Viewpoint: Ben Cohen, JNS

It’s time to get tough with Mahmoud Abbas

Posted

I believe that President [Mahmoud] Abbas is sincere about his willingness to recognize Israel and its right to exist, to recognize Israel’s legitimate security needs, to shun violence, to resolve these issues in a diplomatic fashion that meets the concerns of the people of Israel. And I think that this is a rare quality not just within the Palestinian territories, but in the Middle East generally.”

That, in case you didn’t come across it the first time, was what President Barack Obama confidently declared to Bloomberg journalist Jeffrey Goldberg on March 2. Barely two months later, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki uttered the following words no less than four times at a press briefing: “It’s hard to see how Israel can be expected to negotiate with a government that does not believe in its right to exist.”

The “government” Psaki referred to is the one headed by Abbas, which just announced a unity agreement between the Palestinian leader’s Fatah movement and the Islamist Hamas terror organization. Hamas, as is well known, believes that Israel has no right to exist and should therefore be violently wiped off the map.

There are any number of questions arising from this sorry episode, most obviously how the Obama Administration got Abbas so spectacularly wrong. Go back to Obama’s interview with Goldberg for confirmation that, in the president’s mind, it’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is risking the long-term peace of the region in favor of short-term political gains. The theme of “Israel is blocking the peace talks” will now become “Israel wrecked the peace talks.”

In this environment, Abbas has become adept at strategically placing obstacles on the road to peace while portraying himself as a victim of the machinations of others, particularly Israel, with more power and resources than the Palestinian Authority. One important reason he’s been able to get away with doing so is that, as Obama said, he “shuns violence.”

Abbas certainly glorifies violence, as evidenced by his embrace of Palestinian terrorists past and present, but it’s true that violence is not his preferred method. That doesn’t mean, however, that he’s committed to peace with Israel.

Page 1 / 3