Abbas's UN Speech Is Mere Political Rhetoric

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Mahmoud Abbas — the illegitimate president of the Palestinian Authority — delivered his customary address to the United Nations General Assembly, an event his supporters had inflated in importance before he even set off for New York. Every time Abbas packs his bags to travel, his supporters rush to exaggerate the achievements he is about to secure; they see him off with fanfare and receive him with fanfare, while Palestinian Authority media go overboard glorifying him and praising his supposedly wise and resolute leadership.

In the end, Palestinians and others alike discover that the achievements amount to zero, and that these trips are nothing but costs borne by the Palestinian people. The Palestinians may obtain a resolution from the General Assembly, but as usual it is never implemented, and the Palestinian media machine fails to make good use of it on the international stage.

Two initial observations. I noticed two important things as Abbas delivered his speech to the General Assembly: the hall was fairly empty of attendees, and Abbas was visibly tense. I noticed that most of the seats in the General Assembly hall were empty — the front section was occupied, while the back was empty.

This is exactly what we had warned the people of the international back rooms about: we told them that Abbas says things in the General Assembly and never follows through, which has cost him the trust of the world’s delegations and made them stop listening to what he says.

Abbas had previously said he would “detonate a bomb,” declaring that if Israel did not honor its agreements, the Palestinians would not honor them either. Israel, along with America, has honored neither agreements nor international law, while the Palestinians have remained committed to them.

Nations do not look to Abbas, or anyone else, for justifications to abandon declared positions — they look for the political will to carry out what is said. Nations are not a crowd of chanters, occupied only with applause, who swallow deception, lies, and manipulation.

The second observation is that Abbas was extremely tense, evidenced by the severe coughing that seized his throat at the start of the speech. It is well known that this kind of coughing results from a spasm of the throat muscles and vocal cords — a spasm that occurs in states of tension, when the speaker has difficulty getting the words out.

Abbas calmed down in the second part of his speech, but there was no reason for him to have been tense in the first place, especially since the UN General Assembly is not a place for quarrels, brawls, or armed attacks. His tension served neither him nor whatever goal he may have traveled for.

As expected, Abbas did not stray from the topics observers had predicted he would touch on. He spoke about America’s measures and criticized its positions, stripping its administration of any claim to integrity — but he did not strip it of its role as mediator between Palestinians and Zionists.

He ruled America out as the sole mediator, yet accepted it as one member of a group of mediators. In any case, he cannot rule America out at all, because he has tied himself and the Palestinian people to both the American and Zionist wills.

Abbas spoke of the Zionists’ familiar practices against the Palestinian people, and raised the burning issue of Khan al-Ahmar, declaring his rejection of the use of force and firearms. But he did not say whether the Palestinians who are about to lose their homes have the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and their rights — even though international law permits them to do so.

Abbas reaffirmed the traditional Palestinian demand for a two-state solution — and the strange thing here is that Abbas still believes a two-state solution is possible amid the American and Zionist measures being taken continuously, every single day. This is why he called for convening an international peace conference, even though every international conference to date has failed to liberate a single inch of the land of Palestine.

Here Abbas made a grave mistake when he said that Israel had recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In fact, Yitzhak Rabin’s 1993 letter to Arafat said that Israel recognizes the PLO as a representative of the Palestinian people — not as their sole legitimate representative.

It is important to read Rabin’s letter; and this also calls us to say that it is important to read UN Security Council Resolution 242, to which the PLO clings. This resolution does not call for the establishment of a Palestinian state, nor does it recognize the PLO as a partner in peacemaking — rather, it stipulates the establishment of peace between states.

Lamentation and threats. Abbas repeated, as he has done for years, his talk of peaceful popular resistance — but to this day he has never said what he means by peaceful popular resistance. He has never defined it for the world or for the Palestinian people, and he has never told the Palestinian people what they must do to establish popular resistance on the ground.

Abbas threatened that he would not honor his commitments if America did not honor its own. America is not committed, and it defies Palestinian rights every single day, yet Abbas continues to abide by the agreements with the Zionists and by the pillars of his understandings with the Americans. He does not mean what he says, and he has no choice but to remain committed — otherwise the Americans would get rid of him.

The Americans and the Zionists are hollowing out the Palestinian Authority just as they hollow out Arab governments, and they are capable of engineering political changes however and whenever they please.

Abbas’s speech was not free of the lamenting tone many Palestinians adopt — complaining about the lack of money, the weakness of their condition, and their inability to protect themselves. He asked the world to protect the Palestinian people, fully aware that all his previous calls for protection have never succeeded.

Who would volunteer to send their army to defend the Palestinian people? It seems Abbas still does not grasp that there is no protection except through one’s own strength — and instead of seeking to build that strength, he works to dismantle Palestinian power.

Weeping accomplishes nothing; it only pleases enemies and displeases friends. This is a sterile rhetorical posture, and it pushes the enemy toward greater greed and aggression. An enemy grows fiercer when it sees the other side weak and helpless, and it escalates its pursuit and its measures because it is reassured by the powerlessness of the one begging for help. Palestinians must not indulge in self-pity; it is essential that they instill a sense of strength in themselves. Pleading for help weakens morale, while projecting strength intimidates the enemy.

Abbas said he would fight terrorism across the world, and spoke of the Authority’s actions against terrorism — meaning Palestinian “terrorism.” By speaking of terrorism in this way, Abbas has done a disservice to Palestine’s martyrs, prisoners, wounded, and their families. We, the people of Palestine, have never been terrorists — we have always been fighters for freedom and for the restoration of our rights, and the true terrorist among us is the one who hunts down his own people in defense of the security of his people’s enemy.

Abbas never explained to us how he intends to fight terrorism on a global scale. Will he mobilize Palestinian armies to roam the world in search of terrorists to eliminate? He must have meant Hamas specifically, since — according to the enemies — it is the one practicing terrorism.

Hamas is the only party Abbas threatened, and the only one whose threat he may actually follow through on: he said in his speech that the latest round of dialogue in Cairo would be the last, and that after it “we will have another matter to attend to.” This is the language of threat, and it reveals just how committed he is to the measures he has taken against the Gaza Strip.

But Abbas forgot — or did not dare — to mention Zionist terrorism. Israel and America are both terrorist states: Israel is terrorist because it practices occupation, and occupation is by definition terrorism; and America is a state that supports Israeli terrorism. So are we to expect an Abbas-led war on Zionist terrorism?

Toward the end of his speech, Abbas noted that a single weapon must remain in Palestine. That is a sound statement, and we say yes — the weapon of resistance must remain, and the Palestinian Authority must hand over its own weapons to the resistance in Gaza, because the Authority’s weapons are illegitimate — licensed by the Zionists, and used to defend the Zionists.

Source: Originally published in Al Jazeera on 2018-10-10. Translated from the original Arabic, “خطاب عباس في الأمم المتحدة مجرد لغو سياسي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.