Why Mahmoud Abbas’s Threats of Cancelling Agreements with Israel Are Empty

This week, high-ranking Palestinian Authority (PA) officials will meet in Ramallah to discuss how to respond to the possibility that Jerusalem will apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank. Reportedly, one of the options they will consider is withdrawal from all written agreements with Israel. Khaled Abu Toameh believes that the PA president, Mahmoud Abbas, would happily threaten to take such a drastic step, but will never follow through:

In the past few years, Abbas and some Palestinian officials have threatened to abandon the agreements, including the 1993 Oslo Accords, and revoke the PLO’s recognition of Israel. On several occasions, Abbas has also threatened to dismantle the PA in response to Israeli and U.S. policies. [But], besides boycotting the Israeli government and the administration of President Donald Trump, Abbas has failed to carry out any of his other threats, and he has good reason not to do so.

The PA was created by the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, pursuant to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The termination of the accords will lead to the dismantling of the PA and its institutions, with Abbas losing his status as its president. In addition, such a move is likely to result in a sharp decline of international financial aid to the Palestinians, who will be left without a governing body. This is a move that the Palestinians can’t afford, particularly during an economic crisis resulting from the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the terms of the Paris Protocol of 1994, the PA and Israel work together on various trade and economic projects that are significant for the Palestinian economy. If the Oslo Accords are cancelled, Israel, for its part, would no longer be obliged to issue work permits for Palestinians and could halt the import and export of Palestinian goods.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority, West Bank

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF