The Palestinian Option To No Settlement Freeze

With an Israeli settlement freeze off the table and the peace talks themselves at an apparent standstill, where do the Arabs go from here?

According to the Ma'an News Agency, one of the main options is for Abbas to carry through on his threat to disband the Palestinian Authority:

In a recent interview with Palestinian state television, Abbas warned that if all efforts to establish a Palestinian state fail he will dissolve the PA and ask Israel to assume responsibility for the occupation. His threats are neither a manoeuvre nor a clearly planned strategy. They are rather an expression of despair and a reflection of the mood of the Palestinian people - who see the PA as merely facilitating the continuation of the Israeli occupation while removing the need for it to pay for its actions.

Ma'an rejects the idea if for no other reason than that such a move requires having a strategy--and there is no indication that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority have one. The other problem, as Ma'an points out later in the article, is that the PA pays the salaries of about 150,000 people, so that disbanding the PA would have a severe economic impact.

Then there are 2 other possibilities that Abbas has suggested:

• have the UN recognize a Palestinian state.
• letting the UN take responsibility for the Palestinian territories.

The problem with these two ideas is that the US is likely to veto them.

The assumption appears to be that the options Abbas is suggesting somehow require a confrontation with Israel, something that the Palestinian Authority is not ready for:

The PA cannot be taken seriously as long as it accommodates Israeli terms and demands. Israel continues to prevent the movement of goods and people, to conduct raids and arrests in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to strike at the Gaza Strip. Thus a prerequisite for any significant Palestinian move must be an immediate halt to security coordination between Israel and the PA. [emphasis added]

Now there's a jump: from dissolving the PA and forcing Israel to be responsible for the West Bank to suggesting that the PA continue--and take responsibility themselves for the security of the West Bank. This is supposed to be the first step towards developing a 'resistance strategy' against Israel, but there is no mention of whether Abbas is actually up to the job of keeping Hamas elements in the West Bank at bay on his own.

Yet the LA Times blog, Babylon and Beyond, also quotes an Arab analyst who claims Abbas's first step must be to end security cooperation with Israel:

Political analyst and newspaper columnist Hani Masri said that any alternative approaches that involve the United States “will be a waste of time.”

The United States, he said, “is totally biased toward Israel and this bias has increased after the midterm elections for the U.S. Congress.”

Masri suggested peaceful popular resistance to the Israeli occupation as well as suspending the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation with Israel as long as the stalemate continues.

The problem appears to be that the West Bank Arabs are saddled with a leader whose only strategy is to threaten to resign whenever things get tough.

If the best idea they can come up with is to end cooperation with Israel and take on Hamas in the West Bank on their own, then it appears that Abbas is not the only one with no good ideas.

Technorati Tag: Abbas.