Municipal Elections in the West Bank . Palestinian Authority and Mahoud Abbas .... Baruch Dayan Emet

The End of Mahmoud Abbas

16 years after the failed Camp David summit, the fiction of the two-state solution is about to be shattered once and for all. The only relevant question today, is what does Israel intend to do next?
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets Israeli delegation in Ramallah, May 17, 2016.

Like it or not, the day is fast approaching when the Palestinian Authority we have known for the past 22 years will cease to exist.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s US-trained Palestinian security forces have lost control over the Palestinians cities in Judea and Samaria. His EU- and US-funded bureaucracies are about to lose control over the local governments to Hamas. And his Fatah militias have turned against him.

Palestinian affairs experts Pinchas Inbari of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Khaled Abu Toameh of the Gatestone Institute have in recent weeks reported in detail about the insurrection of Fatah militias and tribal leaders against Abbas’s PA.

In Nablus, Fatah terrorist cells are in open rebellion against PA security forces. Since August 18, Fatah cells have repeatedly engaged PA forces in lethal exchanges, and according to Inbari, the town is now in a state of “total anarchy.”

In Hebron, tribal leaders, more or less dormant for the past 20 years, are regenerating a tribal alliance as a means of bypassing the PA, which no longer represents them. Their first major action to date was to send a delegation of tribal leaders to meet with King Abdullah of Jordan.

Even in Ramallah, the seat of Abbas’s power, the PA is losing ground to EU-funded NGOs that seek to limit the PA’s economic control over the groups and their operations.

All of this fighting and maneuvering is taking place against the backdrop of the encroaching PA municipal elections, scheduled for October 8.

Hamas is widely expected to win control over most of the local governments in Judea and Samaria. Hamas’s coming takeover of the municipalities is likely playing a role in decisions by Fatah terrorist cells to reject the authority of the PA. Many of those cells can be expected to transfer their allegiance to Hamas once the terrorist group wins the elections.

Given his Fatah party’s looming electoral defeat, more and more PA functionaries are wondering why Abbas doesn’t use the growing anarchy in Palestinian cities as a reason to cancel them. Abbas seems to have calculated that Israel will step in and, as it has repeatedly done over the past 20 years, cancel the elections for him.

Media organs Abbas controls are full of conspiracy theories whose bottom line is that Israel is not canceling the elections Abbas declared because it is in cahoots with Hamas and other “collaborators” to undermine the PA.

Although Israel, of course, is in cahoots with no one, it is the case that the government has apparently finally lost its patience with Abbas and is looking past him.

Repeated angry denunciations by government leaders of Abbas for his lead role in inciting violence against Israelis, leading the international movement to delegitimize Israel, refusing to negotiate anything with its leaders, and radicalizing Palestinian society, are finally being translated into policy.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s recent announcement that Israel is adopting a carrot-andstick approach not toward the PA but toward the Palestinians themselves, and will advance development projects in areas where terrorism levels are low and take a hard line against areas where terrorist cells are most active, has sent shock waves through Abbas’s palaces.

For 22 years, Israel has bowed to Palestinian and Western demands and agreed to speak only to PA functionaries and Palestinian civilians authorized by the PA to speak to Israelis. Liberman’s decision to base Israel’s actions on the ground on the behavior of the Palestinians themselves rather than act in accordance with PA directives, along with his decision to speak directly to Palestinian businessmen and others, marks the end of Israel’s acceptance of this practice.

Without a doubt, Israel’s willingness to let Abbas fall is in part a function of the wider Arab world’s increased indifference to, if not disgust with the Palestinians. As MEMRI has documented, the Arab media is registering growing impatience with PA spokespeople. Arab commentators have harshly criticized PA functionaries who continue to insist their conflict with Israel is the most pressing issue on the pan-Arab agenda.

The disintegration of Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya and the rise of Iran as a mortal threat, along with Israel’s growing importance as an ally to Sunni Arab regimes have made the Palestinian cause look downright offensive to large swaths of the Arab world.

Part of Israel’s willingness to let Abbas fall also owes to its inevitability. Once Hamas wins the elections and takes control over the local governments, Abbas’s already weakened position will become unsustainable. As is already happening in towns and villages throughout the areas, Fatah cells will transfer their allegiance to Hamas. The areas will become Balkanized and radicalized still further.

