Arab Expert: Abbas Fears Assassination
Director of the Center of Palestine Studies in the UAE says PA chief taking part in negotiations to avoid Arafat's fate.
By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 1/17/2012, 9:03 AM
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
Flash 90
The Director of the Center of Palestine Studies in the UAE, Aldrawi Ibrahim Masri, believes Palestinian Authority (PA) chief Mahmoud Abbas agreed to participate in the Quartet-sponsored negotiations in Jordan because he thinks that he will be killed otherwise.
According to the Palestine Today news agency, Masri said that Abbas "feared the fate of Yasser Arafat," his predecessor. Masri believes Arafat did not die of an illness but was assassinated.
He noted that Arafat was surrounded and trapped by Israeli forces in the Muqata complex in Ramallah in the period before his death. He fails to note that this was preceded by Arafat's launching of a savagely effective campaign of mass murder against Israeli civilians, referred to as the Oslo War (or, by Arabs, as the Second Intifada).
Masri said the reconciliation meeting a month ago between Abbas and Hamas Political Bureau chief Khaled Mashaal was fruitful, but the more recent meeting in Amman between PA and Israeli negotiators shows that there is pressure to end the PA reconciliation move.