Jordan, at that time, had become the new headquarters for Arafat and the PLO. But it would not be for long. The Palestinian guerrillas were not welcomed there, particularly as they attacked Israel from Jordanian territory, eliciting Israeli reprisals. Increasingly, the Palestinians operated as a state within a state. Jordan’s King Hussein had lost control of his own territory. The monarch attempted to rein in the group but found that Arafat was unwilling to yield. The result was the Black September war of 1970 that resulted in a victory for the monarchy but also in an estimated 3,000 Palestinian casualties.24
After Black September, Abbas returned to Damascus, although the majority of Palestinian guerrillas fighting under Arafat had moved to Lebanon, where they prepared for the next phase of the Palestinian struggle. Why Abbas chose not to remain with the bulk of the movement is not known. But he later recalled that his time in Syria allowed him to learn more about the enemy: “I devoted much of my time to learning about Israeli society. There had been a general phenomenon in the ranks of the Palestinian revolution, from the leadership to the [foot soldiers], which was a lack of attention paid to the composition of Israel, which we were fighting.”25
But Abbas was not simply reading about Israel. During the early 1970s, by his own admission, he also raised funds to sustain Fatah’s campaign against the Jewish state.26 This is important to note because it marked a rather gruesome period of Palestinian violence, which included the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games and the 1973 attack on the Saudi embassy in Sudan that led to the murder of the US embassy’s chief of mission. Years later, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), the mastermind of the Munich Massacre, suggested that although Abbas did not know what the money was being spent on, he was responsible, in part, for raising the funds that financed the Munich Massacre.27
By the late 1970s, it appeared that Abbas had assumed a somewhat more important role within the PLO. News reports from that time period suggest that amid the PLO’s drive for greater recognition, he was an interlocutor with Iraq, Syria,28 Qatar,29 Tunisia,30 Morocco, Libya,31 Saudi Arabia,32 Yemen, and Kuwait.33
His diplomatic activity extended beyond the Arab world to the Soviet bloc, with documented meetings in Moscow34 and Prague.35 In February 1980, he visited Moscow, where he met with officials from the USSR Committee for Solidarity with the Countries of Asia and the Soviet-Palestinian Friendship Society.36
From what we can tell, he served as a bridge between the USSR and the PLO. In this capacity, he put a Palestinian imprint on the Soviets’ anti-American propaganda. In 1980, he wrote in a Russian newspaper, “The USA is counteracting any plan directed at allowing the Palestinians to create their own independent state and acquire sovereignty,” and he made sure to note that the Palestinians had a “reliable and faithful partner in this struggle—the Soviet Union.”37
Among other initiatives, Abbas advocated for closer ties between Saudi Arabia, a patron of the Palestinians, and the Soviet Union.38 This marriage was unlikely given that the Saudis already were heavily invested in sending mujahedin to fight the Red Army in Afghanistan.
Abbas also forged closer ties with Cuba, signing a “five-year work agreement on solidarity and cooperation” between Cuba and the Palestinian resistance. In fact, Abbas was once described as the president of the Cuba-Palestine Friendship Association.39
Although Abbas was never identified as a top leader of the PLO during this period, he could be described as a rising figure. He was a member of the Fatah Central Committee and later joined the PLO Executive Committee.40 As Abbas notes on his presidential website, “I was not present at the national council meeting that chose me. . . . When I was consulted about it while in Moscow, I told them I refused. But when I returned to Damascus I found myself a member of the committee, and I did not participate in its work for two full years, until the [Israeli] invasion of Beirut.”41
The Israelis invaded Lebanon in June 1982 in an effort to flush out the PLO. In his capacity as a PLO official, Abbas called on the Arab states to provide aid to Palestinian groups fighting against Israel.42 When the Arab states sat out the war, Abbas began to prepare for the flight of the PLO from Lebanon to Tunisia. According to Abbas, “When the Israeli invasion happened and they imposed a blockade of Beirut, I realized that a phase had ended, and that a new phase was coming. I moved to Tunis, as the Tunisian government agreed to receive the [Palestinian] leadership, and it was a lifeline to the Palestinian revolution, which lived a fertile period of its life [there].”43
The year 1982 was an important one for Abbas for other reasons. He defended his PhD in history at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.44 Abbas’s scholarship, however, has long been a subject of controversy.
