If this wasn’t so tragic it would be funny in a dark sort of way:
In the wake of harsh criticism leveled at the Palestinian Authority over its decision to support delaying a vote in the UN Human Rights Council on passing the Goldstone Report to the General Assembly for further action, President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered the establishment of an inquiry committee to examine the affair.
…Yasser Abed Rabbo, the secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, said that following deliberations with top PA officials, Abbas decided to set up a committee tasked with determining who was behind the decision to support the deferral of the UN vote.
According to another PA official, the Palestinians pulled their support for the report’s endorsement by the Human Rights Council following talks with the US and Israel. He said the fact that Israel’s envoy to the UN in Geneva made the agreement public “complicated matters” for the Authority and made it appear as though it were cooperating with Israel “at the expense of those who were killed in Gaza.”
Over the weekend Hamas called the PA’s decision “a serious crime against our people, a betrayal of the blood of our martyrs and collaboration with the Zionist enemy.”
Just who runs the show at the PA anyway? You might be forgiven for thinking that Abbas and Salam Fayyad were playing that role. But I guess you’d be wrong. Who does the Palestinian representative to the UN Human Rights Council, who made this agreement, work for anyway?
While I don’t blame Hamas for shreying that this is a crime against the Palestinian people. Really all they needed to do was point out that if THEY represented the Palestinian people in Geneva you could be damn sure that Ismail Haniya would be directing his representative how to vote and not shrugging his shoulders three days later and wondering who made the decision and how.
While I have no great affection for Hamas, this is yet another example of why Fatah is the laughingstock of Palestine and of Palestinian political parties. And to think Tom Friedman was singing the praises of “Fayyadism” only a few weeks ago in the pages of the N.Y. Times!
One of the funniest statements in the article is the PA’s concern that the Geneva decision might make it appear they were collaborating with Israel. Gee, d’ya think? As I wrote in my first post about this ill-fated decision, it amounts to selling the blood of your fellow Gazans for a mess of porridge. And of course the horse is out of the barn. The PA can’t ask for a “do over” now that its shameful decision has become public knowledge. It will have to wait till March and hope the rest of the UN Human Rights Council will have interest and will to take up the measure again.
Frankly, I’ve never heard of the victim of war crimes ever cutting the legs out from under the chief international investigator in the middle of the investigation. This is a new one on me. I must say the bizarreness of human behavior never ceases to amaze me.
This report by Amira Haas makes Abbas look like even more of a fool:
Palestinian sources told Haaretz that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made the decision to delay the vote immediately after meeting with the U.S. Consul General last Thursday, without the knowledge of the PLO leadership or the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and without any consultation.
“While I have no great affection for Hamas, this is yet another example of why Fatah is the laughingstock of Palestine and of Palestinian political parties.”
That is exactly what I have been thinking. What Palestinian in his right mind would still vote for Fatah now?
I guess Abbas’ pockets are filled once again with Zionist cash. It’s sad that the lives of his people are so cheaply sold.
Regardless of who is whose pockets, it was made absolutely clear days ago that this report and any tangible outcome of it at the UN would be blocked by the US’s power of veto. Therefore, Abbas has not done Israel or the peace process any favours here, but he has saved Obama from any fallouts he may have ensued with the Middle East had he used his veto – that is one of the things I find most disgusting with this whole debacle. I’m not anti-Obama, but I believe his “peace process” is a joke and this just proves it. How can he, with one breath, push for a Palestinian state but with the other breath threaten to use his veto to deny Palestinians justice?
That aside, if I’m not mistaken, a rough guide to Obama’s peace process to-date would go like this:
Obama to Netanyahu: “I want you to stop settlements.”
Natanyahu to Obama: “F**k you!”
Obama to Netanyahu: “Ok! But I still want you to stop settlements.”
Natanyahu to Obama: “Get the f…”
Obama to Arab League: “He’s not going to stop settlements. Maybe you guys can sweeten the deal?”
Arab League to Obama: “El Khara Dah? Alaan abok labo abook, yabn al gahba… Yla’an haramak!”