Confrontation between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Palestinians in Judea and Samaria is inevitable.

Moreover, this process will likely be rapid. Just as Hamas’s complete takeover of Gaza from Fatah forces happened seemingly overnight in June 2007, so its seizure of control over Judea and Samaria will happen in the blink of an eye.

Many Westerners, Israeli leftists and PA functionaries hope that some deus ex machina will fall from the sky at the last minute and cancel the elections.

But even if that happens, the underlying reality in which Abbas is rapidly losing all semblance of control over events in Judea and Samaria will not be reversed. Abbas has incited the Palestinians to the point where they reject not only Israel, but Abbas and the PA.

Last week, the left-leaning Israeli Democracy Institute released the results of its joint survey with the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey Research regarding levels of support for a two-state solution.

For a generation, we have been told by world leaders that “everyone who is anyone” knows that the only way to reconcile the Palestinians and Israelis is to establish an independent Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem, as well as Gaza, roughly along the 1949 armistice lines, with land swaps between the sides involving continued Israeli control over a small percentage of the land in exchange for Palestinian control over lands Israel has controlled since its establishment.

The same formula that “everyone who is anyone” agrees on assumes that the Palestinian state will be demilitarized and that Israel will accept around a hundred thousand Palestinians who were displaced in 1949 as citizens in a token acceptance of the Palestinian demand for a so-called “right of return” of the descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948-9.

The poll showed that this plan is a nonstarter for the majority of Palestinians and Israelis. Only 46 percent of Israelis accept the formula and a mere 39% of Palestinians do.

The PA itself rejected the two-state formula at Camp David 16 years ago.

The fictional peace process based on the failed policy model has been maintained ever since for two reasons. First, successive Israeli governments have been intimidated by successive US administrations into maintaining faith with it despite its obvious failure.

Second, Abbas has built, secured and maintained his corrupt dictatorship over Palestinian society on the West’s obsession with the two-state formula.

This practice has allowed him to serve into the 11th year of his five-year term of office. It has allowed Abbas, his sons and his cronies to build fortunes on the backs of the Palestinians they are supposedly serving.

Now that Abbas’s reign is ending, the West is losing their man in Ramallah. Abbas’s Hamas successors will not be beholden to Western donors, although to their discredit, the Europeans in all likelihood will shower them with cash and side with them against Israel.

16 years after the failed Camp David summit, the fiction of the two-state solution is about to be shattered once and for all. The only relevant question today, is what does Israel intend to do next?

Comedy of Errors and Midnight Fantasy'sAbbas and the Palestinian Authority Sues History

Comedy of Errors and Midnight Fantasy's Abbas and the Palestinian Authority Sues History

...So rather than merely a nonsensical diversion into fantasy, the Palestinian lawsuit illustrates the plain fact that their goal remains reversing the verdict of history altogether; not merely a demand for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank and Jerusalem. This reflects the state of Palestinian public opinion and the fact that their national identity has remained intrinsically tied to the century-old war against Zionism. Not until they give up this futile quest will peace be possible–something that the majority of Israelis already understand but which has eluded the U.S. government and many liberal American Jews.

This week, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority decided to take action. It wasn’t to reform their corrupt government, make progress toward genuine peace, or anything else that might improve the plight of their people. Instead, they’re going to sue Britain over the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It’s no joke. The Palestinians are serious about legal action to undo a historical document. The plan is the brainchild of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and was announced by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki. They are asking Arab states to support them and plan to launch the suit in an as yet unnamed international court.

Is this a publicity stunt intended to buttress their campaign to get the United Nations to recognize their independence without first making peace with Israel? Maybe. Perhaps they think some court in an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe might actually rule in their favor. But though walking back a century of history is pretty much the definition of futility, this effort not only speaks volumes about the inanity of Palestinian politics, it also demonstrates why peace is not possible for the foreseeable future.

The Balfour Declaration was a brief statement issued in a public letter in which the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour said the following:

His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The text didn’t commit the British to building a Jewish state and also pointedly including language that protected the rights of Arabs living in an area that today encompasses all of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan. By 1917, Jews had already begun to return to their ancient homeland (from which they had never completely departed) in large numbers, but Balfour’s letter was the first formal recognition by a great power of the justice of the cause for which Zionists had been working the previous 20 years and for which Jews had prayed for 2,000 years.

