Abbas's Responsibility for Gaza Crisis - by Bassam Tawil - https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12898/gaza-crisis-mahmoud-abbas
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is continuing to pursue a policy of double-dealing regarding the Gaza Strip.
On the one hand, President Mahmoud Abbas and the PA leadership continue inciting against Israel by holding it solely responsible for the humanitarian and economic crisis in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, Abbas and his Ramallah-based government continue to impose strict economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip.
Now, Abbas is bending over backwards to foil a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip. Abbas says he is worried that such a deal would pave the way for the implementation of US President Donald Trump's yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East.
Although they have never seen the Trump plan, Abbas and the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah claim that it envisages the establishment of a separate Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip. They also argue that the Trump plan seeks to transform the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from a political and national conflict into one that is related only to humanitarian and economic issues. Abbas says he fears that the humanitarian and economic aid that the international community is promising to the Gaza Strip, as part of a cease-fire deal, is aimed at extracting concessions from the Palestinians, especially on issues related to Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.
Abbas also claims that any cease-fire agreement would solidify the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He argues that the PLO, the "sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," is the only party authorized to sign an agreement with Israel.
ٍReminder: In March 2018, Abbas and his government decided to impose a series of punitive measures against his own people: the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The measures include, among other things, halting payments to thousands of civil servants and forcing thousands of others into early retirement. He also decided to stop paying Israel for the electricity it supplies to the Gaza Strip and limited the amount of medicine shipments to the coastal enclave.
Abbas has defended his sanctions against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by arguing that Hamas was refusing to hand control over the coastal Gaza enclave to his government in accordance with previous "reconciliation" agreements signed between his ruling Fatah faction and Hamas.
Subsequently, violent riots by Palestinians along the Gaza-Israel border -- organized by Hamas and labelled as the "March of Return" -- which began in March, reached their peak when arson kites and balloons were launched into Israel.
In other words, it is Abbas himself who bears full responsibility for the clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Were it not for his sanctions, the Palestinian factions would not have waged the "March of Return" -- the primary goal of which is to protest the deteriorating conditions inside the Gaza Strip, for which they blame Israel rather than their own leaders. The blood of the more than 150 Palestinians killed in the riots is on his hands alone.
The violence of the past few months along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel could have been avoided had Abbas agreed to lift the sanctions he himself imposed on the two million residents of the Gaza Strip. He chose, however, to continue his measures so that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would continue directing their anger towards Israel. Abbas has no headquarters or offices in the Gaza Strip where the Palestinians there can protest against him. So, he had nothing to worry about when he decided to punish his own people. He also had nothing to worry about regarding the international community because he knows that, as usual, it will blame only Israel for the crisis in the Gaza Strip.
Today, as Egypt, the United Nations and other parties scramble to reach a long-term cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, Abbas suddenly seems to be feeling uncomfortable. In the past few days, he and his senior officials in Ramallah have been inciting against the proposed cease-fire deal by claiming that it is part of an Israeli-American conspiracy to separate the Gaza Strip from the West Bank and pave the way for the implementation of Trump's unseen peace plan. Abbas is especially worried that the international community will be funding economic and humanitarian projects in the Gaza Strip behind his back. He wants the money to be spent through his government. He wants to control every penny the international community earmarks for the welfare of his people.
Let us get to the nitty-gritty: Abbas is seeking to prolong the suffering of his people in the Gaza Strip so that he can keep deflecting the Palestinians' rage and violence toward Israel. He also seems to be hoping that the sanctions he imposed on the Gaza Strip might prompt the Palestinians living there to revolt against Hamas. While he has succeeded in his first goal -- triggering a wave of protests against Israel -- Abbas's desire to see Palestinians rise against his rivals in Hamas has thus far been unsuccessful.
Instead of helping to resolve the crisis in the Gaza Strip, Abbas is continuing to pour oil on the fire by inciting against Israel and the US administration. In recent speeches before the PLO Central Council in Ramallah, Abbas has repeatedly denounced Israel and the US and accused them of conspiring against the Palestinians and of being "partners" in "crimes" against the Palestinians. He has also vowed to continue his boycott of the US administration because of its "bias" in favor of Israel.
It is not clear how a cease-fire in return for improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is linked to any Israeli-American conspiracy. Since when is economic and humanitarian aid considered a conspiracy against the Palestinians?
Abbas, like most Arab leaders, never cared about improving the living conditions of the Palestinians. They could easily have helped the Palestinians build a strong economy and proper state institutions. Instead, Abbas and these Arab leaders want to keep the Palestinians living in refugee camps and poverty so that they can continue extorting money from the world and putting all the blame on Israel. Arab leaders seem to care about only one thing: enriching their personal bank accounts and securing the future of their own sons and daughters.
