Before long, Rachid went on the offensive, unleashing a torrent of allegations against Abbas and his associates. Meanwhile, the PA requested Interpol’s help in arresting Rachid, but because Palestine was not an officially recognized state, the international law-enforcement agency declined to get involved.51 This did not stop the PA from its campaign against Arafat’s former adviser. On May 25, Mahmoud Habash, the Palestinian Religious Endowments minister and a close ally of Abbas, asserted that Rachid was a thief and traitor who deserved to be imprisoned.52 On June 7, a Palestinian court conducted a lightning trial of Rachid in absentia. According to the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh, “Rachid [was] the most senior PA official to be sentenced for corruption by a PA court.”53 Rachid and two of his associates, Abdul Rahman al-Rachid Najab and Khalid Abdul Ghani Farra, were “convicted of taking a total of $33.5 million from the foreign donor-financed Palestinian Investment Fund.” The punishment for Rachid was a 15-year jail term, a $15 million fine, and calls for his properties to be confiscated.54
Rachid insisted on his innocence. He contended that Abbas was corrupt. Through the Arabic language InLight Press website (www.InLightPress.com), the former Arafat adviser leveled a barrage of charges, mostly of corruption, at Abbas, his family, and his inner circle.
Dahlan and Rachid were Abbas’s main targets, but other political figures who disagreed with the Palestinian leader or maintained strong ties to Dahlan and Rachid also incurred his wrath.
In December 2011, Palestinian media outlets reported that Abbas was actively looking for someone to replace Yasser Abed Rabbo as the secretary-general of the PLO.55 The relationship between the two reportedly soured following Abbas’s attempt to declare a Palestinian state at the United Nations a few months earlier in New York. Abed Rabbo had been publicly against the move but denied that there was a feud, dismissing the reports as “lies.”56
Over the years, Abed Rabbo learned how to play the game. He became a member of the PLO Executive Committee in 197157 and ascended as secretary-general in 2006.58 But he apparently stepped over the line when he challenged Abbas openly over the controversial UN strategy that defined Abbas’s diplomacy in recent years.
In April 2012, the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that Abbas was gunning for Abed Rabbo because the latter refused to be part of a delegation that handed a rather undiplomatic letter from Abbas to Netanyahu. The paper further reported that Abed Rabbo convinced Fayyad to also refuse to be part of the delegation,59 which led to Abbas and Fayyad cutting off contact with each other for a period of time.60 A few days after that report, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that Abbas had removed Abed Rabbo as the PA’s media supervisor.61
According to a senior Fatah official, Abed Rabbo’s decision not to be part of the delegation that delivered Abbas’s letter to Netanyahu “was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”62 Interestingly, the Times of Israel later reported that Abed Rabbo had been involved in secret talks with a high-level Israeli official. It was unclear whether this colored his decision.63 Nevertheless, Abbas was reportedly so upset with Abed Rabbo in the lead-up to the UN maneuver of 2011 that he had banned Abed Rabbo from coming on tours to garner support.
Samir Mashharawi, a senior Fatah official in Gaza with strong ties to Dahlan, was also at odds with Abbas during this period. Over the course of a decade, if not longer, there had been a general conflict between Fatah’s old and young guard. Mashharawi was decidedly in the young-guard camp, led by such figures as Dahlan and the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti.