It’s true that the British decision to back the Zionists was as much the result of London buying into anti-Semitic myths about Jewish power (that would presumably solidify U.S. support for the war against Germany as well as keeping Russia in the fight) as it was also philo-Semitism and sympathy for Zionism on the part of men like David Lloyd-George and Balfour. The British promise led to the creation of a Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations after World War I that was tasked with facilitating the creation of a Jewish national home. That’s why Palestinians who rejected any idea of sharing the land a century ago as much as they do today regard the declaration as the start of all their troubles.

The irony is that while the Arabs are seeking legal redress against Britain for setting in motion the process that led to Jewish statehood, the truth is that they soon betrayed their promise to the Zionists. By 1939, Britain had shut the gates to Palestine to Jews fleeing Hitler, a move that might have destroyed the growing Jewish polity and doomed millions to die in the Holocaust.


But even if we ignore that historical fact, the real blame for the plight of the Palestinians (a term that only began to be associated with Arabs rather than Jews after the birth of the State of Israel in 1948) belongs to their own leadership. They rejected every offer of partition from the 1930s to the current day. Instead, they choose war and with each defeat their share of the country decreased. Nevertheless, they were still offered a state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza, and a share of Jerusalem by Israel and rejected each one. If they are seeking intervention by the UN or international courts, it is only because they refuse to engage in direct negotiations with the Israelis. Doing so would require them to make peace and end the conflict for all time.

But there is more to this than just a diplomatic evasion. By focusing on Balfour and treating it as illegal, what the Palestinians are doing is rejecting the very legitimacy of the Jewish presence anywhere in the country. It is not for nothing that Abbas has often referred to pre-1967 Israel as being occupied territory rather than just the West Bank.
For years, those intent on pressuring Israel into making more territorial concessions to the Palestinians have tried to claim that “moderates” like Abbas truly want peace. But every peace negotiation or Israeli gesture such as Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal of every soldier, settler, and settlement from Gaza in 2005 hasn’t budged the Palestinians from the same intransigent position they’ve held since they rejected Balfour, the Mandate, and the 1947 UN partition plan.
So rather than merely a nonsensical diversion into fantasy, the Palestinian lawsuit illustrates the plain fact that their goal remains reversing the verdict of history altogether; not merely a demand for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank and Jerusalem. This reflects the state of Palestinian public opinion and the fact that their national identity has remained intrinsically tied to the century-old war against Zionism. Not until they give up this futile quest will peace be possible–something that the majority of Israelis already understand but which has eluded the U.S. government and many liberal American Jews.

As the Obama administration and the Europeans plot their next move to pressure Israel into making the same mistake in the West Bank that Sharon made in Gaza, they ought to be paying attention to the signals Abbas is sending to the world. So long as the Palestinians are still trying to erase Balfour, the idea that they are prepared to accept the state of Israel is the real joke.

Quartet again blasted by octogenarian still without an heir Mahmoud Abbas

Abbas' Eid al-Fitr attack on the Quartet 

...It is due to the Oslo Accords that his mentor, Arafat, signed -- and which only Israel upheld -- that he controls a de facto state in Judea and Samaria. With all the foreign money that has been earmarked for its development, the PA should have been Singapore by now. Instead, its best-known commodity is "martyrdom." No reports or recommendations can alter that fact.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas marked Eid al-Fitr -- the end of Ramadan -- by making a ritual pilgrimage on Wednesday to a very holy site among his people: the grave of former PLO chief Yasser Arafat.

It was a fitting occasion for the PA leader to pay respects to his predecessor, a mass murderer whose greatest achievement was persuading the world that he had changed his stripes. Though Arafat's vision all along was to annihilate the Jewish state in stages -- which caused his internal rivals to consider him too moderate -- the West took his acquiescence to negotiate and sign the Oslo Accords to be a turning point.

Between the signing of Oslo I in 1993 on the White House lawn and Oslo II at Taba in 1995, the archterrorist was even awarded a joint Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in 1994.

