Abbas Is Seen as Ready to Seek Pact on His Own
With no clear resolution in sight to the battle between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, who has been largely sidelined as his popularity sank during the conflict, is making a new play to reassert his role and cast himself as the leader of all Palestinians.
Mr. Abbas plans to present an initiative Tuesday to the Palestinian leadership that, several people close to him said, would bypass American-brokered negotiations with Israel that have failed for many years to produce a Palestinian state. Instead he will call for an international conference or United Nations resolution demanding a deadline to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. As leverage, Mr. Abbas would finally join the International Criminal Court and other institutions where he has long threatened to pursue Israeli violations, these people said.
Egypt, Israel and the United States have all said for weeks that strengthening Mr. Abbas and reinstating his security forces on Gaza’s borders was a goal of cease-fire negotiations in Cairo, but Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates Gaza, has yet to accede to these and other conditions. Now, Mr. Abbas’s allies said they hoped to seize on the Gaza crisis and diplomatic stalemate to press for a fresh approach to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and to show the public that he is at the helm.
“This is exactly our moment, like it was the moment of the European Jews after the Holocaust, when they said, ‘Never again.’ This is our ‘never again,’ ” said Husam Zomlot, a senior foreign-policy official in Mr. Abbas’s Fatah faction. “This is the time to really operate. We either operate or we let the patient die, and the patient here is the two-state solution. We cannot just put bandages.”
Details of the Abbas initiative remain under wraps — he teased it only as “a nonconventional solution” in an interview on Egyptian television this weekend, and acknowledged that Israel and the United States were both likely to reject it. But even as Mr. Abbas tried to assert himself, his shaky position was on display. Asked whether he would visit Gaza, he said he would do so “on the proper timing,” but added, “because I’m the president of the country, it’s my duty to go there.”
Ziad Abu Amr, the Palestinian deputy prime minister, said Monday that underpinning the new initiative is the idea that “the status quo ante is no longer acceptable.”
“It’s going to be in the form of either-or: Either you do this and this and this and that, or we do this and this and this and that,” Mr. Abu Amr said. “It’s going to be a different approach to the ongoing modus operandi.”
Given how the continuing fighting has raised Hamas’s standing with the Palestinian public, some analysts saw the initiative, along with Mr. Abbas’s recent meetings with the Egyptian president and the Qatari emir, largely as a bid to stay relevant.
“He’s trying to be engaged, trying to survive politically as leadership, trying to find a place in this new reality,” said Ghassan Khatib, vice president of Birzeit University in Ramallah and a former spokesman for the Palestinian government. But Mr. Khatib, like others, said “the political weight of Hamas increased” during the war while the stature of Mr. Abbas and his Palestine Liberation Organization waned.
“It’s an illusion and wishful thinking that they will have increased role in the postwar,” he said.
The initiative comes amid renewed Egyptian efforts to halt the hostilities between Israel and Hamas. Arab news agencies reported on Monday that Egypt called for an open-ended cease-fire in exchange for a full opening of Gaza’s border crossings, rehabilitation of what the fighting destroyed in the coastal enclave, and an expansion of the permitted fishing zone. Hamas’s demand for a Gaza seaport and airport — and Israel’s for Gaza’s demilitarization — would be discussed within a month.
Israeli officials declined to comment on the reports. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, confirmed in an interview that “there are efforts and contacts to reach a lull,” but said “nothing is final so far.”
More than 120 rockets soared from Gaza into Israel on Monday, the sixth straight day of intense barrages. Most landed in open areas and caused little damage.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 11 Palestinians were killed, including three in a car in Gaza City, three others in Beit Lahiya, and Farhana Attar, 48, all by Israeli airstrikes. Killed by artillery shells was Abdullah Mourtaga, 26, identified on his Facebook page as a worker for the Palestinian Religious Committee. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Ms. Attar, 48, was feeding poultry at her home in Beit Lahiya when she was hit.
And early Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike leveled a 14-story building in Gaza, wounding at least 25 people, a Gaza health official told The Associated Press.
American diplomats said they did not yet have details of Mr. Abbas’s plan, and Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said he would not comment until it was presented in full. Yaakov Peri, a senior Israeli minister, said Monday the ideas were “far from giving hope for a solution.”
“Instead of working with the axis of relatively moderate states, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, Abu Mazen is again working on the Qatar-Turkey axis that blames and accuses of war crimes,” Mr. Peri said on Israel Radio, using Mr. Abbas’s nickname. “This is certainly not constructive, this is not a solution, and obviously is unacceptable to Israel.”
Palestinians have been threatening for years to prosecute Israel at The Hague for its occupation of the West Bank and its restrictions on travel and trade in Gaza, but in recent days Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s political chief, became the final Palestinian factional leader to sign a petition authorizing Mr. Abbas to join the court. He promised not to do so during the nine-month peace talks that collapsed in April, and has been under increasing pressure to since. But the court remains a third rail for both Israel and Washington.
Asked whether the United States would accept his initiative, Mr. Abbas said Saturday on Egypt’s Watan TV, “I believe not,” and said he would then “put my legs against the wall and move on.”
“But there are issues which I can’t accept the U.S. position on,” he said. Mr. Abbas said he would share his plan with Secretary of State John Kerry “within a week,” adding, “I won’t declare a war on Israel, but I’ll propose political and diplomatic solutions.”
Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the P.L.O. executive committee, said in an interview this month that the era of bilateral negotiations was over. “Never again, never again in my lifetime or Abu Mazen’s anybody will say, ‘Let’s continue the peace process,’ ” Mr. Abed Rabbo said. “Let’s have an international conference, and by this date there will be an end of the occupation, and everything will be done under that.”
Mr. Zomlot, the Fatah official, who has been promoting a new approach for some time, said the Israel-Hamas battle, in which some 2,100 Palestinians have been killed and at least 11,000 homes in Gaza destroyed, has made many in the West Bank leadership ask themselves, “How do we create some sort of positive momentum out of a negative vibe?”
Jodi Rudoren
New York Times