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9:33 AM, Mar 21, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPERAt a press conference today in Ramallah, President Barack Obama addressed the assembled journalists while standing under a Yasser Arafat banner:
 Photo Credit: Newscom
"Hope everyone saw presser. If not there, it was notable that Obama and Abbas spoke from under a banner bearing pictures of Arafat and Abbas. Also another big banner was hanging on wall nearby with Abbas kind of superimposed on Arafat," the White House pool reporter notes.
Arafat, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting has noted, "is known to many as the “father of modern terrorism.” Below is a timeline of some of the key events of his life and terrorist acts with which he was associated."
CAMERA notes, "In fact, groups under Arafat's direct or indirect command – including Fatah, Black September, Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – were responsible for hundreds of bombings, hijackings, assassinations and other attacks, including the 1972 murder of 11 of Israel's Olympic athletes in Munich, the 1973 murder of the American ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, and the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruiseship (resulting in the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer)."
12:20 PM, Sep 28, 2012 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMSOn September 27, the chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas (who is also president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Fatah Party) spoke to the U.N. General Assembly.
Read more... 8:03 AM, May 24, 2012 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMSThe belief that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is inches away or perhaps only one long negotiating session away never dies. Not even 64 years after the birth of the state of Israel and 45 years after Israel’s conquest of Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem in 1967.
Read more... 1:33 PM, Apr 23, 2012 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMSThe situation of the Palestinian Authority is grim. Its diplomatic offensive against Israel in the United Nations did not win it statehood, there are no serious negotiations with Israel because the PA refuses them, Hamas controls Gaza, and Palestinian elections keep getting postponed despite the “Arab Spring” and the wave of elections in Arab countries. Internally, relations between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were recently so poor that for several days Abbas apparently refused even to speak to Fayyad.
Read more... 12:00 AM, Apr 16, 2012 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMSThe chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas (who is also president of the Palestinian Authority), has drafted a letter to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for delivery this week. What is apparently the current state of the draft is published by Times of Israel, a terrific new web site about the Middle East.
Read more... 3:20 PM, Jan 26, 2012 • By JONATHAN SCHANZERMohammed Dahlan, the former security official for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Gaza Strip, is in a lot of trouble.
Read more... Oct 3, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 03 • By LEE SMITHSome have praised President Obama’s September 20 speech at the U.N. as his most rousing defense of Israel to date. Perhaps so—though that’s not saying much. It rather seems to us that the president merits some credit—but only some—for a growing self-awareness, both of his own limits and of the finer points of American Middle East policy.
Read more... 8:01 AM, Sep 9, 2011 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
London—Several days of Middle East discussions in London have not contributed to any sense of optimism about the near, or for that matter medium-range, future on the Israeli-Palestinian front. It did not appear to the officials with whom I spoke that PA president Mahmoud Abbas can be persuaded to drop his foolish U.N. gambit. The only good news was that the UK will, this fall, adopt laws protecting Israeli officials from the politicized prosecutions that have kept them out of Britain.
Read more... The Arab Spring and Palestinian democracy.11:00 AM, Aug 24, 2011 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
With the advent of the Arab Spring, several former Arab tyrannies (Egypt, Tunisia, now Libya, perhaps Syria next) have thrown off dictators and are, or will be, moving toward elections. And in Jordan and Morocco, the kings have announced new constitutional arrangements that move powers to elected officials.
Read more... Missing from the Bibi vs. Barack drama in Washington was the man who really torpedoed the peace process, Mahmoud AbbasJun 6, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 36 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
Read more... 12:54 PM, May 10, 2011 • By JONATHAN SCHANZER
The Palestinians zealously celebrated last week’s unity deal between Hamas and Fatah. Young men in both the West Bank and Gaza cruised around in their cars, honking and flashing the victory sign out of their windows. There was dancing, singing, and firecrackers. Indeed, the civil war between the two most powerful Palestinian factions appears to have ended.
Read more... 9:29 AM, Apr 29, 2011 • By ELLIOTT ABRAMS
The agreement between Fatah and Hamas may not last very long. The last agreement, in 2007, failed and led to increased violence between the two groups—and finally to Hamas’s coup in Gaza. Hamas and Fatah militants have been killing each other for decades and reconciliation seems more a ploy for public consumption than a serious goal.
Read more... Dinner with Mahmoud Abbas.10:05 AM, Jul 15, 2010 • By GABRIEL SCHOENFELD
If Israel and its neighbors are ever to arrive at a stable and genuine peace, Palestinian incitement of hatred –and its predilection for murderous acts – must cease. It is an elementary proposition, and one to which the Palestinian Authority has unambiguously agreed.
Read more...
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