Abbas Casting Blame for Dire Economic Difficulties

Here we go once more into the financial doldrums and the Abbas dance of blame the rest of the Palestinian Authority leadership, blame Israel, blame Arab nations for not meeting their promised obligations and blame the world for not supporting the Palestinian cause with sufficient amounts of support, measured in dollars, Euros, precious metals or other forms of monetary equivalents. As has been the case since the fateful election where United States President Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice forced the inclusion of Hamas in the imminent elections for the Palestinian Parliament, Abbas has claimed he has been forced to act as a man under siege against the fates of the world. As a quick refresher, Hamas won a clear majority in the Palestinian Parliament which caused Mahmoud Abbas to cancel the upcoming Palestinian Presidential election as he faced losing to the Hamas candidate. Soon after this Hamas executed a takeover of Gaza ejecting all the members of Fatah and splitting the Palestinian government into two separate and independent entities which continue to struggle for preeminence. Since then Mahmoud Abbas has become the equivalent of Palestinian President for life as he has consistently refused to allow new elections for his position. All of the past is now once again foaming to the top and displaying the grotesque underbelly of the Palestinian governance which he represents more than anyone else. So, what are the coming events and how exactly will Mahmoud Abbas once again remain President when all else around him changes.

The initiation of the problem was a familiar one, the Palestinian Authority was out of cash and unable to meet payroll of their enormously over-bloated government which employs over half of the residents under Palestinian rule. The payroll includes both employees in the West Bank and in Gaza. When the Palestinian employees threatened to strike if they did not receive their back pay, Mahmoud Abbas made a pitiable plea to the world to honor their pledges or renew new guarantees of monetary aid to the Palestinian cause and to also save Abbas and his government. Israel gave in to pressures from various fronts and released a large amount of the collected taxes they were withholding from the Palestinians as a response to the Palestinians going around Israel and petitioning the United Nations for statehood which was a break against the agreements in the Oslo Accords which specifically forbids any path outside of direct negotiations. The United States also responded with a half billion dollars which was sent by the Obama Administration circumventing Congress which had frozen all funding for the Palestinian Authority also in response to their petition for statehood at the United Nations. The President was able to authorize the aid bypassing Congress utilizing emergency measures which enabled bypassing Congress. This was still insufficient funds to alleviate the monetary predicament the Palestinian Authority finds themselves in once again. This is the predicament which Mahmoud Abbas is facing which he will once again find some way of casting all of the blame onto others and the first leaves have already started to fall from the government tree and more are sure to follow soon.

The first leaf that fell came as Nabil Qassis quit as Finance Minister responding to refutation to proposed austerity measures he had proposed to address financial situation. Nabil Qassis is a former president of the Bir Zeit University near Ramallah who joined the government in May 2012, who gave notice while President Abbas was out of the territories on March 2 that he was resigning. When members of the Parliament began to protest the financial situation and as a reaction to the resignation of Nabil Qassis, President Abbas responded upon his returning to Ramallah saying, “I am angrier than all of you at the government… but I don’t want to say more than that now. Just wait for three days.” It was further reported by an unnamed government official that, “Abbas informed (Salam) Fayyad that if Nabil Qassis did not return to the finance ministry… Abbas would dismiss his government and form a new one.” So, here we are on the verge of yet once again President Mahmoud Abbas placing all the blame upon everybody but himself and holding another round of elections while refusing to stand for election himself. The Palestinian authority seems to lurch from one catastrophe to the next with the solution always being either the Prime Minister or other high office holders resigning or being forced from office or the Parliament being disbanded and new elections held but one thing remains unchanged, President Mahmoud Abbas remains the sole survivor who never need face the people and receive their support to remain as President of the Palestinian Authority.

This is not the sole situation for which President Mahmoud Abbas appears to be more of a dictatorial President for Life than the rightfully elected leader the Palestinian people. The repeated attempts at managing a reunification of the two sectors of the Palestinian leadership bringing Hamas and Fatah together again in unified governance for the Palestinian Authority and its peoples which has been another example of Abbas intransigence. Every attempt at reunification has appeared to have reached an accord with all of the particulars smoothed out and the only remaining item being a general election for a new Parliament, the choosing of a new Prime Minister, and holding election for the office of President. That final little item, the election for President, has been the tripping point each and every time as Mahmoud Abbas refuses to stand for election. He is convinced that he would not have a prayers chance in…, well; he would have no chance of surviving the election and retaining the office of the President. This has caused the agreements to suddenly collapse and disintegrate as soon as the time comes for picking the date for the elections, especially and precisely the elections for the next President. Mahmoud Abbas is for too enamored with being the President of the Palestinian Authority and consistently refuses to risk being voted out of office. Perhaps his fears are completely founded. Perhaps his fears go beyond that of losing the office and are more about losing something far more dear and important to him; his life. It is his fear of death that I believe drives him to avoid having new elections for the office of President of the Palestinian Authority. The problem is that Mahmoud Abbas’s fear for his life will very likely forestall any progression for Palestinian governance until he finally accepts leaving the Presidency which will likely take the exact same path as his predecessor.