In December 2005, Mashharawi ran in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, but he ran on a Fatah list separate from Abbas.64 Following the January 2006 elections (in which Fatah was handed a crushing electoral defeat), Mashharawi said that “Fatah paid the price because of its corrupt administration and . . . leaders.”65 Admittedly, this was mild compared to the words of Dahlan, who, following the elections, said, “We have to reform this piece of shit called Fatah.”66 However, Mashharawi then called for the resignation of Fatah’s Central Committee and the insertion of a leadership that “can restore dignity and deliver a message that Fatah is a national project and not just a ruling project.”67 To say the least, this put him on the outs with the West Bank government. This rift was cemented further when the spat between Abbas and Dahlan became ugly, and Mashharawi sided with Dahlan.68
In late January 2012, Mashharawi was expelled from Fatah and the Revolutionary Council.69 According to the Fatah-aligned Palestine Press, he slammed Fatah in an interview on Al-Arabiya, in which he said that the movement “lacked leadership.”70 According to Mashharawi, “Since President Mahmoud Abbas took the reins in Fatah and the [PA], one defeat after another has been inflicted on us. We have lost the municipalities, the [PLC], and Gaza; the political process has been deadlocked; Fatah has lost the spirit of struggle and resistance.”71
In response to the expulsion of Mashharawi, Dahlan said, “The decision to dismiss the brother Samir Mashharawi is only what is expected of people who have lost their loyalty and affiliation to the movement.”72
Some might argue that the punishments Abbas meted out to Dahlan and Rachid were deserved. And with the cases of Mashharawi and Abed Rabbo, some could argue that they were lesser figures whom the Palestinian president had every right to cast aside. In other words, they served at the pleasure of Abbas.
But perhaps the greatest casualty in Abbas’s campaign against political challengers has been Fayyad. “Fayyadism” was once hailed in Washington’s corridors of power—and by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman—as a refreshing alternative to the governing philosophy of other Middle Eastern regimes. As Friedman wrote in 2009, “Fayyadism is based on the simple but all-too-rare notion that an Arab leader’s legitimacy should be based not on slogans or rejectionism or personality cults or security services, but on delivering transparent, accountable administration and services.”73
Abbas, however, appeared to have other ideas for the PA. Alternatively, he may simply not have appreciated a potential political challenger being so openly adored by governments in the West. Either way, in a move that can best be described as political cannibalization, the Palestinian president went out of his way to marginalize his own prime minister.
The tensions between the two men were first apparent in 2005, when Fayyad resigned from his cabinet post as finance minister to run in the 2006 elections. Ma’an News Agency suggested that Fayyad resigned because “of hiring issues with President Abbas.”74 The Jerusalem Post suggested that differences between Fayyad and Abbas over how to handle the economy also led to the resignation.75
Of course, Abbas brought Fayyad back into government after the Hamas coup in Gaza. But the tensions quietly continued between the two men, although whatever differences they had were often kept out of the public eye. That changed in 2011, however, when Abbas began to orchestrate a series of trials against his prime minister’s top officials. On November 29, the Palestinian prosecutor-general charged economy minister Hassan Abu Libdeh with corruption, paving the way for him to stand trial. The charges—breach of trust, fraud, insider trading, and embezzlement of public funds—dated back to Abu Libdeh’s tenure as director of the Palestinian Capital Market Authority in 2008. In other words, Abbas was not trying Abu Libdeh for anything he did while serving in his current role in the PA.76 On top of this, the newly formed Palestinian anticorruption commission had charged agriculture minister Ismail Daiq with corruption.77 The charges against Daiq were tax evasion and money laundering.78 Both cases are pending.
In Abbas’s PA, corruption probes aren’t usually launched unless the president wants them launched. From all appearances, Abbas chose to pursue these cases to discredit Fayyad and cast doubt on the prime minister’s ability to deliver on his celebrated mandate of countering corruption. After all, the corruption reached the highest levels, and Fayyad had appointed the officials who were under fire.
In other
words, these probes were not designed to rid the PA of corruption. Rather, by ousting ministers and hobbling Fayyad, Abbas created a possible window to replace them with figures more to his liking.
Meanwhile, from his sprawling Muqata compound in Ramallah, Abbas made the major foreign policy decisions affecting Palestinians while Fayyad worked with a skeleton crew in a modest office nearby. Abbas traveled around the world to generate support for the Palestine 194 campaign while Fayyad labored to bring in international donor funds. In fact, Abbas’s initiative at the United Nations endangered those sources of funding. The leadership styles of the two men were very different, to say the least. In 2011, according to officials who worked with them, the two figureheads of the Palestinians were barely on speaking terms.
