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Mahmoud Abbas: The Perpetual Dictator and the Missing Peace
(Times of Israel) Bassem Eid - 2023 marks an astonishing 19th year of Mahmoud Abbas' endless 4-year presidential term, which began on January 9, 2005. Democracy monitor Freedom House describes my native West Bank as having "no functioning legislature...[the Palestinian Authority] governs in an authoritarian manner, engaging in acts of repression against journalists and activists who present critical views on its rule." In 1993, the peace-seeking Israeli government handed governance of the Palestinian residents in Gaza and the West Bank to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a notorious terrorist organization that was known to be responsible for the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes and of schoolchildren, and the hijacking of cruise ships and planes. In 2000 and again in 2001, the Israeli government made generous permanent peace offers that would have created an independent Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Instead, Arafat opted for war. For five horrific years, terrorists armed by the major factions of PA society slaughtered more than a thousand Israeli civilians and wounded thousands more in a campaign of suicide bombings. Since then, peace has eluded the region primarily through Abbas' personal obstinance. In 2008, Abbas walked away from a third Israeli peace offer. Under his rule, Palestinian public education and news media fully normalized and are even saturated in antisemitism, often featuring explicit calls for violence against Jews. Abbas is the real occupier of our cities and our homeland, not our future partner Israel, which has consistently had a majority in favor of peace, and not Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader who has explicitly supported the idea of a Palestinian state so long as Israel maintains the necessary security control. It is time for the Palestinian nation to reach a new agreement with Israel and the international community, abolishing the dictatorial rule of Abbas and the PLO and instead granting our people peace with dignity alongside our neighbor, the Jewish State of Israel. The writer is a Palestinian political analyst and human rights pioneer.