Beyond the Cusp

The Ignored Reason There is no Palestinian State Already

Ask any European leader or politician and the odds are you will hear that the reason there is no Palestinian State is due to Israeli refusals to make peace and the Israeli settlements. They will speak of how the Palestinians are thirsting for peace and crave their own State and have made generous offers if only Israel would compromise. They will never mention the refusals over the decades by the Arab League, Yasser Arafat, and Mahmoud Abbas to every offer beginning with the initial offer from the United Nations to found the Palestinian State on the more select and prime farming lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea leaving only a thin strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea, another along the northwest at the bottom of the Golan Heights and over half of the land being the southern lands of the Negev Dessert. The Zionists accepted this hardly equal or fair division while the Arab League refused to allow this partition as it still allowed the Jews to rule themselves and demanded that all the land be relegated to Arab rule and they would allow the Jews to remain as long as they behaved like good Dhimmis. The United Nations and the world simply left the offer to stand in hopes that the Arab League would accept the plan, but come the middle of May, 1948, Israel declared their nationhood and seven Arab nations’ armies declared a war of annihilation against the Nascent Jewish State of Israel. Miraculously, the small newly found State of Israel managed to survive and even gain lands by pushing the combined Arab armies back taking the western half of Jerusalem within hours of the declared ceasefire taking hold. At this point there was no Israeli presence in the lands of Gaza, Judea, or Samaria with Egypt retaining control of Gaza and Jordan retaining control over Judea and Samaria which they refused to call by their historic names substituting the less descriptive and un-Jewish name of West Bank. Jordan even attempted to annex the lands they called the West Bank and made the Arabs living within Jordanian citizens. This seemed natural as the Arabs living in the area mostly had relatives either in Jordan or in either Syria or Iraq as most had arrived over the past two generations as the economy offered better employment. Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank was not recognized not even by the other Arab nations or the Arab League and was recognized solely by Great Britain and Pakistan in the entire world. Jordan also forced the Jewish residents within their areas of control to leave their property behind and expelled them into Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion offered for the Arabs living within Israel to remain and join in building a future. Despite this invitation many Arabs fled into neighboring Jordan, Egypt or Syria where they eventually ended up placed in camps, denied citizenship largely due to their not joining in the war against Israel; causing them to be seen as less loyal.

During the next decade over three-quarters of a million Jews were stripped of their wealth, lands, businesses and were deported from the majority of the countries of the Arab League with the majority finding a new home and a place to restart their lives in Israel while some went to Europe, the United States and other destinations. The Jews who were ejected from their homes often with only the clothes on their backs or a suitcase or two were welcomed in Israel and were granted citizenship and full rights and today they and their descendants make up approximately half of the Israeli population. This makes the claim by many Palestinian and Arab spokespersons that Israelis should be returned to the lands from whence they came in Europe and the United States ignores that half of the Israelis lived originally in the Arab world. One must wonder if these countries would open their arms and accept the descendants of the Jews they ejected. Somehow I just cannot see that ever happening.

