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Who’s to blame for Abbas’ resignation?

By Uriel Heilman · November 19, 2009

Mahmoud Abbas wants to resign as Palestinian Authority president. Who's to blame?

Is it:

1. Benjamin Netanyahu, for refusing to agree to a full settlement freeze in the West Bank as a precondition for restarting negotiations, and for refusing to offer concessions on dividing Jerusalem and allowing Palestinian refugees from 1948 to settle in Israel.
2. The Obama administration, for first demanding Israel impose a full settlement freeze and then backpeddling on that demand and calling for the Palestinians to return to the  negotiating table immediately.
3. Hamas, for taking over Gaza and refusing to join in national unity government with Abbas' Fatah faction, and for refusing to allow Fatah to run candidates in the Gaza Strip.
4. Abbas, for failing to root out corruption in the Palestinian Authority and make his party, Fatah, a popular alternative to Hamas.
5. All of the above.

In The New Republic, Shmuel Rosner goes with No. 4. He writes of Abbas:

He largely has himself to blame. While the Americans and Israelis were finally reaching an agreement on a partial settlement freeze at the trilateral meeting this past September in New York, Abbas refused to admit that a total freeze was no longer a viable option. He continued his intransigence in a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two weeks ago in Abu Dhabi. And this past Wednesday, in a public appearance marking the five years that have passed since the death of Yasser Arafat, Abbas vowed, yet again, that he will not go back to negotiating with Israel "without a full cessation of settlement construction, including Jerusalem and natural growth."

That is one tall tree he has climbed. Abbas is now committed to a stance that cannot be acceptable to an American administration that prides itself on engagement with friend and foe, and dialogue without preconditions. If Obama is willing to negotiate with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, how can Abbas get away with refusing to talk to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu? On the other hand, with every bombastic statement, Abbas seems to be limiting his domestic options. How can he go back to negotiations while saving face with his own people after repeatedly promising not to do so unless Israel freezes all settlement construction?

Steven A. Cook warns in The New Republic that the Palestinians may turn to a third intifada to get their way:

The dynamics of Palestinian politics indicate that a third intifada is likely to erupt in the near future. If history is any guide, the Palestinian leadership of the West Bank--whether it includes Mahmoud Abbas or not--may again look to a violence to improve its sagging domestic popularity.

Throughout contemporary Palestinian history, spilling Israeli blood has often been the best way for competing political factions to burnish their nationalist credentials.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post looks beyond Abbas:

Follow the lead of Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and the man who's largely responsible for Ramallah's turnaround. He has drawn up a plan for a two-year transition to statehood. The United States should endorse this goal, explicitly, and call for an immediate start to negotiations about the details.

"Fayyad is the only game in town, but his plan isn't sustainable without a political process," says Martin Indyk, who heads the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution and organized a three-day conference in Jerusalem to discuss U.S.-Israeli issues.