Abbas’s thesis, titled “The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement 1933–1945,” was published as a book in Amman in 1984: The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.45 According to Abbas, “The Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.”46 Additionally, Abbas wrote, “Following the war, word was spread that six million Jews were amongst the victims and that a war of extermination was aimed primarily at the Jews . . . The truth is that no one can either confirm or deny this figure. In other words, it is possible that the number of Jewish victims reached six million, but at the same time it is possible that the figure is much smaller—below one million.”47
In addition, Abbas asserted that a “partnership was established between Hitler’s Nazis and the leadership of the Zionist movement. . . . [the Zionists gave] permission to every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine.”48
Finally, Abbas’s book touted “a scientific study” of French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, who “denies that the gas chambers were for murdering people, and claims that they were only for incinerating bodies, out of concern for the spread of disease and infection in the region.”49 Notably, in February 2012, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—a public Holocaust denier—presented Faurisson an award for “courage, strength, and force.”50
In later years, as Abbas was subject to increased Israeli and Western media scrutiny, he disavowed his own work. In 1995, Abbas told the Israeli daily Maariv, “Today I would not have made such remarks.”51 In 2003, as Bush touted him as Arafat’s successor, he went a step further, saying, “The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it.”52 In July 2011, as PA president, Abbas told a Dutch newspaper, “If they say six million, I say six million. . . . I do not deny the Holocaust.”53
Remarkably, despite this record, he emerged as one of the PLO figures responsible for outreach to the Israelis and the Jewish Diaspora. Beginning in the early 1980s, he began to engage with left-leaning Israelis.54 As he later stated, PLO policy was “to create relations with Jewish forces inside Israel . . . who recognize the PLO and our right to self-determination and an independent state.”55 In March 1983, for example, Abbas led a Palestinian delegation that met with members of Israel’s Communist Party in Prague.56
As Abbas later recalled, “We hoped that our meetings with the Peace Now movement and other Oriental [Sephardic] Jews as a group could form a bridge between Arabs and Israelis.” Three major meetings took place, according to Abbas. The first took place on November 6, 1986, in Romania. The second was in Hungary on June 12, 1987, and the final meeting took place in Spain on July 5, 1987.57 These were the building blocks for what eventually evolved into the peace process.
The meetings that Abbas conducted with the Israelis and world Jewry did not take place in a vacuum. In the early 1980s, even as its cadres continued to carry out grisly terrorist attacks around the world, the PLO engaged in strategic outreach. As
Abbas told Voice of Palestine radio, the goal was to reach out to “the peoples of Western Europe—and to the American people, and convince them of the justice of our cause. We must not leave the arena empty and let the Zionists and Western imperialism have their say in this arena. . . . Pressure must be applied to public opinion and this applies to America in particular.”58
The Jewish outreach portfolio was, to say the least, one of the least coveted portfolios a PLO official might have, given the organization’s animus toward the Jewish state. As one Palestinian insider notes, “He was a pioneer of this area. But it was a terrible portfolio. That said, it helped him gain a foothold in the leadership.”59
In his own way, Abbas continued to advance within the Palestinian system. His rise was by no means meteoric. In 1983, he was selected to be a part of Fatah’s financial supervision committee,60 and in 1984, he was appointed head of the PLO’s Arab and international relations portfolio (a position he held until 2000).61 There was no doubt that Arafat still ran the show, while Abbas merely contributed to the cause when and where he was asked.
Abbas typically refrained from engaging in activities that tied him to Palestinian terrorism, but he did engage in some rare violent rhetoric. In October 1985, he told the Egyptian newspaper Al-Gomhuria, “The Palestine revolution would embark on a campaign of attacks against US interests wherever they might be, because the USA was not seeking peace but the capitulation of the PLO.”62 But relative to the rest of the organization, as Arafat biographers Janet and John Wallach noted, Abbas maintained “a low profile.”63
Mahmoud Abbas’s profile got a boost with the launch of the
Palestinian–Israeli peace process. The process began on December 14, 1988, when the Tunis-based Arafat accepted UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and recognized Israel’s right to exist.64 This was the result of a series of direct and indirect meetings over the course of several years, during which Western powers sought to convince the PLO to renounce violence and begin serious negotiations for a two-state solution. Once Arafat relented, US secretary of state George Shultz announced that Washington was “prepared for a substantive dialogue with PLO representatives.”65
Abbas was named as a representative to the United States to convey the official PLO view.66 But his role in the Oslo process was far more complex. In 1989, he traveled from Jordan67 to Moscow68 to Toledo, Ohio,69 in a diplomatic capacity. Judging from the press reports, it appeared that Abbas barely stayed in the same place for more than a night or two all year. Throughout this flurry of activity, he maintained his position on the PLO Executive Committee70 and continued to serve as Fatah’s first assistant secretary in charge of international affairs.71
By 1991, Abbas was leading the PLO’s negotiating team with Israel.72 This provided him significant influence with regard to the PLO’s strategy.73 As he recalls in his memoir, he soon “noticed that many Israeli officials wanted to meet [him], specifying [him] by name.”74 With his new and elevated profile, Abbas continued to travel frenetically around the globe, building support for the PLO’s position in Moscow,75 Egypt,76 Prague,77 and beyond.
