Love of the Land: Citizen Mahmoud Abbas

Citizen Mahmoud Abbas

Michael Freund
Opinion/JPost
17 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

This past Monday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman raised an interesting point about Mahmoud Abbas that has not received the attention it deserves.

Speaking at a session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Lieberman intimated that the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, who is also known as Abu Mazen, may very well be little more than a has-been – not just politically, but constitutionally as well.

“Abu Mazen does not represent the residents of Gaza because Hamas rules there,” Lieberman said, adding, “Seeing as elections in the PA have been postponed three times, one needs to ask whom does Abu Mazen represent. It is not clear that he can supply the goods in negotiations.”

To be sure, those in favor of talks with the Palestinians will dismiss Lieberman’s remarks as little more than rhetoric, viewing them as an attempt to minimize Abbas’s importance in order to justify ignoring him. But whether the critics like it or not, the fact is that Lieberman is correct: under Palestinian law, Abbas is no longer the lawful and legitimate leader of the PA.

Indeed, ever since January 24, the Palestinian chairman can no longer be said to be legally occupying his post. It was on that date, after all, that a new round of Palestinian balloting was supposed to be held to fill the post of chairman as well as elect a new Palestinian Legislative Council.

But because of disagreements between Fatah and Hamas, the vote never took place, leaving the Palestinian areas in a constitutional vacuum of epic proportions.

If you don’t believe me, just listen to what the Palestinians themselves have to say.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Citizen Mahmoud Abbas

Love of the Land: Planet Palestine

Planet Palestine

FresnoZionism.org
16 December 09

Mustafa Barghouti (not to be confused with convicted multiple murderer and possible next Palestinian President Marwan Barghouti), a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, lives on another planet.

In an op-ed written for the NY Times, Barghouti talks about freedom and non-violence like a 1960’s civil rights activist instead of a representative of a people which practically invented terrorism as its political strategy.

Through decades of occupation and dispossession, 90 percent of the Palestinian struggle has been nonviolent, with the vast majority of Palestinians supporting this method of struggle. Today, growing numbers of Palestinians are participating in organized nonviolent resistance.

Apparently on Planet Palestine, Hamas — whose charter calls for the murder of Jews and whose leader called for the ‘liberation’ of “all Palestine” just this Monday – did not win a majority in the last Palestinian election. On Planet Palestine, it’s not the case that in 2007, 70% of Palestinian Muslims viewed suicide bombing as sometimes or often justified (Pew survey, 7/24/07) or that 77% of Palestinians say that “the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists” (Pew survey, 6/27/07). Planet Palestine is different from Earth.

On Earth there’s been violent terrorism against Jews by Palestinian Arabs since the early 20th century — long before the ‘occupation’ of Judea, Samaria, West Jerusalem and Gaza, and even before there was a Jewish state. I would like to know — Barghouti must have explained it to the Times’ fact-checkers — exactly what he defines as the ’struggle’ which has been 90% nonviolent. Where is the ‘vast majority’ he mentions?

In the face of European and American inaction, it is crucial that we continue to revive our culture of collective activism by vigorously and nonviolently resisting Israel’s domination over us.

Translation: because Europe and the US cannot force Israel to make even more suicidal concessions than the near-surrender offered by Ehud Olmert in 2008 and Barak/Clinton in 2000 — concessions, like the ‘right of return’ that would be the end of Israel — then the Palestinians will continue to ‘resist’.

(Full article)

Love of the Land: Planet Palestine