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Abbas' Comeback Plan Is a Dead End
(Los Angeles Times) Aaron David Miller - * If you had a headache, even a migraine, would you shoot yourself in the head to get rid of it? That's precisely what PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is doing in his current gambit to corner Hamas by forcing a referendum on the future of the two-state solution. If he succeeds, it will not help his cause, but it will undermine his credibility and set the Palestinian national movement back twenty years. * The problem is that the document that Abbas sees as the vehicle of his deliverance will only muddy the clarity of his own stand against terrorism and for negotiations - the very positions that make him credible with Israel and the U.S. The document endorses armed resistance in the West Bank and Gaza, urges Palestinians to free prisoners by any means, and gives preeminence to the Palestinian right of return. * The fact that it may represent an advance over Hamas' maximalist goals cannot hide the fact that it is a serious retreat from Fatah's more moderate objectives. Indeed, it reopens vital questions about Israel's right to exist and about Palestinian endorsement of terrorism and violence that should have been laid to rest by now. * Abbas risks locking himself into positions that raise serious doubts about his own moderate intentions and could formally link him to prospective partners and committees (the document calls for the creation of a committee to direct resistance in the occupied territories) that will undermine his own approach toward negotiations. * Abbas' approach may play well in the Palestinian Peoria, but it will do little to advance his case in Washington and Jerusalem. In the end, his success or failure will be determined by his capacity to create a process that replaces the occupation with statehood - something that can only be achieved with Israeli and American support. The writer, a former senior State Department Middle East negotiator, is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.