Whoa – I Almost Praised The Killings In English Too

By Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

My office issued a condemnation of the killings in Jerusalem yesterday, almost as soon as I heard about them. It was important that the world see that announcement, in English, so that it would be clear what position the Palestinian people are taking on the public stage. What the world didn’t see was that I almost issued the wrong statement in English – we were this close to having my praise for the killers in Arabic issued as the English statement. Whew.

We narrowly averted that disaster when a trusted secretary reviewed the text before transmission. Thank Allah for him! It would have been awkward to have to explain the language of martyrdom, admiration, and inspiration, not to mention vengeance, ethnocentrism, and antisemitism. John Kerry would not have been pleased. But we caught it in time, and are implementing measures to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

Even more disturbing, though, is that I almost issued the bland, diplo-speak condemnation in Arabic through our local media. If I’d been seen as actually denouncing the violence, it would mean my head. Fatah would collapse before the more radical factions in the West bank – and forget about Gaza. No matter that the actual condemnation was of a general nature, avoiding mention of yesterday’s particular attack in isolation, and taking care to blame Israel for the situation. The very implication that Abu Mazen had placed the attack in a negative context would spell disaster for my political future. No damage control could save me or my cronies from the rage of the Palestinian street.

The Palestinian street, of course, has been fed a steady diet of Fatah’s official incitement, antisemitism, and victimhood for decades, so a sudden departure from that line would constitute a serious breach of precedent and produce, let’s face it, cries of “treason!” So a double catastrophe has been averted.

You know, I’m not entirely sure how Yassir Arafat did it. It takes all my concentration to talk out of both sides of my mouth, but he seemed to do it so effortlessly. If I spend a morning sweet-talking Israeli students or leftists, then come back to the Muqata and have to formulate incitement and propaganda in Arabic, I’m spent. But Abu Ammar could go back and forth with such ease. I do miss him.

The problem, I think, is that I’m supposed to represent a “moderate” position, whatever that means. To Westerners, I have to appear reasonable and tolerant, so as not to upend their notions of “even-handedness” and the benefits of a two-state solution. But no one seems to appreciate how difficult that is when my own people favor the overtly bloodthirsty line of Hamas and its ilk. I have to balance the demand for resistance with the financial and diplomatic realities of the world.

One could almost think that prolonging the conflict is the only way for me and my allies to survive politically.