Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "aid"
Gaza gets manure, but no one to spread it
Billions promised, but Gazans still waiting
Four months on from the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Palestinians have seen little of the money pledged for reconstruction. By Matt Beynon Rees, on Global Post.
RAMALLAH — Money, wrote the English philosopher Francis Bacon, is like manure: of very little use unless it is spread.
Since an international aid conference in March promised $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, the stink of un-spread money has been strong in the nostrils. That’s particularly unpleasant for the people of Gaza, who also have to deal with a largely destroyed sewage system, thus giving them a double-helping of manure.
International diplomats, Israeli officials and leaders of the Palestinian Authority haven’t been able to figure out how to rebuild Gaza while keeping the cash out of the hands of Hamas, which runs the narrow strip of land. Food aid can get in, but substantial reconstruction hasn’t begun.
“The Sharm conference was just a big public relations stunt,” says a diplomat who works in the development arm of a European government. “The money promised for Gaza is just not there.”
Gaza’s 1.5 million people have been in desperate straits since the war there at the turn of the year. Israeli ground and air forces attacked Hamas to halt the Islamic group’s missile strikes on towns in southern Israel. About 1,300 people died.
At least 14,000 homes throughout the Gaza Strip were destroyed or badly damaged, according to the UN Development Program. Infrastructure, such as roads, water, sewage and electricity supply, were severely affected.
In early March, a wide range of international donors converged on the swanky Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Responding to public concern about the plight of ordinary Gazans, the donors dug deep. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised $900 million from the United States. Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion.
The total was put at $5.2 billion, though $700 million of that was made up of old pledges that hadn’t ever been fulfilled (a perverse international aid equivalent of re-gifting). New pledges amounted to $4.4 billion. That's more than Germany received, in real terms, under the Marshall Plan after World War II. It ought to have been enough to rebuild a place as small as Gaza where, it's fair to say, the residents have low expectations for the luxuriousness of their habitat.
Yet the people of Gaza quivered in their wintry tent encampments, waiting for the manure to be spread.
They’re still in the tents. Sweltering now with the onset of the long heat that runs from April until November in Gaza.
What happened to the cash?
After all, when the money was promised, diplomats claimed it would be easy enough to figure out a way to give the aid money without letting Hamas get its hands on it.
That was important because the U.S. wouldn’t give a cent if it might end up paying for more missiles aimed at Israel. Last week a Florida congresswoman told Clinton the aid money was “a bailout for Hamas.”
Most Arab states were keen to back the Palestinian Authority, which is still engaged in a civil war with Hamas. No problem, diplomats said at the time, we can set up mechanisms to get around Hamas.
European diplomats and Jerusalem-based aid agencies tell GlobalPost that these claims turned out to be hot air. Basic humanitarian aid, such as food, gets through no problem. But the rest of the cash remains unused.
Diplomats are concerned that even if the aid doesn’t go directly to Hamas, the Islamic party which took over absolute control of Gaza two years ago might tax or divert the money — or simply steal it, as its militiamen did when they raided a U.N. food warehouse after the end of the fighting.
The donors thought the situation would become clearer after the formation of a new Israeli government and with progress in Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks between Hamas and their West Bank rivals, Fatah.
No luck. Hamas and Fatah seem to be drifting further apart, maneuvering behind the scenes as they prepare for a new round of talks.
Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority from Ramallah, lacks urgency due to the fact that it’s still receiving the money it has been promised by the United States. Hamas hasn’t been doing much to kiss and make up, either. A Human Rights Watch report released last week said Hamas killed at least 32 political rivals during the Israeli assault and in the three months since. It also shot 49 Palestinians in the legs and broke the legs or arms of another 73, according to the rights group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a review of the policy of barring construction materials from Gaza, after he took office a month ago. But the review isn’t due to be completed for another three weeks, according to officials in Netanyahu’s office.
“Keeping the money out of the hands of Hamas is a challenge,” says one Israeli official. “Whether the money is dollars, Euros or shekels, no one has easy answers.”
It turns out blame is easier to spread than money.
Four months on from the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Palestinians have seen little of the money pledged for reconstruction. By Matt Beynon Rees, on Global Post.
