Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he thought the Arab Spring was a wasted effort from the beginning.
But he said then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had another opinion, since she called him to solicit help getting rid of a longtime U.S. ally, Egypt President Hosni Mubarak.
“One day, before the Jan. 25 [Egyptian] revolution, I was with then-President Hosni Mubarak, and when the events of Jan. 25 began, U.S. Secretary of State [at the time] Hillary Clinton phoned me and asked me to phone president Mubarak and persuade him to step down. I asked, ‘What do I have to do with the Egyptian matter? We are facing chaos, the rise of the MB, or both,'” he said in a Nov. 30, 2014, interview with the Egyptian daily Akhbar Al-Yawm.
The comments were uncovered and translated by officials with the Middle East Media Research Institute.
MEMRI said the interview addressed “the stalemate in the negotiations with Israel and the Palestinian alternatives to the negotiations, including appealing to the U.N., stopping the PA’s security coordination with Israel and transferring responsibility for the Palestinian Authority to Israel.”
Abbas said Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood are a “gang of liars,” with Hamas responsible for the July 2014 fighting in Gaza.
Abbas warned the way things are now, without changes, “ISIS will also emerge in the West Bank.”
He also said in the interview he “did not recognize Israel as a Jewish state, because this contradicted the Palestinian interests by harming Israeli Arabs and preventing the return of the Palestinian refugees. He said that there were six million Palestinian refugees wishing to return to their homes, and he was one of them, and that creative solutions had to be found for the refugee problem, because ‘we cannot close the door to those who wish to return.'”
Abbas also said there is no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood, and that organization, in fact, is responsible for terror groups including ISIS, al-Qaida and Jabhat al-Nusra, which sometimes is called al-Qaida in Syria.
“In my recent meeting with Obama, he asked me about the situation in Egypt, and I explained to him that the process of democratization was about to be completed,” Abbas said. “He asked me about the Brothers [Muslim Brotherhood], and I explained to him that there was no such thing as Brothers there.
“Obama clarified, ‘The moderate Brothers,’ and I explained to him that the moderate Brothers are only in the U.S., but that [the organization] were the ones who had created all the extremist organizations in the region, including ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida,” he said.
Other points Abbas made include:
- It’s Israel’s fault that peace isn’t yet reached. “We are conducting mutual relations with people who don’t believe in peace. You ask for peace and they do not want it.”
- He’s not after Israel’s destruction. “I don’t want to destroy Israel and do not call for its destruction. We want to live with it in security peace, but only after I receive my rights and you receive yours.”
- Israel will have to give up a lot to make him happy. “We want a state in the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, and we want to [set] a date to end the occupation. That is all we want. If Israel agrees to this now, we will go to negotiations.”
- He realizes he probably won’t get his way. “Chances that I can actualize my plan are small, because of two obstacles: The first is that nine countries [in the U.N.] must agree to it in order for the proposal to be brought to a vote. … The second is that, even if we obtain the agreement of nine countries, we expect an American veto.”
He’s always looking for alternatives, the interview suggested.
“If we cannot get what we want, there are other steps [we can take]. The first step is joining many international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice. There are 520 international organizations, and [joining them] will surely bother everyone. If there is an appeal to the ICC, and a Palestinian files a lawsuit against an Israeli, they [the Israelis] get scared, because they are wanted and cannot travel,” he said.
While that “won’t do much good,” there are other ideas, he said.
“The first is ending all security coordination between us and them [i.e. Israel]. Currently, there is security coordination, and the comrades in Hamas see this as something they can accuse us about, but they themselves coordinated [with Israel] in 2012 during the era of [Egyptian president Mohammad] Morsi. We have been committed to this security coordination since the Oslo Accords. Now, when there is nothing between us, there is no problem to end the coordination, and there will be no ties, no security, and no talks with anyone,” he said.
And he said, “The last step, which bothers many of us since it is not understood and which also bothers the Arabs but bothers the U.S. and Israel even more is saying to Netanyahu: You are an occupation state, please take responsibility for the occupation. Many comrades tell me: Authority is an achievement. But I am not giving away authority. I am merely saying that I have no authority and that I have nothing. My job is just to pay [salaries]. I panhandle in order to pay clerks, and the health and education sectors, while the occupier has it all. I cannot continue like this. Take all this authority, and if you don’t, let us talk of the peace that the world has approved that is, a border between two countries and Jerusalem as our capital. The other details, such as refugees, security, and more, can be discussed later.”