How can he talk about Trump's purported peace plan when neither he nor any Palestinian has ever seen it? How do he and his senior PLO official, Saeb Erekat, know that Trump's purported plan is aimed at "liquidating" the Palestinian cause and national rights?
Equally disingenuous is that Abbas, who is responsible for the current wave of violence along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, is now demanding that the international community, specifically the UN, provide "international protection" for the Palestinians against Israeli measures. In a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Abbas's Foreign Ministry accused Israel of committing "crimes" against Palestinians civilians, especially in the Gaza Strip, and renewed the call to provide international protection" for the Palestinians.
This is the same Abbas whose sanctions are depriving cancer patients of chemotherapy medicine in the Gaza Strip.
This is the same Abbas whose sanctions have deprived thousands of civil servants of their salaries in the Gaza Strip.
This is the same Abbas whose sanctions have triggered the recent violence along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Abbas is calling for "international protection" for the Palestinians while he is doing everything he can to wreak havoc on his people in the Gaza Strip. He does not want a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel; he does not want to lift the sanctions he imposed on the Gaza Strip, and he does not want the international community directly to fund economic and humanitarian projects that would improve the living conditions of his people. So what exactly does Abbas want? He wants the people of the Gaza Strip to continue protesting so that he will be able to continue to demonize Israel.
Worse, Abbas does not want his people to raise their voice against his sanctions. Palestinians who have been protesting against his punitive measures in the West Bank have been repeatedly beaten by Abbas's police forces. Just last week, Abbas's security officers broke up a peaceful protest in Ramallah against his sanctions.
Abbas is fine with protests as long as they call for bringing down Israel or the US. But Palestinians who dare to criticize his policies often find themselves subjected to various forms of punishment, including detention and beatings.
Abbas's crackdown on protests against his sanctions are yet another sign of his policy of double standards regarding the Gaza Strip. If anyone needs "international protection," it is those protesters who are being targeted by Abbas's security forces in the West Bank. Abbas's actions and words have shown that the well-being of his people is the very last thing on his mind.
Abbas has one strategy: to incite his people against Israel and the US. He is prepared to fight against Israel and the US to the last Palestinian. It is a battle he is waging at the cost of cancer patients and needy families. For him, a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip is a bad thing because it could bring calm and deprive him of his ability to whip up hatred against Israel and the US.
The question remains: Will the international community allow Abbas to continue playing his dirty game at the expense of his people or will it wake up and realize that Abbas is part of the problem, not part of the solution? The best way of employing pressure on Abbas is by making it clear to him that as long as he continues with his policies, including the incitement against Israel and the US, the international community will not fund his government.
Hamas-Israel Ceasefire Talks Show Peace Impossible - By Caroline Glick - www.breitbart.com
The ceasefire negotiations between Israel and the Hamas terror group's regime in Gaza point to a central truth about the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Before anyone speaks any more about a possible "deal of the century," or a "two-state solution," it is imperative that the implications of those talks be fully understood.
The ceasefire talks are being held between the sides of two separate international coalitions. On the one side are Israel, the U.S., and Egypt. On the other side are Hamas, Qatar, and Turkey.
The party that has been most notably absent from the discussions is the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA, which was formed in 1994 in the framework of talks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, is charged with running the Palestinian autonomous areas that Israel transferred to PLO control. Until June 2007, that included the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria.
In 2006, the PA held elections to its legislative council. Hamas won. In 2007, Hamas forcibly ejected the PA from Gaza and set up its own terror regime, which has ruled - with public support - ever since.
The PLO is an umbrella organization that includes several aligned Palestinian terror groups. Fatah, which was established by Yasser Arafat in 1958, is the largest faction of the PLO. Until his death in 2004, Arafat headed Fatah, the PLO and the PA. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, similarly sits at the helm of all three groups.
Since it was established in 1964, the PLO has insisted that it is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians. Since the PA was established in 1994, the PLO has sought to convince Hamas, the Muslim-Brotherhood's Palestinian terror affiliate, to join its ranks. Although Hamas and Fatah have negotiated multiple unity deals since then, many of which involved Hamas joining the PLO, none of the deals was ever fully implemented.
Since Hamas ousted Fatah forces from Gaza, on the ground, PA/Fatah has served as Hamas's financier and diplomatic representative. It has used the internationally-funded PA budget to pay for Hamas's regime in Gaza. Abbas's PLO representative Azzam al-Ahmad served as the chief Palestinian negotiator in ceasefire talks that brought an end to Hamas's 50 day war against Israel in 2014. The PLO's international delegations represented Hamas's positions in forums like the UN.
The PA/Fatah was apparently blindsided by the current round of ceasefire discussions. In these discussions, being carried out indirectly with Israel through several different mediators, Hamas is not using the PA to represent it. And this makes sense.
