palestinians

Abbas speech: What does it mean?

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The Oslo Accords? “Killed,” the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says.

The Israeli prime minister says the Palestinians are now “unmasked.”

Notably, the U.S. is silent — suggesting that the Trump administration has not entirely written off its effort to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks.

What Abbas said

In addition to discounting the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the region, Abbas counted out a role for the Trump administration in restarting the talks.

Abbas is furious with Trump for his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and for his threats to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority.

What does Abbas’ speech mean?

Not a lot. Abbas has not been this blunt about declaring Oslo dead, nor has he been as adamant about decentralizing the traditional U.S. role as mediator. But none of this is new: When the peace process is on the skids, Abbas has reflexively blamed its structure, which he says favors Israeli settlement expansion and Palestinian disempowerment, and called for a diminished U.S. role.

“It is impossible, and I repeat — it is impossible — to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question,” he told the U.N. General Assembly in September 2014 following the collapse earlier in the year of the Obama administration-led peace talks and the Gaza War that ensued in the summer of the same year. He also called for a greater U.N. role in peacemaking.

Abbas subsequently retreated from that posture, embracing renewed talks under the Trump administration. Notably the PLO has not taken substantive steps to end the peace process. (A subsequent vote by the Central Council recommending an end to recognition of Israel was nonbinding and symbolic.)

So why is this attracting attention?

Abbas resurrected just about every anti-Jewish trope in the Palestinian nationalist playbook: that there was no Jewish connection to Israel, that Zionism was a European colonialist plot, that Jews preferred Hitler’s Europe to the renascent Zionist project in Palestine, even that Israel is drugging Palestinian youths.

But like his declarations of the death of the peace process, none of Abbas’ gibes were new. They have cropped up repeatedly in Palestinian propaganda, especially after negotiations go south.

Following the collapse of the 2000 Camp David talks, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat stepped up his claims that Israelis falsified archaeological evidence of a Jewish past in the land of Israel. Arafat’s wife, Suha, was infamous for her spurious allegation that Israel was somehow poisoning Palestinian youths.

What stood out in Abbas’ speech was how he compiled a single golden oldies collection of anti-Jewish myths and fabrications.

How is Israel’s government reacting?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Abbas’ comments — but has not proposed any changes in Israeli policy nor any departure from the Kushner peace initiative. Netanyahu’s reaction, notably, was jammed into a video postcard greeting from India, where he otherwise extolled the virtues of touring that country.

How is the United States reacting?

Abbas said of Trump, “May your house be demolished.” It’s not clear whether he was referring to the White House, Trump Tower or wishing for an end to the Trump dynasty. In any case, Trump and his spokesmen seemed unfazed.

“Clearly emotions are running high in the region and we certainly accept that,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert. “I’d like to caution folks in the region and particularly Mr. Abbas that some of those things [he said] would be considered inflammatory and inciteful and divisive. We would like to see a peace process go forward.”