NOW: Abbas Livefeed at the UNGA with Critical Analysis: Representative of Palestine or Strategic Asset of Israel?
The Palestinian Authority is similar to the UN in that it was presented as an institution of liberation but often functions as an instrument of imperial Israel and the US Empire.
Following up on the livefeed of the UNGA opening on Tuesday, we’re doing a livefeed covering Abbas’s address from 9:45 a.m. NYC time with Craig Mokhiber:
The Electronic Intifada has been highly critical of Abbas: “The Palestinian Authority: A policy of national suicide.”
He is clearly under threat.
Al-Shabaka: “Israel’s withholding of Palestinian clearance revenues is a longstanding practice, historically used to punish or manipulate the Palestinian Authority.”
Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, signed a series of unequal agreements with Israel and died in 2004. Many charge that Israel poisoned him when he was no longer useful to them.
In 2023, some suggested the PA go to Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks, a charge that PA officials disputed.
In 2021, Middle East Eye reported: “Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas ‘almost like a father’, says Trump.”
Now, the Trump administration refuses to allow Abbas and other Palestinian officials into the US. When the US government did this to Arafat in 1988, the UN held their meeting in Geneva instead of NYC.
Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. Corruption in Abbas’s PA was seen as one of the reasons for that victory. This effectively left Palestinian ranks divided.
I personally think that a major factor in those elections was also that voting for Hamas in the aftermath of Arafat’s death was virtually the only way the Palestinian people could communicate that they still regarded themselves as a people — not just populations centers in the West Bank and Gaza.
Earlier this year, Abbas called Hamas “sons of dogs”.
The US has pressured Abbas for years into not going to international bodies like the ICC.
Abbas’s new VP is Hussein al-Sheikh. The Electronic Intifada has noted Israeli officials have called him “our man in Ramallah”.
Abbas was elected in 2005 for a four-year term that should have ended in 2009.
No presidential elections have been held since, so he has remained in office far beyond his original mandate.
According to an International Crisis Group report, most Israeli officials “do not see [Abbas] as a peace partner but consider [him] a non-threatening, violence-abhorring strategic asset.”