Nabil Amr
Palestinian writer and politician
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The Deal of the Century Addresses a Post-Abbas Stage

The speech the Palestinian President addressed to the Palestinians, Arabs and the world dispels any possibility of him agreeing to the “Deal of the Century”. Consequently, any effort for Abbas to change his position is in vain. The man has burned every bridge for him to return and has committed himself to absolute rejection, especially that he considers any negotiation over the deal to be an act of betrayal, and refuses to engage with it, using an expression that is his predecessors’ favorite: I refuse to be put down in history as a traitor.

American despair that is fed by the Israeli right-wing’s depiction of Abbas as an existential threat to the Jewish state instead of a partner in the deal, the same despair that led to the “Deal of the Century” before it was announced, influenced the formulation of the deal and its timing.

That was according to the principle which states that as long as the historic leader of Fatah and the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority rejects the deal, let us address the stage beyond him. This stage will perhaps be long, but it will be decisive for the emergence of a Palestinian leader who can cooperate and coexist with the unilateral Israeli implementation of the deal, part of which was already started before its announcement. In contrast, its remaining parts will be implemented after the third elections, either all together or piecemeal to avoid reactions and disperse them.

Before his departure, and only God knows when that will be, Abbas, put high barriers between whoever will succeed him and cooperation and coexistence with the deal. The Palestinian public opinion that is supposed to produce leaders through elections has been definitively mobilized around this principle that accepting the deal and cooperating in its implementation, or even merely coexisting with it, will pin them as traitors to Palestinian rights and all of the national achievements that the people and revolution have achieved over decades.

The actual crisis will appear at its most manifest after Abbas. It will be exhausting to Palestinians, and equally exhausting to Israelis and confusing to all parties involved in the Palestinian-Israeli situation.

To the Palestinians, any leadership or leader that will succeed Abbas will inherit a complicated situation that is far from a political compromise that the Palestinians can assimilate and live with. They will inherit an internal Palestinian situation that is at its worse, ridden with a division that is close to becoming a separation. They will also inherit an Israeli-American infiltration that functions around the slogan stating that the solution to the Palestinian cause is by getting rid of it, and will inherit a grave deterioration in the Arabs’ capacities to impose balanced solutions or providing adequate circumstances for Palestinians to reach these solutions.

As for Israel, the “Deal of the Century”, the Palestinian rejection of it and the American-Israeli bet on implementing it after Abbas, will not be an easy road to impose an occupation as a fait accompli over millions of Palestinians who will live inside a new body produced by the deal.

The Jewish state has started to exhibit some symptoms of inability to achieve Zionist dreams by establishing a purely Jewish state, and its incapacity will be amplified when it finds itself confronting millions of Palestinians who will not accept the new maps imposed on them. Even the most robust research think tanks in Israel are still incapable of predicting the implications of unilaterally implementing this deal.

Many in Israel are afraid of the implications of the exaggerated American overindulgence of the Israeli right-wing, which renders the Jewish state incapable of containing what millions of frustrated Palestinians will do to Israel and its unceasing greed to consume the Palestinian cause and eliminate it. Many in Israel are worried about the “Deal of the Century” after remembering the fate of the Oslo Accords, which failed despite being born out of regional and international consensus and approved by the majority of Israelis and Palestinians. What then would make them think that this much worse deal will not meet a worse fate than Oslo?

The Israeli right-wing, and not just its heads, Netanyahu and Bennett, is committed to a foolish formula that has been revoked on the ground, that any harm done to Palestinians is in Israel’s interest. The evident truth is that in all times and places when harm comes to the Palestinians, some harm necessarily comes to Israel. This is what the facts over the three-fourths of a century show, with all sorts of Israeli military, economic and technological superiority over Palestinians, as well as all types of occupation and control, Israel is yet to feel safe and secure. Many in Israel know this, whether publicly or secretly. The latest opinion polls published in Israel show that the majority of Israelis prefer a complete separation from Palestinians, and the “Deal of the Century” without a doubt does not provide this separation.