Wizblog

Fatah Rules Palestine

A Tuesday 1/11 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle made the following statement following the Palestinian election of Mahmoud Abbas:

"Palestinian voters have done their part. Now it's up to the United States and Israel to support the revived message of peace embodied in the election of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president."

In a great post today, Bill Roggio points out the glaring difference between any "message of peace" sent by the election, and the altogether different message embodied in the PLO Charter. It's going to difficult for Abbas to make the case that it is now incumbent upon Israel to show good faith, as long as his party, indeed his whole government is sworn, in writing, to Israel's destruction:

The Yasser Arafat Martyrs Brigades is part of Fatah, the political party of the recently elected President Mahmoud Abbas which falls under the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The PLO Charter explicitly calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, this can be clearly seen in Articles 2 and 19:

Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit...

Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time...

The PLO, as explicitly stated in the Charter, relies on terrorism to defeat the “Zionist entity” (Israel):

Article 9: Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine. This it is the overall strategy, not merely a tactical phase...

Article 10: Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution...

Not satisfied with hatred for Israel and the promotion of terrorism to achieve their goals, the PLO puts forth conspiracy theories to scapegoat the Jews as international imperialists:

Article 22: Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement...

While it has been claimed that the PLO Charter was amended to remove these and other offensive passages, the Charter has not been amended. This is the party of Mahmoud Abbas.

Seems to me a formal renunciation by Abbas and the PLO of the offending portions of the PLO Charter is a prerequisite to negotiations of any kind over the issue of Palestinian statehood. It's nutty for Israel to make a single concrete concession as long as the opening negotiating position of the PLO remains "you all die."

Obviously, not a single original thought is expressed in any of this. But Roggio and others are right to keep reminding people that Abbas has so far shown little inclination to "moderation". The election was a show necessitated by the death of Arafat, not a concession of any sort on the part of the PLO. We'll see that Abbas is in charge if and when the PLO Charter is revised.