13-Jul-15: Is the Mahmoud Abbas crony circle disintegrating?

Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed Rabbo, Ramallah, 2010 [Image Source]

Not so tight these days

It would be greatly overstating things to say we admire the Palestinian Arab leadership.

About Hamas, any extra words are superfluous.

The kleptocratic PA/PLO/Fatah insiders who have gotten away for years with the pretence of being a democratically-elected regime in search of peace with their Israeli neighbours are in reality a cosy bunch of past-their-use-by-date clique comrades. Not a single one of whom has asked (or has even been required to ask) Palestinian Arab voters for their electoral support for almost a full decade.

Their most recent parliamentary election took place on January 25, 2006. The last PA presidential election took place more than a year before that, on January 9, 2005, when Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four year term that he keeps extending indefinitely. What he has wrought in the years since then has been a disgrace [see for instance "10-Mar-15: The not-so-moderate Palestinian Authority and the terrorism it enables"].

It's painfully obvious, as well, that there is a sort of gentlemen's agreement among Western countries not to mention this embarrassment publicly. Undermining the legitimacy of Abbas and the merry men of his inner cabal seems to be perceived as diminishing the chances for the fair, just and equitable peace that is about to break out and just around the corner. Needless to add, that tacit support is one of the key issues in ensuring peace remains perpetually around the corner and even further away.

Abbas is now 80 years old. It's evident that age has not diminished his passion for suppressing the opposition, particularly among the closest of his colleagues:

Yasser Abed Rabbo, who has criticized Abbas’s policies and leadership, was removed two weeks ago as the Palestine Liberation Organization’s No. 2. He was replaced by Abbas confidant Saeb Erekat. Abed Rabbo told reporters Sunday he was fired without a vote, and that this “harms not only me” but the organization. Abbas’s office had no comment... [Times of Israel, today]

There are reports as well that Abbas has raged against a group of other Palestinian politicians "trying to undermine him with financial support from the United Arab Emirates". Foes on that list include former Palestinian prime minister Salaam Fayad (whose not-for-profit organization Future for Palestine was raided by PA police in June, and its money frozen), and Fatah tough-guy Mohammad Dahlan, now-exiled and living (very, very comfortably) in the Emirates. Both, along with Abed Rabbo, are considered rivals for Abbas' autocratic throne.

A December 2014 article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Akhbar foreshadowed the direction in which things are moving:

...Abbas may be on the cusp of implementing a number of decisions to sack figures who are no longer toeing his political line, especially since his phobias about conspiracies targeting him have shifted from his known opponents to figures who were once close to Abbas ["Is a coup being plotted against PA President Abbas?", Alakhbar English, December 19, 2014]

Abbas' ambitious - and frustrated - 'young' rival (he is now 71) sticks in our memory particularly because of the outrageous claim he made in the wake of the Palestinian Arab terorist massacre in central Jerusalem in 2001 which our daughter Malki was murdered:

Palestinian legislative council member Hanan Ashrawi said the pizza parlour attack was part of a cycle of violence. Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo went farther: "Sharon provoked it. Sharon waited for it. Sharon wanted it," he said. ["Israel stunned by Jerusalem blast", BBC, August 9, 2001]

Abed Rabbo is malevolent, but no fool. Condemning vile acts of terrorist savagery is dead easy when, in the very same breath, you explain to the world in general and your own political constituency in particular that really it was never your own side that did the evil but the enemy.

If, as might be the case, the rise and rise of Abed Rabbo who just a few years ago was described as "a staunch Abbas confidant" but who was already relieved of his PLO duties (by Abbas) in December 2014, has now come to an end, some revealing exposures may be on the way.

For instance, about corruption - here is what Abed Rabbo said from inside the Abbas circle, and from a position of insider power, just a few months ago

 “Abu Mazen [Abbas] wants to consolidate all authorities with his cronies,” Abed Rabbo was quoted as saying, claiming that Abbas was planning to hand over Abed Rabbo’s authorities to Ramzi Khoury, head of the Palestine National Fund. “He acts in a dictatorial way, wishing to control everything related to money.” ["Palestinian official bashes ‘dictatorial’ Abbas", Times of Israel, December 14, 2014]

If this is what one of Abbas cronies said while still being a crony, now that he is not he might find it convenient to expand on the details.

27-Jan-14: For PA leadership, Kerry talks are "futile" and "only martyrdom" will fix the problems

Abed Rabbo [Image Source]

What should we expect from those peace moves now underway? Here a few updated clues.

