The fall of Abbas: Why such surprise?

By Avi Davis
web posted September 15, 2003

Shock is a word that many have registered to describe their
reaction to the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian
Prime Minister. Reading the statements of foreign ministers one
might believe that no one outside the Palestinian cities believed
that Abbas could possibly fail. But a careful reading of Middle
East history over the past 100 years would have warned anyone
that Abbas never had a chance. Moderates don't rule the
Palestinians. Their political culture has never been given to
temperance. History, in fact, reveals quite the opposite.

In 1922, the first High Commissioner of the British Mandate,
Herbert Samuels, sought to fulfill Britain's pledges to Arabs and
Jews by instituting a Legislative Council, a body that would
represent Arabs, Jews, Christians and all other minorities in
proportion to their population numbers. At the time there were
650,000 Arabs living in Palestine and 87,000 Jews. Within
Palestinian Arab circles, fearsome argument raged on whether to
accept the Samuels' plan which would have been their first step
on the road towards self government. While the leaders of the
Jewish community accepted the plan, Arab nationalists ultimately
dismissed it, refusing to adhere to the notion that Jews and Arabs
could one day live peaceably side by side. Moderate supporters
of the plan were ostracized, branded as traitors and the backlash
marked the rise to power of the rabid anti-semite Haj Amin al
Husseini.

In 1938, in the midst of the three year Arab rebellion against the
British, many moderate Arabs, particularly the members of the
wealthy Nashashibi clan, argued heatedly against continuing the
insurrection which had resulted in enormous economic hardship
and political loss for the Arabs. The answer given by the hardline
leadership of al Husseini was definitive. A wide scale crack
down, involving both assassination and revenge killing ensued,
forcing hundreds of members of the Nashashibi clan and others
to flee. Among those killed were the mayor of Hebron, the
mukhtar of Caeserea and Hassan Sidqi al Dajani ,one of the
most prominent members of the Jerusalem Municipal Council –
all men who could have played a vital role in accepting, rather
than rejecting the U.N Partition Plan of 1947. Many other
political leaders who fled would never return.

In 1968, in the aftermath of Israel's conquest of the West Bank
and Gaza during the Six Day War, the Eshkol government
floated the idea of limited self-government for the Arab
population - a courtesy denied to them under 19 years of
Jordanian rule. The opening of the border to both economic
opportunity and health services for the Arab community brought
an immediate improvement to Arab life and many were prepared
to accommodate the Israelis. Sensing a challenge to its
annihilationist agenda, Arafat's Fatah guerillas infiltrated the West
Bank and embarked on a violent campaign of intimidation,
enforcing silence on many of the West Bank intellectuals and
moderates. By 1969, it became clear that one's life as a political
leader in the West Bank and Gaza would be conditioned on
loyalty to the PLO. The opportunity for self-government was
lost.

During the first Intifada (1987-92) - a locally led uprising which
took the exiled PLO by surprise - hundreds of Palestinians were
killed as "collaborators," a loose term used to denote those who
later came to oppose the PLO's wresting of control from the
local leadership or who had simply found employment in Israel.
A little known fact is that during those years more than 700 such
collaborators were murdered by Palestinian death squads- far
more than died from clashes with the IDF. Once again Arafat's
henchmen, mimicking the earlier campaign of the al-Husseini
clan, sought to eliminate opposition to their control and snuffing
out any real voice of moderation or opposition.
 
It should come as no surprise then that Mahmoud Abbas'
campaign to challenge hardliners and terrorists has failed.
Palestinians are inclined, through decades of intimidation,
coercion and doctrinal inculcation, into accepting the rule of
revolutionaries and rejectionists. Little wonder indeed that it is
the autocratic and militant Yasser Arafat, and not the seemingly
pliable and pandering Mahmoud Abbas who has won the heart
of the Palestinian street. And yet the lessons of history remain
unlearned. Violence has never nourished the permanent interests
of the Palestinians. It has only served to divert their painful trudge
through history into poverty, humiliation and political oblivion.
Their real tragedy is that no leader among them remains standing
who has either the courage or political muscle to hector them on
the palpable failures of the past or the avoidable pitfalls of the
future.

Avi Davis is the senior fellow of the Freeman Center for
Strategic Studies and the senior editorial columnist for
Jewsweek.com.

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