Praise for Abbas was way too late

Praise for Abbas was way too late

I might be wrong but I thought I detected a little flirting going on between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her guest at the State Department on Thursday, the new German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

Perhaps flirting is a bit strong but there was definitely a "chemistry" between them shall we say, as they addressed journalists in a packed suite on the upper floors of the U.S. State Department in the Washington district of Foggy Bottom.

In some ways I felt a bit sorry for the German delegation.

They were so obviously thrilled to be in DC but all the hacks wanted to ask about was what he thought about GM retaining Opel and what she thought about Mahmoud Abbas declining to stand for election as Palestinian President in January.

On the first point, Westerwelle repeated his stance that German tax payers must be paid back the money they've given to GM to bailout its Opel division.

On the second point Mrs Clinton praised Abbas' efforts to bring about Middle East peace and implied she'd known about his plans to step aside for more than a few days.

"I saw him on Saturday and George Mitchell saw him on Monday. He described the challenges he faced. He reiterated his personal commitment to the search for Middle East peace. I look forward to working with him in any new capacity," she said.

But praising Abbas now that he's decided to step down is one thing, the message in past months and in particular this past week, quite another.

In Israel last Saturday, Mrs Clinton had warm words for Israel's Prime Minister for his limited settlement building plans - a far cry from what the Obama administration originally wanted - which was for the construction to stop altogether.

"No new starts, for example, is unprecedented" she told a news conference in Tel Aviv on October 31st.

But that praise for the Israeli Prime Minister and the US failure to force the Israelis to freeze all construction may have been the final straw for Abbas. who said this during his address to the Palestinian people on Thursday:

"The stated position of the United States in relation to settlements and Judaisation and annexation of Jerusalem are well known and appreciated by us. However we were surprised by their favouring of the Israeli position."

The Obama administration has been talking up a possible breakthrough in Mid-East peace since before his Cairo speech in June.

That early promise of engagement has yet to be matched by action and Palestinians now fear Obama won't be able to encourage Israel to make other compromises necessary to complete a final peace deal.

Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who is counted as a possible successor to Abbas, put it this way:

"I think this announcement is a serious declaration of the failure of the efforts for true peace process, due to the Israeli policy of expanding and continuing settlements and to the failure of the U.S. to take impartial position."

So now Abbas has had enough and says he won't stand for re-election.

The U.S. State Department says it wants to bridge the gaps that exist and bring both sides to the negotiating table as fast as possible. It thinks Abbas is wrong to get hung up on the settlement issue before talks can begin.

It remains to be seen if the U.S. will move to try to encourage Abbas to run again or if it prefers to look to the future with another Palestinian head of state in the early part of next year.

- John Terrett, Washington. November 5th 2009