Abbas says (in Arabic) that he will never dissolve the PA, insists on referendum before any compromise

On at least ten occasions since 2007, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to dismantle the Palestinian Authority  if Israel did  not accede to various demands.

In virtually every case, the threat was delivered to a Western media outlet, and it caused headlines about how terrible it would be for Israel and therefore Israel should do everything Abbas demands in order to forestall such a terrible situation.

During Abbas' December 31 speech on the 51st anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack, however, Abbas made clear that he never had any intention to dismantle the PA.

Towards the end of the speech, he said "For those who are betting on the collapse of the Authority, it is not on the table. [The PA] is one of the gains and achievements of our people on the road to rebuilding our national institutions based on the rule of law, national identity, and independence."

In other words, Abbas has proven what we knew all along: he uses threats to try to get what he wants rather than by negotiating like an actual leader.

Abbas proved his inability to lead in another section of the speech as well.

He cemented his desire to ensure that there would never be any territorial compromise with Israel. Instead of saying that the government might have to make painful decisions for peace, as every Israeli leader has admitted, Abbas gave his people veto power over any agreement, saying that "all crucial decisions concerning the future of our land and our people, the permanent national rights in our land and our Christian and Islamic holy spaces, will be subject to a referendum, as well as a vote by the National Council, because our people who have given enormous sacrifices are the owners of the state and the source of authority."

This would mean, for example, that any peace plan that allows Jews to remain in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem or that gives Jews rights over the Western Wall would be subject to veto by people who have been taught since birth (by the Palestinian leadership) that Jews have no history or rights in the land.

Abbas further praised the "innocent martyrs" of the current wave of attacks against Jews in his speech on the terror anniversary.

This speech was virtually unreported in the West. It was not translated by the official PA news agency into English. Al Jazeera featured it in its Arabic edition but not in English.

Abbas' intransigence has once again been swept under the rug because the truth just doesn't jive with the carefully constructed meme of him as a man of peace. While Netanyahu's words are parsed and dissected endlessly by Israeli and Western media to prove their assumption that he is a racist warmonger, Abbas' words ensuring that there can never be peace with Israel and praising terrorists are simply ignored by the media, by "peace" NGOs - and by every government in the world save one.

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