Mahmoud Abbas

From AICbackground

Mahmoud Abbas

President of the Palestinian Authority

Quotes:

"The only way is the choice of peace. It is impossible to liberate Palestine with the use of weapons because the balance of power is not with us."

"We will put the road map on the table and say that we are ready to implement it completely."

Background
You were born in 1935 in the town of Safad, which became part of Israel in 1948. Your family fled to Syria, where you graduated from Damascus University with a law degree. You then went to the Oriental College in Moscow and received a Ph.D. in History. You are one of the few Palestinian leaders to study Israeli history and politics, though this did get you in some trouble following the publication of your 1982 thesis: you claimed that the numbers of Jews killed during the Holocaust were dramatically exaggerated afterwards to create sympathy for the Israeli cause amongst the international community. Since then you have publicly explained that this statement was misinterpreted by your detractors, but in any case it has tarnished your academic achievements in the eyes of some of your detractors.
After school you went into politics. In the 1950’s you became very involved in underground Palestinian politics, joining a number of exiled Palestinians in Qatar, where you were Director of Personnel in the emirate’s Civil Service. While there, you recruited a number of people who would eventually become key figures in the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1957, you became one of the founding members of Fatah, along with Yasser Arafat.

Fatah
Throughout the Palestinian exile, which lasted until 1993 or later for some operatives, you served as a behind-the-scenes counterpart to Arafat’s public revolutionary. You were especially skilled at meticulous matters, like the nitty-gritty of negotiations and logistics, making you a bureaucratic powerhouse within the Palestinian establishment, but also making you something of a pragmatist: you never fell in love with the limelight, and therefore you had the clarity of mind to keep your goals reasonable: the establishment of a Palestinian state through alliances and outside support, not through romantic revolutionaries.
In the 1960’s you led the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Affairs Department. One of your most important missions came in 1993, when you visited Saudi Arabia, as the first PLO official to ever visit Saudi Arabia. You went there after the Gulf War and apologized to the Gulf countries for the PLO’s stand during the crisis. This was especially important because the PLO had actually supported Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, particularly after he began firing rockets at Israel, and as a result of this stance the Palestinians subsequently lost all funding from their Gulf supporters, who allied with the west against Hussein and Iraq.
As one of the PLO’s top diplomats, you were credited with initiating secretive contacts with left wing and pacifist Jewish groups during the 1970s and 1980s. Later, when Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to the Oslo peace accords in 1993, you were one of the major players behind the scenes who made it happen, having secretly negotiated with Israeli diplomat Yossi Beilin to establish the preliminary framework for what later become the Oslo accords, known as the “Abu Mazen-Beilin Agreement.” Abu Mazen is your honorific title amongst Palestinians, and as a result of this accord you can truly be said to have taken one of the most important Palestinian steps towards peace with Israel. In recognition of you efforts, you accompanied Mr. Arafat to the White House in 1993 to sign the Accords; sometime after this signing, you were finally allowed to return to your long lost homeland.

The Palestinian Authority
In September of 1995, you returned to the territories and took residences in Gaza and Ramallah. You have written several books. You authored an account on the Oslo negotiations entitled Through Secret Channels: The Road to Oslo, which detailed your contacts with Yossi Beilin and the many challenges you faced on the road to achieving this diplomatic breakthrough. For you efforts in the Oslo Process you were awarded with a number of important, if low-key, positions inside of Arafat’s new “Palestinian Authority,” which he headed as Palestine’s first elected leader. In January 1996, you served as the head of the Central Election Commission for the Palestine Legislative Council elections, helping to create the political framework for representative politics in the PA.
In early 2003, Israel and the United States had indicated their refusal to negotiate with Yasser Arafat., on account of rampant corruption within his government and his seeming inability, or indifference, to both this and the violence of then-fringe groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. You had credibility with the Palestinian people because you were one of the founding members of Fatah, and you were favored by western nations because of your reputation as a pragmatist. On March 19, 2003 Arafat appointed you Prime Minister. You were the first Palestinian Prime Minister. You then signed the U.S.-backed road map to a Middle East peace. During your term as Prime Minister, you constantly fought with Yasser Arafat over the distribution of power. In addition to your disputes with Arafat, you came into conflict with Palestinian militant groups, notably Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Your moderate pragmatic policies were diametrically opposed to their hard-line approach. Initially you pledged not to use force against the militants, in the interest of avoiding a civil war, and instead you attempted negotiation. This was partially successful, resulting in a pledge from the two groups to honor a unilateral cease-fire. However, continuing violence and Israeli target murders forced you to pledge a crackdown in order to uphold the Palestinian Authorities side of the Road Map for peace. This event led to another power struggle with Arafat over control of the Palestinian security services. Yasser Arafat ultimately refused to release control to you, and then in October of 2003, after less than five months as the Palestinian Prime Minister, you resigned.
After your resignation, you dropped out of the public eye for a little but you were back in the spotlight during Yasser Arafat’s illness and when he passed away., maneuvering to create a succession system for both Fatah and the PA, out of fear that Arafat’s death would lead to unrestrained power-grabs by different factions. After Arafat's death in November 2004, you were elected to replace him as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the first step in your road towards public authority. On November 25, 2004, you were endorsed by the Fatah Revolutionary Council as their preferred candidate for the Palestinian presidential election.
On December 14, 2004, you called for an end to violence in the Al-Aqsa Intifada and a return to peaceful resistance. You stated that the ‘use of arms has been damaging and should end’. However, you refused to disarm Palestinian militants and use force to act against groups that Israel, the U.S., and the European Union designated as ‘terrorist organizations’.

