Give Abbas Another Chance

Daniel R. DePetris

Politics, Middle East

The Palestinian president is the best negotiating partner that Israelis are likely to get.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is old and tired. The eighty-one-year-old from the village of Safed has been ensconced in the dysfunction and heartbreak of Palestinian politics for most of his professional life, where he played second fiddle to Yasser Arafat for years before climbing his way to the top of the PA hierarchy.

U.S. negotiators and senior officials who have dealt with Abbas describe him as the best partner for peace that the Israelis are likely to get, a man who is, at the very least, far better than Arafat. Unlike his predecessor, Abbas refrains from endorsing violent Palestinian attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. And despite the sporadic wave of violence that has been occurring over the past six months (resulting in the deaths of twenty-eight Israelis and at least 190 Palestinians), no one who is honest with themselves could reasonably argue that Mahmoud Abbas is hoping that the knifings on the streets of Israel and the West Bank will escalate into a third Palestinian intifada.

Abbas isn’t perfect, of course. His refusal to take Ehud Olmert’s generous offer in 2008 was the equivalent of popping a hot-air balloon in midflight. Since that time, there hasn’t been an acceptable, comprehensive peace formula offered by the Israelis and Palestinians that could be a blueprint for further discussions down the line. The Obama administration’s two efforts to get the Israeli-Palestinian peace process back on track (2009–10 and 2013–14) quickly succumbed to arguments about tactics, prisoner exchanges, settlement activity and the whether Israel should be recognized exclusively as a Jewish state. The two efforts no doubt took a toll on both Netanyahu and Abbas, but it was an especially bitter pill for the Palestinian president to swallow.