Friday 9 October 2009

Abbas must go


Abbas must go

[ 09/10/2009 - 06:43 PM ]

By Khalid Amayreh

Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to defer the adoption of the Goldstone report by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week was more than an innocent diplomatic error or classical example of political misjudgment.

It was rather a brazen act of national irresponsibility bordering on breach of trust or outright treason.

I realize that one shouldn’t use words such “treason” very lightly. However, it is also true that undermining national interests, even unknowingly, in order to appease Israel and please the Obama administration goes beyond the pale of what is politically allowable and morally acceptable.

We are a people languishing under a cruel military occupation that is trying to obliterate us as a people using nefarious tactics, including murderous ethnic cleansing. This is why we can’t allow ourselves to have the luxury of having third-class leaders playing with our cause.

Abbas might cite a lot of excuses to save face and extenuate the gravity of this blunder, to put extremely mildly, such as claiming that he came under tremendous American pressure, or that he didn’t foresee the harmful effects of his decision on the Palestinian people and their just cause.

But such excuses makes no sense and only dishonest peoples or imbeciles would give Abbas the benefit of the doubt.

The reason is very simple. If indeed incompetence, or misjudgment or even senility is to blame for this appalling act of national irresponsibility, then it is clear that Abbas is unfit to be the leader of the Palestinian people. In the final analysis, incompetent leaders can be as harmful to their nations as treacherous leaders are.

But the scandalous blunder would be considered a brazen act of treason if Abbas did know what he was doing and if he decided to sheepishly heed the American “advice” despite his foreknowledge that this would cause a huge harm to the Palestinian cause.

So, in both cases, Abbas has no excuses to remain in his job as “President” of the Palestinian Authority, an entity of ill-repute that has wreaked havoc on the Palestinian people and their just cause.

The just Palestinian cause simply can’t bear having another “mistake” or “judgment error” of this magnitude.

Today, the issue is shielding Israeli war criminals from international condemnation and possible prosecution and punishment. God knows what could happen next if the Palestinian people allowed this awful absurdity to persist.

It is really difficult to relate to this issue without getting angry. After all, we are dealing with the murder of more than 1400 innocent Palestinians, including hundreds of children, brutally massacred in order to grant the Judeo-Nazi entity a feeling of safety, confidence and deterrence.
In fact, what happened in Gaza more than nine months ago was a quasi-holocaust. How else could one honestly relate to the ganging up by a regional superpower on a helpless and blockaded people who could hardly find sufficient food to feed their children, a people who had to die everyday to prove that they were alive?

And when a glimmer of hope for taking the murderers and child-killers to task appeared on the distant horizons, the leader of the victimized people, Mr. Abbas, readily and single-handedly volunteered to help Israel bury its crimes by saying “not this time!”

Well, if not this time, then when, Mr. President? When the disciples of Hitler will turn Gaza , Nablus and al-Khalil into another Auschwitz , another Bergen Belsen, and another Mauthausen?

When the world loses whatever semblance of human conscience it still has and comes to view the murder of Palestinians by the Nazi-minded Israelis as just one of these unpleasant aspects of daily life?

Besides, it is perfectly legitimate to wonder if a president who doesn’t fully realize the consequences and repercussions of his actions can really be entrusted with the paramount task of tackling the national burden, the task of regaining our freedom and extricating our usurped rights from the claws of Zionism.

Indeed, would it be farfetched to think that Abbas and his ilk could repeat the same disastrous stupidity (in case he didn’t mean it) or brazen treachery (in case he did) with more paramount issues such as Jerusalem and the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees unjustly uprooted from their ancestral homeland at the hands of the criminal Zionists?

In fact, there is already strong evidence that Abbas is planning to compromise on both issues ( Jerusalem and the refugees), which require that we, the people of Palestine , remain vigilant in order to thwart all conspiracies against our survival and future.

I strongly believe that Abbas must take the right decision and retire for good. That would be a dignified step that would spare him further indignity and dishonor.

The Palestinian people are too tired and too exhausted to fight on two battles, the main battle with the Zionist beast which is trying to arrogate our land and ruin our present and future, and a secondary battle of preserving our just cause from the betrayal of narcissistic and self-absorbed “leaders” who think that complacency and capitulation are the best policy.

Finally, Fatah should draw the right conclusion from this sorry episode. After all, one doesn’t have to be a great public relations expert to realize that the continued existence of this man at the helm of Fatah will prove to be disastrous. But the issue is more than just public relations. The issue is Palestine itself.

The people just won’t forgive you, and Abbas is no Yasser Arafat.

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