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Posted on 01/18/2005 10:38:00 AM PST by Alouette
The election of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in Palestinian voting Sunday came as no surprise. The organized election process, the lively campaign and the openness to the media have all proved once again that if a Palestinian state is established it will be the first Arab democracy.
But the state has not yet been established, and the system now headed by Abbas is not much more than a stage set.
The real question is not whether Abbas is genuinely ready for peace and will start combating terrorism tomorrow, but whether the United States, Europe and Israel are prepared to seize this rare opportunity: the election as Palestinian leader of a pragmatic person who has taken part in all the peace processes with Israel and who courageously came out against the use of violence in the most recent intifada.
Today Abbas does not need to prove himself. At 69, he is one of the more transparent politicians in the region. His books, speeches, interviews and actions are well known.
Even during the most difficult moments of the recent election campaign he went out of his way to condemn the rockets fired against Israel by Hamas, for which he and his policies came under heavy criticism from Islamic elements.
In 1995, after two years of negotiations, we agreed upon what came to be known as the Beilin-Abu Mazen Agreement. This unsigned document was to serve as the basis for the Clinton plan five years later, and to form the basis for negotiations leading up to the Geneva accord, inaugurated a year ago.
On a personal level Abbas is a pragmatist, but not necessarily a moderate. He has no sympathy for the Zionist enterprise, but he understood, before many of his colleagues, that the distress of the Palestinian people could be resolved through an independent state next to Israel, rather than in place of it.
In principle, his permanent-status agreement is no different from Yasser Arafat's, and at the moment of truth he may flaunt it, positioning himself as continuing Arafat's legacy.
But the real question is not the principles; it is the details. In my opinion, it will be possible to reach a detailed peace agreement with Abbas.
Abbas has won the genuine and extensive support of his people for his new role.
Born in Safed and himself a refugee (which means it will be easier for him to persuade refugees to accept the payment due them), he has gained the confidence of President Bush, of the Arab world, of Europe and of many Israeli citizens on both the right and left wings.
He opposes violence of any type and has been struggling for a long time to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian permanent-status agreement.
His election to head the Palestinian Authority represents a rare opportunity indeed.
BUT IF from this point onward we do nothing more than wait for Abbas to move, it is an opportunity we are likely to miss.
Abbas stands at the head of a system that has been destroyed over the past four years. There is no law and order in the Palestinian territories; people are afraid to leave their homes at night. Only part of the security forces obey the head of the Palestinian Authority. Half of Palestinians live under the poverty line, and unemployment is rampant.
Abbas may well set up a "government," appear at assemblies, give interviews, try to reach understandings with Hamas, and even make visits to other countries.
But if he wants to bring about a genuine change in conditions, he needs us – not sitting on the sidelines, but out there on the stage with him.
If President Bush makes do with implementing the road map without updating it and setting realistic deadlines, without sending an envoy to the region to supervise and monitor events, without someone on his behalf working day and night to implement the plan that Israel and the Palestinians agreed on (each side according to its own interpretations), then Abbas will fail.
Without major political vision, he will not be able to preserve his political existence.
If the Europeans do not provide assistance in financing economic plans, in rehabilitating the infrastructure and in helping the Palestinian security system to train and to function as an effective police force, Mahmoud Abbas will become history even before one of the warlords takes control of the Palestinian Authority.
He must prove that he is capable of changing the day-to-day situation and that tranquility is beneficial to the Palestinians.
If Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proceeds with the withdrawal plan from Gaza as if his partner in peace were Yasser Arafat, if the targeted assassinations continue, if the number of checkpoints is not reduced, if the parties do not return to the negotiating table to discuss the permanent-status agreement after four years during which they have not exchanged a single official word – then it will be a waste of time to prepare profile reports on Abbas.
We will have missed this opportunity.
And we are so very good at missing opportunities.
The writer is leader of the Yahad Party. This essay first appeared in The Washington Post.
And we are so very good at missing opportunities.
So Yossi finally admits that he's a shill of the Palestinians.
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
"He [Abbas] opposes violence of any type and has been struggling for a long time to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian permanent-status agreement."
I don't know what planet the author of this article lives, but he is clearly several sandwiches short of a picnic. Obviously was a poster boy for the anti-drug commercial "this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs" of some years ago.
Bump
Yossi Beilin was one of the authors of the Oslo accords and he still has Oslo dreams and delusions. He wants to believe Abbas is better than Arafat. The fact is that Abbas talks out of both sides of his mouth just as Arafat did and we have no idea what he really will do.
IMHO the Road Map is dead. A Palestinian state this year? Give me a break! The first step under the Road Map for the Palestinians was supposed to be a cessation to violence. Let Abbas stop Palestinian terror and violence as well as incitement and then we can talk about an updated or new plan for peace, not before.
Yossi Beilin is a naive dreamer. Such people are dangerous only if they get into positions of power. Thankfully as leader of the far-left Yahad party there are no prospects that he will be able to do more damage any time soon.
Just think of the damage that Shimon Peres (whom nobody voted for) is now in a position to do.
Prime Minister Sharon had to make up a new position and pass a new law to find a place for Shimon Peres. Ehud Olmert is still the one who would stand in for the Prime Minister when he is unavailable. In other words I doubt Shimon Peres has any real power.
The Prime Minister is, first and foremost, a politician. He did what he had to do to cobble together a new coalition with 13 of his own party's MKs in revolt. Likud has effectively split in two and the Prime Minister only had 27 seats from his own party. He needed Labor's 21 and Shimon Peres is the leader of Labor.
Why do you think the Prime Minister is negotiating with Shas again? On paper his coalition has 66 seats. In reality it has 53. He still needs the 11 from Shas.
I think the whole coalition-building system is completely screwed up and ultimately cheats the voters by putting the country at the mercy of these secondary single-issue parties. What Israel really needs is a two-party system like the US and not this multitude of single-issue-parties hefkerut (free-for-all) they're currently stuck with.
Having lived in both countries I see flaws in both electoral systems. How many Americans do you know who were not happy with the choices they had in recent Presidential elections?
There has to be a middle somewhere. I just don't know where that somewhere is.
The only promising sign here is the merger of small parties into larger ones, i.e.: Yisrael b'Aliya and Gesher into Likud and Am Echad and Meimad into Labor immediately come to mind. Perhaps we'll end up with a smaller number of parties and less insanity.
I would miss the election commercials for the Green Leaf Party. They are truly humorous.
Beilin: an arab Jew killer's best friend in Israel.
Abbas' election wasn't a surprize indeed, but not because of the 'lively campaign' but because it was totally pre-arranged (and 7 senior members of the Palestinian election committee resighned in protest).
If so called Palestinian state'd become a democracy one day (I very much doubt it) it wouldn't be the first Arab democracy. Lebanon was until it was destroyed by the PLO terrorists and Syrian occupiers.
And so on, and so forth.
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