Hanan Ashrawi Resigns From the Palestinian Authority
by Hugh Fitzgerald
The unpleasant-in-all-respects — morally, mentally, physically — Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian Authority’s Executive Council, who along with the late Saeb Erekat was the “moderate” and “acceptable” face of the Palestinians, has just announced her resignation. The report is here: “Longtime Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi resigns,” by Aaron Boxerman, Times of Israel, December 9, 2020:
Senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Hanan Ashrawi announced on Wednesday that she had submitted her resignation from the pan-Palestinian organization.
In a letter publicly confirming her decision, Ashrawi said she’d notified Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in late November, and the resignation would take effect by the end of the year. Abbas accepted her resignation in a laconic statement on Wednesday evening.
According to widely circulated reports in Arabic-language media, Ashrawi was frustrated by the Palestinian Authority’s recent decision to renew security coordination with Israel after months of disconnect, a decision she allegedly said was made by Abbas alone.
The decision to renew cooperation with Israel was made for three reasons. First, Abbas needs the security cooperation of Israel, particularly in its sharing of intelligence about Hamas and PIJ operatives in the West Bank, who might threaten his rule, and even his life. It is this renewal of security coordination that according to reports led to her resignation. But there are other reasons, which we will get to.
Second, having refused for many months to take any of tax money Israel had been collecting for the PA, because the Israelis dared to deduct from the amount to be transferred the sums that the PA devoted to its “Pay-For-Slay” program, Abbas finally yielded to reality. With the PA’s economy in free fall, Abbas deigned to accept, at the beginning of December, the $1.1 billion Israel had by then accumulated in taxes collected for the PA , after deducting the amounts given to terrorists and their families in the “Pay-For-Slay” program. He’s learned the hard way that beggars can’t be choosers. Third, the pandemic was slow to take off among the Palestinians but now is hitting them hard in both the West Bank and Gaza; it’s essential that the P.A be able to coordinate with Israel on fighting the pandemic, including the PA’s possible reliance on Israel for medical equipment, ICU units, and above all, vaccines. Israel has now managed to buy enough doses of Pfizer, Moderna, and Astra-Zeneca vaccines to inoculate 12 million people, while its own population is 8.7 million. That leaves 3.3 million vaccines that could be supplied to the PA. And even if the PA obtains vaccines elsewhere, it will still need to cooperate with Israel on the receipt, proper storage (Israel has the necessary -minus 70 degrees Celsius storage facilities, the PA does not), and distribution of those vaccines. That is another reason Abbas renewed cooperation with Israel.
The PA severed ties with Israel in May in protest of an Israeli plan to annex parts of the West Bank in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s controversial peace plan. Coordination between the two sides did not resume until the victory of US President-elect Joe Biden over Trump, which soothed Palestinian fears that annexation was still on the table.
Ashrawi said only that she and Abbas had “a candid and amicable discussion” when discussing her departure.
“Regrettably, news of my resignation was leaked from ‘senior sources’ in a misleading and irresponsible manner that led to conjecture and rumors,” Ashrawi said.
Ashrawi is a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee — the most powerful body in the organization recognized by the international community as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
In practice, the role of the PLO has diminished considerably since the Oslo Accords, which established the Palestinian Authority. The PLO still exists in a largely symbolic manner, but the PA controls affairs on the ground in the West Bank.
“I believe it is time to carry out the required reform and to activate the PLO in a manner which restores its standing and role, including respecting the mandate of the Executive Committee rather than its marginalization and exclusion from decision-making,” Ashrawi said in her resignation letter.
As a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Ashrawi naturally wants that body to be given back the authority it once possessed within the PLO, and the PLO itself to regain the power it has steadily lost to the Palestinian Authority, and its president, Mahmoud Abbas. Her resignation is partly prompted by her anger over this loss of power, as it has more and more devolved into the hands of the despotic Abbas.
“The Palestinian political system needs renewal and reinvigoration with the inclusion of youth, women and additional qualified professionals,” she added.
This pointed remark about “renewal and reinvigoration” refers to Mahmoud Abbas, the 85-year-old who was elected to a four-year term as President in 2005 and is now in the 15th year of that four-year-term. In his $13 million palace in Ramallah, with his $50 million private plane waiting nearby, Abbas brooks no dissent. He has established a government of cronies and relatives intent on enriching themselves. Abbas himself, and his two sons Nasser and Tareq, have amassed a fortune of $400 million. Ashrawi is opposed not only to Abbas’ renewing cooperation with Israel, but at his corrupt and despotic rule. She won’t say that aloud, not wanting to “betray” the Palestinian cause, but it seems clear from her choice of words: “the Palestinian political system needs renewal and reinvigoration” – as opposed to the sclerotic 15-year rule of Mahmoud Abbas. It needs to include “youth, women, and additional qualified professionals” (meaning new faces, including technocrats, to replace Abbas and his cronies).
Along with her late colleague former PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat, who died of COVID-19 in November, Ashrawi had long been one of the Palestinian cause’s most visible advocates in the Western press. Her eloquent, academic English — Ashrawi received her doctorate in comparative literature in the United States — made her eminently accessible to Anglophone journalists seeking the official viewpoint in Ramallah.