Obama to the world: “To be continued…”
Yeah, if you can set aside the seriousness of the subject it’s hilarious. Abbas is going to investigate himself and if he finds out that he’s done what he did, he’ll probably want to have some harsh words with himself.
Maybe he’ll even fire himself for cronyism & incompetence!
He’s probably not competent enough to do that.
Maybe he’d even fire himself & then launch an inquiry into who made the decision!
That’d probably send the Angry Arab guy into orgasmic pleasure, but then Abbas would have to flee to France to spend the rest of his days there (or at least until someone assassinates him). Why do you hate the French so much, Richard?
I rather like them actually, except for Sarkozy (despite his being part-Jewish). I guess though, if they can stand having Suha Arafat living among them they could stand Abbas there too. Or maybe that U.S. consul general can find Abbas a rest home somewhere outside Langley where old friends of the U.S. can retire and live out their days dreaming of past glory.
I find it very amusing when you “progressives” dump on FATAH…..it was Arafat’s party, for heaven’s sake! In the period before Oslo I assume you, Richard, like the rest of the “progressives” were screaming for the Israelis to recognize Arafat and his FATAH/Palestine Liberation as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, even though no election was ever held in the Palestinian territories before Rabin and Peres decided to impose Arafat on the population there. I am certain you were ecstatic. Today, however all you guys fall over each other denouncing FATAH and the PA as “collaborators”, “corrupt”, “inefficient”, etc. What did you expect? What was FATAH like when they were running mini-states in Lebanon and Jordan before 1982? Corrupt, brutal, repressive. Everyone knew this , yet you guys closed your eyes to it. The people, like Abbas, you are denouncing today are ARAFAT’S PEOPLE.
Now, you may give me the line like so many people in Czarist Russia, Stalin’s USSR or so many other corrupt dictatorships enjoy spouting…”The leader is good and honest, but he is surrounded by bad peope”. Well, if the leader is good, why would he pick bad people as his subordinates?
So now you have transferred your affections to HAMAS, and you ascribe the same qualities to them that you once did for Arafat….now you say that Haniyeh would never perform the flip-flops that Abbas has performed. Really? If his Iranian paymasters told him to do it, he would do it no less that Abbas did for his American paymasters.
Do you have any actual evidence that people hold the beliefs you ascribe to them? Cause your comment is very heavy on the assumptions, kind of short on the evidence.
But an election WAS held in 2006 to determine who Palestinians wanted to represent them. They chose Hamas. So I presume under the logic you’re using that you would recognize Hamas as their legitimate representative. Right? What’s that? You don’t? Hmm. That poses a wee bitty problem of consistency for you, doesn’t it?
As for Arafat, do you mean to tell me you doubt that Arafat represented the overwhelming preponderance of Palestinians during that period?
I’m hardly ever ecstatic over anything related to the IP conflict & I assure you that Arafat & the PLO being the representative of the Palestinians wasn’t in that category. Though nice of you to fantacize about what I felt or believed way back in 1988 or whenever that was. I never said Arafat was “good.” There are few Palestinian leaders I would place in that category & about as many Israeli leaders I would place there as well. And my “affections” have not been transferred anywhere, least of all to Hamas. My affections are for truth and justice, not for a particular political party.
Watch the political sloganeering. It’s a violation of my comment rules. I don’t like it. You can sloganeer at right wing websites, but not here.
It’s funny reading what rightwingers imagine lefties think. I’ve always had a low opinion of Arafat, something I picked up from reading Chomsky and Fisk. Robert Fisk wrote a book on Lebanon some years back that I read and he despised Arafat and the PLO.
And Hamas stinks. I was not at all happy when they won the election a few years ago. I can’t get too enthused over a bunch of rightwing religious fanatics who used to send people with strapped on explosives into restaurants. But they represent a major faction of the Palestinians due to the fact that Fatah seems bent on discrediting itself.
In the run-up to the Iraq War, France was the sober friend who tried to withhold the car keys from an America thoroughly drunk on hyperjingoism. The French are definitely the good guys.