In 2011, when Abbas began openly angling for international recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations—a finger in Washington’s eye—Fayyad went on record opposing him.79 Although Fayyad had created the plan announced in 2009 to prepare the Palestinians for statehood,80 and as it became clear the approach was infuriating Washington and prompting Congress to mull a cutoff in aid, he openly questioned the wisdom of the endeavor. As he stated in December 2011, “This is not the state we are looking for.”81
Fayyad was marginalized further when Abbas entered into negotiations to form a unity government with the terrorist group Hamas—a deal that would undoubtedly prompt a full cut in US funding. He claimed that he was prepared to step aside in the name of “national unity,”82 but Fayyad later went on record as refusing to serve the future Hamas–Fatah coalition government in any capacity.83
Meanwhile, the West failed to provide him with the support he needed to ensure political survival. The Obama administration, not to mention the State Department, was fully aware of the power struggle in Ramallah and the toll it took on Fayyad. However, Washington feared that weakening Abbas—even if the end result would empower Fayyad—would lead to a power vacuum from which only Hamas would benefit.
For his part, Abbas knew that Washington valued his ability to fend off Hamas more than it valued Fayyad’s ability to govern. This explains why he felt unencumbered to test Washington’s patience, both when it came to political reform in Ramallah and the statehood bid at the United Nations. It also explains why Washington stood by silently as Fayyad struggled.
Interestingly, while Fayyad struggled silently, Dahlan reemerged as a player in the Palestinian arena, challenging Abbas’s primacy. In early January 2013, after Abbas successfully upgraded the PLO’s UN mission with overwhelming international support, Abbas began to flirt openly with the question of political reconciliation with Hamas. The West Bank government had allowed several Hamas rallies to take place on its turf in December 2012, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hamas’s founding in 1987. In response, Hamas allowed Fatah to hold anniversary celebrations of its own in Gaza, marking the forty-eighth anniversary of the first Fatah attacks against Israel.
But Dahlan, the former strongman of Gaza under Arafat, was not prepared to allow Abbas to have his day in the sun. As Agence France-Presse reported, hundreds of thousands poured into the streets on January 4, 2013, for a mass rally marking the anniversary of Fatah’s armed struggle—the first since 2007 in fact. But they soon were disrupted by Dahlan loyalists who “brandished portraits and chanted slogans.”84 Palestinian media outlets reported that there were thousands of Dahlan backers, and they were chanting, “Dahlan is the president.”85 This challenge to Abbas quickly led to clashes, which were documented by several news outlets. As the Associated Press reported, some of the Dahlan supporters jumped onto the stage, prompting the rally to end prematurely, marring what would have otherwise been a triumphant day for Abbas.86
That Dahlan would rain on his parade likely came as no surprise for Abbas. After all, the Palestinian president had been pursuing him for years. The Jerusalem Post even cited a Hamas official as being concerned that Dahlan loyalists were planning to disrupt the festivities in the days leading up to the event.87
Some reports even suggested that Dahlan was planning a comeback. Al-Quds Al-Arabi ran a piece in September 2012 pointing to Dahlan’s influence over the renegade Fatah candidates in the municipal elections, citing his furnishing of “big money” to gain influence.88
Dahlan did not limit himself to an on-the-ground political campaign. He continued to maintain a network of websites critical of the Palestinian president89 and occasionally launched into Abbas on other sites, too.90
Interestingly, the impact of Dahlan’s attacks against Abbas paled in comparison with the problems that arose between Abbas and the UAE as the result of this ongoing spat. As the Economist noted, “Cash from the Gulf has dwindled, partly because the United Arab Emirates, which used to send $200m a year, seems to have sided with Mr. Dahlan.”91 The Associated Press similarly noted that the UAE “cut aid from $174 million in 2009 to $42.5 million since the beginning of 2011—according to Palestinian officials in an attempt to pressure Abbas to reinstate a disgraced former aide, Mohammed Dahlan.”92
In March 2013, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir reported on the “possibility of reconciliation between Abbas and Dahlan.”93 The Ma’an News Agency also reported that the Palestinian courts were considering an appeal by Dahlan to have his immunity reinstated.94 But in the end, Dahlan’s appeal was rejected.95 The two men remained political foes. Dahlan threatened to sue Abbas in July 2013.
