict besides Israel and Palestine living in peace side by side.
He knows exactly what he wants and has made it clear to anyone willing to listen.
He opposes violence. He recognizes Israel in the 1967 borders. He accepts a demilitarized state. He wants a Palestinian state on 22 percent of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and he is willing to compromise on the border delineation, taking into account the settlement blocks adjacent to the Green Line. He wants East Jerusalem to be his capital. He is willing to make significant compromises on the refugee issue.
He sees himself as the most reasonable man in the Middle East and cannot understand why the Israeli leadership and people don’t recognize him as the ultimate partner for peace.
He wants to negotiate with Israel but will not sit down with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without understandings that negotiations must begin from where they ended with former prime minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. Recently Abbas added two more conditions: releasing Palestinian prisoners in jail prior to the Oslo process, a promise made by Olmert; and providing weapons for his security forces. Abbas also has public opinion to contend with. Palestinians will not accept negotiations while settlement building continues.
Abbas is keenly aware of his sinking legitimacy in the eyes of most Palestinians. He is not blind or deaf to the criticism leveled at him. He knows that the majority no longer believes that a two-state solution is feasible. Many Palestinians see their leaders as collaborators with the occupation and view the entire Palestinian Authority enterprise as a devious means of perpetuating Israeli subjugation with the international community, rather than Israel, footing the bill.
But Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad understand that if they give in to public demands and disband the PA, they would impoverish more than one million Palestinians who depend on the Authority for their livelihoods.
Fayyad has credibility in the West and in Israel. He has been considering a run for the presidency if and when new elections are held. Fayyad has no political movement to back him, but his practical approach and good public relations with voters around the West Bank could earn him a fighting chance. Abbas has the Fatah movement behind him, but what is that worth? Fatah institutions are hardly functional, there is internal dissent, and there are conflicts with Fayyad, ousted strong man Mohammed Dahlan and over reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.
The great hopes for UN recognition of Palestine crashed last year. Now they are considering the option of applying to the General Assembly in September for non-member status, surely achievable but of questionable value. Palestinian leaders pay lip-service to non-violent resistance but, aware of the tremendous price their society would pay for effective nonviolent action, they are absent from the non-violent struggles currently being pursued.
Palestinian leaders, such as Abbas and Fayyad, are not ready to lead tens of thousands of their countrymen, women and children, to frontline confrontation with Israeli settlers and the IDF, and from there to prison.
In their first meeting in mid-July, Abbas told the new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi that the possibilities of peace with Israel are dead. Now the questions he and others must answer are: How much longer he will remain in power and how much longer his commitment to non-violence will hold sway.