Mahmoud Abbas could have succeeded. The US and Israel made sure that he should fail, argues George Giacaman* When Palestinians are in a self-critical mood, they often joke about how the have a knack for blaming Israel or outside forces for the ills they are responsible for. "Hanging it all on the coat-hanger of occupation" as they would say. When Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, submitted his resignation, some voices blamed Arafat and others in Fatah for Abbas's departure. A serious mistake that left Palestinians vulnerable, they argued. Still, this need not be seen as a departure from old habits, as much as a sign of divisions within the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah as well. Arafat is still holding most of the reigns of power, but a small coalition of supporters was beginning to coalesce around a new focus of power in the PA. No one else among Abbas's supporters could have played that role. He was widely regarded as number two in the PLO structure, and as prime minister he became number two in the PA as well. Yet for once it has to be said that Abbas's resignation was not caused primarily by Arafat's refusal to hand over more authority to him, including over the security services, even though there is some truth in that. The Israeli government especially, but also the US administration, have been in the habit of heaping blame on Arafat since the prime minister took office four months ago. And it is true that Arafat has since been fighting for his political life, and appointed a prime minister only under duress. It is also true that he fought Abbas tooth and nail over some main levers of his power such as control over the security services and appointments in the governmental bureaucracy. Still, all of this is almost beyond the point; that is, the question as to why Abbas is widely held by Palestinians to have failed, with resignation as an expected result. Consider the following scenario: Abbas succeeded in arranging for a ceasefire on both sides; he succeeded in stopping the settlement process and land confiscation; he succeeded in removing more than five barricades, check-posts, and mounds of rubble, out of a total of 160 that made access to towns and villages in the West Bank and Gaza nearly impossible. All of these and more were steps required of Israel in Phase 1 of the roadmap. The result would not have been his resignation but his further empowerment. It may have also further weakened Arafat, exactly as the US administration and the Israeli government have declared it to be their aim. It is true of course that specific steps were also required of the Palestinian side in Phase 1. But there's the rub: the roadmap's formulations are often general and the nitty-gritty in terms of steps, benchmarks of "performance", and specific time-frames are all subject to interpretation. And since the Quartet were excluded from being involved in this process as called for by the roadmap, only Israel and the US were left to do the interpreting. And interpret they did. As a result, there emerged a new Israeli roadmap modified in minor ways by the US. Take for instance the "ceasefire" that began at the end of June, widely but erroneously believed to have broken down in mid-August after the explosion of the bus in Jerusalem. For six weeks before that, the Israeli army continued to conduct raids, arrests, and extra-legal assassinations of "wanted" individuals. The US administration let that pass, even though it was clear to anyone who could see that the assassinations in particular would be the undoing of the ceasefire. The collapse of the ceasefire also proved to be the undoing of the Mahmoud Abbas government. The life of his government was tied to progress on the roadmap, the first step of which was a ceasefire. He also made it clear to the American and Israeli governments that he could not battle Hamas and other groups head-on as required by the Israeli version of the roadmap, since this would lead to civil war. This he could not do, and did not want to do. From the perspective of the Palestinian public at large, this is all to his credit. He also got strong public support for the ceasefire, but not for a one-sided one. He should have tendered his resignation in protest after the last assassination executed by the Israeli army in Hebron, a few days before the bus explosion in Jerusalem. A reclusive figure for most of his public life, Mahmoud Abbas was thrust into a fray for which he may have not been cut out. Plain-speaking and forthright in his views on the course the Intifada took, he assumed office reluctantly, to emerge finally as a tragic figure, a victim of Israeli intransigence and American compliance. Indeed, they made him fail. * The writer is a professor at Birzeit University, and co-founder of the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy (Muwatin). He is co-editor of After Oslo: New Realities Old Problems (London: 1998)
