Abbas Threatens To Abrogate Agreements He Never Kept Anyway

Analysts differ on whether this eighty-fifth threat will prove as effective as the previous eighty-four.

Ramallah, June 16 – This de facto Palestinian capital city once again felt political and diplomatic waves after the Palestinian Authority president warned for the eighty-fifth time in fifteen years that if Israel continues to refuse to hand over control of territory that was never before under autonomous Palestinian Arab rule, he will revoke the accords that established Palestinian self-rule, accords to which his administration and the one before it did not adhere in the first place.

Mahmoud Abbas threatened again Tuesday to abrogate the Palestine Liberation Organization’s 1993 agreements with Israel that provided for Palestinian governmental autonomy in certain majority-Palestinian areas of territory Israel took from Jordanian occupation in 1967. The Oslo Accords set up the Palestinian National Authority, part of whose obligations include coordination of security functions with the Israeli military to prevent attacks on Israelis, but in practice those obligations have become token as Abbas’s political clout has waned and only Israeli military might keeps him in power. Even before Abbas succeeded Yasser Arafat as head of both the PLO and the PA, Palestinian leadership engaged in incitement to murder Israelis and played a prominent role in the Second Intifada, a 2000-2005 campaign of terrorism that left more than a thousand Israelis dead.

Abbas has issued the threat before, most of the time as a tactic to pressure Israel into concessions. Palestinian leaders and negotiators have never put forth final status agreement proposals of their own, always relying on Israel or outside parties to produce such documents for the Palestinians to reject as insufficient, or to point to with righteous indignation as they claim Israel does not negotiate in good faith by accepting certain irreversible compromises as preconditions for talks.

Analysts differ on whether this eighty-fifth threat will prove as effective as the previous eighty-four in prompting Israeli reconsideration of its positions. “It got old a long time ago,” argued political commentator Sharq Dhiib. “Somewhere around 2007, when Abbas made his twentieth idle threat to disband the Palestinian Authority and let the autonomous areas revert to Israeli military rule, I think maybe some people got the idea he might not intend to follow through.”

“Oh, I think he means it this time,” insisted Haaretz columnist Gidon Levy. “He’s an honest man, always lives up to his commitments. If he says he’s going to revoke the Oslo Accords, we better believe him and do as he says. Giving into such pressure has never been a bad idea.”

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