The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has circulated a hard-hitting critique of alleged Israeli violations of the 20-year-old Oslo accords and subsequent agreements ahead of his speech to the UN general assembly in New York later on Wednesday.
The comprehensive matrix of claimed violations, seen by the Guardian, was compiled in July and has been shared with US and European officials – among others – and is expected the form the basis of Abbas’s speech.
Covering issues from water rights, tax collections and transfer of monies, settlement building, house demolitions and to the continued Israeli military occupation which gives Israel “exclusive control of 62% of the West Bank” – the document argues “Israel as failed to honour the accords as it has violated many of its provisions.”
Western diplomats who have met Abbas recently report he feels exhausted and isolated, and say he will argue that he feels the Oslo agreements have been effectively gutted.
A further flavour of what Abbas might say was supplied in an article he wrote for the Huffington Post calling for multilateral international efforts to push forward the peace process outside of US stewardship.
“While the Israeli government pays lip service to the two-state solution internationally, domestically it employs policies aimed at destroying what’s left of Palestine,” he wrote.
The UN speech has been heavily trailed – including by Abbas himself – who hinted he intended to “drop a bombshell” at the general assembly. That led to speculation by some Palestinian officials that Abbas might announce he was nullifying the Oslo agreement in whole or in part.
By the end of last week, however, other officials were talking down that expectation. Despite the heavy hints most analysts now expect Abbas simply to deliver another warning that he might sever ties with Israel in the future.
Abbas’s speech, however, has come to be viewed as a painful metaphor for Abbas’s mounting political problems at home, faced with both a moribund peace process and growing dissatisfaction among Palestinians over Abbas’s tactics in the last decade to secure a Palestinian state.
The Oslo accords – which set up Palestinian autonomy in the mid-1990s – were meant as a stepping stone toward Palestinian statehood. Instead, a temporary arrangement has largely remained in place despite wars, uprisings and political crises. Hamas seized Gaza in 2007, but Abbas still administers 38% of the West Bank, with the rest of that territory and Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem under sole Israeli control.
“Abbas feels he has played the ‘good guy’ and done what the international community has asked at him at every turn and has received nothing to show in return. He feels betrayed and let down,” one Palestinian official told the Guardian.
“He went into his meeting with [the US secretary of state, John] Kerry [on Saturday] with an open mind to see if there was anything on offer. But failing that the speech is bound to be more pessimistic.”
According to readouts from that Saturday meeting – according to comments from Abbas adviser, Ahmed Majdalani on Voice of Palestine radio – Kerry offered Abbas little hope that Washington intended to re-engage in its peace efforts.
Recent months have seen growing talk that the 80-year-old Abbas is losing the enthusiasm to continue as president with his own prestige and legacy badly damaged by the lack of progress on peace talks amid continued Israeli settlement building.
That in turn has fuelled a growing crisis in Palestinian politics with no obvious successor to Abbas and collapsing confidence in the political leadership represented by Abbas’s Fatah movement.
A recent poll indicated that a majority of Palestinians want Abbas to resign and dissolve his self-rule government, the Palestinian Authority, as a majority have said they no longer believe a two-state solution is realistic.
The poll last week undertaken by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research suggested two-thirds of Palestinians want Abbas to step down. The same poll also showed 57% of Palestinians support a return to an armed intifada in the absence of peace negotiations, up from 49% three months ago.
The poll organisers said the figure was similar to numbers seen ahead of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.
“If a spark comes along,” pollster Khalil Shikaki said recently, “there is absolutely no doubt that the Palestinian situation today is very, very fertile for a major eruption.”
The grim assessment comes amid bleak signs that any breakthrough can be achieved soon in the peace process.
Recent contacts between Israeli and Palestinian officials in Cairo and Amman in recent months – say diplomatic sources familiar with the talks – showed no signs of any movement, with Israel reportedly signalling that recent remarks by the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that he was open to bilateral contacts with Abbas there was no enthusiasm in his rightwing government for negotiations.
A Palestinian request to talk about borders, say Palestinian officials, was also rebuffed.
Efforts too by Abbas to internationalise the Palestinian bid for statehood incrementally in global institutions, despite some symbolic successes, have recently run into the sand at the UN.
Domestically too Abbas appears constrained in his room for manoeuvre not least in the oft-repeated threat to either end security cooperation with Israel – largely aimed at Hamas on the West Bank – or nullify the Oslo accords.
In reality, as officials point out, the Palestinian Authority is the largest employer in the West Bank supported by large amounts of foreign aid, which has long benefitted the political class around Abbas.
“Abbas is not going to dissolve the Palestinian Authority because there is an internal interest in maintaining it, the privileges, the international pressure and the international money,” said Ali Jerbawi, a former Palestinian cabinet minister.
Further uncertainty has also been fuelled by Abbas’s own political moves in recent months that has seen him raise the possibility of resigning as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation while remaining Palestinian Authority president.
(The Guardian)
