Abbas Continues Arafat's Weakness Strategy

Mahmoud Abbas is continuing Yassir Arafat's highly effective strategy of claiming he won't be able to convince the Palestinian Arabs to agree to peace unless Israel lets its citizens get murdered with impunity.

The title "Abbas threatens to resign if Israeli 'escalation' continues, written by Khaled Abu Toameh says it all, but we'll elaborate with some annotated quotes from that article and an article in Haaretz.

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is considering resigning from his post if Israel continues its military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a top PA official said Thursday.

[Those operations came in response to the sniper murder of Andres Muscara Chavez, which itself was followed by the launching of more than a hundred Kassams and mortars at civilian areas in Israel. All, of course, in gross violation of the most basic commitments of the Palestinian Arabs under the Oslo Accords.]

The official said Abbas, in a series of phone conversations with Arab, American and EU leaders and government officials, strongly condemned Israel's attacks as a "severe blow" to the peace process.

[No mention, of course, of the continuing terrorist attacks, which are the real escalation. Yet Abbas is considered a "moderate." (Of course, everything's relative, so compared to Hamas, someone like Abbas seems "moderate."]

"The president has said that he will resign if the military escalation and daily killings continue," the official said. "Israel's actions undermine the Palestinian Authority and drive more Palestinians into the open arms of Hamas and Islamic Jihad."

[There's that broken record again: Palestinian Arab terrorists will be radicalized and will murder Jews under the banner of Hamas and Islamic Jihad if Israel has the chutzpah to try to protect its citizens.]

According to the official, Abbas was particularly enraged that Israel had stepped up its military operations shortly after US President George W. Bush's visit to the region.

[The sniper murder of Andres Muscara Chavez came shortly after President Bush's visit. Israel doesn't give Hamas a calendar and tell them when to launch attacks.]

"The military escalation is being seen as a direct result of Bush's visit to Ramallah," the official said. "This puts President Abbas in an uncomfortable position and makes him look as if he's part of the aggression."

[If anything, Abbas' reaction makes it appear he supports the terrorist acts committed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.]

Another PA official said Abbas was also considering disbanding the Palestinian negotiating team as a first step toward suspending peace talks with Israel.

[The talks are a sop to Abbas, an opportunity for him to pocket even more Israeli concessions without fulfilling his prior obligations and without making any concessions of his own.]

Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, accused Israel of seeking to sabotage the peace talks in the aftermath of the Annapolis peace conference.

[The broken record again. Israel wasn't the party that went out to murder innocent people.]

"President Abbas's position is that the Israeli military aggression and the settlements not only cause harm to the peace process, but will destroy it," he said. "Israel must halt its military attacks immediately to save the peace process."

Asked if the PA is considering suspending peace talks with Israel, he said: "Such a decision should not be taken by the Palestinians alone. This should be a decision of all Arab parties."

Abbas on Thursday chaired an emergency meeting of the PLO Executive Committee in Ramallah to discuss the latest upsurge in violence and its impact on the peace process, sources close to Abbas said.

[What peace process?]

Following the meeting, the committee issued a statement accusing Israel of turning the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a "bloody battlefield." The committee condemned the IDF's operations as "terrorism" that jeopardized the peace process.

[Not a word about the terrorist sniper murder of a visitor to Israel, who had the misfortune of working in a potato field while the sniper was taking aim, but calling efforts to prevent such terrorist acts as "terrorism."]

Meanwhile, the ongoing IDF attacks appear to have brought Hamas and Fatah closer to each other after months of fighting.

[Murdering Israelis has always been a way of bringing Arabs together.]

Representatives of the two parties have appealed to their leaders to set aside their differences and join ranks to face the Israeli operations.

[It's doubtful, to say the least, that they will even consider the guaranteed way of preventing such Israeli actions: ending terrorism.]

Several Fatah officials on Thursday visited Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar in Gaza City to offer their condolences over the death of his son, Husam, in Tuesday's IDF operation. The delegation was headed by top Fatah operative Ibrahim Abu al-Naja. The visit came hours after Abbas phoned Zahar to also offer his condolences. It was the first time the two had talked since Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip last June.

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Haaretz also covered the whining from the Palestinian Authority in an article Erekat: Talks with Israel impossible while raids continue.

Earlier Thursday, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said negotiations with Israel are impossible as long as the IDF continues its raids on Gaza.

Erekat's comments came after two days of heavy violence between Israel and Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip.

[Certainly, there isn't going to be any genuine, as opposed to artificial, progress as long as the Palestinian Arabs continue their love affair with terrorism.]

Israel Air Force attacks have killed at least 25 Palestinians since Tuesday and militants in Gaza have fired more than 70 rockets at the western Negev, including at least 15 on Thursday.

[The current count of Kassams launched from Gaza at Israeli communities is far higher.]

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Thursday from Moscow, where she arrived Wednesday for talks with Russian officials, that the IDF would continue its offensive in response to the ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza.

"Israel is obligated to give its citizens a response to the daily attacks coming from the Gaza Strip," she said.

[Israel has clearly been far too passive, doing very little while Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Arab terrorist groups including some from Abbas' Fatah gang have launched thousands of Kassams at Sederot.]

In Jordan on Thursday, parliament's lower house denounced the continuous
IDF attacks on the Palestinian territories, the official Petra news agency reported.

[Jordan parliament might take the time to denounce the terrorist attacks that have necessitated Israel's defensive actions, which have been minimal so far.

No other nation in the world would have endured the attacks the Palestinian Arabs have launched against Israel from both Gaza and the West Bank and continued to pretend there was a partner for peace in someone like Abu Mazen.]