Ramzy Baroud’s Interview with Foreign Policy
Excerpts from Ramzy Baroud’s Interview in Foreign Policy
“[The ICC move] is about assuring his survival.… He knows nobody is buying into the old game of ‘back to negotiations’ and making threats to quit,” said Ramzy Baroud, a U.K.-based Palestinian author and political columnist. “He needed something so impressive, a grandstanding type of gesture that would assure supporters that there is something different and new, and that should win him a bit of time.”
To make matters worse, Abbas has been dogged by rumors of ill health and has been confronted by political foes both within his own party and outside. “Abbas knows that new challengers are springing up. After the Gaza war, Hamas’s numbers shot up in the polls; Mohammad Dahlan is trying to stage a comeback; and others are trying to offer themselves as alternatives to Abbas,” Baroud said. Dahlan, 53, once a close Abbas confidant, was ejected in 2011 from Fatah, the West Bank’s ruling party, which is headed by the Palestinian president. This expulsion came following Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, which wrested control of the territory from Dahlan’s forces. Dahlan is also facing corruption charges.
“It is really difficult to believe that Abbas, close to the age of 80, has decided to carry out a fundamental change of course” in the struggle for Palestinian independence, Baroud, the political columnist, said. “It’s all about winning time and creating distractions, but is it a strategy towards a specific end? I don’t think so.”
Read full article here: How Long Can Mahmoud Abbas Hold On?
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