RAMALLAH — Money, wrote the English philosopher Francis Bacon, is like manure: of very little use unless it is spread.
Since an international aid conference in March promised $5.2 billion to rebuild Gaza, the stink of un-spread money has been strong in the nostrils. That’s particularly unpleasant for the people of Gaza, who also have to deal with a largely destroyed sewage system, thus giving them a double-helping of manure.
International diplomats, Israeli officials and leaders of the Palestinian Authority haven’t been able to figure out how to rebuild Gaza while keeping the cash out of the hands of Hamas, which runs the narrow strip of land. Food aid can get in, but substantial reconstruction hasn’t begun.
“The Sharm conference was just a big public relations stunt,” says a diplomat who works in the development arm of a European government. “The money promised for Gaza is just not there.”
Gaza’s 1.5 million people have been in desperate straits since the war there at the turn of the year. Israeli ground and air forces attacked Hamas to halt the Islamic group’s missile strikes on towns in southern Israel. About 1,300 people died.
At least 14,000 homes throughout the Gaza Strip were destroyed or badly damaged, according to the UN Development Program. Infrastructure, such as roads, water, sewage and electricity supply, were severely affected.
In early March, a wide range of international donors converged on the swanky Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Responding to public concern about the plight of ordinary Gazans, the donors dug deep. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised $900 million from the United States. Saudi Arabia pledged $1 billion.
The total was put at $5.2 billion, though $700 million of that was made up of old pledges that hadn’t ever been fulfilled (a perverse international aid equivalent of re-gifting). New pledges amounted to $4.4 billion. That's more than Germany received, in real terms, under the Marshall Plan after World War II. It ought to have been enough to rebuild a place as small as Gaza where, it's fair to say, the residents have low expectations for the luxuriousness of their habitat.
Yet the people of Gaza quivered in their wintry tent encampments, waiting for the manure to be spread.
They’re still in the tents. Sweltering now with the onset of the long heat that runs from April until November in Gaza.
What happened to the cash?
After all, when the money was promised, diplomats claimed it would be easy enough to figure out a way to give the aid money without letting Hamas get its hands on it.
That was important because the U.S. wouldn’t give a cent if it might end up paying for more missiles aimed at Israel. Last week a Florida congresswoman told Clinton the aid money was “a bailout for Hamas.”
Most Arab states were keen to back the Palestinian Authority, which is still engaged in a civil war with Hamas. No problem, diplomats said at the time, we can set up mechanisms to get around Hamas.
European diplomats and Jerusalem-based aid agencies tell GlobalPost that these claims turned out to be hot air. Basic humanitarian aid, such as food, gets through no problem. But the rest of the cash remains unused.
Diplomats are concerned that even if the aid doesn’t go directly to Hamas, the Islamic party which took over absolute control of Gaza two years ago might tax or divert the money — or simply steal it, as its militiamen did when they raided a U.N. food warehouse after the end of the fighting.
The donors thought the situation would become clearer after the formation of a new Israeli government and with progress in Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks between Hamas and their West Bank rivals, Fatah.
No luck. Hamas and Fatah seem to be drifting further apart, maneuvering behind the scenes as they prepare for a new round of talks.
Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority from Ramallah, lacks urgency due to the fact that it’s still receiving the money it has been promised by the United States. Hamas hasn’t been doing much to kiss and make up, either. A Human Rights Watch report released last week said Hamas killed at least 32 political rivals during the Israeli assault and in the three months since. It also shot 49 Palestinians in the legs and broke the legs or arms of another 73, according to the rights group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a review of the policy of barring construction materials from Gaza, after he took office a month ago. But the review isn’t due to be completed for another three weeks, according to officials in Netanyahu’s office.
“Keeping the money out of the hands of Hamas is a challenge,” says one Israeli official. “Whether the money is dollars, Euros or shekels, no one has easy answers.”
It turns out blame is easier to spread than money.
Israel's new weapon: water?
Yet another report accuses Israel of human rights abuses, this time for denying Palestinians water. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — Human-rights reports condemning Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians have become so frequent of late they’re like the dripping of Chinese water torture.
