Abbas Pressured to Quit over Report, Threatened with a Video Tape?!

Abbas Pressured to Quit over Report, Threatened with a Video Tape?!

06/10/2009 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is facing unusually harsh criticism from within Fatah and other Palestinian groups for his decision last week to withdraw a draft document requesting the United Nations Human Rights Council pursue the adoption of the Goldstone report which could have led to the prosecution of Israel for war crimes during its aggression in Gaza.

Senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar has demanded that the Palestinian president resign for supporting the postponement of the UN vote. Al-Zahar told Al Jazeera that Abbas was guilty of "a very big crime against the Palestinian people" over the Palestinian Authority's support to defer endorsing the report, which was highly critical of Israel's conduct during the Gaza war.

"He is encouraging the Israeli military leaders to attack Gaza, to kill Hamas, and to kill people because they voted for Hamas; to postpone a very important report concerning the Israelis committing crimes against human beings," al-Zahar said on Monday. "He should resign and he should seek a fair trial. He is not representing any of the Palestinian people."

Hundreds of people in the West Bank city of Ramallah protested against the Palestinian Authority's decision to support a delay to a UN vote on whether to endorse the findings of the report, which was authored by Richard Goldstone, a former South African judge. Protesters gathered on Monday waving placards saying the delay "insults the blood of the martyrs and wounds our people".

Protests were also held in Jerusalem, where pro-Palestinian activists demanded an apology from Abbas. "If the government had anything to do with the decision we want it to resign," Muhammad Jadallah, the head of the Coalition for Jerusalem, said.

Thirty-two Palestinian groups in Europe also called on Abbas to immediately step down from office. In a statement, the groups said "the step to delay the endorsement was not less dangerous than the atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation in Gaza". During the three-week Gaza war, more than 1,400 Palestinians - one-third of them women and children - were killed.

Israel, meanwhile, has changed its diplomatic policy on the report, which it had vocally rejected as “biased”. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has instructed Israeli spokesmen not to comment on the report.

The adoption of the report by the 49-member UN Human Rights Council was seen as a key step towards eventually bringing war crimes charges against Israeli leaders at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The 575-page report blamed both the Israeli military and the Palestinian fighters for war crimes during Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip between December and January, but was more critical of Israeli troops for "targeting and terrorizing civilians".

But the council on Friday deferred endorsement of the report until March, as requested by sponsors of the resolution, acting on behalf of the Palestinians. Sources have said that Abbas bowed to US pressure on the resolution, but the Palestinian president on Sunday dismissed the criticism.

FATAH ALSO ANGERED

Human rights organizations and Palestinian political factions - including the president's own Fatah movement – had been escalating their expressions of anger and condemnation about their leadership's decision to support the withdrawal. And many questions were being asked about how the crisis would affect ongoing efforts to reach national reconciliation.

Hamas, which has de facto control of Gaza and is the main political rival to Abbas's Fatah faction, has appeared to rule out reconciliation under the present circumstances. Egypt has invited Hamas and Fatah to Cairo for negotiations on October 26 towards the formation of a national unity government, but al-Zahar said that the PA's position on the Goldstone report made such a meeting futile.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused Abbas of personally instructing his representative in Geneva to revoke the representative's demand that the Goldstone Report be adopted, and accused him of "betrayal" of his people. Haniyeh said that this was typical of the PA and that Palestinian unity talks would not succeed unless there was change in Ramallah.

There has been strong dissension within Fatah over the delay as well, with an unnamed official saying "the consent to defer the vote had cost us dear. We'll need years to fix this mistake".

“A VIDEO CAUSED REPORT’S WITHDRAWAL”

The Palestinian Shahab agency quoted well-informed US sources as saying that a video was behind the Palestinian Authority's decision to withdraw support for Goldstone report. The agency said that a meeting was held in Washington in recent days between the representatives of the Palestinian Authority and Israeli delegation on the Gaza report. The sources pointed out that the PA representatives strongly rejected the Israeli request to defer the report and insisted on their position, until the Israeli Colonel Eli Avraham presented a video file displaying a dialogue which took place between Abbas and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the presence of the former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

According to the same source, Abbas appeared in the video as trying to persuade Barak to continue the war on Gaza, while Barak seemed reluctant to the enthusiastic support from Abbas and Livni to continue the war.

The source pointed out that Avraham also introduced to the PA delegation a telephone conversation between the Israeli Chiefs of Staff office director Dov Weisglass and Tayeb Abdel Rahim, secretary general of the Palestinian presidency. Abdel Rahim was quoted as telling Weisglass that “conditions are ripe and ready for the Israeli army to enter Jabalia and Shatea camps”, adding that the downfall of the camps will end the rule of the Islamic Resistance (Hamas) in Gaza Strip.

According to the tape record, Weisglass told Tayeb Abdel Rahim that this will cause the killing of thousands of civilians. Abdul Rahim replied that "they all elected Hamas, they have chosen their own destiny, not us." So, Israel blackmailed the PA with the video and tape in order to win against the Goldstone report.

Israeli Maariv newspaper had previously

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• Amr: Abbas is responsible for delaying the vote on Goldstone’s report
• Al Thani and Ihsanoglu: Abbas delayed action on Goldstone’s report
• Sarraj calls for removing Abbas from office
• Mizan center: Delaying action on the UN report is a serious precedent
• Palestinian factions call for forming committee to probe Goldstone report delay