Abbas asks for support of Palestinian council

By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, 9/5/2003

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Embattled Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas yesterday challenged the Palestinian Legislative Council to back him in his efforts to end armed conflict with Israel and negotiate peace or to send him packing.

Abbas's address to the Palestinian Authority legislature initially was planned as a report on his first 100 days in office, but it took on the appearance of a political showdown as Abbas was repeatedly undercut during the past two weeks by longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who appointed him only because of heavy pressure from the United States and the international community.

In a closed-door meeting after the speech, Abbas supporters and critics alike called for a council vote approving or disapproving of his leadership. Palestinian Authority officials said the confidence vote could be taken next week.

A negative vote probably would be a deathblow to the badly damaged "road map" toward Middle East peace, an initiative sponsored by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia. Without a positive vote, it appeared that Abbas would be reduced to an impotent figurehead whose every significant move would need Arafat's approval.

Hundreds of demonstrators carrying professionally printed posters and pictures of Arafat jammed the steps of the legislative council before Abbas's speech, chanting and spray-painting the building with slogans praising Arafat and condemning Abbas as a tool of the United States and Israel. Some protesters roughly jostled the bodyguards around Abbas as he tried to enter, and pounded on the doors of the council chamber as he tried to begin his speech.

"I am not clinging to this post," Abbas said. "I never did, and I never will, make an effort to keep it. . . . I took it because I saw serious possibilities to deal with our status and upgrade our conditions. . . .

"I don't agree to sell the Palestinian people illusions and ghosts that do not exist," he said, referring to the promises of armed radical groups to destroy Israel.

Abbas sharply rejected the use of radical tactics. "We need to increase steadfastness by providing the resources for development and progress," he said. "We do not need anyone who considers the blowing up of a house or the fall of a martyr an end in itself."

He told council members that "either you have to supply the resources and support" for this approach or "you take [the prime ministership] back. I will back any decision you make."

Abbas struggled to show respect for Arafat, by far the most popular Palestinian political figure, while also insisting his own program must prevail.

He described Arafat as the central figure of the Palestinian cause and acknowledged that Arafat held the supreme position atop all Palestinian governmental and nationalist organizations. But he asserted traditional ways of running Palestinian society had to change if the people and cause were to progress, an assertion clearly aimed at Arafat's authoritarian rule, which has dominated the Palestinian national movement for a quarter-century.

"President Arafat is the historical, constitutional, legitimate leader of the Palestinian people," said Abbas, adding that Israel's confinement of Arafat in his compound here is "a dangerous affront to our national dignity."

Talk of an internal split is "a dreadful lie," Abbas said, although Palestinian politicians say the two men are not on speaking terms, and Arafat has blocked recent attempts by Abbas to control the Palestinian security forces and to appoint key civilian personnel.

While Abbas took a conciliatory line, at least for public consumption, Arafat seemed be getting tougher on his longtime second-in-command in the Palestine Liberation Organization.

"I am not Mullah Omar," Arafat said in an interview published yesterday in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds al Arabi, referring to the former leader of the Islamic extremist Taliban group of Afghanistan, "but he [Abbas] is for sure the Karzai of Palestine" -- a reference to the current ruler of Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, widely viewed in the Arab world as a US puppet.

By yesterday afternoon, the slogan "we will not accept a second Karzai in Palestine" was painted in red on whitewashed walls around central Ramallah.

Abbas attributed the recent surge of violence to Israel, and urged all concerned -- Israeli officials, radical Palestinian factions, and ordinary people -- to break out of their long, bloody cycle of violence and revenge. But he also acknowledged that his problems with Arafat were complicating his efforts to restart a political effort to resolve the conflict.

"I do not deny that there is a phenomenon of cracks in the functional relations . . . between the government and the presidency, between the Authority and the PLO," Abbas said. "This crack needs to be dealt with."

The Authority is the governing body set up in the failed Oslo peace process as a first step toward creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, while the PLO, which Arafat chairs, represents Palestinians living in the occupied territories as well as elsewhere in the world, including the refugee camps and communities of Lebanon and Jordan.

Abbas said "one of the sources of the crack is the traditions and patterns of work that continued for decades," a clear reference to Arafat's regime.

The PLO "is the supreme political leadership for the Palestinian people," said Abbas, himself a longtime member of the PLO high command, and the Palestinian Authority "is a part of the PLO, committed to its policies and its decisions." But unless there is only one authority making political decisions and controlling the use of force on the Palestinian side, unless there is political pluralism and absolute sovereignty of law, Abbas said, "we will never make a step forward on the political track."

In other developments yesterday, an Israeli soldier was shot dead as troops withdrew from the Palestinian city of Jenin after arresting seven men there. Another soldier was wounded when Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a post on the Israeli-Egyptian border near Rafah. Israelis and Palestinians battled near the settlement of Morag in the Gaza Strip, and Israeli forces arrested an alleged suicide bomber in Nablus.

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.