A
Counterproductive U.S.
Advice To Palestinians
By Nicola Nasser
19 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Regardless
of good will or bad faith, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’
decision to go without national consensus to early presidential and
parliamentary elections was divisive, counterproductive and conforms
to U.S.-Israeli plans to remove the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas”
from power or pressure it into accepting what its rival Fatah had accepted:
A peace process on their dictated terms and conditions.
“I have decided to call for early presidential and parliamentary
elections,” Abbas said in a televised 90-minute speech on Saturday,
in an effort to break a political nine-month deadlocked dialogue mainly
bilateral between Fatah, the former ruling movement, and the incumbent
Hamas. “Let’s return to the people to have their say, and
let them be the judge.”
Early election was among several options floated with the aim of outmaneuvering
Hamas including a referendum, declaring a state of emergency, calling
for early legislative election, forming an emergency government or a
government of independents or technocrats.
Chairman of the Higher Committee of the Central Election Commission
(CEC), Hanna M. Nasser, said after a meeting with Abbas in the West
Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday that the CEC needs 110 days after the
issuance of the relevant presidential decree, which has yet to be issued,
to organize the election; the CEC decided five days earlier to start
updating the voter's list as from mid-January 2007.
Close aide to Abbas and member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) Yasser Abed Rabbo, said he expected the
election to take place in the next three months, but Saeb Erekat, another
senior aide and chief negotiator, said they might not happen until June.
Accordingly a time space is still available to mediate the Palestinian
divide; Abbas’ decision could be used as a pressure tactic to
prod the political protagonists into a common ground either for a consensus
to form a national unity government, in which case the elections become
irrelevant, or a consensus to go to the polls, which precludes the slide
into civil war.
Abbas could be once again maneuvering to pressure Hamas into giving
in to the Israeli-U.S. conditions. “My aim,” he said, “is
a national unity government to lift this crisis and siege.” This
is, after all, the same Abbas who once threatened to hold a referendum
on the prisoners' document and changed his mind; and now he is threatening
early elections and could change his mind.
However he hardly finished his speech than his decision backfired. Hamas
legislators and cabinet ministers had boycotted Abbas’ speech
and Hamas leaders immediately called his declaration illegal and tantamount
to a coup.
The Hamas-led Palestinian government of Haniyeh on Sunday refused Abbas’
decision as “unconstitutional” and condemned his speech
as divisive. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar said that the call for new
elections is illegal: “We will not participate … If he (Abbas)
is tired, he should resign and we’ll have a presidential election.”
Haniyeh’s senior adviser, Ahmed Yousef, was more blunt: “Abu
Mazen (Abbas) is not part of the solution anymore. He is part of the
problem now,” he said. Reiterating an earlier similar warning
by Zahar, Yousef had warned in Gaza on Saturday: “Today what we
have heard from Abu Mazen is a call … for a civil war.”
But Abbas on Saturday played down the warning: “The removal of
the government is not a recipe for civil war, as suggested by Zahar.
Firing the government is a constitutional right that I can exercise
when I want.” Many political experts, even in his own Fatah movement,
believe he only has the right to fire the current prime minister and
cabinet, but under the Palestinian Basic Law, only the legislature can
dissolve itself, these experts say, according to The New York Times.
Ahmed Baher, the deputy speaker of the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislature
Council (PLC), said that Abbas “can’t dismiss the legislative
council. Such a decision violates the basic law.” The PLC is like
the government paralyzed and could not convene on Sunday. The Palestinian
Basic Law, which acts as a constitution, has no provision for calling
early elections. Fatah officials say Abbas can do so by issuing a presidential
decree. Hamas says that would be illegal.
Abbas’ decision however has only escalated the mutual incitement
and the war of words is exacerbating an already tense situation, which
spelled over to the streets in massive pro and con demonstrations across
the West Bank and Gaza Strip and threatens to turn into armed mass expression
of support or protest, the ideal environment for a flare up into a full-fledged
civil war.
Abbas cited several reasons behind his decision: The divide arising
from a two-head political system should be resolved, the national dialogue
has reached an impasse and he has to act, the dual U.S.-Israeli economic
siege on both Abbas and Hamas should be lifted sooner than later by
a government mandated to do so by conforming to the conditions set by
Israel and adopted by the Quartet of the U.S., U.N., EU and Russia,
and to end the security chaos that has claimed 320 Palestinian lives,
a figure reported by MP and former foreign minister Nabil Shaath to
be 400 during the past three months.
Contributing Factors
On all accounts Abbas’ decision is proving counterproductive.
It was advised by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when
she met the Palestinian president in Jericho at the end of November
and recommended by the PLO executive committee earlier this month.
The PLO recommendation could be a bad advice out of a good will to break
through an impasse, although the PLO represents one side of the Palestinian
divide vis-à-vis Hamas, but Rice’s advice could not be
judged except as given in bad faith.
