Mahmoud Abbas appears alone in still taking peace negotiations with Israel seriously, writes Nicola Nasser* For the first time since the US-hosted Annapolis conference in November last year re-launched Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, interrupted by the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 after the collapse of Camp David II, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo 6 September expressed "doubt" on striking a peace deal with Israel by the end of the year "because very little time is left". He reiterated his scepticism 10 September in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz. Accordingly, Abbas dispelled US President George W Bush's pledge to reach such a deal before his term ends and at the same time practically announced that peace talks have now been frozen for at least a year by imminent change in Washington and Tel Aviv. Abbas was reportedly scheduled to hold his last meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem 16 September, one day before Kadima, Olmert's ruling party, elected his successor ahead of his scheduled meeting with President Bush at the White House 25 September. It seems all partners to the Annapolis process are trying to strike a last-minute impossible deal or are simply saying goodbye to each other. Nonetheless, Abbas by all evidence is determined to swim against an overwhelming current to prove that he is the persistent, unrelenting Palestinian partner who will never despair in his pursuit of peace despite all the internal and external odds, nor will he be deterred by undelivered US promises to lose trust in Washington. On 10 September he told Haaretz that, "Even today, I'm convinced that I would have signed the Oslo Accords. I risked my life for peace and if I have to pay for it with my life, that's a negligible price. I don't regret the Oslo Accords. Twenty years before the agreement I believed in peace with the Israelis, and I still believe in it." Abbas is still desperately committed to his "strategic option" of a negotiated peace deal with Israel in pursuit of a life-long hope that would make or break his political career as well as a Palestinian leadership team, led by him, that has bet everything on mirage-like US promises to deliver a Palestinian state on the part of historic Palestine that Israel occupied in 1967. This despite Bush's pledges to former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004 that have so far proved much more durable than vague US indications to the Palestinians, and despite the fact that overall Israeli policy, and every single tactic of that policy, indicates a strategy that clashes head-to-head with the minimum Palestinian national aspiration for an independent, viable and contiguous state as the basis for a just and lasting peace. "We are determined to continue accelerated diplomatic negotiations concurrently with the change of administration in the United States," Abbas was quoted as saying in Cernobbio, Italy, Friday. He appealed to the upcoming US administration not to waste "seven more years" to resume its peace efforts. "The new administration should not wait seven years for us to start negotiations. It should begin immediately as soon as a new president is in the White House." However, with nothing on the record to prove the US would be forthcoming, a Palestinian semi-consensus is ruling out such a possibility as wishful thinking, and Abbas is similarly swimming against this strong internal current, which has throughout opposed the Annapolis initiative as a non-starter. Peacemaking seems so absurd now as to defy all logic and belief, at least to the majority of the Palestinian people, according to Palestinian polls, the most recent of which was released 7 September by the Near East Consulting Company showing that 86 per cent of Palestinians are frustrated and 43 per cent believe that the conflict with Israel will continue and a Palestinian state will not be established. Only 24 per cent believe that a Palestinian state will be established within 10-20 years, 18 per cent within 5-10 years, and 16 per cent within a year to five years. The optimistic fanfare Abbas and his team raised following the Annapolis conference has now boiled down to publicly voiced bitter disappointment and disillusion; his earlier insistence on timetables and deadlines as preconditions have now been forgone for the sake of not dooming the dialogue process; his threatening repeated warnings that the continued expansion of illegal Israeli colonial settlements would spell the end of negotiations have been replaced by lenient appeals to the same effect. Abbas's preconditioning a deal with the Israelis on reaching an agreement on every final status issue was met by the cold shower of Olmert's proposal for a partial agreement that rules out Jerusalem until a later stage and excludes the refugee issue for good -- a deal not to be implemented but presented to Bush and then to the UN General Assembly in November, which would bestow on the proposal UN legitimacy that would in turn legitimise Ariel Sharon's original draft of an interim, transitional, long-term and yet reversible Palestinian state on 42 per cent of the West Bank, demarcated by the 700 kilometre-long wall Israel is building on occupied Palestinian territory, termed by everyday media as the "Apartheid Wall" that the International Court of Justice ruled "illegal" in July 2004. Abbas, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have officially on record rejected both Israeli proposals of the transitional state and the partial agreement. "Jerusalem and the right of return are inalienable Palestinian rights, too," Abbas confirmed during his recent visit to Cairo. However, this official rejection is moot in the face of Israeli-created facts on the ground, including more than 200 Jewish settlements and outposts, home to slightly less than half a million settlers living among two and a half million Palestinians but exclusively controlling 37 per cent -- and restricting free movement of Palestinians on 21 per cent -- of the land, all tied into Israel proper by a massive network of Israeli-only highways. This system and the apartheid wall indicate that the occupation is not "a temporary military situation" as defined by international law. These facts, together with US collusion, sweep away whatever credibility is left of the peace process. While rejecting out of hand the notion that peacemaking would ever have a "last chance", Abbas does accept that a "last chance" is imminent to resolve peacefully inter-Palestinian strife with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. If ongoing Egyptian mediation fails to reconcile the Palestinian rivals, Abbas will "take all steps and measures to restore Gaza before the end of this year," he said in Egypt. This impatience with Hamas is another manifestation of his determination to use the break in negotiations, brought about by upcoming US and Israeli government change, to put the Palestinian house in order -- needless to say, in order according to his vision. Within this context Abbas is battling political foes on two fronts, declaring the Hamas-Gaza front his first priority. He is also involved in a power struggle within his own Fatah party on another front. Abbas here is allying himself with a US-backed and Israeli-okayed diverse spectrum of Fatah and non-Fatah politicians who share his strategy and tactics, with the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad at the forefront. The battleground revolves now on the renewal of Abbas's presidential mandate, which terminates 9 January 2009. This spectrum is evolving as a "third power" between Fatah and Hamas and is fuelling the rivalry between them in the hope of establishing itself as the alternative to both, though it has yet to officially take shape as a unified entity. Both Abbas and this "third power" are exploiting the other to gain the upper hand, both within the ranks of the PA and the PLO, where there is still very strong opposition to the strategy of both. This evolving force is fomenting the power struggle between Abbas and that opposition as much as it is exacerbating his rivalry with Hamas, cornering him in a very sensitive but critical showdown with his own party, Fatah. Abbas's bitter battle with Hamas is smoke-screening the power struggle within Fatah, which currently revolves around convening both the PLO National Council (the Palestinian parliament in exile) and the Sixth Congress of Fatah, both long overdue. * The writer is a veteran Palestinian journalist based in Birzeit, the occupied West Bank.