The tension between Abbas and Fayyad, meanwhile, was a constant. For months, it was rumored that Fayyad might be on his way out. Then, somewhat suddenly, in April 2013, Reuters reported that he had tendered his resignation.96 Fayyad’s office declined to comment, but American officials offered reassurances that Fayyad was “sticking around.”97 The timing of the reports was decidedly awkward. President Obama, during his visit to the Middle East the month before, publicly lauded Fayyad as a partner for peace.98
Abbas’s Fatah faction was apparently not terribly concerned with the optics. The faction was among the more strident voices calling for Fayyad to go. “Fatah has been left with no authority at all. All claims that Fatah had been in control of the West Bank are baseless and wrong,” said Najat Abu Baker, a Fatah leader in the West Bank, in an interview with the UAE-based Gulf News. “Fayyad who is not a Fatah cadre has been in total control of the entire West Bank.”99
On April 13, with rumors swirling, international news outlets confirmed that Abbas had finally accepted Fayyad’s resignation.100 The news was a blow to US diplomacy efforts, recently rekindled by new Secretary of State John Kerry. But the prime minister’s departure also raised troubling questions about the future of the PA’s leadership.
With Fayyad on his way out, Abbas appeared to have overcome any institutional restraints on his power. He sat atop the PLO, the Fatah faction, and the PA, where he was four years past the end of his legal term with no new elections in sight. Abbas had no political challengers. He had no heir apparent. And he would not allow for a healthy exchange of political ideas in the public space. With Fayyad’s resignation, his domination of Palestinian politics in the West Bank appeared complete.
12
Quashing Critical Media and Protesters
While the PA was never a full-fledged democracy, one could argue that the Palestinians enjoyed more freedoms under the PA than the majority of their neighbors in the Middle East. These freedoms are enshrined in Palestinian law. Article 19 of the Palestinian Basic Law, amended in 2003, states, “Every person shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and expression, and shall have the right to publish his opinion orally, in writing, or in any form of art, or through any other form of expression, provided that it does not contradict with the provisions of law.” Additionally, Article 27 states, “Censorship on media shall be prohibited.”1
Palestinian journalists are quick to note that Israel obstructs Palestinian press freedoms. From blocking access to certain locales to dete
ntions, George Hale, an editor for Ma’an News Agency, notes that “Israeli restrictions” are common. “The restrictions I face as an American passport holder are negligible compared to what Palestinian journalists put up with, but they are prohibitive,” he notes.2
But under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian press freedom has suffered further. Specifically, the West Bank government has reportedly carried out a campaign against websites and journalists who have dared to challenge Abbas and his old-guard order.
According to the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, “It is difficult to know exactly how many people have been detained in violation of the right to freedom of expression because victims, in many cases, are charged with or accused of penal offenses to mask the political motivation behind their arrest.”3 Since 2007, in particular, incidents have skyrocketed in which PA security forces have violated the rights of journalists in the West Bank.
In the summer of 2007, after the Gaza war between Hamas and Fatah, the West Bank became a highly inhospitable environment for Hamas members. It was common to see Fatah and PLO loyalists attack Hamas members. But these attacks were not limited to militants or even political figures. Those loyal to Abbas attacked Hamas media outlets, much as Hamas attacked Fatah and PLO outlets in Gaza.4
Early on, many Hamas media outlets were simply shut down. In 2007, Hamas press conferences,5 TV, and even journalists who were not critical of Hamas were all targets of the PA security forces.6 The following year, Palestinian forces arrested two Palestinian journalists, charging them with being Hamas members.7 The PA also banned a number of journalists from entering the presidential compound in Ramallah, including those from Al-Jazeera, reportedly due to the Qatar-based satellite station’s decision to air a speech by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, rather than remarks by Abbas to the PLO in Ramallah.8
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