The acts of Abbas’s comedy theatre continue

I still laugh sarcastically whenever I hear a speech or statement issued by Mahmoud Abbas, President of the security coordination authority with Israel. I am enraged, saddened and pained at the fact that this old man, who is over 86 years old, is the one in charge of the great Palestinian people who have struggled and fought against the Israeli enemy and made sacrifices that no other nation in the world has had to. How can this subservient and lowly person speak in the name of a free people that refuse to sacrifice their religion and homeland?

Since his conspiracy against the late Yasser Arafat after the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, and his imposition as Prime Minister by Israel in 2003, when he plotted to besiege Yasser Arafat and then, later, killed him and inherited all his positions—including the delusional Presidency, head of the Fatah movement, and the presidency of the PLO amongst other positions, that mean nothing to anyone but those holding the positions. They do not benefit the Palestinian people. Since then and till today, this man has been going in the opposite direction to the Palestinian people, as he does not believe in resistance as a means to liberate Palestine. Instead, he considers it terrorism, speaking like the Zionists and courting the US to gain its approval while persecuting the honourable resistance fighters, wherever they are. He concedes the rights of the Palestinian people and their land and agrees with the Israelis for them to give up their right of return. Since the inception of the so-called “peace negotiations” between him and the Israelis, Jerusalem has not been on the table and he continues to negotiate for the sake of negotiating, hoping that the game of negotiations does not end so that he continues to occupy his seat, which is stained with the blood of Palestinian resistance fighters that he reported to the Israeli security authorities in his sacred cooperation, as he describes it. The man always exposes himself, as if he wants people to follow his example in treason and collusion, and for him to go down in history for it.

Sometimes, he portrays himself as the hero and ‘climbs up the tree’, as Benjamin Netanyahu puts it, makes arrogant statements such as threatening to cancel security coordination and return to the resistance and so on. However, he is forced to climb down the tree, hanging his head and humiliated.

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In his last speech to the UN General Assembly, he played this role and threatened Israel, saying it had a year to withdraw from the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and if that did not happen, then he would withdraw recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders.

He believed that salvation or a solution lies in the ICC in The Hague, deliberately forgetting that the Court had issued an unprecedented historical ruling in 2004, in the case of the Apartheid Wall built by the occupation and ruled that the occupation’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories was illegal. The ruling also stipulated that Israel immediately stop construction of the Wall and to nullify or cancel all measures taken to illegally restrict or hinder the residents of the West Bank from exercising their rights. It also ordered Israel to repair all the damage it caused. However, what happened after that? Did the occupation authorities comply with this ruling and stop construction? Of course not; instead, it challenged the ruling and continued construction.

It is quite ironic that Abbas’s puppet authority also contributed to the non-implementation of the ruling, and extinguished the flame of this ruling, turning it into ashes after undermining it when it agreed to the idea of land swaps with Israel. In doing so, it agreed to the annexation of large parts of the territories occupied in 1967, which are some of the best and most fertile areas in Palestine. Israel established hundreds of settlements on these lands, and this helped Judaise Palestinian cities and erased the Arabic names of cities, neighbourhoods, and streets, replacing them with Jewish names.

As he sat in the tree, Abbas told a delegation of activists from the Hebron and Bethlehem governorates in the West Bank that “Israel’s rejection of the two-state solution will oblige the Palestinians to go for other political options.” He added that these options include “the implementation of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, or we will go to the one democratic state on the ground of historic Palestine, where Palestinians would have full political and civil rights,” not one state that is based on support for the occupation and the imposition of an apartheid regime.

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The truth is, we do not want him to climb down from the tree; we want him to stay up in it and commit to his threats, meaning a return to the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which is Resolution 181; which gives the Palestinian 44 per cent of historical Palestine, which is double the area the PA agreed to after the ill-fated Oslo Accords, which amounted to 22 per cent. The territories occupied by Israel after the June 1967 War are included in this resolution. A strange irony is the fact that the declaration of the Palestinian State in November 1988 in Algeria was based mainly on the Partition Plan, but within the June 1967 borders, although the international community, at that time, was more inclined or aligned with the idea of ​​a one democratic state solution on all Palestinian lands from the river to the sea, which the PLO had adopted since its founding in the 1960s. However, it abandoned this idea with the declaration of the Palestinian State within the June borders, meaning it settled for 22 per cent of historical Palestine. However, it did not even get this shameful concession or surrender of Palestinian rights, and is still negotiating it.

The question remains, will Mahmoud Abbas remain in the tree during the year, which is how long he’s given Israel to withdraw, before going through with his threat, or will he be forced to climb down, like every other time, humiliated?

Since the 1948 Nakba, the Palestinian people have not experienced a state of loss and decline on all levels as the one it is experiencing today. Only young national leadership, which has not been corrupted by politics or money, can stop this decline and prevent it from progressing to complete deterioration. Therefore, it has become necessary for all of the resistance factions and those who are honourable in Fatah, to form a new Palestinian entity with a young national spirit, after the PLO deviated from its path. Its role has completely ended, and its pages turned in history, with all of its good and bad, its struggle and fight, its breakdown and surrender and its downfall.

The responsibility for forming this new national entity falls on the shoulders of all the resistance factions, after the people proclaimed their word, following the Al-Aqsa uprising and the Sword of Jerusalem battle last Ramadan. The Palestinians chose the road of resistance, and they rejected the path taken by the PLO, so it has become essential to elect a new Palestinian leadership that expresses the beliefs of this great nation and reflects its spirit of resistance. It must reinstate the Palestinian case as a “national liberation” cause and be granted full legitimacy by making the bold decision regarding the Oslo Accords and what resulted from it. It must also manage the Palestinian national project in all its manifestations.

This is what the Palestinian people need now, not Abbas’s comedies.

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