Occupied East Jerusalem, August 5, 2007

A few days after the 2006 parliamentary elections in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, E. Jerusalem and Gaza, which Hamas won decisively, Fatah leaders and activists held a "soul-searching" meeting in Dura, near Hebron.

Nabil Amr, now Mahmoud Abbas’s political advisor, who failed to win a seat, attended the meeting, apparently in order to boost his defeated faction’s moral

And when a Fatah activist and student leader asked Amr how Fatah could rehabilitate itself and regain stature and preeminence among Palestinians, Amr reportedly said, without patting an eyelash "Concessions, concessions, concessions."

Amr often describes himself as a "secular pragmatist" and "firm believer in real politike"

In 2003, he played a leading role in effecting American-backed efforts to weaken the late Palestinian leader, along with people like Mahmoud Abbas and Muhammed Dahlan.

The "gang of conspirers" as Arafat called his critics within Fatah, sought, with full American backing, to strip the late Palestinian leader of at least some of his powers, including control over security agencies.

Arafat’s presence was then quite dominant and Amr, Abbas and Dahlan couldn’t successfully challenge Arafat’s autocratic leadership. In fact, on 20 July, 2004, Amr himself was shot and nearly killed by a Fatah gunman, apparently on instructions from Arafat who had apparently thought that Amr was going too far in criticizing and undermining his benefactor. A few weeks later, Amr got his right leg amputated in Germany.

Amr seems to have never forgiven his would-be assassins and especially those standing behind them, namely the so-called Arafat loyalists.

Golden opportunity

Now, with Arafat no longer around, and Hamas nearly completely isolated in Gaza, and with Israel and the Bush administration cordially embracing Abbas and his Ramallah-based regime, Amr seems to have finally seized a "golden opportunity" to promote his long-held agenda, namely to reach peace with Israel at any price and crush, with America’s (and Israel’s) help, all opposition to such a peace.

Indeed, in the aftermath of the mid-June events in Gaza, Amr was among the most vitriolic opponents to any rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas. In a plethora of TV interviews, he used terms like "criminals" and "enemies of peace" to describe the Islamic movement.

In fact, it is amply clear that Amr believes that the best and most effective way to defeat Hamas and avenge Fatah’s defeat in Gaza is by conceding to Israel on the cardinal issues of the Arab Israeli conflict such as the fate of Jerusalem, the paramount right of return and the erstwhile national constant of "total Israeli withdrawal to the 4th of June, 1967.

Moreover, it is widely believed that distancing Hamas from the "national discourse," at least for the time being, will enable Abbas and his coterie of aides and hangers-on to pursue their " bold peace agenda" without having to worry about opposition from Hamas and other Palestinian factions.

This explains the fact that Abbas, Amr, et al, have suddenly stopped invoking Palestinian national constants, the so-called "national red lines," signaling a propensity to compromise on the core issues of the Palestinian issue..

The leaders of the American-backed regime in Ramallah have so far refused to confirm the occurrence of any deviation from the long-observed red lines..

However, the way Abbas and his aides and advisors have been behaving since Hamas’s takeover of Gaza nearly seven weeks ago, suggests that the Ramallah leadership is contemplating "bolder steps" vis-à-vis talks with Israel, including accepting a prospective Israeli-imposed solution that would leave the vast bulk of Israeli colonies in the Wes Bank, including in East Jerusalem, intact, in Israel’s hands.

More to the point, the same leadership seems to have effectively given up on "the right of return" for the estimated five million Palestinian refugees, still languishing in squalid refugee camps all over the Middle East.

The unrestrained harrowing toward Israel, which is being justified as "Palestinian reciprocity" to Israel’s "good will gestures," such as releasing frozen Palestinian tax revenues and keeping the Rafah border crossing closed to punish Gazans and Hamas, is actually reminiscent to the secret contacts between the PLO and the Yitzhak Rabin government in 1991-1992, which eventually gave birth to a deformed brat known as the Oslo Agreement.

The "Oslo-2" talks being conducted now, even if they don’t carry the Norwegian capital appellation, are certainly going to be a further corruption of the original corrupt Declaration of Principles.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hopes that Abbas will consent to a new road map for peace which can be reached outside any international umbrella, including the putative regional-international conference slated to take place in November.

According to some Fatah insiders, the Israeli-sought accords, which might take the form of a new declaration of principles, will include the following features.

First, the creation of a Palestinian state on unspecific parts of the West Bank with temporary borders. Such a state would have "authority" (not sovereignty) over 95% of Palestinians. (Notice the authority would be over the people not the land).

Second, such a state would have "territorial continuity" as much as possible, and in case such continuity proves impossible, Israel will see to it that travel movement between Palestinian towns and population centers is unhindered.

Third, the core issues, including Jerusalem, the refugees and Jewish settlements, will be discussed at a later (unspecified ) stage."

And to induce the Palestinians to accept the proposed roadmap, the upcoming regional conference will offer the PA a package of generous economic inducements, including billions of dollars from the donor countries.

The Israelis and the Americans must be hoping that with a combination of fanfare, artificially-induced euphoria and especially financial incentives, the Abbas leadership will enthusiastically embrace the final chance for peace.

Then Abbas would be asked to call for general elections at least in the West Bank where he would make sure, by whatever means necessary, that Fatah would be the winner.

This scenario, a poor mimicry of the Oslo agreement, is very real and is being secretly discussed between Israel and the Ramallah leadership.

However, as the original Oslo Agreement was doomed, because of its inherent flaws and vagueness, the present secret talks will also lead nowhere since Israel refuses to take a strategic decision to give up the spoils of the 1967 war and deal positively with Palestinian demands for a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee crisis pursuant UN resolution 149.

Finally, it is imperative to remember that Mahmoud Abbas is not Yasser Arafat.

Hence, it is more than possible that Abbas, by going too far in giving concessions to Israel at the expense of Palestinian rights, would be placing his own political, even physical, life in jeopardy.