At the Camp David summit in 2000, aimed at actually achieving the "peace" for which he had won the most prestigious global award, Arafat first blew up the talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and subsequently launched a five-year suicide bombing war against innocent Israelis.

Abbas never enjoyed the kind of popularity at home and abroad in which Arafat basked. But he is made of the same cloth, in spite of sporting a suit and tie, rather than a keffiyeh and phony medal-studded army fatigues.

It should have come as no surprise, then, when the PA leader took the occasion of the Muslim holiday and the site of Arafat's burial to blast the report, released last Friday by the Middle East Quartet, calling on Israel and the Palestinians "to independently demonstrate, through policies and actions, a genuine commitment to the two-state solution and refrain from unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations."

Incensed that the Quartet -- comprised of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia -- had the gall to include the PA in its recommendations rather than single out Israel for wrongdoing, Abbas called on the U.N. Security Council to intervene and reject the document.


The 10 recommendations in question are as follows:

1. Both sides should work to de-escalate tensions by exercising restraint and refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric.

2. Both sides should take all necessary steps to prevent violence and protect the lives and property of all civilians, including through continuing security coordination and strengthening the capacity, capability and authority of the Palestinian Authority Security Forces.

3. The Palestinian Authority should act decisively and take all steps within its capacity to cease incitement to violence and strengthen ongoing efforts to combat terrorism, including by clearly condemning all acts of terrorism.

4. Israel should cease the policy of settlement construction and expansion, designating land for exclusive Israeli use and denying Palestinian development.

5. Israel should implement positive and significant policy shifts, including transferring powers and responsibilities in Area C, consistent with the transition to greater Palestinian civil authority contemplated by prior agreements. Progress in the areas of housing, water, energy, communications, agriculture and natural resources, along with significantly easing Palestinian movement restrictions, can be made while respecting Israel's legitimate security needs.

6. The Palestinian leadership should continue their efforts to strengthen institutions, improve governance, and develop a sustainable economy. Israel should take all necessary steps to enable this process, in line with the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee recommendations.

7. All sides must continue to respect the cease-fire in Gaza, and the illicit arms buildup and militant activities must be terminated.

8. Israel should accelerate the lifting of movement and access restrictions to and from Gaza, with due consideration of its need to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks.

9. Gaza and the West Bank should be reunified under a single, legitimate and democratic Palestinian authority on the basis of the PLO platform and Quartet principles and the rule of law, including control over all armed personnel and weapons in accordance with existing agreements.

10. Both parties should foster a climate of tolerance, including through increasing interaction and cooperation in a variety of fields -- economic, professional, educational, cultural -- that strengthen the foundations for peace and countering extremism.

That Abbas is furious about these recommendations, which put Israel on equal footing with its aggressor, is yet further proof, if any were needed, of his total belligerence. Laughably, the report calls for the PA leadership to "strengthen" its efforts to combat terrorism -- as though it ever engaged in such an endeavor. If he were alive to read such a clause, Arafat would have been chuckling all the way to the bank to pocket the billions poured into Palestinian "institution-building." Abbas can't even manage to do this with a smile.

It is crucial to stress the timing of the release of the Quartet's "findings" -- a day after 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel from Kiryat Arba was butchered in her bed as she slept, and on the same day that a father of 10 from Otniel, Rabbi Michael Mark, was killed in a shooting attack on his car. But these are just two of hundreds of incidents of Palestinian terrorist attacks that have rocked the Jewish state since Rosh Hashanah last September.

Abbas not only welcomed each and every one of the bloodthirsty stabbing, car-ramming, Molotov-cocktail-hurling assaults on innocent Israelis -- he encouraged and rewarded them.

It is due to the Oslo Accords that his mentor, Arafat, signed -- and which only Israel upheld -- that he controls a de facto state in Judea and Samaria. With all the foreign money that has been earmarked for its development, the PA should have been Singapore by now. Instead, its best-known commodity is "martyrdom."

No reports or recommendations can alter that fact.

After Mahmoud Abbas Quo Vadis the Palestinian Authority and its Struggle against Zion

What if a Shakespearean palace battle to succeed Palestinian bigwig Mahmoud Abbas was raging and no one was there to document it?

