Mahmoud Abbas: The Luckiest Man in the Levant
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's relaxed trade policies have caused a growth spurt in the West Bank.
I recently had the chance to interview the Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea — think Tim Russert of the Holy Land — about whether or not Benjamin Netanyahu might be thought of as “lucky.” The Likudnik prime minister, after all, enjoys a fair approval rating, virtually no parliamentary opposition, and a populace that has sided with him, if not quite enthusiastically, over the Obama administration’s insistence on a settlement freeze.
Barnea told me I had the wrong man. The lucky one in the Levant is Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. “Abu Mazen is quite happy with the status quo,” Barnea said. “The West Bank standard of living is improving, law and order is improving. He’s a head of state with none of the responsibilities of a head of state.”
If one were looking for proof of this proposition, then one need only examine Fatah’s sixth general assembly, which concluded two weeks ago in Bethlehem but received scant media coverage in the West and drew not a word from the Israeli government in response.
Though this was the first general assembly Fatah convened in twenty years, only two significant votes were taken: the first established that Israel was responsible for the death of Fatah’s heroic founder Yasser Arafat (even if no one could quite explain how Israel killed him); the second was that Abbas would remain president of both the PA and Fatah.
As Micah Halpern observed, “the vote was only in the affirmative and it was conducted by a show of hands. The intention was to make it impossible to gauge how many people neglected to raise their hands and who they are.” Other resolutions passed included the “red line” demand for a united Jerusalem — that is, as the capital of any future Palestinian state — and the endorsement of Fatah’s official armed wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which, since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, has killed dozens of Israelis in terrorist attacks and suicide bombings. Also dead at their hands, Mohammed Dahlan, Fatah’s former security commander in Gaza, who blamed his party’s political leadership for a failure to prevent Hamas’s 2007 coup in the Strip.
If this seems like a grandiose non-event on par with a Soviet plenary session to reaffirm the existence of proletarian dictatorship, then it’s because Abbas’ plan as the only Palestinian political leader capable of talking to Israel is to do as little talking as possible. As Abbas told Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post in May,
“I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements. Until then,” Abbas continued, “in the West Bank we have a good reality.… The people are living a normal life.”
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Michael Weiss is a senior editor of Tablet Magazine and a culture blogger for The New Criterion. He also writes occasionally for Slate, The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The New York Daily News and Standpoint.
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8 Comments
1. Adina Kutnicki,Israel:When one can gain EVERYTHING in exchange for NOTHING, isn’t said person considered the lucky one? Of course.
While Netanyahu froze ALL Jewish construction in the heartland of Judea and Samaria since his election, he inexplicably eased life for the PA Arabs.Whose PM is he anyway?
Rest assured, despite his tough talk bluster, patriotic nationalist can’t even add a porch onto their houses, as they are the ones given the shaft. On the other hand,the genocidal PA populace who name schools, streets, cultural centers etc after murderous Jew killers are reaping economic whirlwinds, courtesy of Israel’s mushy and squishy leadership.
People have the mistaken impression that a right wing Israeli leadership is the enemy of our tormentors. Not at all. It is under right wing leadership that the Jewish patriots must remain hyper vigilant, as they get lulled into complacency believing that all is well within their right leaning government.
After all, it was under Sharon that 10,000 Jews were expelled from their legal homes, their land gifted to Gazans.
No one should dare be surprised if Netanyahu pulls a Sharon with Judea & Samaria, on a larger scale than his Wye capitulation.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Aug 26, 2009 - 4:53 am 2. Jack Okie:As I recall, the Palestinians in the West Bank were gradually improving their lot until Bill Clinton summoned Arafat from exile in Tunisia (a move for which I have never seen a rational explanation). It seems to me that the more prosperous the West Bank becomes, the more resistant to radicalism the population becomes. Perhaps the original vision of the Zionists where Jews and Arabs share the land can come true after all.
As for Sharon, nothing in his past indicates that the withdrawal from Gaza was anything but a strategic move. His death prevents us from seeing his plan play out, but I am convinced he had a good one.
Aug 26, 2009 - 6:11 am 3. Raymond in DC:Jack, your posting requires a few correctives. It was indeed under the Israeli “occupation” that from 1967-1987 the lot of the residents of Gaza and the West Bank improved year by year: construction of roads, schools (including colleges), medical clinics and hospitals, water and sewage systems, electrification and the lot. Child mortality went down, life expectancy went up. Agricultural output and average incomes went up dramatically. Over 100,000 Palestinians worked in Israel.
Then came the first intifada in ‘87 and things started to stumble. Left wingers – with Beilin and Peres in the lead – decided to reach out to Arafat. It was they who decided to bring that Egyptian-born Palestinian into the territories along with a few thousand of his Tunisian thugs. Clinton just put his seal of approval to that lunacy. It was only after the post-Oslo terror that the checkpoints first went up and many of the gains of previous decades put at risk, and it was the post 2000 restrictions brought on by waves of terror that destroyed much that had been accomplished.
Aug 26, 2009 - 7:37 am 4. David W. Lincoln:Nonetheless, those who see property rights for all in Arab lands, they continue to be targets of those who defend the status quo, in those benighted lands, most vociferously.
Aug 26, 2009 - 9:36 am 5. Larsen E. Whipsnade:2. Jack Okie: “Perhaps the original vision of the Zionists where Jews and Arabs share the land can come true after all.”
That particular Zionist vison only works when the Holy Land is a “no-man’s land”. If it becomes a Jewish land or a Muslim land, then the chafing starts. These days, no sensible Jew wants to live with Muslim-controlled roads, water, schools, swimming pools, police, judges, and internet. And vice versa. All of the above are now controlled by one side or the other, and neither side will ever accept control by the other. The days of a hippie-style “no-man’s land” where Jews & Muslims can live peacefully side-by-side are gone forever.
Aug 26, 2009 - 9:47 am 6. Free Quark:Well, that’s good that the economy is improving. Maybe then the Palies will be less interested in provoking their neighbor to destroy what they’ve built.
Aug 26, 2009 - 11:42 am 7. David W. Lincoln:5. Larsen E. Whipsnade, answer me this: what drives
a Nonie Darwish, or a Wafa Sultan, a Bat Yeor, and all those who conclude they are being cheated by the likes of Nasrallah?
There are Arabs who do not hold the Jewishness of Jews against Jews.
Aug 26, 2009 - 12:40 pm 8. dougf:I don’t care about the Big Picture in this situation. As EVERYONE sees very clearly the political solution is decades off. If ever.
But as Free Quark relates prosperity or at the least a much improved lifestyle, is not conducive to the murderous radicalism of Hamas. If you have a job and can start a VIABLE business without having to bribe every Fatah man in sight, you are ispo facto MUCH less interested in having your neighbor drop by to bulldoze your house because it was used to house terrorists. Peace may in fact come in increments as small as more young men having money in their pockets for a Friday/Saturday Night. If all Abbas does is basically nothing at all either positive or negative except for encouraging movement like this, he will have done a good thing.
More jobs,more money,more security,less corruption —- it’s ALL a good thing. best story I have read about that sink-hole for many a year.
More —- Faster.
Aug 26, 2009 - 4:26 pm