The Farce Of Abbas Makes The Coming Peace Talks A Joke

Khaled Abu Toameh asks the obvious question: Abbas and Fayyad: Do They Have a Mandate?.

A president whose term in office expired a long time ago, and a prime minister who won about 2% of the vote when he ran in an election, have now been invited by the US Administration to hold direct peace talks with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.


Mahmoud Abbas, the president, and Salam Fayyad, his prime minister, have even won the "backing" of two key decision-making bodies that are largely controlled by their supporters: the PLO Executive Committee and the Fatah Central Committee.

The 18-member PLO Executive Committee, which met in Ramallah last week to approve the Palestinians' participation in the direct talks with Israel, is dominated by unelected veteran officials.

Only nine PLO officials attended the meeting. The PLO constitution requires a minimum of 12 members for a quorum. This means that, contrary to reports in the Palestinian and international media, Abbas and Fayyad do not have the support of the PLO committee to negotiate directly with Israel.

The situation of the Fatah Central Committee is only marginally better:

With regards to the Central Council of Fatah, it remains unclear whether its 21 members ever endorsed the US invitation to hold direct talks with Israel.

Elections for the committee were held on July 8, 2009. The results of the vote, which has been denounced by many Fatah officials as unfair, was that only Abbas loyalists were elected.

Some of the committee members have even issued contradictory statements over the past few weeks regarding the direct talks. In the beginning, most of them seemed to oppose such talks unless Israel agreed to stop settlement construction and recognized the 1967 lines as the future borders of a Palestinian state.

Now, however, most of the committee members appear to have changed their minds -- clearly as a result of immense US pressure on Abbas and the Palestinian leadership.

Read the whole thing.

Think about that: a man who is no longer president has the backing of a group of similarly unelected officials and another group whose backing was manipulated--assuming it actually back the ideas of talks at all.

Toameh goes on to discuss Fayyad, whose lack of political backing--and reliance for his position on US pressure--only further illustrates the sham that these talks have become.

At the very least, an attempt could be made to create a serious infrastructure. Instead, money is being thrown at the West Bank as if that is the solution--an international version of Obamacare.

And we all know how that's working out.

Technorati Tag: Abbas and Fayyad.