MidEast

  • Print Friendly, PDF & Email
  • Send to Kindle

Analysis: Abbas’ Rhetoric Has “Radicalized Palestinians,” Undermining Hopes for Peace

by TheTower.org Staff |

In an analysis published Wednesday, veteran Palestinian affairs reporter Khaled Abu Toameh faults Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, along with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, for radicalizing “Palestinians to a point where it has become laughable even to talk about any peace process with Israel.”

Instead of being honest with his people and telling them that peace requires painful concessions also on the part of Palestinians, and not only Israel, Abbas has chosen — ever since the collapse of Kerry’s “peace process” — to incite Palestinians against Israel. […]

Abbas is well aware that his people will condemn him if he ever returns to the negotiating table with Israel. That is why he has now chosen a different strategy — to try to impose a solution with the help of the United Nations and the international community.

Abbas wants the international community and UN Security Council to give him what Israel cannot and will not offer him at the negotiating table.

Abu Toameh writes that Abbas “is now in the tenth year of his four-year term in office,” and thus “does not have a mandate from his people to negotiate, let alone sign, any agreement with Israel.” But instead of building a consensus for peace, Abbas has engaged in an “incitement campaign against Israel […] reminiscent of the atmosphere that prevailed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip immediately after the botched Camp David summit in the summer of 2000.”

The Palestinian Authority has long been accused of engaging in incitement against Israel, in violation of the 1995 Oslo 2 Accords that call on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority “to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and […] accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda.” Abbas has disregarded this commitment, as did his predecessor Arafat  in 2000, before the outbreak of the Second Intifada.

Even before the latest escalation in his rhetoric, Abbas subverted the idea of “mutual understanding” by, among other things, treating terrorists as heroes.

[Photo: DocumentingNews / YouTube ]

tt