Mahmoud Abbas has been very talkative lately. He talked to American Jewish groups. He’s talking to the Israeli media. It’s a pretty good PR offensive. He seems eminently reasonable. Except it’s all a facade.
Abbas, in the briefing with Israeli journalists Tuesday in Ramallah, said that originally he wanted to hear from Netanyahu whether he was willing to accept the understandings agreed upon by his predecessor, Ehud Olmert.
[…] When no answer from Netanyahu was forthcoming regarding the Olmert offer, Abbas said at Tuesday’s briefing, he sent a message through US envoy George Mitchell saying that he would suffice with an answer on only two of the issues: borders and security.
The answer that he was looking for was regarding this:
At the end of 2008, Olmert offered Abbas 93.5-to-93.7 percent of the West Bank, a one-to-one swap for most of the rest, and an arrangement whereby no one would have sovereignty over the “holy basin†surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City, but rather it would be administered by a consortium made up of the Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudis and Americans. Olmert also offered to accept a certain number of Palestinian refugees on humanitarian grounds.
Abbas is pretending that he is absolutely on board with that. But if he is absolutely on board with that, I have two questions. One, why didn’t he accept the offer from Olmert in 2008? And two, why is one of his chief advisors stating in Arabic that the Palestinians will never accept anything other than total control over the Temple Mount?
“In other words, you proposed Palestinian sovereignty, with Israel playing a role in the administrative aspects. In other words, Israel would participate in the administration of the Haram area – unlike the ‘reduced sovereignty’ demanded by Shlomo Ben-Ami at that meeting. In other words, you wanted to let [Israel] play a role, one way or another, with regard to the so-called Holy Basin.”
Saeb Erekat: “They will never have this. Like President Abu Mazen said in front of President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert: I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. East Jerusalem is an occupied area, just like Khan Yunis, Jericho, and Nablus were. Its status in international law will never be anything else. Therefore, any arrangements regarding East Jerusalem are categorically unacceptable.”
Every time the Arab press gets hold of statements like the above from Abu Mazen, they get a correction from him or his spokesmen. (Note that I say “spokesmen” instead of “spokespersons”—there are no women in important positions in the PA.) And the correction is always basically, “Oh, please. He said that for the suckers who only read English. He hasn’t changed.”
He hasn’t.