In the last few months, there have been reports on the conduct of Israeli forces in Gaza, on restrictions on medical supplies and food entering Gaza and the necessity for a boycott of Israeli products and people. This week Amnesty International made its latest contribution with a report on water itself.
Amnesty issued a 112-page report that accuses Israel of denying sufficient water to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The report says Israelis uses more than three times as much water per person as Palestinians, and that Gazans are down to 20 liters of water a day — the World Health Organization’s designated minimum level for subsistence.
“Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality, subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford,” said Amnesty's researcher for Israel and the Palestinian territories Donatella Rovera.
Palestinian officials gushed about the Amnesty report. Israelis told them to suck it up.
A measure of the importance of water in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and throughout the parched Middle East — is the position water rights were given in the Oslo Peace Accords between the two sides.
When the peace agreement was signed in 1993, the most difficult issues were set aside for “final-status negotiations.” In other words, the two sides figured they’d be able to agree on some issues only when they’d already made nice for a few years, their people would’ve seen the benefits of early measures, and consequently would accept compromise on the toughest questions.
Those tough questions, by the way, were: the status of Jerusalem, the future of Palestinian refugees, the final borders of a Palestinian state.
And water.
The first three issues are essentially at the heart of every story you read every day about this conflict. Water, on the other hand, doesn’t get so much coverage.
Because it’s harder to deal with than any of the others.
That’s right. You can pay refugees to make new lives in the West Bank and Gaza or Sweden. You can draw a line on a map and call one side of the line “Palestine.” You can even give sovereignty over the Temple Mount above ground to the Palestinians and underground (where all their ancient relics are) to the Israelis.
But you can’t make more water.
There are three main sources of water for Israel and the Palestinians, and they’re all in rotten shape.
The Sea of Galilee, according to Israeli government water officials, is so low after a decade of droughts that another winter of light rainfall could turn it into a “dead lake.” In other words, the water would become contaminated. Fears such as this led Israel’s Water Authority this summer to institute higher charges for homes that use large amounts of water.
Contamination isn’t a fear for the coastal aquifer, which runs beneath Gaza. It’s already a reality. The aquifer has been over-pumped, so that sea water has leeched into it and untreated sewage from the 1.5 million Palestinians living on top of it has seeped down into it. That’s led to dangerous quantities of nitrates in the water pumped out of the ground in Gaza.
The mountain aquifer beneath the West Bank is little better. Amnesty says Israel pumps 80 percent of the water that comes out of the mountain source, leaving only 20 percent to the Palestinians.
Israeli officials argue that they then sell much of that water back to the Palestinian Authority as they’re mandated to do under their peace accords (Article 40 of Annex III, to be precise). They also contend that the Palestinian Authority refuses to recycle its waste water, doesn’t build water plants even when Israel gives a permit to do so and has frittered away billions of dollars in Western aid without setting up its own water infrastructure (or pretty much any other infrastructure, in fact).
To be sure, the World Bank conceded recently that the Palestinian Water Authority is “in total chaos.” In most of the Palestinian villages of the West Bank, water is trucked in by leaky, old tankers, which sometimes fail to make it past Israeli military checkpoints.
Amnesty contends that Palestinians consume an average of 70 liters of water a day, including agricultural use. Much less than the Israeli average of 300 liters.
Israel disagrees with those figures. The Israeli Water Authority says Israelis use 408 liters a day of fresh water from natural sources, while Palestinians use 200 liters.
Those numbers won’t wash with Amnesty, which points the finger at Israeli settlements in the West Bank as big users of local water resources. Certainly the settlements have a lusher look than the neighboring Palestinian villages.
The language of Amnesty’s report highlights that water is not merely something that’s drunk or used for irrigation. The report "calls on the Israeli authorities to urgently address the desperate need for water security in the [occupied Palestinian territories:].”
“Water security.” Like everything else in the Middle East, water has turned into a security issue. In other words, something that can lead to violence.
Behind the politics, Amnesty points out the specific and pressing problems of the people of Gaza. The three-week Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza which ended in mid-January this year destroyed much of the infrastructure, such as it was.