To show his frustration with Hamas's refusal to cede control over Gaza to the PA in any significant way, in April 2017, Abbas stopped paying Hamas's electricity bills. He also stopped transferring money for salaries to the Hamas regime in April 2018. Given the acrimony between the two sides, it is little wonder that Hamas, uninterested in ceding its power, decided to represent itself in its ceasefire negotiations.
Abbas stubbornly refuses to accept his growing irrelevance. Rather than trying to maneuver himself into a senior negotiating role, Abbas has boycotted the talks. He has soured his relations with the Sisi regime in Egypt, by - among other things - refusing to meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, who is overseeing ceasefire negotiations with Hamas.
Until a few weeks ago, Sisi was Abbas's strongest supporter. He accepted Abbas's demand that Fatah reassert its control over Gaza in any ceasefire deal. But Abbas's recalcitrance and contempt for Sisi's regime have brought relations to a low point. Sisi, like Israel, believes it is more urgent to prevent another war than empower the feckless Fatah leader.
Abbas's behavior has also won him the contempt of several PLO factions. While Fatah boycotts the Cairo talks, almost every other PLO faction is participating in them. The participation of the likes of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) in the talks shows that Abbas's long-held plan to incorporate Hamas into the PLO has been turned on its head. The PLO is joining Hamas.
And this brings us to the main reality that the current ceasefire talks expose.
Since Hamas took over Gaza 11 years ago, the U.S., Egypt, and Israel have believed to varying degrees that Gaza is a sideshow. The main story is Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
Like all previous U.S. peace proposals, Trump's "deal of the century" is reportedly focused on Judea and Samaria and the PA, not on Gaza and Hamas.
But the ceasefire discussions have shown that Gaza and Hamas are the only game in town.
Since Israel removed all of its civilians and military forces from Gaza in 2005 and abandoned the area, Gaza has been an entirely independent Palestinian territory. It has international borders with Israel and Egypt. It has a population it controls. It is a Palestinian state in everything but name. On the other hand, in Judea and Samaria, there is a Palestinian autonomy inside a larger area controlled by Israel.
As Abbas said in a speech Saturday panning the ceasefire talks, "There is no state in Gaza and an autonomy in the West Bank, and we will not accept this. We will never accept the separation of Gaza [from the West Bank]."
What Abbas left out was that the reason the Palestinians do not have a state in Judea and Samaria is because the PA/Fatah, under both Arafat and Abbas, rejected multiple Israel and U.S offers of statehood. There is no Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria because the PLO/Fatah/PLO doesn't want one.
Which brings us back to the Hamas state in Gaza.
Abbas also said, "Either we take responsibility for the West Bank and Gaza under one state, one regime, one law, and one weapons, or Hamas will take responsibility [for the West Bank].
The situation in Gaza proves that is a lie. The options aren't Fatah or Hamas. They are Israel or Hamas.
In 2004, Israel decimated Hamas's leadership in Gaza. The next year it walked away from Gaza, handing the area to the PA/Fatah lock, stock and barrel.
Rather than use the opportunity to build a state, the PA/Fatah militarized Gaza and orchestrated ever escalating mortar and rocket assaults against Israel. Gaza's militarization and the open transfer of massive quantities of armaments to Gaza through the Egyptian border gave Hamas the ability to rebuild its forces - and, in less than two years, oust Fatah from power.
Like the PA, Hamas uses its control over Gaza not to build a state but to expand its ability to strike Israel. This it has achieved by, among other things, developing close relations with Iran, Turkey, and Qatar, serving as an arm of their foreign policies towards Israel, Egypt and the wider Islamic world. Hamas has also developed close ties with the so-called "Islamic State" and affiliated al Qaeda organizations that operate in Gaza and Sinai. Like the PA, Hamas has used Europe's hostility towards Israel, and the Islamic bloc's control over UN agencies (including the UN General Assembly), to mask its crimes and blame Israel for its aggression against the Jewish state.
Despite Hamas's failure to develop Gaza economically, and its use of Gaza's civilian population as human shields behind which it builds its military capabilities and attacks Israel, the people of Gaza have maintained their support for the terror regime.
Far from pushing it out for failure to govern in any recognizable sense of the term, a majority of Gazans continue to support the jihadist group and to share its program of continuous warfare against Israel, with the aim of annihilating the Jewish state. Moreover, polling data show that if elections were held in Judea and Samaria, Hamas would win them.
All of this leads to one clear conclusion.
Hamas-ruled Gaza is what a Palestinian state looks like. It is what a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would look like if any U.S. or other peace proposal that requires Israel to transfer control over the areas to the PA/Fatah is implemented.
The Palestinians - as a people - are not interested in establishing an independent state. They are committed to annihilating Israel. This is why all of their political factions are terror groups. That's why one of Abbas's possible successors is in prison for five counts of terrorist murder and the other has called for Israel to be wiped out with nuclear weapons.