She and Saeb Erekat were the “moderate” faces, both of them perfectly at home in English, who spoke on behalf of the PA with the Western media. Erekat’s death left Ashrawi alone to perform this function. She may have been prompted to resign partly because her job as that sole “moderate” English-speaking spokesman had now become overwhelming. And a close colleague’s early death concentrates the mind. She must have asked herself: Do I really want to work for someone I detest — Mahmoud Abbas — to the end of my days?
After decades of pro-Palestinian activism, Ashrawi became the spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace talks with Israel. When the Palestinian Authority was formed in the mid-1990s, she became a minister in the nascent PA government before her resignation in 1998. Ashrawi was later elected to the Palestinian parliament in the 2006 elections on former prime minister Salam Fayyad’s Third Way ticket.
She was elected to the Palestinian Parliament in 2006, the year after Abbas assumed the presidency of the PA. Since then, Abbas has not only refused to hold another presidential election, but has not held another parliamentary election either. And he has steadily taken power away from all other bodies, including both the Palestinian Parliament and the PLO Executive Committee, and transferred it to his own office. Ashrawi has complained more than once that the PLO’s Executive Committee, on which she served, had been marginalised “and [excluded] from decision-making.” By whom? By Mahmoud Abbas.
While considered a moderate in Palestinian politics, Ashrawi’s strong support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) made her a controversial figure in Israel. Her longtime association with more hardline figures, such as former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, also led to accusations that she was a convenient, moderate public face for less palatable elements of the Palestinian cause.
Her “moderation” was, like that of Saeb Erekat, merely a front. She was as hardline as any of her colleagues. She supports BDS. She is a Holocaust minimizer. She was devoted to that arch-terrorist Yassir Arafat. But her use of English made her a go-to source for Western reporters, who either misunderstood, or shared, her anti-Israel malevolence. She famously had a romance with ABC anchor man Peter Jennings when he was a correspondent in Beirut; later, he would often have her on his nightly news program, allowing her to spread her anti-Israel pro-Palestinian propaganda; when she was unavailable, Jennings broadcast his views on Israel, scarcely distinguishable from hers. He famously described the terrorists who murdered Israeli Olympics athletes (unarmed, helpless) as “commandos.”
Ashrawi has been an advocate for accountability in Palestinian governance, having founded the Palestinian branch of Transparency International, known as AMAN.
Ashrawi said Wednesday she would remain active in Palestinian public life outside of the PLO when her resignation goes into effect at the end of December.
“I will continue to serve the Palestinian people and our just cause in every capacity outside public office,” Ashrawi said.
Summary:
Ashrawi has finally resigned from the PA for the following reasons:
First, she disagrees with Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to renew security cooperation with Israel. This is the only reason that has been given for her resignation, but there are others. In inveighing against that renewal of security ties to Israel, Ashrawi fails to appreciate that Israeli intelligence has helped the PA keep track of, and foil attacks directed at it and its leaders (including Abbas) by members of Hamas and PIJ. She has no idea, either, how important cooperation with Israel is both for the PA’s financial state and for its ability to contain the pandemic.
Second, Ashrawi is clearly fed up with the despotism of Abbas, who is in the 15th year of his four-year term as President, with no new elections in sight. She is angry about the loss of power by the PLO Executive Committee, and by other bodies, such as Parliament, that have seen their responsibilities steadily moved to the office of President Abbas.
Third, she wants more technocrats in the government –her resignation statement called for “additional qualified professionals” — , and fewer unsuitable cronies and relatives of the President and his associates. The mismanagement and corruption in the PA have gotten out of hand. She knows that the PA provides sinecures (low or no-show jobs) in the bureaucracy to the relatives of Abbas’ cronies; this practice keeps them loyal to him. While she’s not done badly — she has a net worth of $5 million – she’s kept her corruption within reasonable limits; Abbas, with his $400 million nest egg, has not.
Fourth, in her resignation statement she said that “the Palestinian political system needs renewal and reinvigoration with the inclusion of youth, women and additional qualified professionals.” The “inclusion of youth.” Everyone knew what she meant. Mahmoud Abbas is 85.. Enough said.
Fifth, the death of Saeb Erekat deprived her of her closest colleague, another one described, just like Ashrawi herself, as a “passionate and tireless advocate for his people.” This has increased her work load, as the senior English-language spokesperson for the PA, and surely made her consider if she wanted to spend her last years defending a scheming despot whom she cannot stand. She has decided against it.
This truly awful woman has been heaped with so many honors from so many foolish groups. Here are some:
Ashrawi is the recipient of numerous awards from all over the world, including the distinguished French decoration, “Officier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur” in 2006; the 2005 Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation; the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize ; the 2002 Olof Palme Prize; the 1999 International Women of Hope “Bread and Roses”; the Defender of Democracy Award – Parliamentarians for Global Action; the 50 Women of the Century; the 1996 Jane Addams International Women’s Leadership Award; the Pearl S. Buck Foundation Women’s Award; the 1994 Pio Manzu Gold Medal Peace Award; and the 1992 Marissa Bellisario International Peace Award.
However, there seem to be no more such awards for Ashrawi after 2006. Did the world find out a bit more about her Holocaust-denying antisemitic views? One hopes so.
I won’t be missing her. Will you?
First published in Jihad Watch.