American and Israeli officials shrugged off Abbas’s warnings last fall that he’d dissolve the Palestinian Authority, of which he’s president. The rais (boss) had so often made similar threats in the past that no one took him seriously.

No one, that is, except some in Ramallah who started thinking that maybe, well into Abbas’ tenth year of a four-year term, the 81-year-old chain-smoker is finally thinking of mortality, retirement — or just a bit of rest.

Abbas had always discouraged such notions. Palestinian doubters and dissenters are jailed or otherwise made to shut up. Yet now even Abbas’ own former yes-men started making public statements that could easily be interpreted as a challenge to his hold on power.

Palestinian Sports Minister Jibril Rajoub wondered out loud where Abbas is leading the Palestinians. Mohammed Dahlan, a Dubai-based former Gaza strongman who pulls West Bank strings from afar, raised his Abbas criticism a notch. Even top loyalists like long-time negotiator Saeb Erekat and intelligence chief Majid Faraj sounded like they were contemplating a leadership fight.

When Palestinian security forces arrested a top manager in Erekat’s office earlier this month, accusing him of spying for Israel, West Bankers speculated that it was orchestrated by Erekat’s rivals seeking to make him look bad.

But as whispers of a succession battle intensified, Abbas realized he risked losing his grip. In the last couple of weeks he gathered loyalists to assure them he’s going nowhere. He then started a campaign to rein in the terrorist wave he had unleashed in September but of which he’s clearly lost control.

Faraj, the intel chief, gave a rare interview to the New York-based Defense News this week, boasting he’d prevented 200 terrorist attacks and arrested 100 Palestinians. It signaled to outsiders that the PA is fighting terror, but at home the message was, hey, watch out. (Faraj didn’t say how many of the men he’d arrested were mere critics or political rivals.)

At the same time, officials in Ramallah leaked to reporters that they’re about to launch a UN campaign to fight Israel diplomatically.

These are staples of Abbas’ longtime tactics, which suggests he’s got full control of the reins again.

But, like it or not, he won’t live or rule forever.

And then what? To fend off pesky rivals, Abbas has long avoided anointing a successor or naming a deputy. So who decides who’s next?

According to Palestinian law, the speaker of parliament would take over pending new elections. But the parliament hasn’t convened in years. And the current speaker is a member of Hamas, Abbas’ Islamist rivals.

Israel and the US — and, even more so, members of Abbas’ Fatah party — won’t let him get near the seat of power. Nor would they risk another humiliating election, which Hamas is likely to win.

In other words, no one in the West Bank knows how the next leader will emerge — “and Israeli intelligence officials, whose entire job is to predict such things, have no idea either,” says Gal Berger, Israel Radio’s indispensable Palestinian affairs correspondent.

When the time comes, the Fatah men who in the last few weeks started jockeying for position will duke it out for real. Such chaotic political fighting often leads to violence.

Once that violence ebbs, a new strongman will emerge.

But not a peaceful, democratic state of Palestine.

This week, the UN’s Ban Ki-moon said Palestinian terrorism is part of “human nature” to resist occupation through “hate and extremism.” US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro earlier said Israel’s justice system employs “two standards” — one for Israelis and another for Palestinians (and later said he regretted his timing).

The real double standard is in endlessly scrutinizing Jerusalem while ignoring Ramallah. Rather than promoting two states, it only assures endless failure in the West Bank and Gaza.

Confederation with Jordan?

Surprising an interviewer from a well-known Palestinian website two months ago, famed Palestinian man of letters Sari Nusseibeh said the concept of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation should be reconsidered.

The idea of a confederation has been almost completely discredited in recent years — a process that began with a 1988 announcement by the late King Hussein of Jordan that he was giving up his claim to Palestinian-controlled territories.

The comments by Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University, were thus widely perceived among Palestinians as an irrelevant example of his unusual musings and doings, such as his ill-fated 2003 peace initiative with former Shin Bet chief and ex-Labor MK Ami Ayalon.

The remarks did spark some dialogue, in particular among some of the older generation and the more affluent tiers of Palestinian society – the business people and merchants. Ultimately, however, it is clear that the Hashemite royal family has no interest in reviving the initiative.


President of Al-Quds University Prof. Sari Nusseibeh in his office at the university in Beit Hanina, in East Jerusalem. 