Since 1948 Israel has been attacked by her Arab neighbors a number of times. Resulting from the first conflict where France, Great Britain and Israel declared war of Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and refused to allow European shipping to pass through the canal, Israel took possession of the entire Sinai Peninsula during this conflict but returned every inch of the lands to Egypt as part of the peace treaty that also saw the reopening of the Suez Canal to international shipping. United Nations peacekeepers were also stationed in the Sinai Peninsula to prevent another conflict from erupting. In late May, 1967, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the peacekeepers removed from the Sinai Peninsula, massed troops on the Israeli southern border, closed the Straights of Tiran and massed Syrian troops on the Israeli northern border threatening to annihilate the Jewish State. The closing of the Straights of Tiran was an internationally recognized casus belli of war. Israel responded to this declaration and defeated both armies driving almost to the outskirts of Damascus and taking the entire Sinai Peninsula once again. Close to the beginning of the war upon hearing of great Arab victories that Egyptian and Syrian radio and television broadcast they were executing against the Israelis, Jordan declared war in the hopes on taking their part in the glorious victory. The Israelis pleaded for Jordan not to enter the conflict warning them that the broadcasts were untrue and were simply propaganda. Jordan did not trust the Israelis believing they were simply frightened of another Arab army entering the war which would definitely contribute to the end of the Jewish state. The results of the Six Day War are well known and by the end of the conflict, in response to the United Nations and World pressures, Israel halted their advances also now having driven the Jordanians back east of the Jordan River liberating occupied Judea and Samaria (one must recall that Jordan illegally occupied the so-called West Bank which was originally believed to be part of Israel). During Yom Kippur of October, 1973 Egypt and Syria once again attacked Israel hoping to reclaim the lands lost in 1967 and destroy the Jewish State. After initial gains the war ended with Israel retaining all of the Sinai Peninsula and having crossed the Suez Canal and approaching Cairo as well as approaching Damascus in Syria. When hostilities ended, Israel agreed to return to the borders which had existed since the 1967 conflict returning lands to both Egypt and Syria lands gained during the closing days of the conflict. Eventually Israel and Egypt made peace (for those who claim Israel must return some of the lands they gained in the 1967 war remember the following) with Israel returning all of the Sinai Peninsula once again, an expanse of land greatly larger than all of Israel. Egypt refused any claim to Gaza which was relented to Israeli sovereignty. Further on in time Jordan and Israel also reached a peace accord in which Jordan surrendered the previously Jordanian occupied lands to Israel liberating the lands and allowing many Jewish families to reclaim their lands and homes they had left when Jordan forcibly removed them in 1948.

Somewhere the world acquiesced to the invention of peoples whom had never existed in all of history and was admitted by even Yasser Arafat they were necessarily invented in order to have a political wedge with which to remove the Jews from Arab sovereign lands, namely Israel. This twist of history beyond recognition of any historic accounts dated previous to 1920 has gained great recognition and a life all its own in Europe as well as throughout the Arab and Muslim lands. Historically, before 1948 the use of the title Palestinian had several different forms, Palestinian Arab was used to define Arabs living within the British Mandate, Palestinian Jews or simple using Palestinian alone was used to refer to the Jews living within the British Mandate. In 1922 the nation of Transjordan, later renamed simply Jordan, was founded with the issue of the Churchill White Paper where Transjordan was granted for rule by the Hashemite family repaying them for their assistance against the Ottomans in World War I and they were to rule over a Palestinian State. This was the British reaction in response to Arab insistence for a country of their own within the British Mandate. The Arab demands implied they should have their country formed over all of the British Mandate but the British still had their obligation stemming from the Balfour Declaration, the Peel Commission, Article 80 of the United Nations Charter and numerous other treaties and agreements to found a Jewish homeland. The White Paper which established the Palestinian Arab State of Transjordan also guaranteed that the lands west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea would remain never to be divided and remain as whole and in its entirety as the Jewish Homeland. This accord was also ratified by motions and legislations in the League of Nations, the United States and several European nations. That is the history; the future is far less resolute and will likely be a thorn as intended by Yasser Arafat and those who initiated the demand for another Arab nation in place of the only Jewish nation on Earth. This desire to replace Israel with one or two new Palestinian Arab states, whichever becomes necessary by events to come, is understood as the inevitable aim of the Arab world but is never spoken of as to admit to knowing this would reveal all the duplicities, animosities, hatreds, and lies which are the realities of the negotiations the world calls the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, originally the Arab-Israeli Peace Process but renamed in order to mask the ultimate aim of the destruction of Israel.

Beyond the Cusp

Shas Reacts Facing the Unthinkable

In the entire history of the state of Israel, Shas has been included as part of the ruling coalition ever since its inception going into elections for the eleventh Knesset without concern for the political alignment, be it right, left, Zionist or any other conceivable alignment except for the sixteenth Knesset under Prime Minister Sharon. This has made the leadership of the Shas Party begin to expect that they would be included in every government going forward as they have proven to be loyal members of coalitions led by Labor or Likud and anyone inbetween. As such, the Shas leadership now has to deal with not being included in the next ruling coalition for only the second time since their inception and they are definitely not pleased with this situation. This begs the question of whether or not any party can rightfully view themselves as indispensable to any ruling coalition and what leads the membership of Shas to have such beliefs.

