E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Abbas Cites Internal Interference in Resignation
edited for the interesting stuff
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, tendered his resignation yesterday, citing interference by Yasser Arafat and insufficient support from Israel, the United States, and Palestinians...
His mummy and his dog unavailable for comment, apparently.
...Legislators said Arafat, the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority, had accepted Abbas’s resignation and under Palestinian law has three weeks to name a new prime minister. Palestinian Cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, speaking to reporters after Abbas explained to legislators during a two-hour closed-door session in Ramallah why he decided to quit, said, "This is a national crisis."
Sheesh, and everything was going so well.
Abed Rabbo blamed Israel for the crisis and said Sharon’s "repeated violations" of the road map made it impossible for Abbas to succeed as prime minister.
"It wuz them! It's always them!"
But others who attended the meeting said Abbas, 68, widely known as Abu Mazen, explained his resignation mainly in terms of the power struggle he waged with Arafat and the difficulty of reining in Islamic militants responsible for a long spree of suicide attacks against Israel. "He only talked about internal [Palestinian] matters. He did not mention external issues," Jamal Shati, a legislator from the West Bank town of Jenin, said in an interview outside the Parliament building. Shati said Abbas, whom Arafat appointed in April under pressure from Washington, protested in the meeting over Arafat’s refusal to cede control of most Palestinian security agencies and his meddling in government appointments. Several legislators said the tipping point for Abbas was a violent demonstration Thursday in which activists of his Fatah party rampaged at a Parliament meeting and called him a traitor. In his brief tenure as prime minister, Abbas’s approval rating never topped a few percentage points.
He could still win in California.
During a speech to Parliament on Thursday, Abbas cited a cease-fire he coaxed from Hamas and other militant groups as the main accomplishment of his young government, along with financial reforms and some Israeli troop pullbacks in the West Bank and Gaza.
So the party line is the usual suspects, Israel, Bush, etc., done kilt the roadmap, but the truth is that the Prime Mover of Unpeace never relinquished control. Hmmm, what to do, what to do? Yassir’s death wish may not go unheeded much longer.
Posted by: Mark IV 2003-09-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=18417