Since then Israel has restricted construction materials entering the Gaza Strip, because it fears Hamas will use them to rebuild military facilities and weapons-smuggling tunnels beneath the Egyptian border. That, according to Amnesty, has brought the water situation in Gaza to “crisis point.”
Unfortunately the fact that water was supposed to be left to “final-status” peace negotiations means that there’s likely to be little change in the situation now. Final-status talks are a long, long way off. Palestinian negotiators have refused to talk to their Israeli counterparts until construction in Israeli settlements is at a complete halt. That means no water talks, either.
JERUSALEM — Human-rights reports condemning Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians have become so frequent of late they’re like the dripping of Chinese water torture.
In the last few months, there have been reports on the conduct of Israeli forces in Gaza, on restrictions on medical supplies and food entering Gaza and the necessity for a boycott of Israeli products and people. This week Amnesty International made its latest contribution with a report on water itself.
Amnesty issued a 112-page report that accuses Israel of denying sufficient water to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The report says Israelis uses more than three times as much water per person as Palestinians, and that Gazans are down to 20 liters of water a day — the World Health Organization’s designated minimum level for subsistence.
“Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality, subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford,” said Amnesty's researcher for Israel and the Palestinian territories Donatella Rovera.
Palestinian officials gushed about the Amnesty report. Israelis told them to suck it up.
A measure of the importance of water in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and throughout the parched Middle East — is the position water rights were given in the Oslo Peace Accords between the two sides.
When the peace agreement was signed in 1993, the most difficult issues were set aside for “final-status negotiations.” In other words, the two sides figured they’d be able to agree on some issues only when they’d already made nice for a few years, their people would’ve seen the benefits of early measures, and consequently would accept compromise on the toughest questions.
Those tough questions, by the way, were: the status of Jerusalem, the future of Palestinian refugees, the final borders of a Palestinian state.
And water.
The first three issues are essentially at the heart of every story you read every day about this conflict. Water, on the other hand, doesn’t get so much coverage.
Because it’s harder to deal with than any of the others.
That’s right. You can pay refugees to make new lives in the West Bank and Gaza or Sweden. You can draw a line on a map and call one side of the line “Palestine.” You can even give sovereignty over the Temple Mount above ground to the Palestinians and underground (where all their ancient relics are) to the Israelis.
But you can’t make more water.
There are three main sources of water for Israel and the Palestinians, and they’re all in rotten shape.
The Sea of Galilee, according to Israeli government water officials, is so low after a decade of droughts that another winter of light rainfall could turn it into a “dead lake.” In other words, the water would become contaminated. Fears such as this led Israel’s Water Authority this summer to institute higher charges for homes that use large amounts of water.
Contamination isn’t a fear for the coastal aquifer, which runs beneath Gaza. It’s already a reality. The aquifer has been over-pumped, so that sea water has leeched into it and untreated sewage from the 1.5 million Palestinians living on top of it has seeped down into it. That’s led to dangerous quantities of nitrates in the water pumped out of the ground in Gaza.
The mountain aquifer beneath the West Bank is little better. Amnesty says Israel pumps 80 percent of the water that comes out of the mountain source, leaving only 20 percent to the Palestinians.
Israeli officials argue that they then sell much of that water back to the Palestinian Authority as they’re mandated to do under their peace accords (Article 40 of Annex III, to be precise). They also contend that the Palestinian Authority refuses to recycle its waste water, doesn’t build water plants even when Israel gives a permit to do so and has frittered away billions of dollars in Western aid without setting up its own water infrastructure (or pretty much any other infrastructure, in fact).
To be sure, the World Bank conceded recently that the Palestinian Water Authority is “in total chaos.” In most of the Palestinian villages of the West Bank, water is trucked in by leaky, old tankers, which sometimes fail to make it past Israeli military checkpoints.
Amnesty contends that Palestinians consume an average of 70 liters of water a day, including agricultural use. Much less than the Israeli average of 300 liters.
Israel disagrees with those figures. The Israeli Water Authority says Israelis use 408 liters a day of fresh water from natural sources, while Palestinians use 200 liters.
