The Stateless Statesman

Despite criticism from every quarter, Mahmoud Abbas' slow, nonviolent campaign for Palestinian statehood just might be working

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Joachim Ladefoged for TIME

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The dramatic reduction in violence has many senior Israeli officials now speaking of the Palestinian issue as a conflict to be managed rather than solved. For many Palestinians, however, the cooperation with an occupying army can be tolerated for only so long. Consider the position of one of Abbas' appointees, Qaddura Fares, who runs the PA's prisoner-affairs office. Fares says his nephew was arrested by Israeli troops, released, then taken away a month later by Palestinian security and questioned about whether he had ties to the militant group Hamas. He was released last year. "What's the difference?" Fares asks. "I will be ready to arrest my nephew--my son!--if in one year we achieve a state. But to arrest these people to appear beautiful to the Americans or to look professional?" The line between cooperation and collaboration is both thin and combustible, like a fuse.

"Exactly!" says Abbas. "Sometimes they are whispering, 'Are we collaborators?' We don't want to be collaborators for anybody. We are working for our own benefit, for our own future." But what future? In his latest U.N. address, Abbas declared, "There is still a chance--maybe the last--to save the two-state solution and salvage peace." Yet privately, neither side believes the other is serious about making a deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu campaigned against the Oslo Accords. In 2009, Israel announced it was freezing construction of new homes in its West Bank settlements for 10 months, but Abbas complained that the moratorium contained exceptions that permitted certain construction to carry on. Amid disagreement over the freeze, talks foundered in 2010. The building continues. "Every way is closed to me," Abbas told TIME last year.

If a new uprising, or intifadeh, erupts, Palestinians say it will come in the space between the death of hope for the Oslo Accords and whatever takes their place. One option is to abandon the PA and force Israel to once again administer the territories it occupies, as it did before 1994--a burden Israel doesn't want and a situation that would almost certainly lead to more fighting. "We are at a crossroads," says Bassam Salhi, head of the leftist Palestinian People's Party. "The problem is more than a problem of Abu Mazen. It's a problem of this process, which began 20 years ago and has brought nothing till now." Palestinians also complain bitterly about corruption within the Authority, and some say Abbas uses its security forces to intimidate critics. But all complaints are aggravated by the limbo that Palestinians find intolerable. Says Mohammed Mahmoud, a protester in downtown Ramallah: "The people are upset about the economic situation because there are no solutions for the political situation."

Militant Youth

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