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MY LIFE (After
the Navy)
IN A CONCH SHELL
William
(Biff) Hawke
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Mahmoud
Abbas: The only way is the
choice of peace
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Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was named as the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) after Yasser Arafat died in November 2004. Born in 1935 in the town of
Safed, Galilee, in British Mandate Palestine, which became part of Israel in 1948; he and his family fled to Syria. Since 1980, Abbas has headed the PLO Department for National and International Relations and was elected by the PLO Executive Committee to replace the assassinated Abu Jihad as Chairman of the portfolio on Occupied Territories in May 1988. He returned to the territories in September 1995 after 48 years in exile, taking up residences in Gaza and
Ramallah. He was elected the Committee’s Secretary General in 1996, informally confirming his position as Yasser Arafat’s deputy. Abbas also served as the head of the Central Election Commission for the Palestine Legislative Council elections, held in January 1996.
In March 2003, he was named the first Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), but was never given full authority as Yasser Arafat insisted that all decisions be cleared through him. More importantly, Arafat maintained control over several security services, which further undermined Abbas’s authority. He resigned as Prime Minister on 6 September 2003, after just four months in office, after a power struggle with Arafat over control of Palestinian security forces; and was replaced by Ahmed
Korei. Following the death of Yasser Arafat, the PA held an election for his successor, and Abbas – the nominated candidate of the main Palestinian political faction
Fatah, which he co-founded with Arafat – convincingly won on 9 January 2005, with 62 percent of the vote. He was sworn in as the President of PLO, on 15 January.
Abu Mazen, widely regarded as a pragmatist, was one of the main initiators of the dialogue with Jewish left-wing and pacifist movements in the 1970s. He also played a crucial role in the difficult years, before negotiations were eventually started between Israel and the Palestinians. He led negotiations with Matiyahu Peled that resulted in the announcement of “principles of peace” based on a two-state-solution in January 1977. He also coordinated the negotiation process during the Madrid conference. His long contacts with Israeli leftists won him a reputation as a PLO dove and he headed the Palestinian negotiating team to the secret Oslo talks. Widely regarded as the architect of the Oslo peace process, he accompanied Arafat to the White House, in 1993, to sign the Oslo Accords. Abbas has been the head of the PLO Negotiating Affairs Department since 1994 and signed the Interim Agreement in September 1995 on behalf of the PLO. Together with his Israeli counterpart Yossi
Beilin, Abbas drafted a controversial “Framework for the Conclusion of a Final Status Agreement Between Israel and the PLO”—better known as the Abu Mazen-Beilin Plan—in October 1995; although its existence was denied for five years before finally being published in September 2000. He headed, along with Uri
Savir, the first session of the Israeli-PA final status talks in May 1996.
A highly intellectual man, Abbas studied law before doing a doctorate, and is the author of several books. Although some Jewish groups have criticised both his doctorate and the resulting book, The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, as works of holocaust denial, claiming that he downplayed the number of victims and accused Jews of collaborating with the Nazis. Abbas has denied that charge in an interview with the Israeli daily
Haaretz, in May 2003. He said, “I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote there were 12 million victims and another wrote there were 800,000. I have no desire to argue with the figures. The holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind,” he said.
A sign of Abbas’ pragmatism has been his opposition to terrorism. In a newspaper interview, Abbas reiterated his belief that the Palestinians cannot win a military struggle with Israel because they are outgunned. “The only way is the choice of peace. It is impossible to liberate Palestine with the use of weapons because the balance of power is not with us,” he said.
But a sign of Abbas’ determination is that he ran his campaign based on the major principles espoused by Arafat — a Palestinian state within the borders prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war with its capital in east Jerusalem, and the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees who fled or were removed from Israel in 1948.
In the closing days of the campaign, Abbas’ rhetoric became more shrill. After seven Palestinians were killed by an Israeli tank shell, Abbas told thousands of cheering supporters in Gaza: “We came to you today, while we are praying for the souls of the martyrs who were killed by the shells of the Zionist enemy (a term often used by Palestinian groups who oppose Israel’s existence) in Beit
Lahia.” But two days later, Abbas told a crowd in the militant stronghold of Nablus that he would be willing to return to the negotiating table with Israel, if he won the election. “We will put the road map on the table and say that we are ready to implement it completely,” Abbas said, referring to the US-backed plan for Middle-East peace that ironically faltered, when Abbas had explicitly refused to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in the PA, as required by the road map, which he himself had signed in 2003, while serving as PA’s Prime Minister.
Mahmoud Abbas has always kept himself to the background, but along the way built up a network of powerful contacts that include Arab leaders and heads of intelligence services, which enabled him to become a successful fundraiser for the PLO, and to take on an important security role even as early as early 70s. While Abbas has always campaigned as the faithful aide and heir to Arafat, he is strikingly different in many ways from the charismatic Palestinian leader. Abbas wears a suit, not the military uniform and kaffiyeh that were Arafat’s trademarks. Also, while Arafat loved crowds and was considered a master showman, Abbas has shunned the spotlight, preferring to confer with only a small circle of advisers. According to
Beilin, Abbas is a quick study and a relentless negotiator.
Referring to the current Intifada, Mr Abbas has called for a halt to armed attacks on Israeli targets to avoid giving Israel a pretext to destroy the last vestiges of Palestinian autonomy. In the light of his origins in Safed–now in northern Israel–he is said to hold strong views about the right of return of Palestinian refugees. In the newly formed Palestinian Authority, Mr Abbas took over the refugee file and pushed for progress on this issue.
It is his view that: “Everyone should first be granted the right of return, but then we have to sit down and discuss the details that have to be jointly agreed upon and mutually acceptable to both sides.”
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