Palestinian polarization into a brink of civil war is being fueled by
several factors, but mainly by the active and direct U.S., Israeli and
European contribution to the divide by taking sides; this factor is
too influential to allow in more constructive international influences.
The absence of Arab mediation and the Arab League divide over several
Middle Eastern hot issues is another important contributing factor.
Internally the marginal role of factions other than Fatah and Hamas
and the non-existence of a third mainstream party that could provide
a balancing power to bridge the divide is a third factor.
The Israeli government, the U.S. administration and the European Union
welcomed Abbas’ move and pledged support; at the same time the
Jordanian minister of information, an Egyptian statement, the U.N. Secretary
General and Russia’s foreign ministry as well as Syria and Iran
urged Palestinians to preserve their national unity and to de-escalate.
Israel and the U.S. are not neutral in the inter-Palestinian crisis.
They were inciting the PLO and its autonomous Palestinian Authority
(PA) to take on armed resistance to the Israeli 40-year old occupation
long before Hamas assumed power. Their incitement was fleshed with more
muscle after the Islamic movement came to power through ballots, which
they themselves financed and monitored. Bringing in the EU to join them
they imposed a devastating economic siege on both heads of the Palestinian
leadership. However they spared their political and diplomatic siege
to one head, the Hamas-led government, and selectively streamed in only
humanitarian aid through the other head, which they continued to flesh
with more muscle.
According to USINFO, Rice has said its administration will request from
the Congress additional funding to support the mission of the U.S. security
envoy, Army Major General Keith Dayton, who is leading an effort to
train and equip Palestinian security forces controlled by Abbas since
November last year; nonetheless Rice blamed the recent violence on Hamas’
“inability to govern” and White House spokeswoman Jeanie
Mamo denied on Friday that Washington was meddling in Palestinian “internal
affairs!”
The U.S.-Israeli blockade did not start with the election of Hamas on
January 25 but was imposed on the PA since the collapse of the Camp
David summit talks in 2000; late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was
a prominent casualty. The hundreds of millions of dollars in tax monies
owed to the PA were withheld by Israel before that. Even the Arab League
financial pledges were not enough to bail out the salaries of the PA
employees and the PA was compelled to borrow more than $600 million
from local banks before Hamas came to power.
In fact both heads of the Palestinian leadership are now under siege;
the aim did not change since 2000: Give in to the will of the Israeli
occupation or starve to yielding!
Regional Spillover Inevitable
The accelerating slide of the Palestinian divide into the brink of a
low key civil war is a direct result of U.S. shirking of its responsibilities
vis-à-vis the regional peace process, its unbalanced and biased
foreign policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, its unwavering commitment
to its strategic alliance with Israel at the expense of its Arab strategic
allies who have proved their worth much better than the Jewish state
in many regional conflicts during the past decades, and its preoccupation
with other Middle East issues that are less central to the security
of the region, which is pivotal and more vital for U.S. interests.
Washington is currently preoccupied with coordinating an “arch
of moderation,” which it hopes would lump up together Arab moderates
and Israel to stand up to the so-called Syrian-Iranian “axis of
evil,” but is shooting its plan in the legs by dictating to the
Palestinians and meddling in their internal affairs. How could any Arab
state subscribe to such a scheme when the U.S. fails to provide for
the success of the long-awaited and much-trumpeted Abbas summit meeting
with the Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert?
Both U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt tried to add the resumption of the
Palestinian –Israeli peace process to the agenda of President
George W. Bush during his last visit to Amman; both hoped Bush could
arrange for Abbas-Olmert meeting or at least would meet Abbas to pave
the way for such a summit; instead he sent Rice to meet the Palestinian
president in Jericho, where she denied him even promises to secure Israeli
reciprocity to sustain the renewed Palestinian unilaterally-declared
and honored two-year old truce and gave him in bad faith her bad advice
to outmaneuver Hamas by going to polls, knowing beforehand her advice
would only deepen the Palestinian divide and polarization.
It was a counterproductive advice. Sustaining the Palestinian divide
and allowing it to slide into civil war would only defer the peace process
indefinitely and prolong the suffering of the Palestinian people, but
would not also spare the Arab as well as the Israeli neighbors the expected
repercussions.
A full-blown civil war in the Occupied Palestinian Territories inevitably
“would also boil over to us,” Ron Ben Yishai wrote in the
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot on Dec. 15; a civil war would also thwart
any attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis through negotiations
and would almost certainly lead to the most radical elements taking
over Palestinian society.
Egypt and Jordan may also be hit by unfriendly ricochets from this civil
war, so they, just like Israel, have a clear interest in stopping this
deterioration at this point before it completely spirals out of control,
Ben Yishai warned.
How could such a development contribute to defusing the already explosive
regional situation to serve U.S. interests as envisaged by the Baker-Hamilton
report is a question for Bush and Rice to answer!
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in
Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
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