Palestinian leader Abbas facing outrage over suspending attempt to have Gaza war crimes trials.

This is such a corrupt decision that even with Fatah politics it is causing outrage and as the final sentence implies there seems to be a reconsideration of the decision. The decision was a triumph for the US and even more for Israel since it has no doubt ruined any attempt for Hamas and Fatah to find common ground as they have been attempting to do. The Israelis have thrown cold water on the idea that there will be any negotiated solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict any time soon. It would seem that Abbas gets nothing on the political front. The article is at sfgate.


Palestinian leader Abbas facing outrage
Karin Laub, Associated Press
Thursday, October 8, 2009
(10-08) 04:00 PDT Ramallah, West Bank --
In five turbulent years in office, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has never faced as much outrage as he has over his decision to suspend efforts to get Israeli officials put on trial for war crimes in Gaza.
On Wednesday, Gaza professors threw shoes at his defaced image and West Bank commentators called for his resignation, the latest signs Abbas may have miscalculated in bowing to what Palestinian officials say was intense U.S. pressure.
Abbas is unlikely to be forced out of office because he enjoys strong Western support and has ruled the West Bank without challenge since his Islamic militant Hamas rivals drove him out of Gaza in 2007.
However, the scandal could cause lasting harm to the 74-year-old Palestinian leader's standing with voters and his ability to negotiate with Israel.
In the short term, the United States is pushing for a quick resumption of peace talks, but gaps remain wide on what it takes to get back to the table. A weakened Abbas may not be in a position to make concessions when President Obama's special Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, returns to the region this week.
"This is the worst position that Abbas has found himself in since he was elected president," said Hani al-Masri, a West Bank commentator.
At the center of the uproar is a 575-page U.N. report about Israel's three-week war in Gaza last winter, which alleges that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes, something both sides deny.
Last week, Abbas withdrew Palestinian support for a vote in the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to have the report sent to the U.N. General Assembly for possible action - the first of many steps toward possibly establishing war crimes tribunals. With the Palestinians out of the picture, the council set the report aside for six months.
Abbas made the decision under heavy U.S. pressure, Palestinian and Israeli officials have said. U.S. officials told Palestinian leaders that a war crimes debate would complicate efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, according to participants in the meetings.
The anger over Abbas' decision was intense because many Palestinians felt he chose not to pursue a rare opportunity to win justice for Gaza's war victims, said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent Palestinian legislator.
"Finally, there was a moment, in front of the international community, to hold Israel accountable," Barghouti said. "What he (Abbas) did, or his government did, it's now perceived that they gave Israel the leeway to escape from that."
Nearly 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the war, including hundreds of civilians, along with 13 Israelis. Israel launched the attacks to end years of Hamas rocket fire on Israeli border towns.
Abbas has been away for most of the crisis, visiting Jordan, Yemen and Italy, and is only to return to the West Bank later this week. His aides initially defended the decision, saying a deferral did not mean the report was being buried, only that Palestinian diplomats needed more time to win international support for it.
However, Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Abbas adviser, said Wednesday that the Palestinian leadership had erred, the first such acknowledgment after six days of escalating protests.
"What happened is a mistake, but (it) can be repaired," Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told the Voice of Palestine radio in a taped statement. "We have the courage to admit there was a mistake."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/08/MNN21A2HCH.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
© 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

Palestinian civil strife deepens divide

August 4, 2008 - 12:00AM

This is from the Age. This internal strife makes it difficult to forge a peace agreement and makes the Palestinians even weaker in their negotiations with Israel. Israel would no doubt like to obtain a weak agreement with Abbas and Fatah and leave Hamas out completely.

Bitter weekend fighting between rival Palestinian factions left nine people dead and about 100 wounded. There were fears the death toll would rise as rescue workers began sifting through the rubble of a three-storey apartment block detonated by Hamas on Saturday.

It is believed that Hamas militants fired 300 mortar shells and dozens of rocket-propelled grenades into the Sajaiya neighbourhood in Gaza City.

The area is a stronghold of the Hilles clan, which is aligned to Fatah, the secular party that controls the West Bank.

Hamas marksmen also positioned themselves on the minarets of several mosques and fired at anyone who came out into the street.

So fierce was Hamas' pursuit of the Hilles clan that Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak allowed 190 clan members fleeing Hamas militants to cross into Israel.

Mr Barak made the decision on humanitarian grounds after receiving a phone call from Palestinian President — and Fatah leader — Mahmoud Abbas appealing for help.

"Yesterday evening Abu Mazen (Abbas) and (Palestinian Prime Minister Salam) Fayyad made a request for Israel to allow them to cross into Israel and then to hospitals and the West Bank," a senior Israeli official said yesterday.

"Shortly afterwards Barak was contacted again by Abbas who asked him to allow all of them to return to Gaza," the official said.

Among those who escaped were 30 wounded people, at least six in a serious condition.

Israeli security officials began transferring the 190 Palestinians to the West Bank late yesterday.

The violence was part of Hamas' response to a series of bombings in Gaza 10 days ago that killed five Hamas operatives and a six-year-old girl.

Hamas blames Fatah for the bombings. Hamas encircled the Sajaiya neighbourhood yesterday and said that it would conduct house-to-house searches to find those suspected of involvement in the bombings.

"We got hit hard," one Fatah official was quoted as saying yesterday. "Those battles were meant to erase our presence in the Gaza Strip. This is political cleansing."

Residents of Gaza described the battles in Sajaiya as the fiercest yet in the Gaza Strip.

Mohammad Darawshe, co-director of the Abraham Fund, an organisation aimed at advancing co-existence and equality between Jews and Arabs in Israel, said the weekend fighting was another dark page in Palestinian history.

"When you have Palestinians being forced to flee their own territory by other Palestinians, it is a tragedy," Mr Darawshe said.

"Hamas might win the battle, but this behaviour makes it so much harder to win international support to create an independent state. This is the behaviour of a brutal dictatorship, not a political party working towards advancing the interests of its people."

Hebrew University professor of philosophy Gabriel Motzkin, who heads a discussion forum that promotes efforts to increase reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, said the faint hopes for the current round of peace talks being sponsored by the US had been all but extinguished.

"It is beyond doubt that there are now two separate Palestinian territories, so who does Israel deal with?" he asked. "Mahmoud Abbas does not speak for Palestinians in Gaza. And Hamas is not interested in any negotiations with Israel at all. This civil war makes a permanent solution impossible to negotiate."

With AFP

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/world/palestinian-civil-strife-deepens-divide-20080803-3pbx.html