President
You were elected president of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005 by a wide margin. Hopes were high in the west that your election marked a pragmatic turn in Palestinian affairs, which would hopefully lead to the empowerment of Fatah and other secular groups at the expense of the Islamist groups responsible for the majority of the al-Aqsa Intifada, especially Hamas. These hopes proved either misplaced or naïve, because upon assuming the presidency you declared that you would not take steps to forcible disarm any Palestinian militia: while you publicly called for fighters to stop the violence and come back to the bargaining table, you were not prepared to enforce your authority by taking steps that would lead to a Palestinian civil war. This situation endured throughout 2005, during which western and Israeli interlocutors gradually lost confidence in your ability to rein in violent groups, but privately conceded that your moderate and retiring style was probably preferable to more of a firebrand taking your place. The Palestinians, however, were not content with aimless moderation.
In early 2006, following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005, new elections for the Palestinian Assembly resulted in a landslide victory for Hamas, the true power behind both Gaza and the ongoing Intifada. While this result was perhaps surprising to all parties involved, including Hamas, the Islamist group quickly formed a government under Ismail Haniyeh, who refused to acknowledge the Oslo Process, but at least tacitly endorsed a cease-fire with Israel. Despite this slight pragmatic tilt in Hamas policy, the wider world was appalled by this election: western aid to the territories dried up, Israel shut its doors to Palestinian entreaties, and you, a moderate politician from a minority party, suddenly found yourself out in the political cold.
The state of privation which resulted from the freezing of western aid and an increasingly severe Israeli lock down on the Occupied Territories led to real economic desperation within Palestine, the result of which was rising tempers between competing groups and in some cases even street battles which seemed to herald the long-feared Palestinian civil war. As the president you were in the unenviable position of trying to reopen western aid by talking tough towards your Hamas opponents, while also acknowledging that Hamas represented the aspirations of a large chunk of the Palestinian people. You were largely unsuccessful at this, however: even as president, your ability to enforce cease-fires and bring people back to the bargaining table is severely limited by the sheer number of militias which have arisen since the start of the Intifada.
In June of 2007, you witnessed Hamas' take-over of the Gaza Strip, signaling the demise of hope for a unity government. Due to this act, you dismissed Haniya as Prime Minister and replaced him with Salam Fayyad of the Fatah party. Practically now, you are only in control of the West Bank. This split of the Palestinian territories has been marginally beneficial for you, however. You are now able to assure Israel and “The West” that you are separate from Hamas; hence, Israel has released tax money to you, you are receiving aid money from “The West”, all the while Hamas has received nothing. However, you still would like a unified Palestine and would be willing to again work towards a unity government; however, you will never except total rule be Hamas and feel that giving into many of their demands, especially about Israel, would be steps background on the road to eventual peace.

Roleplaying Notes
You are in the unenviable position of being a moderate in a part of the world that does not reward moderation. As a shrewd (detractors even say wily) politician, you know that you cannot stop the Intifada by force: the Palestinians have spoken, and it is clear they favor Hamas. All the same, as an elder statesman you recognize that Hamas does not, in its present incarnation, have much hope of really settling the conflict, as its militancy only strengthens the right wing in Israel, who have decided that perhaps the Palestinians are best ignored completely, if not outright dominated. As such you are stuck in the middle, arguing on the one hand for the legitimate rights of Palestinians to elect their own government, on the other hand trying to act as the public face of a constructive national government, bent on honoring your commitments to the peace process and ensuring the peaceful creation of a Palestinian state.
Unfortunately, everyone (including you) seems to have lost patience with this type of gradualism: Palestinians want resistance now, Israelis want peace now, and all sides have lost confidence with your ability to give them what they want. The international community still favors you, since as far as peace is concerned you are the best of all possible options, but most observers feel very disillusioned by your term in office: it is up to you to show the international community that Palestinians are still willing to pursue their aspirations peacefully—otherwise Oslo need not have ever happened.

References:

Mahmoud Abbas, (Abu Mazen). Jewish Virtual Library: A Division of The American-Israel Cooperative Enterprise. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.

Mahmoud Abbas. Wikipedia Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org.

Mahmoud Abbas. BBC News World Edition. Middle East/ Profile. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/middle-east/1933453.stm January 16, 2005.

Mahmoud Abbas. CNN News. Who is Mahmoud Abbas? http://www.cnn.com January 10, 2005.

Mahmoud Abbas. CBC News In-depth. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background

Mahmoud Abbas. Palestine Facts: Current Events: Mahmoud Abbas. http://www.palestinefacts.org