Abbas’ threat to resign sparks fears, uncertainty

Thursday, November 12, 2009 | by leslie susser

What will the departure of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas mean to the peace process?

No matter whom you talk to, the answer is that without Abbas the prospect for a peace pact gets even more distant.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama both fear that Abbas’ departure could lead to instability, chaos and even violence in the Palestinian-populated territories.

AP reported that France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy telephoned Abbas on Nov. 10 and “encouraged Mr. Abbas to pursue his actions in the service of the Palestinians and of peace,” according to a statement from Sarkozy’s office.

Abbas, 74, president of the Palestinian Authority, said last week that he would not seek another term in an election scheduled for January. This week he said he may step down sooner.

He has made similar threats before and some suggest he may be doing it again to jump start peace talks.

But if he carries out his resignation this time around, Palestinian moderates say this will give a real boost to Hamas and other more radical Palestinian movements that believe in violence as a means to pressure Israel.

In making his announcement last week, Abbas declared, “We had high hopes in President Obama — they had a very clear attitude on settlements — but it turned out that the American administration favored Israel.”

Abbas believed Obama would force Israel to stop all settlement construction and then launch peace talks. The Palestinian leader thought the policy would push Netanyahu into a corner and possibly even topple his Likud-led government for one more likely to cut a deal with the Palestinians.

Taking his cue from Obama, Abbas made a full freeze of settlement construction a precondition for talks. But Obama’s resolution to push Israel further seems to be dissipating.

The last straw was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement early last week praising Netanyahu’s agreement to restrictions on settlement building in the West Bank as “unprecedented.”

Clinton’s forthright language stunned the Palestinians. For Abbas it meant his gamble on a settlement freeze had failed.

While insisting that his decision was not a tactical ploy, he raised the specter of the two-state solution for which he had worked so hard slipping away.

Abbas also finds himself in a no-win situation with regard to Hamas. If he backs down on settlements, the fundamentalists will accuse him of being an Israeli-American lackey. If he resigns, they will say his resignation is proof of their thesis that negotiations with the Zionist enemy can only lead to grief.

Another source of Abbas’ frustration is Netanyahu’s refusal to recognize the progress made with the previous Israeli government under Ehud Olmert. Abbas says he was very close to an agreement with Olmert: On borders, he says, they were already reviewing detailed maps, and on the thorny question of the right of return to Israel for Palestinian refugees, Abbas says the differences were only over numbers.

Abbas would like to continue negotiations from the point Olmert left off. But by insisting on “no preconditions,” Netanyahu seems to want to start from scratch.

To break the impasse, P.A. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is considering declaring independence unilaterally if the United States agrees to back a self-declared Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. But other voices in the Palestinian camp are talking about a return to armed struggle and a new intifada.

What makes the situation even more volatile is the lack of an obvious successor to Abbas if he goes through with his threat to stand down. The front-runner is Marwan Barghouti, the jailed former leader of the young Fatah military cadres, who would likely take a more militant line toward Israel — if he’s even able to compete.

Abbas’ move has forced early decision time on the main players: Obama must decide whether to work with Netanyahu to appease Abbas — by, for example, getting the Israelis to release Fatah prisoners and make a serious peace offer — or to disengage altogether until both parties are ready to talk business, or to shake things up by putting a detailed American peace plan on the table.

Netanyahu must decide whether to launch a major peace initiative or face the consequences that Abbas’ resignation could spark chaos. If he really wants to convince Abbas to stay, he will have to make a far-reaching offer on settlements.

The next few weeks could be crucial.