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Middle East
Abbas Cites Internal Interference in Resignation
2003-09-07
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

#5  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...

Had the guy taken the initiative and formed his own forces to root out and slice up the various terrorist organizations, it's likely that Mazen would have gotten all the "support" he would have wanted. Instead, he avoids doing what needs to be done with lame excuses such as he doesn't want to start a civil war, or that Arafat won't give him control of security forces. This is all nothing but BULLSHIT, and unfortunately, since GWB and the State Dept. are so hardheaded, this probably isn't going to be the last time that this runaround is going to happen.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2003-9-7 11:49:47 PM  

#4  Agreed, Raptor these bastards must PAY for that--but it's the Saudis--not the Paleos (to use your nomenclature)who did that shit. And the Saudis will never pay because they are the Bush allies
Posted by: Not Mike Moore   2003-9-7 11:33:57 PM  

#3  No, they realize that we have a short attention span. Six months from now the busload of victims will have been forgotten, but they'll keep repeating that the Israelis killed the road map and that'll become what really happened to Rooters and CNN.
Posted by: Fred   2003-9-7 11:21:28 AM  

#2  Of course blowing-up a bus load of women and kids had nothing to do with the failure of the peace process.
Guess these,morons think we in the west are"As dumb as a box of rocks".
Posted by: raptor   2003-9-7 11:06:11 AM  

#1  Abbas is a screw-up. He can't even resign correctly. He's supposed to claim a need to spend more time with his family.
Posted by: Super Hose   2003-9-7 10:42:21 AM  

00:00