Those numbers won’t wash with Amnesty, which points the finger at Israeli settlements in the West Bank as big users of local water resources. Certainly the settlements have a lusher look than the neighboring Palestinian villages.
The language of Amnesty’s report highlights that water is not merely something that’s drunk or used for irrigation. The report "calls on the Israeli authorities to urgently address the desperate need for water security in the [occupied Palestinian territories:].”
“Water security.” Like everything else in the Middle East, water has turned into a security issue. In other words, something that can lead to violence.
Behind the politics, Amnesty points out the specific and pressing problems of the people of Gaza. The three-week Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza which ended in mid-January this year destroyed much of the infrastructure, such as it was.
Since then Israel has restricted construction materials entering the Gaza Strip, because it fears Hamas will use them to rebuild military facilities and weapons-smuggling tunnels beneath the Egyptian border. That, according to Amnesty, has brought the water situation in Gaza to “crisis point.”
Unfortunately the fact that water was supposed to be left to “final-status” peace negotiations means that there’s likely to be little change in the situation now. Final-status talks are a long, long way off. Palestinian negotiators have refused to talk to their Israeli counterparts until construction in Israeli settlements is at a complete halt. That means no water talks, either.
Is Abbas really ready to quit this time?
Worn out has-been or drama queen? Interpretations of the Palestinian president's threat to quit vary greatly. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — Sometimes a quitter really does quit for good.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced last week that he wouldn’t run for re-election in the proposed January elections. Back when he was Yasser Arafat’s deputy in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abbas sulked off to his home in the Persian Gulf several times. As Arafat’s prime minister, he quit in the middle of the intifada, accusing the Palestinian leader of undermining him and slamming the U.S. for failing to back him fully.
Each time, he slipped back from exile, until he took over from Arafat on his death and was elected to office, in January 2005. But the 74-year-old now says that he’s exhausted by the political events of this past year, particularly the failure of the Obama administration to pressure Israel on continued settlement-building in the West Bank.
At first, Abbas’s announcement was interpreted as a ploy to press Washington and the Israelis. Israeli, European and Arab leaders called Abbas to beg him to stay on. The West has long banked on Abbas, one of the formulators of the Oslo Peace Accords, as the best hope for a deal with Israel. If he were to go, things might look bleak for peace. (Not that they don’t look bleak right now.)
Despite the phone calls to Ramallah, most leaders assessed Abbas’s move as a tactic rather than a genuine expression of finality — like an actress pouting in her trailer until the director strokes her ego. After all, Abbas said only that he wouldn’t run in the January elections. It’s far from certain that those elections will be held, because Hamas won’t allow a poll in the Gaza Strip, which it controls. That would leave Abbas in office, in spite of his announcement.
Then Palestinian officials started talking to local and international media about what they claimed were Abbas’ true feelings. To sum up: He’s really had it with the Israeli government’s intransigence, and the way the U.S. backed down over settlements was the last straw.
Abbas’ supporters added that if he were to quit, the entire Palestinian Authority might collapse. It is, after all, fairly unloved among Palestinians. The only politician to have told his aides he would run to replace Abbas, Marwan Barghouti, is serving a series of life sentences in an Israeli prison. There are also plenty of Palestinian leaders who hanker for the old days of backroom political deals and lucrative private trade monopolies, which were nixed by Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, a U.S.-trained economist.
Still an institution that receives more than $1 billion in international aid each year is unlikely to just go away. For that kind of money, someone will be found to keep it rolling. The threat of collapse seems like an attempt by Abbas’ friends to demonstrate how peeved he is.
So why is Abbas out of patience?
Early in the year, the new U.S. administration pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a true freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. Washington insisted the freeze include so-called “natural growth,” which Israel uses to expand its building in the West Bank under the guise of new housing for existing residents.
But Netanyahu didn’t cave. During an Oct. 31 visit to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu for showing “restraint” on settlement building. Restraint, Arab leaders pointed out, is not quite a freeze.
U.S. diplomats seemed to have been slipping toward this climb down for some weeks. Abbas already called Obama late last month to complain about it. That was when he first broached the idea of quitting.
