Gaza, October 13: The Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) is struggling to save face and retain political survival following its decision last week to defer, until March, the adoption by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (HRC) of the Goldstone Report on the Israeli blitz against the Gaza Strip last winter.
The report accuses Israel of knowingly and deliberately committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
More than 1400 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were innocent civilians, were killed in the 20-day-onslaught in which the state-of-the-art American technology of death was used.
Thousands others were left maimed, paralyzed, and badly incinerated by white phosphorus bombs wantonly dropped on civilian neighborhoods.
Moreover, thousands of buildings, including homes, mosques, hospitals, businesses, and college buildings were also utterly destroyed by the Israeli air force.
Caught unprepared for the unprecedented indignation of the Palestinian public, PA officials have been exceedingly embarrassed as how to explain, let alone justify, a decision that has effectively helped Israel bury its crimes and shield its alleged war criminals against possible prosecution before international courts.
The PA leadership has yet to explain to the Palestinian people what exactly went wrong and who were the officials that committed the most serious political blunder against Palestinian national interests since the signing of the Oslo Accords more than 16 years ago.
Former PA official Nabil Amr lambasted Chairman Mahmud Abbas for this “scandalous act”.
“He is the President of the Palestinian Authority, and he should bear full responsibility for what happened,” said Amr during a televised interview on Tuesday.
More to the point, Palestinian leaders and intellectuals across the political spectrum used strong epithets such as “treason” and “connivance with Israel” to describe the “fiasco in Geneva”.
Hamas’ officials have questioned the wisdom of entrusting a “weak leader who collapses under pressure to represent the Palestinian cause in harsh peace talks with Israel.”
Abbas had indicated that he had ordered Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) observer to the United Nations, Ibrahim Khreisha, to ask the HRC to defer discussion of the Goldstone Report due to intense American pressure.
One Palestinian writer scoffed at the justification, saying it was “uglier than a sin”.
“If the president budges so easily on this comparatively simple matter, how can we expect him to resist pressure from Israel and the United States when the cardinal contentious issues relate to Al-Quds (Jerusalem), Al-Aqsa Mosque and the refugees’ right of return,” said the writer.
Abdul Bari Atwan, a London-based Palestinian writer and commentator interviewed by Al-Jazeera pan-Arab TV, called the PA “a handful of profiteers and collaborators whose main job is to corrode the Palestinian cause and torment the Palestinian people on Israel”s behalf.”
“I am really happy about what happened in Geneva. It exposed the ugly face of this treacherous entity (the PA). It shows that Abbas and cohorts are treating the Palestinian people as if it were a herd of sheep,” he continued.
“These people must be tried and punished for their crimes against our people,” affirmed Atwan.
It is not exactly certain why the PA leadership decided to take a decision that is widely, even universally viewed, as scandalously politically incorrect, manifestly detrimental to the Palestinian cause.
According to reports from Ramallah, Abbas decided unilaterally, without consulting any of his aides or indeed decision-making bodies, such as the executive committees of Fatah and the PLO, to authorize Khreisha to postpone discussion of the Goldstone report until March.
Abbas’ decision to this effect reportedly was taken a few hours after a brief meeting in his office with US Consul-General in East Jerusalem Jacob Walles who told the Palestinian leader that pursuing the Goldstone Report would isolate Israel and seriously undermine the ability of the Obama Administration to restart stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
One report alleged that the main reason behind Abbas’ decision was to avert an Israeli threat to refuse to license a new mobile-phone company called “Al-Wataniya” which is partially owned by one of Abbas’ sons.
Nonetheless, it is widely assumed that the main reason behind the decision to defer discussion of the Goldstone Report had to do with Israeli threats to expose PLO and PA connivance with Israel in pursuing the war against the Gaza Strip.
According to reports published in the Hebrew press, Abbas and a number of his aides urged Israel during the war on Gaza to crush Hamas, irrespective of the consequences, even if this meant the death of thousands of Palestinians.
One recorded tape reportedly showed PA official Tayeb Abdul Rahim, a personal aide of Abbas, urging an Israeli army general to overrun the Jabalya refugee camp.
The Israeli general told Abdul Rahim that such an operation would leave thousands of Palestinian civilians dead and injured.
At this point, the PA official was claimed to have said “let them be killed. They voted for Hamas and they deserve death”.
Hamas had accused the PA of “conniving with Israel” during the winter war against the Gaza Strip by passing to Israeli army a list of “targets” that should be bombed by the Israeli air-force. The PA denied the charges or remained reticent.
What is clear though is that the PA leadership in Ramallah hoped that the Israeli blitz would finish off Hamas and allow the Fatah organization to re-conquer Gaza either with direct Israeli backing or as a result of a popular uprising against Hamas in the coastal enclave.
“Fatah will be losing public support in any case,” one Fatah official said.
Meanwhile, Abbas is struggling to save his own neck, as a growing number of Palestinians are demanding his resignation.
The Palestinian leader has ordered a prompt probe into the embarrassing affair headed by PLO executive committee member Hanna Amira.
However, many pundits in occupied Palestine view with suspicion a PLO investigation of itself by itself.
Abbas is the head of both the PA and the PLO, as well as the Fatah organization.
Furthermore, Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the PA was now seriously considering asking the Arab and Muslim block to officially take the Goldstone commission’s report to international bodies.
“President Abbas is seriously studying the possibility of asking the Arab and Muslim bloc to officially take the Goldstone Report to international bodies, including the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council,” Erekat has been quoted as saying.
However, critics dismiss these belated efforts as merely attempts at damage control, given the magnitude of public fury and indignation.
Zakariya Muhammed is a secular leftist intellectual who has castigated the PA leadership for what he called “the Geneva folly”.
“We want to know why he (Abbas) took the decision? Did he realize that the Palestinian political establishment would reject it? And, if he did, then he must have abused his powers and authority. Did he think that the matter was not that important. Well, if he did, then he must be lacking the ability to think rationally and wisely [to] appreciate the interests of the Palestinian people,” said Muhammed.
“In any case, he committed a cardinal sin. He breached the trust of his people,” he continued.
Amira Hass, a prominent Israeli journalist, seems to completely concur.
Writing in Ha’aretz on October 6, she pointed out that Abbas had effectively betrayed thousands of Palestinians, their supporters abroad, and Israeli anti-occupation activists who had been toiling to ensure that the legacy of the Israeli military onslaught against Gaza wouldn’t be consigned to the garbage bin of occupying powers obsessed with their feelings of superiority.
“In a single phone call to his man in Geneva, Mahmud Abbas demonstrated his disregard for popular action, and his lack of faith in its accumulative power and the place of mass movements in processes of change,” she stressed.
Apart from Abbas, the Fatah organization stands to lose dearly in terms of its popularity, especially vis-à-vis Hamas, If no corrective measures are taken immediately, including the possible sacking of officials responsible for misstep in Geneva.
However, it seems unlikely that radical measures will be taken in this regard given the tight control of Abbas and his allies on the decision-making process within Fatah, the PA, and the PLO.
“Fatah will be losing public support in any case,” one Fatah official said.
–Agencies–