Abbas Says Security Cooperation
to End, Raising Stakes for Israeli Annexation
The Palestinian leader has made
such assertions before, but this may not be a mere threat. The agreements have
protected Israelis and preserved the Palestinian Authority’s political hold
over the West Bank.
Mahmoud Abbas, president of the
Palestinian Authority, said Tuesday in Ramallah that the Palestinians were
“absolved” of all commitments stemming from the Oslo peace
accords. Credit...Pool photo by AlaaBadarneh
By David M.
Halbfinger and Adam Rasgon
May 19, 2020
JERUSALEM — Raising the stakes
over Israel’s drive to annex land the Palestinians have long claimed,
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday angrily
declared it free of its commitments under the Oslo peace process, including
security understandings that have protected Israelis and preserved the
authority’s political hold over the occupied West Bank.
For a change, several senior
Palestinian officials insisted, Mr. Abbas was not making a mere threat.
“The Palestine Liberation
Organization and the State of Palestine are absolved, as of today, of all
agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments,” Mr.
Abbas declared in a speech in Ramallah after a much-anticipated meeting of
officials of the authority, the P.L.O. and Fatah, the political faction that
dominates them both. Those understandings, he said, include all security
agreements.
Mr. Abbas said his move was a
response to the new Israeli government’s push to annex large portions of the
West Bank.
With peace talks nonexistent
for years, many right-wing Israelis have urged Mr. Netanyahu to extend
sovereignty over the West Bank on ideological and religious grounds, believing
the Jewish state should control the entire Holy Land from the Jordan River to
the Mediterranean. Evangelical Christians who are key supporters of President
Trump have backed the effort.
Supporters of an eventual
two-state solution to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however,
have warned that annexation could render a future Palestinian state impossible
to achieve. In the short term, they say, it could incite violence that, whether
the Palestinian security forces try to suppress it or not, would quickly lead to
the authority’s disintegration.
That, they argue, would force
the Israeli Army to do what it has little appetite to do: resume day-to-day
control over every aspect of the lives of the West Bank’s 2.1 million
Palestinians.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu campaigned for right-wing support on a promise to extend Israeli
sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and Jewish settlements totaling about 30
percent of the territory.
The new alternate prime
minister, Benny Gantz, a former army chief, had campaigned for center-left
votes on a promise to oppose unilateral annexation. But in his coalition
agreement with Mr. Netanyahu, which gave Mr. Gantz a veto over nearly every
major decision confronting their new government, one exception was carved out:
annexation.
The West Bank settlement of
Ma’ale Efraim on the hills of the Jordan Valley.Credit...Ariel
Schalit/Associated Press
Mr. Gantz must be consulted,
but nothing prevents Mr. Netanyahu from proceeding with annexation except the
Trump administration — which has given little indication that it would
stand in the way. Mr. Netanyahu can move ahead as soon as July 1.
In his speech, Mr. Abbas
referred directly both to the coalition agreement and to Mr. Netanyahu’s
inaugural address on Sunday, which he said “did not include anything about
commitment to the signed agreements” but did repeat Mr. Netanyahu’s intention
to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.
By making annexation a
priority, Mr. Abbas argued, Israel had “annulled the Oslo agreement” and the
ensuing pacts that built upon it.
The speech by Mr. Abbas, who is
in his 80s and in frail health, was especially animated, but it did not set out
a timetable or mechanisms for withdrawing from the agreements. It also did not
explain how the Palestinian Authority would function without relying on
agreements that support its existence.
The authority’s finances are
enormously dependent on coordination with Israel, which collects hundreds of
millions of dollars in taxes on its behalf every month. Those funds usually
make up more than half of the authority’s budget.
Its day-to-day operations also
rely heavily on coordination with Israeli officials, which is based on the many
agreements between Israel and the P.L.O.
When the authority’s police
want to transfer a prisoner from Hebron to Jericho, they do so in coordination
with Israel. When the authority wants to arrange for the importation of 3G
telecommunications equipment into the West Bank, it does so in coordination
with Israel. And when Mr. Abbas travels abroad, as he often does, he does so in
coordination with Israel.
Mr. Abbas and other Palestinian
leaders have frequently threatened to halt security coordination with Israel in
recent years, but they have done little to bring such a move to fruition.
When a major dispute erupted in
late 2017 over Israel placing metal detectors at entrances to the Temple Mount,
Mr. Abbas announced that security coordination with Israel had been halted. But
significant parts of it actually remained in place, and once the dispute had been
resolved, Hazem Atallah, the head of the Palestinian Authority police,
acknowledged to reporters that 90 to 95 percent of the force’s coordination
with Israel had been unaffected.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, right, at the swearing-in ceremony Sunday for Israel’s new
government, with Benny Gantz, who now holds the title of alternate prime
minister. Credit...Adina Valman/Knesset Spokesperson Office, via Agence
France-Presse -- Getty Images
And shortly after President
Trump’s decision to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv,
the Palestinians cut off contact with the White House and other parts of the
American administration.
But they continued to work with
the Central Intelligence Agency, a decision that Mr. Abbas attributed to the
Palestinian Authority’s determination to fight terrorism. In his speech Tuesday
night, Mr. Abbas reiterated what he called “our firm commitment to fighting
international terrorism regardless of its shape or source.”
Several Palestinian officials
interviewed late Tuesday and early Wednesday said that this time, Mr. Abbas was
not just talking.
“This decision is for immediate
implementation,” said Wasel Abu Yousef, a member of the P.L.O.’s executive
committee. “It is not to be studied or discussed in committees.”
And Maj. Gen. Adnan Damiri, a
spokesman for the Palestinian security services, said that those agencies’
chiefs had attended the Ramallah meeting and understood that they were to stop
all security cooperation with both Israel and the C.I.A.
“The Palestinian leadership has
always left the decision of cutting all ties with Israel and the U.S. up to the
president,” said Mahmoud al-Habbash, Mr. Abbas’s religious affairs adviser. “He
has now made that decision, and there’s no room for maneuvering.”
But Mr. al-Habbash left room
for some ambiguity. Asked if the police would continue to check with Israel
before driving through Israeli-controlled West Bank territory, to avoid
potential clashes, he said only, “We will continue to do our work and serve our
people.”
Others acknowledged that the
move put the authority at risk.
“The cost of making this
decision is very high, but the cost of coexisting with annexation is
extraordinarily higher,” said Ahmad Majdalani, the authority’s social
development minister and a P.L.O. executive committee member. “We will not be
bystanders while Israel takes over our homeland.”
Still, Mr. Majdalani indicated
what he clearly hoped would be the result.
“If Israel announces that it
will not move toward annexation, we will be ready to enter a dialogue, on that
very day, to discuss all issues,” he said.
Israelis who read Mr. Abbas’s
speeches for a living reacted with well-earned skepticism.
Shimrit Meir, a journalist who
closely watches the Arab world, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Abbas had resorted to
a “doom weapon.”
“Right now it’s on paper,” she
wrote. “For all of those asking how serious they are in their intention to
implement — we should wait a few days and we will know. It will be difficult to
miss an event like the halt of security coordination.”
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