Fayyad resigns – Obama peacemaking in tatters

By Leo Rennet, AMERICAN THINKER

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has called it quits. His resignation has been accepted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. And with Fayyad gone, the Obama administration has suffered a huge setback in its peace-making efforts — a quixotic undertaking to begin with. Now there definitely is no serious or even halfway dependable Palestinian leader left with whom to kick-start negotiations.

Fayyad, with his Western finance credentials, was the latest Washington hope for resumption of peace talks. Twenty-four hours before Fayyad and Abbas officially parted ways, Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned Fayyad in a last-ditch effort to get him to rescind his resignation. Kerry implored Fayyad not to go. It proved futile.

This is a bitter pill for Kerry to swallow. But he only has himself to blame. Self-delusion never has been a promising foundation for genuine peace-making.

Following up on President Obama’s recent trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah, Kerry had started his own shuttle diplomacy, seeking to build a modicum of halfway-stable relations between Israel and the Palestinians — with the lure of a Kerry bag of economic aid to the Palestinian Authority. Now, there’s nobody left on the Palestinian side to use such dollars for their intended purpose. Abbas presides over a corrupt kleptocracy.

Fayyad had ingratiated himself with the Obama administration by building a small semblance of governmental institutions in pursuit of statehood. Fayyad out of the picture leaves the Palestinians with proto-emperors without clothes.

The Fayyad-Abbas feud was an open secret for a long time. Even as a Western-revered prime minister, Fayyad had few, if any, domestic cards to play. His problem was that he lacked any real political base. Leaders of Abbas’s Fatah movement hated him, and the Hamas regime in Gaza called him a Western stooge.
He was a thin reed on which to base efficacious peace talks. And now he’s gone, leaving the Obama administration’s gung-ho push for a two-state solution without a political/diplomatic leg to stand on.

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief if McClatchy Newspapers.

April 14, 2013 | 18 Comments »

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18 Comments / 18 Comments

  1. jeff Said:

    Who said he is gone? He just is no longer with Abbas. Kerry might have future plans for him. I don’t trust any of them.

    Also, who will be the next PM?

  2. Honey Bee Said:

    I stole all your adjatives before yawl could over-adjatates us all.

    no such thing as too much adjatation or too much of a good thing! 🙂

  3. @ Bernard Ross:

    I’am stunned, agassed, shocked,horrified,unblieveable turn of events,unimaginable,there you go, I stole all your adjatives before yawl could over-adjatates us all.

  4. We as usual can count on the Pal to self-destroy and claim that it is the Jews fault. Arab Muslim corruption is the antithesis of what democracy is about. They time after time prove beyond any doubt that they have NO interest in a state which was to start with a FABRICATION of the West to undermine the Jews of Israel.
    The war on the Jews continues unabated.

  5. Who said he is gone? He just is no longer with Abbas. Kerry might have future plans for him. I don’t trust any of them.

  6. Fayyad out of the picture leaves the Palestinians with proto-emperors without clothes.

    fig leaf gone? Soon the european robots will wonder where all their terror funding money has disappeared to.
    chickens, home, roost?
    stay tune for the next episode of “Suckers” 🙂

  7. . And with Fayyad gone, the Obama administration has suffered a huge setback in its peace-making efforts……Now there definitely is no serious or even halfway dependable Palestinian leader left with whom to kick-start negotiations.

    I thought that the fayad quarrel involved finance and corruption and had nothing to do with peace talks????? What id does is remove the fig leaf from the corruption which will be a bitter pill for those touting Pal competence in managing a state. It is also making the euro position more untenable especially their aid funding terror. Now all we need is for erdogan to get involved and we can happily wave bye bye to a final agreement. 🙂 Perhaps everyone wants to stall the process but has to feed the street.

  8. No one forced Israel’s leaders to prop up the corrupt and anti-Semitic PA.

    That was their own free choice and they can’t excuse it with the alibi of American pressure because there was none.

  9. Quixotic is a good descriptive word for this damn failure and sham which has given all of Israel’s enemies in the media the opportunity to bash Israel, find credence in questioning its existence, stop growth and economic development, create the illusion that the only problem in the Middle East is that Arabs need to take over Israel, and it has given terrorists a nice cover to terrorize and kill with impunity and receive the love of the intentional community for their barbaric behavior in Gaza, etc.