Via friday-Lunch-Club
(Your eyes are fine!) Peres to Abbas: "talk to us or face a new Intifada!""... he feels hurt ..."
Haaretz, here"... At a meeting at the President's Residence on Sunday, Peres told Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store about his discussions with Abbas.
Store told Peres that Israel should take more steps to support Abbas. "Abu Mazen [Abbas] is vulnerable and feels hurt, and his position needs to be bolstered by American support," Store said, adding: "You have the best psychologists ... How do we read the personality and political mind of Abu Mazen? What will make him move?"
Peres told him about his meetings with Abbas and Saeb Erekat. According to Palestinian sources, Erekat comes to the President's Residence every few weeks for meetings with Peres.
"I am a friend of Abu Mazen. He says the Americans put him in a high tree and took the ladder away. Some of the mistakes were made by him. His expectations of Obama were created by him. He thought that Obama would take the Palestinian side. ... I can understand his feelings of disappointment," Peres said.
Peres said he told Abbas at one point that "postponing peace negotiations is playing with fire. He says that he has time. Something will happen to start an intifada and the two sides will have lost an opportunity." Peres said he told Abbas, "Start the negotiations. What are you going to lose? It's impossible to have a happy end at the beginning."
Peres told Store that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had revolutionized his positions in accepting the two-state solution. "It is a historic step," he said.
Regarding to the Palestinian demand for a construction freeze in East Jerusalem, Peres said, "About the Old City there is no problem, because Israel prohibits building in the Old City. As far as the Temple Mount is concerned, there is no building there," suggesting that Abbas present this as an achievement. Peres told Store that Netanyahu could not freeze construction in Jerusalem because "Jerusalem is under the jurisdiction of the Israeli parliament."
Peres said he had told Abbas "to be reasonable, and once negotiations are started, then is the time to work out solutions." Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had invited Netanyahu and Abbas to a summit in Cairo to renew talks, the president told Store.
"Abu Mazen wants Netanyahu to declare the 1967 borders. He cannot. The 1967 borders are 40 years past. ... On the other hand, I do not think we have to take territory from them. More or less, we can give them the same amount of land while changing the borders due to of security considerations."
Peres said Israel had accepted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's plan in this vein, and "I told Abu Mazen to accept it too."
Store told Peres that Abbas has to feel that he has the support of the Arab countries to return to negotiations. At this point, Peres seemed pessimistic: "There is no Arab support because there is no Arab [unity]. I was informally approached by Saudi Arabia to accept their paper, which calls for us making peace with Syria on their conditions." ... "
IF THE "SHOE" FITS
From DesertPeace
ABBAS ACCUSED OF TREASON
Qaradawi slams Abbas
Accused of treason by one of Islam’s greatest living scholars, Palestinian President Abbas is rocked and on the defensive, writes Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah
Qaradawi, one of the world’s most highly respected living Sunni Islam scholars, reportedly urged both the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to form a special committee that would look into charges that Abbas had colluded with Israel against Hamas during the three-week onslaught on Gaza last year.
Moreover, Qaradawi lambasted the manner in which Abbas initially dealt with the Goldstone Report as constituting treason and betrayal. He argued, possibly rhetorically, that Abbas and his aides should be stoned to death in the centre of Mecca if it was proved that they colluded and connived with Israel against their own people.
The highly charged statements infuriated the increasingly beleaguered Palestinian leader who retorted by saying that he was more religious than 90 per cent of Hamas’s supporters. Abbas charged that Qaradawi’s outburst was based on Israeli misinformation. He also accused the Egyptian-born scholar of displaying ingratitude, claiming that he had done a favour for Qaradawi by convincing Qatari authorities to allow him to stay in the country.
In fact, Qaradawi didn’t say that Abbas colluded with Israel; he only called on pan- Arab and Muslim bodies to look into the possibility that PA-Israeli collusion may have occurred. Indeed, numerous reports based on Israeli, Palestinian and foreign sources had affirmed the collusion accusations, though the PA vehemently denies them.
However, the mere allusion that Abbas and his aides may have collaborated with Israel against Hamas — though not voiced for the first time — is being seen by the Palestinian leadership as an unacceptable insult warranting a strong reaction. Abbas instructed his media outlets to launch a vitriolic attack on Qaradawi. The PA’s media called the prominent scholar, widely considered one of the most knowledgeable in the disciplines of Sharia, or Islamic law, an “ignoramus” and “puppet of the government of Qatar”.
More obscene epithets were also used against Qaradawi, persona non grata in several Western countries for his outspoken support of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation.
On Friday 15 January, the Fatah- controlled Ministry of Religious Affairs circulated a special anti-Qaradawi sermon to be read at mosques all over the West Bank during the congregational prayer. Most imams refused to read the sermon, with many substituting it for sermons praising the ulema (religious scholars) and castigating those “ignoramuses” and “hoodlums” who assault and insult the scholars.
However, in some places like Ramallah, some newly-appointed imams, who also support the PA, lashed out at Qaradawi, accusing him of “dividing the ranks of Muslims” and of “spreading rumours and disinformation in manners not befitting a great scholar”. PA Waqf (religious endowments) Minister Mahmoud Al-Habbash urged Qaradawi to “apologise to his Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas as well as to the Palestinian people”.
Al-Habbash is a vehement opponent of Hamas who fled Gaza two and half years ago following Hamas’s defeat of Fatah’s militias who had sought to unseat Hamas, aided by American General Keith Dayton.
In truth, the real issue has more to do with the power struggle between Fatah and Hamas than between Qaradawi and Abbas. Qaradawi has always been a strong supporter of Hamas, although he never adopted a manifestly hostile position to Fatah or other Palestinian groups. Indeed, Qaradawi, who appears regularly on Al-Jazeera TV’s flagship show “Sharia and Life”, has consistently called for Palestinian unity, arguing that Palestinian disunity will only benefit Israel and the enemies of the Palestinian cause.
But Qaradawi also took an uncompromising stand against the blockade of Gaza and lately issued a religious edict forbidding the building by Egypt of a steel-and-concrete wall along Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip.
A heated exchange of recriminations, name-calling and blame casting has been raging in occupied Palestine between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood following scathing criticisms of President Mahmoud Abbas by Qatar-based Sheikh Youssef El-Qaradawi.
His edict contradicted another by Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the mufti of Egypt, which supported the construction of the steel wall. This prompted one Palestinian writer to lament that the Palestinian cause was getting lost between “Tantawi and Qaradawi”.There is no doubt that the vast majority of ordinary Palestinians, and probably other Muslim peoples as well, are more sympathetic to Qaradawi who has long stood against the US invasion and occupation of Muslim countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and who remained a consistent supporter of the Palestinian cause during the first and second Intifadas. This is why the ranting and ravings of Fatah spokesmen and leaders against Qaradawi have not been received well in the West Bank, especially in East Jerusalem and Gaza where people can generally voice their views without fear of PA reprisals.
“Qaradawi is a giant in his knowledge, a giant in his morality, a giant in his humanity. We may differ with him on this or that issue, but this should never make us question his status and stature as one of the greatest living scholars of the Muslim umma,” wrote Qassem this week. He added: “A nation that doesn’t show respect to its best sons is a nation ruled by ignoramuses who would sell out their countries for the lowest price.”
Concluding the article, Qassem wrote: “I apologise to Sheikh Qaradawi for what these ignoramuses are saying.”
It is not clear when this fresh acrimony will die down. What is clear is that as long as the Hamas-Fatah showdown continues, polarisation, not only in the Palestinian arena but also in the wider Arab arena, will persist.
Uprooted Palestinian
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