THE prospect that Mahmoud Abbas, the most moderate leader in recent Palestinian history, may vanish from the political stage has touched off concern in European and Arab capitals and in Washington.
Tony Blair, the international community's Middle East envoy, was due to meet last night with Abbas in an effort to dissuade him from his announcement that he would not stand for re-election in Palestinian polling slated for 24 January.
Bernard K
ouchner, France's foreign minister, said yesterday he would make a similar effort during a planned visit to the region. But Israel is trying its best to ignore Abbas's move.
Before meeting US president Barack Obama at the White House on Monday, Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a speech to American Jewish leaders with the standard desire-for-peace clichés, not taking into account that it is years of empty talk about peace while Israel entrenches occupation and grabs more land that has made Abbas's advocacy of negotiations unconvincing to many of his own people.
"I say to president Mahmoud Abbas: let us seize the moment to reach a historic agreement Let us begin talks immediately," Netanyahu said. It was an attempt to paint the Palestinian leader as the obstacle to peace despite the Israeli premier's refusal to halt the expansion of illegal West Bank settlements in accordance with the so-called "roadmap to peace".
Avigdor Lieberman, the ultra-nationalist Israeli foreign minister, has meanwhile taken pains to evince indifference about Abbas's announcement: "You could call it an exercise or a threat, you can interpret it as you wish, but I wouldn't get very excited about it."
But not all Israelis agree. Nachman Shai, of the opposition Kadima party, said: "Yes we should be concerned. We know who we are dealing with now, but we don't know who will come next. It is better for Israel to be dealing with the present relatively moderate leadership."
To the dwindling Israeli left and the centrist Kadima party, Abbas, by being a partner for a peace agreement, can play a role in preserving Israel as a Jewish state and a democracy.
Kadima leader Tzipi Livni fears that, without an agreement setting up a Palestinian state, and given a higher Arab than Jewish birthrate, the continuation of Israel's hold on the West Bank means Jews will become a minority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Zionism would die as a result of holding on to too much territory, not from being defeated by Arab armies or guerrillas, according to this view. This motivated Israel's previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to negotiate with Abbas – albeit without reaching an agreement.
However, Netanyahu's right-wing government sees nothing wrong in the current status quo of occupying the land of another people, and wants to continue expanding the settlements and Israel's borders above all else. It wants to permanently rule the West Bank, granting the Palestinians at most a few cantons.
Thus for the right-wing government, Abbas – with his reasonable positions, respectability and absence of any taint of terrorism, and especially the support he has garnered for the Palestinian cause internationally – is a nuisance. This is especially true when he deviates, as he did last week, from the part Netanyahu and Lieberman would prefer him to play: that of collaborator with Israel's territorial designs.
According to Uri Avnery, an Israeli peace activist who first met Abbas in the 1980s, the Palestinian president fears Israel and Washington are forcing him into just such a role – especially in light of the US's recent backing of Israel in settlement expansion.
"Abbas does not want become a Marshal Pétain. He does not want to head a local Vichy regime. He knows he is on a slippery slope and has decided to stop before it is too late," Avnery wrote on his website at the weekend.
Recalling that Abbas resigned as prime minister in 2003 when then Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon stopped him implementing his ideas, Palestinian analysts believe there is a good chance Abbas will make good his threat unless mollified by Washington.
Talal Awkal, a Gaza-based columnist for the pro-Abbas al-Ayyam newspaper, believes the elections scheduled for January are unlikely to take place, given that Hamas will oppose the holding of balloting in Gaza. But Abbas's threat of standing down will persist – and materialise unless the US gets a complete settlement freeze and meets other conditions.
Awkal said: "He has tried everything and reached a dead end. He will say, 'There is nothing more I can do' and go home."
