The PLO factions and Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas’s interview with Israel’s Channel 2 on Thursday 31 March, leaves no room for us to claim that he is not working to end the intifada or that he has stopped or even reduced his security coordination with the occupation. This forces all Fatah officials and staff who announced or declared they are with the intifada and that they are participating in it to take a strong and firm stand against Mahmoud Abbas’ statements and positions, as well as the Palestinian security efforts to thwart the intifada that he revealed. Such revelations include his statement that “the Palestinian security forces go to schools and search students’ schoolbags to make sure they are not carrying knives, in an effort to stop stabbings.”

He gave another example of the effectiveness of this measure when he said: “The Palestinian security forces found 70 knives in the schoolbags of the students in a single school and confiscated them,” adding: “The Palestinian security forces convinced them of the fruitlessness of killing or dying at Israeli checkpoints.” Of course this convincing involved the security forces arresting the students who were found with knives, questioning them, torturing them and threatening their families. Mahmoud Abbas’s statement about “convincing” the students must be understood within the context of the security agencies’ traditional means of “convincing” those accused of resisting the occupation or attacking settlers. We only need to listen to the experiences of many who were tortured by the Israeli Shabak and the Palestinian security agencies, as they said that the Palestinian security agencies are harsher, more barbaric and more brutal than the Shabak.

If Mahmoud Abbas went as far as to send his security forces to schools every morning to check whether students were carrying knives or not, could there be anything else more scandalous, corrupt, or more serving of the occupation’s and settlement’s interests than this insistence on ending the intifada?

To make matters worse, he is doing this after his strategy and policy failed through settlements and negotiations, and after all his services to Netanyahu, including security coordination, failed to gain him even some control in Area A. This was agreed upon in the Oslo Accords, but was later withdrawn in 2002 after the re-occupation of Areas A and B. Since then, these areas have been under the occupation’s complete control, and after becoming president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas agreed to sign the security coordination agreement under the auspices of Keith Dayton and restructure the Palestinian security services to comply with Zio-American standards, i.e. he solidified the occupation of these areas.

Despite this, he repeatedly said during the aforementioned interview that he is “willing to resume talks with Netanyahu.” He even expressed his willingness to meet with Netanyahu, both in Arabic and in English, when he said: “I will meet him at any time, and I actually proposed that we meet.” When he was asked what Netanyahu’s response to this was, he said: “No, this is a secret that he can tell you.”

Is it possible for Mahmoud Abbas to reach this level of opposition to what the majority of the oppressed, lost and confused Fatah members want? Is it possible for him and his security forces to reach the level of challenging the will of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza Bank, 48 Palestine, and those in Diaspora across the world?

If Fatah is still patient and perseverant, regardless of the reasons, why do the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), and those affiliated with the PLO factions continue to be patient and cover for Mahmoud Abbas by remaining with him under the roof of the PLC, the Central Committee, and the PA in Ramallah? This is despite the fact that these parties made a consensual decision in the PLO’s Central Committee to stop security coordination and demanded the reconsideration of former agreements. They repeated these demands throughout the intifada and ordered a stop to security coordination.

However, Mahmoud Abbas completely disregarded this decision from the first moment it was made. He read it as a call to step up security coordination and go ahead with more measures by means of begging Netanyahu to resume negotiations, which all parties consider fruitless.

This poses the questions: Hasn’t Mahmoud Abbas turned all the positions of his partners in the Central Committee and PLC into meaningless positions when he insisted on resuming the policy of negotiations, considering it the only true official position assumed by the PLO, which is headed and represented by Abbas?

The only other real thing Abbas has adopted is security coordination. The Palestinian security services have enforced this coordination on Mahmoud Abbas’s orders, in every Palestinian school, home and workplace, and this is something the occupation cannot do on its own. Therefore, we can say that the continued occupation of the West Bank, and even Jerusalem, is due to the security coordination and the efforts made by Mahmoud Abbas to stop the intifada and paralyze the resistance groups from getting involved with the intifada and forming Palestinian unity that can escalate the intifada and turn it into a comprehensive Palestinian intifada.

The resistance groups, especially the PPP, then the DFLP, followed by the rest of the parties, must not continue this relationship with Abbas. They must declare their position on the intifada, putting an end to the security coordination, and achieving national unity. Although they have done so, they have left the matter of enforcement to Mahmoud Abbas and covered for him under the pretext of preserving the PLO and national unity, but this will ultimately lead to allowing Mahmoud Abbas and his security forces to freely thwart the intifada, protect the occupation and settlements, solidify the imprisonment of detainees, and further secure the siege on Gaza, regardless of these parties’ good and genuine intentions.

This is occurring at a time when the PPP and other PLO factions are able to put an end to this dangerous flaw in the Palestinian situation. This is because Abbas cannot continue his security and negotiating policy if the cover of these factions is removed. This can be achieved by holding a national meeting attended by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the youth groups in the intifada, and to adopt a united position supporting the escalation of the intifada and achieving widespread national unity.

What is required is the formation of a united front that will become deeply involved in the intifada and mobilise the streets with protests, strikes and sit-ins to serve two main purposes: the departure of the occupation from Jerusalem and the West Bank and the dismantlement of the settlements without any conditions or restrictions, along with the immediate release of all prisoners and lifting the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip. This will push Fatah towards joining this front or pressuring Mahmoud Abbas to stop security coordination and continue the intifada in order to achieve its goals of getting rid of the occupation and dismantling the settlements, i.e. liberating Jerusalem and the West Bank without any limitations or conditions. However, there will be no talk about the steps that will be taken after this, as that bridge will be crossed when we come to it, and the people will be left to decide what to do with the bearskin after its hunted.

In addition to this, Mahmoud Abbas must be responded to when he claims that he is against the knife intifada, with the following: we will launch widespread popular peaceful protests and sit-ins that will not stop until the occupation is ended and the settlements are dismantled. However, your claims that you are against the knife intifada are a weak excuse to do nothing and prolong the occupation and settlements. You do not want to confront the occupation neither peacefully nor violently, and your heart is set on negotiations.

As for the PPP, DFLP and the Central Committee factions, the ball is in their court, as they have not stepped up the intifada and left Mahmoud Abbas free to enforce his policies in their name. It has been six months since the intifada and the declaration of their policies and positions, which Mahmoud Abbas turned into a formality and into something meaningless, but until when?

Translated from Arabi21, 10 April 2016.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.