This is why, in a bid to shore up popular support for Fatah, Abbas is calling for a renewal of terror attacks against Israel. And this is why Hamas, whose record is one unblemished by phony peace processes with Israel, is more respected and trusted by the Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria.
Last week, Trump's top advisors on the Palestinian conflict with Israel, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley,, and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman issued a statement on their much touted plan.
"No one will be fully pleased with our proposal, but that's the way it must be if real peace is to be achieved. Peace can only succeed if it is based on realities," it read.
While it is true that peace can succeed only if it is based on reality, it is also true that there is no realistic prospect for peace. Hamas's terror state in Gaza is the apotheosis of Palestinian aspirations. This is what the Palestinians seek to build in Judea and Samaria and, in due course, this is what they want all of Israel to become.
Under the circumstances, the Trump administration has a choice to make. Does it want Judea and Samaria to look like Gaza? Or does it want Judea and Samaria to look like Israel? The ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel are proof that there is no third option.
What Will Happen After the Palestinians Reject Trump's Peace Plan? - By Ariel Ben Solomon -
Amid speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump could soon release his Middle East peace plan, the word in political, academic and Jewish organizational circles is that it's almost certain to not go anywhere and surely be rejected by the Palestinian leadership.
The reasons for the expected Palestinian uncompromising opposition to any deal with Israel have been repeated ad infinitum elsewhere, but suffice it to say that religiously, culturally and politically, Palestinians are in no way ready to accept a deal.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas does not want to go down in history as a traitor to his people and be the one to give legitimacy to Israel.
So the question remains: What will happen after the Palestinians reject Trump's plan ?
Could it be that Trump expects a Palestinian rejection and then move to bypass them by giving Israel a free hand? At the same time, it seems unlikely that Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt would go along with a plan deemed by many to favor Israel.
Trump was reportedly planning to unveil his "deal of the century" during his Sept. 25 address to the U.N. General Assembly, but National Security Advisor John Bolton pushed back, saying "there is no decision on a timetable for when the full details of the plan will be announced," according to the Associated Press.
However, Trump is expanding his peace-plan staff in anticipation for the rollout, CBS News reported on Wednesday.
At a rally in West Virginia on Tuesday, Trump said Jerusalem is off the table after having relocated the U.S. embassy there, but signaled that Israel would have to pay a price for the move in return.
'Not a central regional concern'
Asaf Romirowsky, executive director of the nonprofit Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and co-author of Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief, tells JNS that every administration feels that it must attempt to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"When the Palestinians reject the plan, Trump can then say he tried. The Palestinians have already created the narrative that Trump is not an honest broker," says Romirowsky, who is also a fellow at the Middle East Forum think tank.
Romirowsky sees the violence launched from Gaza against Israel as interwoven with the peace process talk by the U.S. administration and is meant to create a media image of Israel as the aggressor--bombing with fighter jets--with the Palestinians using mostly kites and balloons, however destructive they have turned out to be.
"The interesting thing is there are good ties between Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states," he says, "and this highlights the fact that the Palestinian issue is not the central regional concern. Iran is."
Asked about what the fallout could be if the Palestinians reject the expected U.S. peace plan, Romirowsky responded that more violence against Israel from Gaza and even from the Hezbollah terrorist group in the north could be expected. He predicts a possible outbreak of full-fledged war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in the next few months.
A war with Israel would change the media narrative by seeking to show the Arabs as victims and Israel as the aggressor, he adds.
The same is true regarding the multiple rejections by the Palestinians for a state, continues Romirowsky, pointing out that "the Palestinians have shown again and again that they don't want a deal, and prefer to play the role of victim."
Palestinians and Arabs consider American offer biased
Ronen Yitzhak, head of the Middle East Studies department at Israel's Western Galilee College, tells JNS that Trump's plan includes items the Palestinians would never agree to. In addition, he speculates that if no major Arab states--Saudi Arabia or Jordan, in particular--support the plan, the world will side with the Palestinians.
"The Trump plan was meant to go around the Palestinians, and get the agreement of the Saudis and Jordanians, but now they don't agree either," says Yitzhak.
He adds that the delaying in the release of Trump's plan could very well be because of the failure to gain Arab support.
Ido Zelkovitz, head of the Middle East Studies program at Yezreel Valley College and a policy fellow at Mitvim think tank, comments that the Trump peace plan has no way of being accepted within the Palestinian political sphere.
"Mahmoud Abbas considers the American offer as biased, and internal political issues are more important to both the Fatah and Hamas leadership than a regional peace process," states Zelkovitz, who is also a senior research fellow at the Ezri Center for Iran & Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Haifa.
Noting that the environment is not ripe for a deal right now, Zelkovitz says that "the Trump plan or any other plan doesn't have any chance to create an impact on the ground."
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