But then came another surprising statement, this time from a member of the Jordanian establishment.

Last week, Jordan’s former prime minister, Abdelsalam al-Majali, visited the West Bank city of Nablus as the guest of Ghassan Shakaa, the city’s former mayor and a member of the PLO Executive Committee,

Speaking to 100 key Palestinians in the Nablus area, Majali expressed support for a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, after the establishment of a Palestinian state. “Jordan cannot live without Palestine and Palestine cannot live without Jordan,” Majali said. “The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants such a confederation established. He asked as much several times but was refused completely.”

The confederation, Majali said, should be headed by a joint government and parliament that would guarantee security, oversee the economy and handle foreign affairs. As things stood, he said, the Arab Ummah [nation] was not fighting for the Palestinians since they have no viable economic capacity on their own.

(Incidentally, Majali also criticized education systems in the Arab world, saying they are not preparing students well enough to tackle scientific issues, “and this allows them to learn only history.”)

Majali’s speech created a real stir among Palestinians. While he no longer holds an official position with the court of Jordan’s King Abdullah, he is still considered a person of influence among the Jordanian elite and among local politicians, having twice served as prime minister.

In the past, Majali was regarded as a close associate of King Hussein. Was his speech coordinated with the Jordanian monarchy, as part of an effort to revive Palestinian – and especially Israeli – faith that peace is possible? Or were these merely the words of an aging ex-politician, who wields no influence with King Abdullah?

A Jordan expert at Tel Aviv University dismissed Majali’s speech.

“It sounds like another attempt by one of the ‘formers’ to make headlines,” said Dr. Yoav Alon. “Majali spoke of this two or three years ago, and the idea in fact dates back to 1982, as an initiative of King Hussein. Then there was an agreement between Hussein and [former PLO leader Yasser] Arafat, that the leadership of PLO rejected. So, in 1988, the king announced he was disengaging from the West Bank. Still,” Alon went on, “one must emphasize: The official Jordanian position does not reject the possibility of establishing a confederation, albeit only after the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“This idea rises now and again when the Palestinians are in distress and diplomacy offers no hope,” Alon went on. “Maybe it also helps Israel swallow the idea that a Palestinian state may rise. For now, the idea of a confederation is non-obligating, so nobody can say precisely what it means. Furthermore, I don’t see any support from official Jordan or the royal family in this idea. Jordan’s demographic situation is delicate as it is. The Palestinians make up 50 percent of the population there. The Jordanians make up 25-30% and the rest are Syrian and Iraqi refugees. That is why they are so sensitive to this notion. The Jordanian regime has no interest in promoting the idea of a confederation and this is why I think there is nothing concrete here,” Alon said.

Senior Palestinian officials speaking to the Times of Israel also dismissed the idea of a confederation. They vaguely said, too, that it may be reconsidered after the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Other Palestinian sources said the Hashemite monarchy is preoccupied, where the Palestinians are concerned, with resolving the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic deadlock, grappling with the fear of a deterioration into violence in the West Bank which would impact Jordan, and dealing with tensions in its ties with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Amman is not pleased by Abbas’s recent shows of independence, including his making diplomatic moves without first consulting King Abdullah, and this has created tension between the two men, the sources said.


Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (right) and Mohammad Dahlan (left), leave a news conference in Egypt, in February 2007.

Ramallah has also been angered by reports that representatives of the Hashemite Kingdom have met with several Palestinian officials, gauging their suitability to take over the PA presidency one day. Especially infuriating for Abbas, the sources said, is that the Jordanians met with his No. 1 enemy, Mohammad Dahlan.

The Jordanians also met with Nasser al-Kidwa, Arafat’s nephew and a former PA foreign minister, whose name keeps coming up, and with ex-PA security chief Jibril Rajoub among others.

Nasser al-Kidwa 

Such Jordanian meddling in Palestinian politics, preparing for the day after Abbas, is seen extremely negatively in Ramallah, the sources said.

The tension between Ramallah and Amman underlines how improbable the idea of a confederation currently seems, much to the chagrin of some of the “West Bank elders” who miss the days when King Hussein was sovereign in the West Bank and the Palestinians had ministers in the Jordanian government and representatives in its parliament.