Word: aqaba
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President Bush twice saluted Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas's "strong leadership" earlier this week, but by Friday there were reasons to doubt the extent of his following among Palestinians. First, Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat ripped into Wednesday's meeting at Aqaba, saying Abbas had gotten precious little by way of concrete undertakings from Ariel Sharon. Then on Friday the militant Islamist group Hamas announced that it would hold no further talks with Abbas on a proposed cease-fire, accusing him of having sold out the Palestinian cause by agreeing at Aqaba to end the intifadah without securing Palestinian...
...Palestinians. The barrage of criticism has come not only from those with a vested interest in seeing his pursuit of the "roadmap" fail - the militant groups waging the armed intifadah, and Arafat - but also on the streets. Among those who bothered to pay attention to the meeting in Aqaba, there was widespread anger at the perception that Abbas had said many things the Israelis and Americans wanted to hear, but had avoided articulating Palestinian grievances. "There was no Palestinian voice at Aqaba," Palestinian human rights campaigner and longtime Arafat critic Mustafa Barghouti told the BBC. And the summit was condemned...
...Abbas had been holding meetings with Hamas leaders in the weeks leading up to the Aqaba summit, hoping to persuade them to sign on to a cease-fire. His plan had been to buy back weapons from militants and integrate some of them into the Palestinian security services. While the Israelis were willing to indulge Abu Abbas's cease-fire efforts, they also made clear that simply restraining militants from launching terror attacks was not enough. Implementing the "roadmap" would require that groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah's own Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade be dissolved, disarmed...
...understanding of what the "roadmap" will require of them and the vagueness over how their promises are to be implemented suggests the plan will require considerable, ongoing micro-management. Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas are not sitting together because they've recognized each other as kindred spirits; they were at Aqaba because Bush told them to be. And the best hope is that they'll continue to do what Bush tells them to do, which, of course, requires constant monitoring and engagement...
...blamed by Palestinians and other Arabs for the collapse of a peace initiative, so they may play along in the belief that Abbas is bound to fail and that the Israelis will, sooner or later, provide a pretext to resume terror strikes - although statements from Hamas leaders following the Aqaba summit defiantly rejected any notion of a cease-fire. Abbas is also making clear to the Israelis and Americans that he can't act against terrorism while Israeli troops continue to conduct raids inside PA territory, and that Israeli restraint is the key to any success. But given the relative...