Yasser Abed Rabbo is "one of only two Palestinian officials authorized to comment on the negotiations with Israel" [source]. So it's significant that, according to Haaretz today, he is calling the current talks

futile and said they would not even produce the framework agreement U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been working to secure... "No Palestinian leadership can accept Kerry's formula for a framework deal" which he says "is vague when it comes to issues important to Palestinians and detailed regarding Israeli concerns... All the illusions that existed in the beginning have since drowned at sea... Israel wants to erase any element of Palestinian sovereignty." [Haaretz]

Tawfik Tirawi, described by Haaretz today as "a senior Fatah official" and a man remembered for his deep personal involvement in terror, is quoted in the same article saying that under current conditions, a Palestinian state would not be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the next two decades. The Palestinians would not accept Kerry's framework deal. Therefore

"We must go back to initiating and become part of a circle of action... I'm talking about all kinds of resistance, but within a unified Palestinian framework that is agreed to by all sides in Fatah and factions outside of it. As part of our plan, we will choose the correct form of resistance and act accordingly... Anyone who thinks there will be a state is sorely mistaken... The negotiations won’t lead anywhere." [Haaretz]

Tirawi [Image Source]

Elsewhere he is quoted today saying

Negotiations with Israel will lead to “zero results” if not fortified by armed resistance... "The big explosion in Palestine is coming. All of Israel’s actions have placed the Palestinian public under immense pressure. They have no choice but to explode in the face of the occupation... The first signs of a new Palestinian uprising have already begun to appear on the ground..." [Times of Israel]

Some of those "first signs" appear in today's Arabic-language news reports (with pictures) of Hamas fighters out in public yesterday in the PA-controlled West Bank city of Jenin, taking part in a memorial service for another deceased terrorist.

Tirawi, who also serves as head of the official Palestinian investigation committee into the death of Yasser Arafat (apparently a lifetime appointment) has praised the usefulness of terrorist violence fairly consistently over the years. This Tirawi speech is from July 2009:

Believe me, brothers, whoever thinks that Israel will give us anything is deluding himself. And why would they give us anything? The Palestinians are divided, and the Arabs are weak. Any negotiations that are not based on a position of strength will not get you anything from the enemy... But let me tell you, Jerusalem needs thousands of martyrs. If we live to see the day, and you become the leaders of the future, mark my words: It is impossible for Jerusalem to be restored to us without thousands of martyrs. Anyone who thinks that America will restore Jerusalem to us is mistaken.

Tirawi made his name as an Arafat confidant in the bloody days of the early 2000s when he was head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service in the West Bank and known to be "orchestrating terrorist operations against Israel".

This message is brought as yet another reminder of what's at stake when convicted terrorists, who play a central role in the PA leadership's narrative, are released from prison without any regard for the length of the terms to which they were sentenced by the courts and the legal justice system.

11-Sep-13: No need to speculate: Palestinian Arabs genuinely, overwhelmingly believe in barbarism as a strategy

Yasser Abed Rabo, co-author of 2003 peace
plan, with Israeli partner Yossi Beilin [Image Source]

A Pew Research Global Attitudes report issued today demonstrates statistically that

Overall support for violence in the name of Islam has declined among Muslim publics during the past decade... In many of the countries surveyed, clear majorities of Muslims oppose violence in the name of Islam. Indeed, about three-quarters or more in Pakistan (89%), Indonesia (81%), Nigeria (78%) and Tunisia (77%), say suicide bombings or other acts of violence that target civilians are never justified. 

But there is one demographic where a clear majority of respondents - 62% - told Pew's pollsters that "suicide bombing is often or sometimes justified". That demographic is Palestinian Arab Muslims.

Knowing the murderous intentions of the Palestinian Arab "street" concerning us ordinary Israelis (and keep in mind that Palestinian Arab terror is rarely directed at the Israeli military), it casts a deadly light on the current strategies of the Mahmoud Abbas regime's inner circle. 

A report published just yesterday by WAFA, the official mouthpiece of the PA, quotes Yasser Abed Rabbo summing up the 'peace' process currently underway. Abed Rabbo is said to be one of the authors of the 2003 Geneva Accord. 

