The Palestinian president is too weak and compromised to accept any final settlement with which Netanyahu can live
Palestinian president Yasser Arafat shakes hands with with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 2004. Photograph: Avi Ohayon/EPA
Since its inception in Oslo almost two decades ago, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been stymied by the dysfunctional political systems of both sides. Hostage of an impossible coalition and of a settlement movement of freelance fanatics, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's leadership is seriously compromised. His Palestinian counterparts are hardly in a better position.
Today, the clique that surrounds Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas embodies the bitter deception that the peace process has meant for the Palestinians. Moreover, the Palestinian Authority has come neither to represent the majority of Palestinians nor to rule by democratic means.
Abbas's presidential term has expired, and elections are constantly being postponed. The PA's prime minister, Salam Fayyad, like his Hamas counterparts in Gaza, rules by decree, keeps parliament inactive, and silences the opposition. With no institutionalised democratic legitimacy, the PA is bound to rely on its security forces and on those of the occupier, Israel, to enforce its will.
Of course, throughout history, national liberation movements have had to marginalise their own radicals and fanatics in order to reach the Promised Land. This was true of Zionism, of the Italian Risorgimento, and most recently of the Catholics in Northern Ireland. But never did the outcast faction actually represent the democratically elected majority. A peace process conceived as a means to weaken and isolate the winners of an election – Hamas – is unlikely to gain much traction.
Like George W Bush, President Barack Obama confines his diplomatic engagement largely to friends rather than adversaries. This, more than anything else, explains the growing disconnection between Arab public opinion and the Obama administration.
The assumption – dear to the architects of the current process – that peace can be achieved by driving a wedge between "moderates" and "extremists" is a fatal misconception. The paradox here is double. Not only does one negotiate with the illegitimate "moderates", but it is precisely because of their legitimacy deficit that the moderates are forced to be unyielding on core issues, lest the radicals label them treasonous.
The Palestinian negotiators' dangerous lack of legitimacy – and, indeed, the disorientation of the entire Palestinian national movement – is reflected in the return of the PLO to its pre-Arafat days, when it was the tool of Arab regimes instead of an autonomous movement. The green light was given to the current negotiators by the Arab League, not by the elected representatives of the Palestinian people.
Coppied by http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/06/netanyahu-abbas-palestinian-legitimacy-deficit
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