Why does the west misunderstand abbas

End all support to the Israeli illegal settlement regime. Recognize the state of Palestine. Continue international economic and financial support to the Palestinians. Affirming Palestinian commitment to respect human rights and international conventions, Abbas urged the UNGA to preserve the two-state solution and pursue peace between Palestinians and Israelis. The Reaction to the Speech Public reaction to official speeches are always in the eye of the beholder.

Khalil E. Related Content. Policy Analysis November 11, Op-Eds October 30, It is a fundamental pillar of their narrative of national liberation, a vehicle for reclaiming the dignity lost by their history of dispossession, a crucible that for many lends the sheen of redemptive theology to their long suffering. This vision of a violent reclamation of national honor is reified in Hamas, funded by cash from Qatar, Iran and elsewhere, and sustained by the religious leadership of Palestinian society in most Palestinian towns and villages.

Indeed, it often seems to be the only narrative left standing that still teaches Palestinians that they have agency in deciding their fate, or that victory against immovable Israel is even possible.

In the end, Abbas lives in a kind of ideological purgatory. He cannot pursue the violent strategy he has watched fail so spectacularly, nor can he acknowledge the flaw at the heart of his diplomatic strategy — the sad fact that Israelis who could not be frightened off by waves of suicide terrorism are not likely to be dislodged by waves of international tut-tutting.

Worse, the trap is permanent. Israeli recalcitrance is shored up against foreign pressure by the very expectation of more waves of terrorism. The one Palestinian strategy fatally undermines the other. And so he is left trying to sell Palestinians on the shallowest of the strategic visions available to them, and they know it. A recent poll found that 67 percent of Palestinians want him to resign, a result that surprised no one. Salvation will come from New York and Geneva, he insists, even as Israelis remain distinctly unimpressed by his international efforts.

And the longer salvation is delayed, the more he is identified with yet another drawn-out failure of the Palestinian national movement. In the unity deal struck between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority last month, Abbas effectively swallowed into his PA, into his vehicle for restoring Palestinian dignity by — not to put too fine a point on it — ignoring the causes of Palestinian self-defeat, the very architects of that defeat, the party most responsible for the hardening of Israeli politics against Palestinian aspirations.

Hamas, after all, seems eager to surrender every instrument of sovereignty it possesses in Gaza — except the one that matters: its armed wing will remain intact, and under its control. It was the original point and purpose of the entire exercise of reconciliation.

Hamas could not give up its military wing because it was in the process of becoming its military wing, shorn of the extranea of civil politics. Those words, meant to soothe the nerves of Fatah officials who understand how small is their victory if Hamas retains its 25,strong military, were a signal of the tension within Fatah over the reconciliation.

No one can take away our weapons. Fatah leaders are not stupid ; they understand that their retaking of Gaza is coming at the cost of liberating Hamas from its civilian responsibilities and freeing it to better lead the military side of the Palestinian agenda. They are worried. This is true, of course, but it was also true before the reconciliation. Hamas has won something more important in Palestinian terms. By granting it a reprieve from its civilian rule in Gaza, and thus unshackling it from responsibility for the consequences of its narrative, Abbas has ensured that no matter what he says or does, it is Hamas and its ilk, the proponents of sacred, violent resistance, who will tell his story.

About Us. Contact us. Advertise with Us. Terms Of Service. Privacy Policy. Subscriber Agreement. JPost Jobs. Cancel Subscription. Customer Service. The Jerusalem Post Group. Breaking News. Iran News. Arab citizens seeking mortgages are often turned away by banks, and many young couples resort to the black market.

But local councils lacked the infrastructure to administer the money, and almost half the funding allocated to them went unspent. The councils have instead become a lucrative target for organized crime.

Last year, fifteen Arab council heads were targeted by gunfire or Molotov cocktails. He serves as a member of an unofficial nationwide sulha committee, and has brokered dozens of reconciliations between rival families. A source close to Abbas told me that Israeli police officials have personally asked him to intervene in several of the bloodiest feuds. Yet some critics say that the Islamic Movement, with its emphasis on religious law, is not a tempering force but a complicit one.

For Abbas, the work is gruelling: endless visits with grieving relatives who are more interested in vengeance than in reconciliation. Kayal, the strategist, recalled phoning him once in the middle of the night and hearing what sounded like a firing range in the background. But, after four months of visits there, Abbas oversaw a breakthrough.

On a clear day in January, five hundred men filed into the town hall for a reconciliation ceremony. A long piece of white cloth and a wooden pole were carried in. The head of each family tied a single knot of cloth to the pole, to symbolize their unshakable bond. Abbas, from the stage, issued a prayer in a soft voice. Before the latest election, in March, Abbas removed his party from the Joint List. The Joint List, outraged, worked to portray him as a shill for Netanyahu, and the strategy seemed to work.

But Kayal believed that the polls were misleading. Analogies to Trump come readily to Kayal, who regards the disgraced political operative Roger Stone as a lodestar.

His opponents were not impressed. Ben Gvir is one of the hard-right ideologues whom Abbas had sought to pacify; he has been convicted eight times, on charges that include incitement and supporting a Jewish terrorist group. The two men have neighboring offices in the Knesset. He had been discussing a power-sharing deal with Naftali Bennett , a kippah-wearing former settlement leader and software millionaire, who would serve the first two years as Prime Minister. Together, they picked up where Netanyahu had left off: Lapid phoned Abbas.

In early May, the three men met at a hotel outside Tel Aviv, about fifteen minutes from where Lapid and Bennett live and a two-hour schlep for Abbas.

Bennett was in shirtsleeves; Lapid had on his habitual T-shirt and blazer; Abbas wore a suit. Over orange juice and croissants, Abbas laid out a demand that would have seemed preposterous a few months before: he would join the coalition if the government supplied almost ten billion dollars for housing, education, welfare, and transportation in Arab communities, with separate funding for the Druze and Bedouin populations and nearly a billion dollars to target crime and violence.

The group, aware that Abbas was still screening calls from Netanyahu, broadly agreed to his terms. And he insisted on cancelling a law that allows the police to demolish unauthorized homes. To build a home in Israel requires a permit—but, because the central government has not supplied many Arab councils with the necessary surveys, securing one can take years, driving families to build illegally.

According to estimates, there are at least fifty thousand unauthorized homes in Arab communities. All are under threat of being razed. The meeting adjourned, with another one scheduled for after the weekend. The impetus was a pending court decision, which was expected to expel six Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. The decision, coinciding with the holy month of Ramadan, was seen as denying Muslims a place to congregate.

Clashes broke out between Palestinian protesters and the police. Some protesters threw stones. The police, wielding tear gas and stun grenades, raided the mosque. Abbas watched from home, as images of the holy site, filled with smoke, appeared onscreen. When Israel did not yield, the group fired a barrage of rockets at Jerusalem. That night, Israel launched an offensive that devastated Gaza, claiming the lives of more than two hundred Palestinians, at least sixty-seven of whom were children.

Rocket fire killed twelve Israelis, including two children. Places such as Haifa, Jaffa, Acre—fast-gentrifying tourist havens, where Jews and Arabs had lived in relative peace—became sites of attempted lynchings.

In Lod, a week of nightly clashes left the city full of charred buildings and broken glass. Even Abbas struggled to maintain his assurance that dialogue would ease the tensions between Arabs and Jews.

The parking lot stood vacant, apart from the torched shells of three cars.