Israel Matzav: When all else fails, order a probe and a riot

When all else fails, order a probe and a riot

'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen has come under pressure from his 'people' for bowing to Western pressure to delay a vote at the United Nations 'Human Rights Council' on referring the Goldstone Commission report to the United Nations General Assembly and the International Criminal Court. So he's doing what all good bureaucrats do when they have no other solution: He's appointing a 'commission' ... to 'investigate' himself and fomenting violence to distract the 'Palestinian street.'

Facing an unprecedented wave of condemnations and accusations of treason, beleaguered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday announced the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the circumstances that led the Palestinians to abandon their demand that the UN Human Rights Council endorse a resolution condemning Israel's failure to cooperate with Justice Richard Goldstone's Cast Lead fact-finding mission.

The attacks on Abbas are the fiercest since he was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat as PA president in January 2005.

The violence that has erupted in Jerusalem's Old City in the past few days can be seen in the context of the PA leadership's attempts to divert attention from what a Palestinian minister described as "one of the worst scandals since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority."

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A PA minister scoffed at Abbas's decision to establish a commission of inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the PA's move at the UN.

"What's the president [Abbas] trying to tell us - that he didn't take the decision to kill the resolution that would have seen the UN endorse the findings of the fact-finding commission into the Gaza war?" the minister wondered sarcastically.

"Well, if he didn't take the decision, then we want to know who's running the Palestinian Authority? If he was responsible for the [deferral] decision, then this is a very serious matter. If he knew, it's bad; if he didn't know, it's even worse."

But Abu Mazen has learned the most important lessons a dictator needs to learn from the Goldstone Commission: He has appointed a 'commission' whose 'findings' are a foregone conclusion and it will report to a body in which support for Abu Mazen is a foregone conclusion.

Abbas's commission of inquiry will be headed by Hana Amireh, a member of the PLO Executive Committee. The other two members of the commission will be Azmi Shuaibi, head of the non-governmental Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN), and Rami Hamdallah, secretary-general of the Palestinian Central Elections Committee.

The commission has been asked to present its findings to Abbas and the PLO Executive Committee within two weeks, said Yasser Abed Rabo, a senior PLO official who also serves as an adviser to the PA president.

The Executive Committee, which is dominated by veteran Abbas loyalists, is one of the Palestinians' key decision-making bodies.

But if this story wasn't farcical enough based on the fact that the 'Palestinian Authority' urged Israel to destroy Hamas during the war, and provided intelligence for Israel to do so there's now more. The 'Palestinians' are now blaming Israel and the United States for exposing 'secret understandings' about postponing the vote - understandings that would have been obvious to any moron in the postponement's aftermath - and that included China, Russia and France.

Abu Mazen will never take responsibility for the postponement. Being a 'Palestinian' means never having to take responsibility for one's own actions. Even when those actions are otherwise completely rational - as agreeing to the postponement was.

Israel Matzav: When all else fails, order a probe and a riot