So how to read Mahmoud Abbas, the new 'moderate' face of Palestinian nationalism? Daniel Pipes reflects on the apparent contradictions of a man who in one breath disavows violence, but in the next talks about the 'right of return' for 4 million Arabs which would destroy the Jewish state, while literally wrapping himself in the flag of Palestinian terror.

Pipes squares the circle. Abbas wants the same goal as Arafat -- the destruction of the Jewish state -- but his tactics are different:

'Unlike Arafat, who could never let go of the terrorist tool that had brought him wealth, power, and glory, Mr. Abbas sees the situation more cogently. If stopping the violence against Israel best serves his goal of eliminating the sovereign Jewish state, that is his program. He no more accepts what he so charmingly the other day called the "Zionist enemy" than Arafat did (or Hamas, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad), but he is open to a multiplicity of means to destroy it. As he announced after his electoral victory this week, "the lesser jihad is over and the greater jihad is ahead." The form of jihad must change from violent to nonviolent, but the jihad continues.And count the many ways to undo the Jewish state: nuclear weaponry, invading armies, mega-terrorism, plain old terrorism, Palestinian demographic fertility, the "right of return," or confusing Israelis to the point that post-Zionist leftists cause the population unilaterally to crumple and accept a dhimmi (subservient) status within "Palestine." '

In other words, it's going to be extermination with a smile rather than a bomb-belt. Except, of course, Abbas has yet to show he will do anything to stop the killing, or indeed the incitement to hate Jews and kill them. This is a man, after all, who said he would never take on Hamas because civil war among the Palestinians was unthinkable. And this is a man who got his doctorate, let us not forget also, in Holocaust denial.

For peace to be achieved in the Middle East, and for Israel and the Palestinians to achieve the dreams of so many and to live side by side in harmony and tranquillity, one development is an absolute precondition. The Palestinians have to be led by a real statesman who can give his people an identity, a purpose and a civil society based not, as now, on hatred and prejudice and religious hysteria but on truth.

The truth that the Jews want only to live in peace with their Arab neighbours, instead of the disgusting libels about the global Jewish conspiracy with which the Palestinians are indoctrinated; the truth that Israel was lawfully and justly created and that to destroy the Jewish state would be a moral outrage; the truth that their brother Arabs have cynically exploited the Palestinians as pawns; the truth that the Palestinians must stop expecting the world to owe them a living but get on instead with building the institutions of a law-abiding, peaceful society.

Will Abbas turn out to be such a statesman? Or is he the Arafat wolf in the clothing of a sheep? The answer to that question will very soon become apparent.

Posted by melanie at January 11, 2005