 

It is actually understandable why Shas has been able to join governing coalitions without regard to most of the political considerations which affect other parties. Shas is only beholden to the Sephardic Haredi population and as such has a very narrow definition of concerns. With such a specific and narrowly defined membership, Shas can be accommodated in any governing coalition without sacrificing any of the more secular principles which often go into the formation of a coalition. Shas would appear to favor more religious Jewish values which are also considered to be at least in part the basics for Likud, Labor and most of the other Israeli Jewish political parties and as such pose no difficulties for the inclusion of Shas in a government. Simply all the major party forming a coalition need implement to have Shas as a member party is to grant them the demands for Torah worship funding including stipends for their adult students, especially those with families, so they may study full time and not need to hold employment and also give those students of Torah deferment from military or public service requirements. This had not been a problem as it had been established through the Tal Law. That came crashing down when Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch annulled the Tal Law as a parting gift when she stepped down from her position. The Tal Law was in need of replacement as the Haredi portion of the Israeli society has grown to the point where it is becoming unfeasible to continue to carry them on the backs of the rest of the country and excuse them from any responsibility solely so they are free to study Torah and only study Torah. The transition had already shown the early signs of stirrings and would have been accomplished, albeit slowly, but it was being addressed. By annulling the Tal Law the government was faced with a pressing situation which more resembled a crisis than having to address a gradual change altering perceptions over time. This made Shas the political hot potato of this election cycle and was further exacerbated by Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party making the immediate enlistment and end of deferrals for almost all Torah students which placed them totally at odds with Shas. This led to a predicament where only one of the two political parties would be able to join the ruling coalition if either were to be included. As Lapid reached an agreement with Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home Party that they would join their Knesset seats together and join a coalition or the opposition as one party. This left Prime Minister Netanyahu with a choice, either include both Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home Party or allow Shas to join his coalition. Apparently Shas will end up on the losing end of such a choice.

 

The resulting anger and recriminations which have emanated from the Shas membership and leadership both during the campaign and the ensuing coalition negotiations has been, shall we say, less than cordial or polite. Their vindictive rhetoric towards Yair Lapid and his party’s secular core which demanded equal sharing of the burden was predictable but their venomous outpourings at Naftali Bennett did come as a surprise to some, especially members of the Jewish Home Party. It will remain to be seen if the uncomely actions and accusations from some Shas members, particularly their newly returned leader, Aryeh Deri, have shocked many and left a rather putrid aroma over the whole coalition building scene. Their demands and appearance of feeling owed a position in the next government would affect adversely any regular party in upcoming elections. Not so Shas as their support comes from a close knit community which is obliged by their Rabbis to vote for Shas and without considerations of anything other than supporting their community at the expense of all else. This is part of why they are immune to normal influences that might cripple other parties and why they appear to garner the same portion of Knesset seats election after election. It will remain to be seen if the discipline to keep the members of Shas dependent upon their party once their insular community is no longer supported separate from the rest of Israeli society. Once they are no longer permitted universal deferment from IDF or public service it is possible that their world and societal views may change and outside influences may forever alter their previously closed society.

 

There is one item that also must be addressed if one is to be fair to the Haredi community. They have not exactly been accepted with open arms by those outside their community. Where there may be some credibility to the excuse that the Haredi have not exactly made enormous efforts to be accepted by the outside society, those outside of the Haredi community share at least an equal amount of blame for not making the Haredi accepted or make efforts to make the outside world accessible for the strictly religious. The lack of understanding has been shared by both sides of this debate and any solution is going to require sacrifices and efforts by both communities. Where the Haredi community has been portrayed by the secular media and secular society as a bunch of freaks living in a backwards and exclusive community, there has not exactly been any real efforts made to make the secular society accessible to the Haredi or to be sensitive to their culture and societal rules and standards. Much of the public discussion has been of a nature to criticize the Haredi with little effort put forth towards understanding and acceptance. The Haredi have just as much right to live according to traditional rules as the secular society has to ignore those very same rules which their ancestors no more than a few short generations ago lived by. That is the one small fact that many in the secular community ignore that they are not that far removed from the exact same societal structures and strict rules of the Haredi in their own families. Where it is true that the Haredi are going to need to join Israeli society and start to pull their fair share of the burden, it is also going to be necessary that the secular make adjustment which allows the Haredi to share the burden while not forcing them to abandon their principles and traditions. It is a two way street and neither side is going to be able to demand of the other that they forfeit their way of life and the lifestyle to which they are accustomed. If both are to share the burden, then both will also be burdened with making Israel a place which respects and accommodates both in equal amounts. The extent to which such accommodations and adjustments are made will be the measure to the tolerance and respect both societies are able to grant the other. The one truth is that the future of Israel is dependent upon a shared effort and interest in working together instead of competing for prevalence.

 

Beyond the Cusp