Where is Palestine headed under Mahmoud Abbas?

Riza Sihbudi, Jakarta

Jan. 9, 2005 was a historic day for the people of Palestine because for the first time in history, they directly elected a president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) after the demise of Yasser Arafat on Nov. 11, 2004.

In fact, not all citizens of Palestine went to the polls. Two very popular "fundamentalist" organizations of Palestine, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, boycotted the election, which they consider illegitimate as long as their land is still occupied by Israel.

This is nothing new. In 1996, they also rejected the election first organized following the establishment of PA on the basis of the Oslo Agreement I (1993) and Oslo II (1995), which were signed by Arafat, the late Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. However, the election proceeded with fairly high enthusiasm among the Palestinians. World citizens, too, closely followed the succession.

Most of them certainly hoped that the PA presidential election would provide strong leadership and at the same time fulfill the Palestinians' decades of longing for the birth of a free and sovereign state. Arafat had spent the greater part of his life struggling for the people of Palestine, but until his death, he was unable to create a free state. What about his successor?

Mahmoud Abbas, 69, alias Abu Mazen finally triumphed in the 2005 election. Not long after Arafat died, Abbas, the secretary- general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), was promptly elected new chairman of PLO. Before his death, Arafat was PLO chairman and concurrently PA president. The PLO became a kind of ruling party in PA, meaning that by serving as PLO chairman it was not too difficult for Abbas to rise to the position as Palestine's top leader. The recent election was actually just a formality for Abbas.

Initially there was Marwan Barghouti, 45, a charismatic younger figure now still in an Israeli prison, as the only tough rival of Abbas. Yet Barghouti later withdrew for reasons of national interests and fully supported Abbas.

Who is Mahmoud Abbas? When Arafat died, Abbas had held no formal office in PA since his withdrawal as PA premier last year, but he had long been considered one of the strongest candidates to replace Arafat. Abbas, co-founder of the al-Fatah movement (the biggest faction in PLO) in 1959, holds a doctorate from Moscow University. He is the most senior PLO political activist and the Palestinian figure who made the first contact with Israel. The problem is that Abbas, the owner of a luxury villa in Ramallah, is said to lack strong grass-roots support, at least compared to Barghouti. Abbas relies more on al-Fatah and PLO.

As PA's new president, Abbas is acceptable to both the U.S. and Israel. It is these two countries that in 2003 proposed Abbas as PA premier but later he withdrew due to a difference of views with Arafat, especially regarding ways to overcome the jihad (holy bombings launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as the Al-Aqsha Brigade group, al-Fatah's military wing) in several Israeli cities. Abbas' closeness to the U.S., Israel and other Western countries became his strength but also his weakness.

Abbas will be capable of participating in the U.S.-sponsored Palestine-Israel peace process, which has been bogged down since the election of Sharon as Israel's prime minister four years ago. Moreover, U.S. security adviser and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in a meeting with the U.S. Zionist lobby organization (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee -- AIPAC) in early December, already conveyed the determination of President George W. Bush's second-term administration to again set the Palestine-Israel peace process in motion.

Under Abbas, the Palestine-Israel-U.S. negotiations are likely to be smoother. But a big question will arise if Abbas fails to secure greater concessions (from Israel and the U.S.) than what Arafat previously gained.

With Sharon still ruling Israel and Bush in the U.S., it seems that Palestine has a very slim hope of obtaining bigger concessions than what it has so far enjoyed. Sharon has never concealed his intention to permanently annex Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, particularly the entire West Bank, including Al-Quds or East Jerusalem, owned by Palestine and Golan Heights (owned by Syria).

Bush, who in his first term of office was ineffective in the face of Sharon, will apparently be more helpless in the second period. This is indicated by the resignation of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is less inclined to agree with Bush's pro-Zionist hard-line policy.

On the other hand, the emergence of Rice as secretary of state in place of Powell only reaffirms Bush's future foreign policy. It is because Rice is widely known as a very pro-Zionist U.S. high-ranking official, like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Under such conditions, it is very hard to expect any chance for the founding of a free Palestine state, although this is actually the substance of the Palestinian issue.

As long as Palestine is not yet independent, there will be no essential peace in the Middle East. In fact, the conflict in this region has become one of the main causes of terrorism in various parts of the globe. If the U.S. (and Israel) truly intend to fight international terrorism, they should also really have the political will to push for the creation of a free state of Palestine. So, the ball is in the court of Bush and Sharon rather than with Mahmoud Abbas'.

The writer is a research professor with the Center for Political Studies, Indonesian Institute of Sciences.