Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas didn't even wait 24 hours for the unveiling of the Trump peace plan before angrily flipping over the proverbial table. According to leaks from a closed-door meeting with senior Fatah officials, Abbas ordered the PA's security apparatuses to no longer prevent Palestinian youths from clashing with Israeli security forces, adding: What we need now is an escalation.
If the reports are accurate, this is a call for a third intifada. The man, who for years sought to separate himself from Yasser Arafat while telling everyone that the path of violence and terror is not his path, because it is ineffective and damaging to the Palestinian people, has changed his tune and is now following his predecessor's footsteps.
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And if the leak is correct that in the same meeting on Monday Abbas also castigated the US president in an expletive-laden tirade, then we can also draw another direct line linking him to Arafat, who 25 years ago in Cairo refused to sign a border agreement with Israel. Then, however, it was former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who lost his patience, calling Arafat a "dog, son of a dog," and forced him to sign the dotted line.
Abbas' claim on Monday, whereby if he accepts Trump's plan he will go down in Palestinian history as a "traitor," could have been taken seriously if he had tried at the very least to talk to the White House about the details of the plan. It's even possible he could have changed some of its clauses.
But he rejected the plan before seeing it, just as he rejected former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's far more generous offer. The outright rejection of the entire plan puts him on the same footing as his predecessor, Arafat, as a peace obstructionist who would rather go down in history as refusing to give an inch over ending the bloody conflict through a fair compromise.
The call emanating from Ramallah on Monday was for Arab leaders to take action, boycott Israel and reject any form of normalization with it.
The Arab world, however, particularly the moderate Sunni bloc, is preoccupied with its own issues. It is tired of the ongoing conflict and the Palestinians' stubborn rejectionism.
Abbas has erred several times throughout his tenure and will err far more egregiously if he now starts playing with fire. Who knows better than anyone – as he has argued so persuasively in the past – that choosing the path of terror won't get the Palestinians anywhere.
