Les Jones: Palestinian Leader-To-Be Mahmoud Abbas

January 10, 2005

News > Palestinian Leader-To-Be Mahmoud Abbas

It's a shoe-in that Mahmoud Abbas will be elected the Palestinian leader, replacing Yassir Arafat. This is supposed to be a time of new hope, but Charles Krauthammer is watching events unfold, and doesn't see much reason for hope.

Dec. 31: Abbas reiterates his undying loyalty to Arafat's maximalist demands: complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines, Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and -- the red-flag deal-breaker -- the "right of return," which would send the millions of Palestinians abroad not to their own country of Palestine but to Israel in order to destroy it demographically.
Jan. 1: Abbas declares that he will never crack down on Palestinian terrorism.

Jan. 4: Abbas calls Israel "the Zionist enemy." That phrase is so odious that only Hezbollah and Iran and others openly dedicated to the extermination of Israel use it.

Posted by lesjones

Comments

If what you're looking for is hope, you'd probably do better reading people who actually are in favor of a Palestinian state, rather than people who think the Palestinians have no vision other than the murder of all Jews.

Jonathan Edelstein at The Head Heeb has lots of interesting commentary on Israeli and Palestinian politics, and a perspective that is almost entirely absent from this country:

http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/

His latest thoughts on the election:

http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/archives/027304.html

There's lots of good stuff in his archives about both Israeli and Palestinian politics, although it's a bit tedious to wade through since, bizarrely, it's mixed together with commentary about legal matters in west Africa and Pacific nations.

Posted by: Steve K. at January 11, 2005

I skipped on over the Head Heeb and the first article I saw seemed lovingly approval of the "land reform" in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. That euphemistically-named program seizes farmland from white landowners, at gunpoint if necessary, and gives it to Mugabe's henchmen and political cronies.

Net result: Zimbabwe went from being a net exporter of food to a net importer, and starvation is imminent. Meanwhile, Mugabe is a crooked, brutal thug who rigs elections to stay in power. If that's the Head Heeb's idea of good government, that doesn't augur well for the Palestinians.

Posted by: Les Jones at January 11, 2005