From the circus ring to the tightrope

Jan 5th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

For peace talks with Israel to have a chance, Mahmoud Abbas needs not only to win the Palestinian presidential election, but to win it convincingly

HOISTED on the shoulders of gunmen one day, denouncing Israel as “the Zionist enemy” another, Mahmoud Abbas this week predictably alarmed Israelis. Yet the belligerence betrays his paradoxical weakness. As the heir apparent to the late Yasser Arafat, he will overwhelmingly win the Palestinian presidential election on Sunday January 9th, but will then have to tread several extremely fine lines to win trust—both at home and abroad—and keep his job.

Mr Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) does represent the best chance for peace talks in years. Israel and the United States froze out Mr Arafat after the start of the second intifada (uprising), now in its fifth year. Mr Abbas, unlike any other senior Palestinian leader, has long called for armed resistance to stop—a call he renewed last month, to the anger of militants within his own Fatah party. Ariel Sharon, Israel’s hawkish prime minister, has spoken of a “window of opportunity”. But on the campaign trail Mr Abbas has looked and sounded more like Mr Arafat, making all the demands—Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital, right of return for refugees, and so on—that Israel refuses to countenance.

That should be no surprise. Mr Abbas is out on a lonely limb: the moderate extreme of the Palestinian political spectrum. “His own convictions are completely peaceful and non-violent,” says Qays Abdul Kerim of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a relatively moderate party (ie, it believes in blowing up only military targets and armed settlers, rather than just anyone), adding, “I think this policy is naive.”

Palestinians agree: a poll last month by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found that almost two-thirds think violence has achieved more than negotiations have. A full three-quarters argue that it is what forced Mr Sharon to order a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza strip, due later this year. Even Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister and backroom negotiator of the 1993 Oslo peace accords, is more sceptical than Mr Abbas: on January 1st he declared that the violence should end only “if there was a credible, serious peace process”, and rejected a conference on Palestinian reform that Britain's Tony Blair proposed and Mr Abbas supports. So far, Gaza’s militants have ignored Mr Abbas’s calls to halt violence: in recent days they have launched volleys of rockets at Jewish settlements in Gaza and across the border into Israel proper, provoking a customarily tough Israeli response.

If Mr Abbas is really such a radical pacifist, why is he so popular? It is not just the mantle he inherited from Mr Arafat. After four years of bloodshed, an unprecedented 81% of Palestinians, though they deeply distrust Mr Sharon, want reconciliation with Israel. They know that Mr Abbas is someone Israel might talk to. They also prefer unity to chaos. Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leading member of the Fatah “young guard”, pulled out of the election to avoid a split.

But Mr Barghouti extracted promises in return (for instance, to make freeing prisoners a top priority), and a recent poll showed he would still beat Mr Abbas if he ran—which is why Mr Abbas has to watch his back. His biggest challenge may not be from Islamist groups like Hamas, which is boycotting the presidential election. Though Hamas has gained points by providing social services, and could do well in upcoming municipal and legislative elections, its religious ideology puts off many secular Palestinians. Its support, currently down to around 20%, will never rise much above 30%, reckons Hani al-Masri, an analyst in Ramallah, the Palestinians’ administrative capital in the West Bank.

Instead the problem is the faultlines in Mr Abbas’s own party: between peaceniks and militants; old and young; returned exiles like him and Mr Arafat and local heroes like Mr Barghouti; the West Bank and Gaza. If he does not do well, anger could spill out at a Fatah congress due in August. There may not be a direct challenge to his leadership, for the “young guard” is a diverse gaggle, and nobody but Mr Barghouti enjoys widespread support; but keeping the party cohesive will be tough.

That is especially true of Fatah’s more extreme elements, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades—a splintered multitude of militias, united in little but name but collectively responsible for nearly as many attacks as Hamas. Mr Arafat used to buy their loyalty with extensive secret funds. But more recently that money seems to have dried up or gone missing. Israeli intelligence thinks that some four-fifths of al-Aqsa attacks are now sponsored by Hizbullah, the Lebanese militant group backed by Iran. Just after Mr Arafat’s death, Fatah gunmen burst into a mourning tent that Mr Abbas was in, killing two people. His triumphal progress with al-Aqsa fighters in Gaza this week was both a show of strength and a reminder of potential weakness: they were of a branch loyal to Muhammad Dahlan, the Gaza security chief who is one of Mr Abbas’s staunch backers, and thus one of his chief props.

Mr Abbas therefore needs to win comfortably. Hamas, despite its boycott, has not told voters to stay away, but if they do, a low turnout would damage Mr Abbas’s legitimacy. So would a big vote for his nearest rival, Mustafa Barghouti (a clansman but not a close relation of Marwan), who is campaigning on another issue that bothers Palestinians a lot: corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA). The fewer votes Mr Abbas gets, says Mr Kerim, the more he will need the support of factions within Fatah.

In other words, his fiery stump speeches look designed to get him elected safely enough to give him a free hand for peace talks. His official platform, by contrast, is padded with safety language—not the refugees’ “right of return”, for instance, but “a fair resolution according to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194”—diplomatic code for “let's discuss it”.

A 100-day credit limit

His true message will become clear only if peace talks begin. Getting there, however, is a chicken-and-egg problem. Israel wants evidence of a crackdown on terrorists before making concessions. But Mr Abbas “wants to reach a truce with the resistance, a ceasefire through a deal,” says Mr al-Masri. And fighters will lay down arms only if they see that his approach works: in other words, if Israel first makes concessions such as easing up at checkpoints or releasing prisoners.

What could get the ball rolling? Mr Sharon offered to co-ordinate the Gaza withdrawal with the Palestinians, but Mr Abbas refused because it is not part of a full peace deal. Avi Gil, a former director-general of the Israeli foreign ministry, thinks that Israel needs to make a different overture. It could, he suggests, start by handing over responsibility for security to the PA in one town—Bethlehem, say—and if that works, then another, and another. That would be both a test of Mr Abbas and a sign of good faith.

But whatever happens needs to happen quickly. Both Mr Gil and Mr al-Masri give Mr Abbas the symbolic 100-day credit limit with Palestinians. “If [Israel’s] view is that there is a sequence of first withdraw [from Gaza] and then see what happens,” says Mr Gil, “we could miss the chance we've been given.”

Copyright © 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.