Abbas' Winning Streak

Ending Abbas's Winning Streak -Caroline Glick

[A]ll Abbas has is what outsiders give him. He is completely dependent on the Americans, the Israelis, the Europeans and the Gulf states. Without them, he would have nothing to buy people’s loyalty with.

Militarily, if Israel ever stops lending military support to Abbas’s forces, it will be a matter of weeks, or perhaps days, before Abbas will be forced to surrender to Hamas.

And yet today Abbas is sitting pretty on the top of the volcano that is Arab politics, dictating terms for people with real power while playing mind-boggling radical politics. And he’s winning big.

This has been a great year for Abbas. In exchange for agreeing to humor the Obama administration with “negotiations,” he got the Americans to force Israel to release several dozen terrorist murderers from prison.

He then abandoned the negotiations and effectively ended the peace process when he signed onto 15 international agreements as “the president of Palestine,” seeking to gain international recognition for a Palestinian state that is in a de facto state of war with Israel.

From there he went on secure his own power at the helm of Palestinian politics by signing the unity deal with Hamas. It’s a win-win deal for Abbas and the genocidal jihadist group. The deal frees Hamas from the financial burden of governing Gaza. The slack will be made up by the PA’s US, European and Israeli-financed budget. Hamas will be able to go back to using all of its own funds to run its 20,000-man army and expand its already massive arsenal of missiles.

Just as important, it will be able to rebuild its military and political infrastructures in Judea and Samaria. Moreover, as a partner in the government, Hamas will have veto power over many of the Palestinian Authority’s governing decisions...

Abbas’s unity deal with Hamas renders the entire Palestinian Authority a terrorist organization.

Abbas knows that his American, European and Israeli supporters are convinced they can’t make it without him. They don’t care that he is a radical. They will believe any lie – no matter how flimsy – to keep up the game of proclaiming him a moderate and a man of peace.
Israel has gotten nothing from playing along with American coddling of Abbas. It receives less support from Obama every day. And its willingness to go along to get along has demoralized and angered the Republicans who oppose what Obama is doing. It has given cover to Democrats who are loath to oppose the White House.

The time has come for Israel to stop playing this game...

The time has come for Israel to stop collecting tax revenues for the PA. All of the money Israel collects and transfers to the PA is now serving Hamas directly.

And it isn’t enough to keep collecting, but stop transferring the revenues. The monies always end up being transferred eventually.

The only way to end this is by actually ceasing to serve as the PA’s taxman.

Obama won’t like it. But what’s he going to do? Facilitate Iran’s nuclear weapons program? Blame Israel for Palestinian aggression against it? Recognize and fund Hamas? The only way to get off this train is to get off. And disembarking is also the only way to impact US behavior. No single act by Israel will do more to empower the US Congress to stop funding the Palestinians than that.

And once that happens, a virtuous circle is formed, where at a minimum, Abbas’s winning streak will end.
[Jerusalem Post]
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Palestinian Leaders Don't Want Independent State - Efraim Karsh

The Palestinian leadership's serial rejection of the numerous opportunities for statehood since the Peel Commission report of 1937 casts a serious doubt on its interest in the creation of an independent state. Instead of engaging in the tasks of nation-building and state creation, all Palestinian leaders without any exception have preferred to immerse their constituents in disastrous conflicts that culminated in their collective undoing and continued statelessness. At the same time, these leaders have lined their pockets from the proceeds of this ongoing tragedy.
   
It can be shown that the main sources of this self-destructive conduct are pan-Arab delusions, Islamist ideals, and the vast financial and political gains attending the perpetuation of Palestinian misery. Had Hajj Amin Husseini chosen to lead his constituents to peace and reconciliation with their Jewish neighbors, the Palestinians would have had their independent state over a substantial part of mandate Palestine by 1948, if not a decade earlier, and would have been spared the traumatic experience of dispersal and exile.
The writer is professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London and professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University.
(Middle East Quarterly)
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UPDATE: 


Why the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba - Richard Landes

• Current peace plans assume that both sides will make the necessary concessions for peace, and that compromise can lead to an acceptable win-win for both sides. As one baffled BBC announcer exclaimed, "Good grief, this is so simple it could be resolved with an email." But it's only simple if you assume that Arabs no longer feel it's a hard zero-sum game, that any win for Israel is an unacceptable loss of honor for them, that any Israeli "win" no matter how small, is an insult to Islam.

• Ahmed Sheikh, editor in chief of Al Jazeera, explained: "It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West's problem is that it does not understand this."
  The writer is a professor of history at Boston University.

(Tablet)