News Analysis by Khalid Amayreh Palestinian Information Center, May 4, 2008
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas feels quite depressed these days, having been unceremoniously told by President Bush that the US administration won’t pressure Israel to halt Jewish settlement expansion nor commit itself to a total Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.
Some of Abbas’s aides have described his recent visit to Washington as the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” Abbas himself described the visit as “a clear failure.”
One Palestinian commentator from Ramallah labeled the visit “ a gigantic and monumental fiasco,” arguing that it amounted to a virtual breakdown of Abbas’s entire strategy of counting on the Bush administration to create a viable and contiguous Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
According to sources in Amman, Abbas informed Bush that he wouldn’t run for a second term as Chairman of the PA.
One source quoted an aide to Abbas as saying that the chairman concluded his meeting with Bush by telling him “you can look for another donkey to preside over the Palestinian Authority.”
The PA chairman reportedly asked Bush to declare his support for the creation of a Palestinian state on the entirety of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and also to pressure Israel to put an end to Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied territories, especially East Jerusalem.
Abbas, according to aides, was stunned when Bush told him that he couldn’t meet Palestinian demands since that would violate the letter of guarantees he gave former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April, 2004. Bush further argued that any departure from the infamous letter would lead to the downfall of the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government.
“President Abbas felt as if he was talking to the wall,” one Palestinian official was quoted as saying. “Both Bush and (US Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice refused to discuss details related to the current peace talks with Israel. We are very depressed.”
Rice arrived in Israel-Palestine Saturday evening, 3 May, apparently to save “the peace process” from an imminent danger of collapse.
Rice told the Israeli media that the purpose of her visit was to press Defense Minister Ehud Barak to remove some of the roadblocks the Israeli occupation army maintains throughout the West Bank in order to punish, torment and control the estimated 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Continued . . .
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