What need does Abbas have for a state?
Op-ed: Some are concerned Trump's recent steps towards the Palestinians will harm Israel or spark an intifada, but they don't get that all peace efforts have failed because the Palestinians are not serious about peace, especially their leaders who enjoy all the benefits of statehood while endlessly indulging in self-victimization.
There are some things I cannot understand. For example, when Israelis (thank God few of them) claim that the American president's steps against the Palestinians will harm Israel. How exactly? "The honor of the Palestinians will not allow them to surrender to Trump," they explain, "and we will eventually pay the price."
“The honor of the Palestinians”? In other words, the lies and deceptions in all the talks with them, including the wretched Oslo agreement that gave international recognition and the Nobel Peace Prize to compulsive liar Yasser Arafat, who never intended to comply with the agreement just like his successor, Mahmoud Abbas.
US President Donald Trump; Mahmoud Abbas (Photo: AP, Reuters)
In other words, incitement against Israel throughout the world, including appealing to international institutions to punish or condemn Israel. And for what exactly: for repeatedly trying to reach some sort of agreement with them. They have rejected any proposal or outline presented to them.
Another argument is that Trump's actions will cause riots and chaos both for us and for the entire Arab world. "Another intifada," warn the pessimists.
So first of all, we are more than 30 years after the first intifada and 18 years after the second intifada and the "rules of the blood game” have changed. Israel today can easily overcome the various intifadas, and the Palestinians know this.
As for the Arab world, it is divided and beset by conflict. Each of the Muslim countries is preoccupied with its own problems at home and abroad. In any event, the fate of their Palestinian "brothers" never really interested them when it did not promote their own interests.
But beyond all this, do those pessimists not understand that the Palestinian leader does not want to reach a solution that will give his people a state?
Why would Mahmoud Abbas want to run a country with all the problems and headaches involved? For years he has received benefits and hospitality just like an actual world leader. He is a president, afterall and he is treated as one.
Abbas enjoys staying in the best hotels, meeting with the leaders of various countries, and benefits from huge sums of money, which in large part do not reach those among his people who need them.
Those very funds allow him to disburse large sums to the "heroes" (i.e., murderers) incarcerated in Israeli prisons or to the families of the "martyrs."
What need does Abbas have for a state? What has he done until this day to bring his people a state? Has he ever said "yes" to anything?
But now, with Trump's recent measures, Abbas is facing a real calamity.
For some time now, most Arab countries have not transferred money to him, but various UN agencies, the European Union and the United States, through various mechanisms, have continued to support the Palestinian Authority, holding off its collapse.
Now, that the US funding will cease, what will the president in Ramallah do? Will he and his supporters continue to lament the "crushed Palestinian dignity," or will they finally begin to look reality in the eye and comprehend that they cannot boycott the president of the world's number one superpower and that they must listen seriously to the initiatives offered by his emissaries?
Will they understand that playing the victim game, which worked well for decades, makes no impression on Trump? It is quite conceivable that they will not.
