Abbas's win-win strategy

Though cornered, he may manage to put Hamas and Israel in a box.

By ZALMAN SHOVAL
abbas closeup 298 88 ap (photo credit: AP [file])
abbas closeup 298 88 ap
(photo credit: AP [file])
Though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that he has not abandoned hope for negotiations with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, present political realities within the Palestinian Authority and Abbas's own ultimate goals would probably make such negotiations another exercise in futility. At a recent conference in Washington I listened to senior Egyptian and Jordanian diplomats and Fatah officials proclaiming an identical message: If Israel were only to start negotiations with Abbas and refrain from unilateral steps, peace would be just around the corner. As to Hamas - well, that would be handled by means of the so-called "Arab Peace Plan." The proverbial Martian landing in our midst might have concluded that negotiating with the Palestinians was an entirely new idea. Eureka! He wouldn't, of course, have known that a few months after the Oslo agreements, buses blew up in Tel Aviv; that the Palestinians have broken every agreement; and that Yasser Arafat embarked on his pre-planned Aksa intifada after president Clinton and prime minister Barak had, at Camp David and Taba, offered him just about everything but the kitchen sink. Nor would this person from outer space have been told that Abbas himself had made it perfectly clear that his own aims and principles did not vary from Arafat's. When Abbas recently declared at Sharm e-Sheikh that a permanent peace could be achieved "within weeks" and urged Israel to adhere to the Quartet's road map, he conveniently forgot that he himself had failed to live up even to the road map's first phase, which includes destroying the terrorist infrastructure and ending incitement in the Palestinian media. One can easily discern the main points of the Arab strategy: rejecting "convergence" (or "re-alignment," as it is now called) and mobilizing international opposition to it, presenting Abbas as a willing negotiating partner. If, as may be expected, the planned negotiations go nowhere, the international community will step in with its own imposed solution, tailored to traditional Arab positions on borders, Jerusalem, settlements, etc. A FURTHER central element in this scenario is reviving the so-called "Arab Peace Initiative" adopted by the Arab League Summit in Beirut in 2002. If Hamas were to accept this plan, it is claimed that the international and Israeli objections to dealing with the Hamas-led government should be removed, since the plan supposedly recognizes and even calls for normalizing relations with Israel. Washington is reminded that it too had supported the Arab plan as part of the international road map. Yet Israel rejected the Saudi plan at the time - and with good reason. Although the plan ostensibly called for "comprehensive peace" with Israel, its clauses and preconditions would eventually have put her very existence in doubt. Ignoring, among other things, the principle of secure borders contained in UN Security Council Resolution 242, the Arab plan called for a full Israeli withdrawal from all the "Arab" territories "occupied since June 1967" - including the Golan Heights. Israel would be required to hand over east Jerusalem and all the Jewish neighborhoods surrounding Jerusalem - not to mention the strategically important population centers on the West Bank, supported by President George Bush's letter to Ariel Sharon and recently reiterated during Olmert's visit to Washington. But there is more: the Beirut plan also calls for the implementation of UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which states that "the refugees wishing to return to their homes… should be permitted to do so… at the earliest practicable date" - in other words, the "right of return" by another name! One does not have to be an ardent believer in conspiracy theories to conclude that, contrary to appearances, Abbas may not be completely unhappy with the present situation regarding Hamas. This is not to say he planned the Hamas victory; but he has certainly made the best of an unpleasant situation. IN THE EYES of the international community, including the US to some extent, Abbas has become the fair-haired boy who can do no wrong, with Hamas being the villain. Even Fatah, parts of which never stopped terrorist activities against Israelis, is now often depicted as almost a paragon of virtue. Abbas carefully projects respectability and moderation whenever it is called for - without, however, moving one inch from his intransigent positions. Even his perceived weakness has served him well, such as when he claims to be unable to shackle Hamas or stop the Kassam rockets, and that that more international support might help him do so. Abbas's latest move is the referendum on a document which he claims implicitly recognizes Israel. Whether the referendum passes or not - or even whether it will actually take place - does not make much difference to the quest for peace. The struggle between Fatah and Hamas is over primacy, power and money, not about peace with Israel. The proposal which Abbas intends to put to voters is the declaration adopted by prominent jailed terrorist leaders of both Fatah and Hamas, including life-termer Marwan Barghouti. It includes all the negative aspects of the "Arab Peace Initiative" with the addition of endorsing continued terrorism against Israelis in the territories. Abbas now believes, not without reason, that he is in a win-win situation. He has put both Hamas and Israel on the defensive - Hamas because it is forced to object to a referendum on Palestinian statehood, and Israel by complicating her negotiating stance. All this without changing any of his own hard-line positions! Israel may go ahead with "convergence," or postpone it indefinitely. But under no circumstances should she allow her decisions, whichever they may be, to be held hostage to the Palestinians' stratagems. The writer twice served as Israel's ambassador to the United States.