Abbas had, after all, conditioned the resumption of peace talks on a total Israeli settlement freeze. He edged out onto that high diplomatic branch because he thought the U.S. was behind him. Gradually he saw that he was going to be left on that limb.
Backing down on the settlements isn’t an option for Abbas. He’s already seen as weak and vacillating by ordinary Palestinians. Over the summer, he backed off when the U.S. pressed him not to insist on an International Court of Justice trial for Israel, after the release of a U.N. report into the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza at the turn of the year.
Palestinian public outcry forced him to shift his position. But it was too late. He appeared to have confirmed long-standing suspicions that he lacked strength. Perhaps really quitting is the only thing that will show he can make a plan and stick to it.
JERUSALEM — Sometimes a quitter really does quit for good.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced last week that he wouldn’t run for re-election in the proposed January elections. Back when he was Yasser Arafat’s deputy in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abbas sulked off to his home in the Persian Gulf several times. As Arafat’s prime minister, he quit in the middle of the intifada, accusing the Palestinian leader of undermining him and slamming the U.S. for failing to back him fully.
Each time, he slipped back from exile, until he took over from Arafat on his death and was elected to office, in January 2005. But the 74-year-old now says that he’s exhausted by the political events of this past year, particularly the failure of the Obama administration to pressure Israel on continued settlement-building in the West Bank.
At first, Abbas’s announcement was interpreted as a ploy to press Washington and the Israelis. Israeli, European and Arab leaders called Abbas to beg him to stay on. The West has long banked on Abbas, one of the formulators of the Oslo Peace Accords, as the best hope for a deal with Israel. If he were to go, things might look bleak for peace. (Not that they don’t look bleak right now.)
Despite the phone calls to Ramallah, most leaders assessed Abbas’s move as a tactic rather than a genuine expression of finality — like an actress pouting in her trailer until the director strokes her ego. After all, Abbas said only that he wouldn’t run in the January elections. It’s far from certain that those elections will be held, because Hamas won’t allow a poll in the Gaza Strip, which it controls. That would leave Abbas in office, in spite of his announcement.
Then Palestinian officials started talking to local and international media about what they claimed were Abbas’ true feelings. To sum up: He’s really had it with the Israeli government’s intransigence, and the way the U.S. backed down over settlements was the last straw.
Abbas’ supporters added that if he were to quit, the entire Palestinian Authority might collapse. It is, after all, fairly unloved among Palestinians. The only politician to have told his aides he would run to replace Abbas, Marwan Barghouti, is serving a series of life sentences in an Israeli prison. There are also plenty of Palestinian leaders who hanker for the old days of backroom political deals and lucrative private trade monopolies, which were nixed by Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, a U.S.-trained economist.
Still an institution that receives more than $1 billion in international aid each year is unlikely to just go away. For that kind of money, someone will be found to keep it rolling. The threat of collapse seems like an attempt by Abbas’ friends to demonstrate how peeved he is.
So why is Abbas out of patience?
Early in the year, the new U.S. administration pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a true freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. Washington insisted the freeze include so-called “natural growth,” which Israel uses to expand its building in the West Bank under the guise of new housing for existing residents.
But Netanyahu didn’t cave. During an Oct. 31 visit to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu for showing “restraint” on settlement building. Restraint, Arab leaders pointed out, is not quite a freeze.
U.S. diplomats seemed to have been slipping toward this climb down for some weeks. Abbas already called Obama late last month to complain about it. That was when he first broached the idea of quitting.
Abbas had, after all, conditioned the resumption of peace talks on a total Israeli settlement freeze. He edged out onto that high diplomatic branch because he thought the U.S. was behind him. Gradually he saw that he was going to be left on that limb.
Backing down on the settlements isn’t an option for Abbas. He’s already seen as weak and vacillating by ordinary Palestinians. Over the summer, he backed off when the U.S. pressed him not to insist on an International Court of Justice trial for Israel, after the release of a U.N. report into the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza at the turn of the year.
Palestinian public outcry forced him to shift his position. But it was too late. He appeared to have confirmed long-standing suspicions that he lacked strength. Perhaps really quitting is the only thing that will show he can make a plan and stick to it.
