Abbas' departure means nothing to the Roadmap to Peace
I am late in blogging about the resignation of Mahmud Abbas as the Palestinian Prime Minister. The papers the day after were full of exclamations that Abbas' departure was a "serious setback" to the Bush administration and a terrible blow to the peace process.

The Bush-back Roadmap to Peace, they gravely observed, is badly wounded, perhaps fatally so.

To which I say, "Pshaw."

Abbas was never more than a figurehead. His ascension to the shadow office of PM was machinated by Yasir Arafat. His successor, Ahmed Qureia, was also handpicked by Arafat for the sham office of prime minister. Qureia is part of Arafat’s old guard and has no personal support of ordinary Palestinians.

Abbas lasted only four months because he was self-deluded enough to believe that he would wield real political power and could really influence his people to move to peace. Either that or he realized entering office that he was a figurehead but thought he could wrest real power away from Arafat and finally understood he couldn’t. So he left.

What this charade really shows is that the Roadmap to Peace (RTP) was a reality only in the minds of George Bush, Colin Powell and the eternally optimistic Israeli government. The RTP was from its inception a cloud of smoke: it was itself nothing substantial but concealed what was really going on.

And what was really going on was - nothing. At least, nothing new. The Roadmap can’t be fatally wounded because it was never alive to begin with.

Arafat has never changed. He still wants to push the Jews from Israel and make their country into Palestine. Hamas simply wants to kill Jews; they have no strategic plan or purpose. Killing Jews is what they do, it’s how they go to work every morning.

For Israel and for peace, there is no distinction that makes a difference between Arafat and Hamas. As long as Arafat has a voice, there will be no peace. Until Hamas is destroyed, there will be no peace.

by Donald Sensing, 9/8/2003 05:25:16 PM. Permalink |