Bruce Wolman writes:
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority came to Washington yesterday to meet President Obama. As a warm-up for his big event at the White House, he sat down for an interview with the two editors of the Washington Post Editorial Page, Fred Hiatt and Jackson Diehl. After reading the result, one has to wonder who manages Palestinian media affairs. The Israeli Embassy?
Was there nobody in the Palestinian entourage aware that Abbas was meeting with two of the more notorious neo-Conservatives in the American media? Were Hiatt & Diehl a suitable channel for communicating with the American public (or even the inside-the-Beltway crowd)? Wouldn't it have made more sense to hook up with more sympathetic interlocuters?
While Hiatt has the reputation of not even letting his own newspaper's reporting get in the way of his pontificating, Diehl is a street fighter who clearly had his knives ready for the Palestinians. It was Diehl who relayed the interview in his op-ed column this morning. The reverberations hit the Israeli media before Washington even went to work.
According to Diehl, "Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off any violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula."
Clearly unhappy with Abbas' passive strategy, Diehl paints Abbas as unyielding, "Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations." To Diehl's annoyance, Abbas "won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George J. Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures." So what if Netanyahu can't bring himself to even mouth the words "two-state solution"? Diehl still expects Abbas to act as if a peace process is possible with Netanyahu at the helm.
To Diehl, Abbas' behavior is just another example of dysfunctional Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. "Both sides invariably begin by arguing they cannot act until the other side offers far-reaching concessions." In Diehl's world, Abbas' insistence that the Netanyahu government acknowledge its acceptance of two states is a call for a major concession, even though both of Netanyahu's predecessors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, already accepted two states years ago. Diehl seems to believe it is only reasonable that Abbas and the Palestinians return to square one with Netanyahu, and re-negotiate once again for the right to their own state. At the same time the United States is insisting that Hamas recognize all previous agreements before the US will even meet with its representatives.
The freezing of settlement construction is Abbas' second "far-reaching" demand in WaPo land. Diehl apparently has amnesia that this has long been a part of the Road Map, which Israel accepted in 2003. Israel is once again offering to remove the same twenty illegal outposts that it has been promising to eliminate for years. The Bush Administration enabled this shell game throughout its two terms, but the Obama administration has had enough. It is insisting that Israel adhere to its Road Map obligations much to Diehl's discomfort.
Diehl equates Abbas' demand for the acceptance of previous commitments with Netanyahu's demand that the "Palestinians should start by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state." Besides the question of what a "Jewish state" means, especially to the Arab minority within Israel, this is a new element to the negotiations not previously put on the table by the Israelis.
In a description that surely will be repeated, Diehl calls Abbas' position "hardline", and he attributes this new Palestinian assertiveness to the Obama administration. The Bushies "made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters [as dictated by the US and Israel we presume] for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel." Diehl has always agreed with the Bush approach.
"Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel." Diehl ominously sees this as reviving a "long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud." Diehl may be right in calling this a fantasy, but this is the only option the United States has provided Abbas.
As demanded by Israel and the United States, Abbas has forsworn any path towards Palestinian self-determination other than peacefully negotiating with Israel and the United States. Aware that the Israelis will never give his people a fair deal without some pressure applied, Abbas' strategy has over time narrowed to doing whatever the American's tell him, while hoping at some point the US will broker a deal that the Palestinians can accept. No other outside powers – neither the Arab moderates, the Europeans, the Russians or Chinese – have offered any alternative base of support from which Abbas could build momentum for a Palestinian state. The only alternative pressure on the Israelis comes from Hamas and its external supporters. Abbas' erstwhile allies have all left him at the mercy of the Americans, as they calculate it is not in their own self-interest to defy the United States.
Having made no progress for his people so far, Abbas at this point is kept in office by his US-supported security forces, the Israeli military and intelligence, European and Arab funding, and his Fatah cronies who live off the foreign largesse. He was elected President in the last election only because the US threatened to withhold all support should he be replaced. The Palestinians complied only to find out that the Americans were not going to deliver anyway, so they voted for Hamas in the next round. Even the WaPo newbie reporter in Israel, Howard Schneider, realizes that Abbas has a credibility problem and that his latest government is viewed as a US proxy by the Palestinians.
Diehl admits that Netanyahu's Likud party "has not yet reconciled to the idea that Israel will have to give up most of the West Bank and evacuate tens of thousands of settlers," but then he goes on to make some rather absurd charges about Palestinian unwillingness to accept reality. As if the ghost of Arafat was still among us, Diehl concludes that Abbas doomed the former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert, "by rejecting a generous outline for Palestinian statehood." The matter of Olmert being indicted apparently had no effect on his having to resign, not to mention the disastrous war in Lebanon which sank Olmert's popularity to below Cheney levels.
Diehl mentions 97 percent of the West Bank, the "acceptance of the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees, and the resettlement of thousands, and then insists that "Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further."
Why did Abbas turn Olmert down? "The gaps are wide," Abbas explained. Diehl either didn't ask – or didn't consider it necessary – to tell us what those gaps are. Just trust WaPo, it was a generous deal. However, nothing in Diehl's report indicates the offer went beyond the terms agreed between Palestinians and Israelis in Taba just before Sharon won election as Israeli prime minister.
Showing clear-eyed realism Abbas and his team told Diehl that "Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze – if he did, the center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse." According to Diehl, the Palestinians told him their plan is "to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office." They expect that will take a couple of years.
Diehl reiterates that the Palestinians should concede to Netanyahu's latest demand and recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which in Diehl's mind "would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees." Here Diehl has his own problem swallowing reality. Does he really expect granting such a concession will commit Netanyahu to a viable Palestinian state?
Diehl ends his piece with the line, "In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian." And he doesn't appear happy about that. Would he prefer that the West Bank suffer more like Gaza?
The Jerusalem Post immediately picked up on Diehl's op-ed in an article titled, 'Abbas wants US to push out Netanyahu.' Expect to hear this refrain from Jerusalem for some time to come.
This morning Diehl's op-ed was headlined as a Plus in the Opinions box. More responsible folks at the Post might have had second thoughts. For the moment, Diehl's piece is no longer mentioned among the Op-Eds on the Home Page.
