Abbas offers to quit over stalled peace process

Thu, Nov 5 11:35 PM

Enlarge Photo Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attends the opening session of the International Al-Quds conference in Rabat... Slideshow: World in pictures: November 05

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told supporters on Thursday that he would not run in an election he has called for January but aides said it was unclear whether he would carry out his latest threat to quit.

Abbas, who has offered to resign on more than one occasion in the five years since he replaced the late Yasser Arafat, faces a dilemma:

Washington insists he drop conditions for renewed peace talks with Israel, yet to abandon his demand for a freeze on West Bank settlements would further bolster his Islamist rivals Hamas.

The Western-backed president, seen by many Palestinians as indecisive and lacking charisma, was to make a televised speech later on Thursday (at 1830 GMT), officials said.

Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) officials rejected the 74-year-old leader's resignation offer during an executive committee meeting on Thursday, members who were present said.

"The president insists on not running in the election," one PLO official told Reuters. Another said Abbas made his decision because of the "stagnation in the peace process and the continuation of settlement activities".

But senior Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said the executive committee's members were still trying to persuade him to run.

Analysts speculated the offer may be largely a negotiating tactic aimed at rallying Western and Arab support against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to freeze the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, where Abbas is trying to establish a Palestinian state.

"I think the aim is to get a strong American position that would define the term of reference for the peace process and that is to establish a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, without excluding Jerusalem," said George Giacaman, a political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

"It's a tool of pressure aimed at the Americans and does not mean he will resign in the current circumstances, maybe later."

NO ALTERNATIVE

Aides have said privately in recent days that, despite talk of Abbas making a grand gesture not to seek a second term, he was unlikely to step down, since his Fatah party and the wider PLO, both of which Abbas heads, have no obvious replacement.

Abbas's main opposition, Hamas, has rejected his call for presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on Jan. 24.

Hamas beat Fatah in the 2006 parliamentary vote and has controlled the Gaza Strip since a brief local war in 2007. Many doubt there will be any vote and should elections happen at all, they would lack legitimacy, many analysts say.

"The president is deeply frustrated because of this American position and because of Israel's insistence on negotiations while expanding settlements," a source close to Abbas said on Thursday. "He wants to quit but we will not allow him -- because we do not have an alternative."

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who himself voiced such frustration with the circumstances of talks this week that he suggested Palestinians might give up seeking their own state, said Abbas had strong reasons for despair:

"If the Israeli government continues the fait accompli policy, dictation on the ground rather than negotiations, maybe the president has come to his moment of truth," Erekat said.

Visiting Israel on Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed with Netanyahu that settlement expansion should not be a bar to resuming peace negotiations that were suspended last December. Washington has said it wants Israel to show more "restraint", but wants such issues to be part of peace talks.

Egypt also called on Wednesday for a rapid start to final negotiations to settle the six-decade-old conflict.

Abbas called the elections last month after failing to conclude an Egyptian-brokered deal with Hamas -- which rejects any peace moves with Israel -- to end the political schism.

In Gaza, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Abbas's decision to run or not was "internal Fatah business".

Nabil Abdel Fattah, of al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo, noted it was not the first time Abbas had threatened to resign and said it was intended "to pressure the American administration to force Israel on the settlements".

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, writing by Alastair Macdonald, editing by Michael Roddy)

Inside News

Editor's picks