“Israel is trying to benefit from the negotiations to pressure Europe to cancel the boycott (of settlement products),” he said on Voice of Palestine... The negotiations have not made any progress on the ground and that all Israel wants is that no one says anything about its settlements and other activities that violate the rights of the Palestinian people.
“There are no signs of progress... There is progress only in the settlements and in the violations, but not in the negotiations that can cause us to say that US efforts have achieved any real results on the ground or in the peace process..." [Abed Rabbo quoted yesterday by WAFA]

His voice is part of a choir. The Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes today on the Gatestone Institute website that -  

PLO, Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials have described the talks as "futile", "unproductive", "a waste of time" and "a cover for Israel to pursue its policy of creating new facts on the ground..." By sounding the alarm bell already, the Palestinians are hoping that when the talks fail they will be able to tell the world, "You see, we told you from the beginning that these Israelis do not want peace." But these statements and threats have also proven to be counter-productive. The more Palestinian officials and leaders talk about the "futility" and "ineffectiveness" of the peace talks, the bigger the opposition grows to the negotiations with Israel. [Khaled Abu Toameh on Gatestone Institute website, September 10, 2013]

Nearly two-thirds of the people ruled by the clique of which Abed Rabbo is a leading member are committed to the most extreme forms of lethal terrorist attacks on Israelis. In that light, do we need to speculate about the intended effect when PA insiders like him dismiss so comprehensively the current round of talks between their side and Israel?

1-Feb-12: Fertilizer and a video that reveals more about how the war against the terrorists is going than a shelf-full of analyses

View the PMW report on YouTube

The things done for and with their own children by Palestinian Arab society have long been the subject of extremely critical comment, and with justification. 

It's almost impossible to imagine a peace between two peoples based (as inevitably it would have to be) on some degree of painful compromise, when the Arab side consistently and continually educates its children for hatred, demonization and death. Here's a tiny example.

Palestinian Authority TV's programs are beamed into most of the homes in the territories controlled by Fatah, the terrorism-friendly political party headed in the past by Arafat and today by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. 

A week ago, on 24th January, it covered a Fatah celebration in Lebanon: the glorious 47th anniversary of Fatah's founding. (Reminder: 47 years ago, when Fatah began its chapter of the war of terrorism against us, the total number of square miles "occupied" by the hated Zionist entity was precisely zero.) 

If, like us, you are unable to tune in or to comprehend the Arabic commentary, Palestinian Media Watch has just published a report - with transcript, video and pictures.

The image above shows a poster that features prominently in the televised celebration. The text reads:

"Our children are our honor and glory. They were created to be fertilizer for the land of Palestine, and for our pure land to be saturated with their blood." 

What kind of future do youngsters raised to see themselves as fertilizer build for themselves? And who is at fault - because someone surely is.

The beauty and heroism of being killed for the sake of a Palestinian state-that-never-existed is a recurring theme in Palestinian Arab culture. Grasping this, you can go some way towards understanding how an entire society has been recruited to fight a war based on racist hatred of the other. It underlies the way its 'soldiers' - thousands of whom are school children and pre-teens - publicly express happiness at the prospect of dying if only (and this is the key) their death will bring pain, harm and destruction to the despised enemy.

PA TV covered another 47th anniversary event, this one in Ramallah, the PA's capital, on January 5, 2012 [see the Palestinian Media Watch report here]. The festive occasion included the participation of  distinguished political leaders whom the mainstream media consistently but unjustifiably calls moderate. The broadcast shows children singing these appalling words supplied to them by their leaders and teachers:

"You have brought up and educated generation after generation. You waited patiently and discovered your heroic children. Oh, my pure land, I shall saturate you with my blood. I shall live and die upon your green ground... I shall redeem you with my life, oh my land. Your embrace warms us. Your ground satiates us, your goodness satisfies us. I shall redeem you with my life."

Evidently unconcerned as to the indictment this scene constitutes for the society in whose establishment they are complicit, the applause that follows is provided by several prominent co-conspirators. 

They include PA prime minister Salam Fayyad - "a moderate politician widely respected among the international community" (source); Secretary General of the Presidential Office, Al-Tayeb Abd Al-Rahim; Secretary of the PLO Executive Council, Yasser Abd Rabbo; Laila Ghannam - District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh; Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf.

It's not possible that the leaders present at this event failed to understand the message directed at their people's children. The facts about Palestinian Arab education of their children speak for themselves.

So does the report below.

Education at a Glance 2011, a study published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) demonstrates again that some societies have far higher levels of educational attainment than others. This news report published today ranks the 10 developed countries with the most educated populations. It's worth noting that Israel, with the smallest per capita income on the list, comes in at number 2, ahead of the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Peace cannot be made by education departments any more than war is caused by doctors. 

But there's a lot that can be learned by how countries implant expectations and ambitions in the minds of the continuing generations and how this impacts on the future. By and large, our side is focused on creating capable, concerned citizens with the equipment to succeed anywhere, and the evidence is out there to see. 

Theirs wants a young generation that will grow to become fertilizer and dirt, and the evidence for this is available to anyone who wants to look.