But his diplomatic post did not mean that Abbas was predisposed toward a diplomatic solution. He began to draw lines in the sand before the negotiations even began. The Associated Press quoted him as saying, “Palestinians from East Jerusalem must participate in peace negotiations. . . . There can be no concession on this.”78 He also told the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd, “We shall not go to the peace conference unless the USA gives us guarantees about Jerusalem and settlements.”79
The Palestinians and Israelis soon began to negotiate a framework for a two-state solution. And Mahmoud Abbas was a central player in this historic process. However, this did not translate to increased power for Abbas within the Palestinian matrix. This was confirmed when Yasser Arafat’s plane went missing in a sandstorm in 1992.80 As speculation raged over who would possibly succeed the PLO chief, Abbas was described in the Associated Press as having “little backing among the movement’s hierarchy and military commanders.81 Canada’s Globe and Mail viewed him “more as a technocrat than [as] a leader.”82
But such talk was premature. Arafat emerged from the wreckage and returned to center stage. He, along with Abbas, signed the Oslo Accords in September 1993. However, Abbas was not the first choice. Indeed, he signed the Declaration of Principles (DoP) because Palestinian foreign minister Farouk Kaddoumi refused to do so.83 Nevertheless, Abbas was seen by some to be the brains behind the Oslo process. The Guardian described him as the one who had “engineered the deal.”84 Several Israeli figures believed Abbas should have received the Nobel Prize. It was Arafat who reportedly was adamant that Abbas not receive the honor alongside the longtime PLO leader.
During his speech at the signing ceremony on the White House lawn, Abbas proclaimed that the Palestinians had “come to this point because we believe that peaceful coexistence and cooperation are the only means for reaching understanding and for realizing the hopes of the Palestinians and the Israelis. The agreement we will sign reflects the decision we made in the Palestine Liberation Organization to turn a new page in our relationship with Israel.”85 He followed up with promises that as a result of the agreement, “terrorism will disappear from the Middle East.”86
In 1994, with the peace process in full bloom, Abbas became the head of the PLO’s Negotiating Affairs Department, a position he held until 2003.87 In this capacity, in the eyes of the West, Abbas appeared as a reform-minded bureaucrat. He criticized Arafat for making decisions in an undemocratic fashion88 and even called for the integration of a younger leadership.89
In March 1995, Abbas was appointed head of a committee to monitor the ongoing peace talks with Israel.90 A few months later, Abbas signed, on behalf of the PLO, the Interim Agreement with Israel, also known as Oslo II.91 However, as the Associated Press noted, Abbas “gradually disappeared from the political scene. . . . Insiders say he is avoiding involvement with Arafat’s self-rule government, criticized for corruption and incompetence, in order to remain untainted in a future leadership bid.”92 Abbas apparently sought to establish himself as independent of Arafat’s autocratic leadership style.
In Through Secret Channels, Abbas noted, “Leadership is not just status, privileges, and perks. It consists basically of a mixture of courage, an ability to sense the wishes of the masses, vision, and self-denial in serving the cause. Leadership does not mean self-preservation, consolidation of personal position, and basking in the comforts of a closed circle, but venturing out to do what is right.”93
Whatever issues he may have had with the Palestinian leadership under Arafat, Abbas kept them out of the public eye and remained a key player in the evolution of the peace process with Israel, working side by side with Israeli politicians.94 In a quiet and workmanlike manner, however, Abbas continued to fulfill various roles within the Palestinian bureaucracy. He also emerged as an unequivocal Palestinian voice opposed to violence against Israel.95 This position, while popular in Israel and the United States, earned him enemies at home. In February 1997, three men were arrested for plotting his assassination.96
Abbas increasingly came to be viewed as the heir apparent. In January 1998, Arafat reportedly told President Bill Clinton, “When my time will come I will be replaced by my brother Abu Mazen.”97 This perception was held internationally, too. As French analyst Jean-François Legrain noted, “If the policy of negotiations with Israel and the United States continues, Abu Mazen . . . will undoubtedly have the best chance of succeeding Arafat as PLO chairman.”98
Not surprisingly, Abbas was part of the official Palestinian delegation at the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David in July 2000. But surprisingly, after all of the work he had invested in the bilateral talks, Abbas expressed his misgivings about even attending the summit.99 One former Palestinian negotiator believes that this was more about Abbas’s personal rivalries than his position regarding a p
ermanent peace with Israel. He was perceived as adopting a position that was diametrically opposed to that of his political rivals, Mohammed Rachid and Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan.100
In July 2001, after the collapse of the peace summit at Camp David, when the prospects of peace with Israel had all but evaporated and the second intifada was still raging, Abbas was quoted as saying, “We did not miss an opportunity at all [at Camp David], but rather survived a trap which was laid for us.” Central to his position was his refusal to relent on the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees displaced by the wars of 1948 and 1967. Abbas stated,
We made our position clear: [Israel] must take historical responsibility and accept the right of return and [responsibility for compensation for both those who wish to return] and those who do not. For those who wish to return—compensation would be for the use of their property, and for those who don’t wish to return—the compensation [will be for] the value of their property and sufferings. Additionally, [Israel] must pay compensation to the countries who host the refugees; this was all that we demanded.101
In rejecting the Israeli offer at Camp David, Arafat and Abbas appeared to be of one mind. However, it soon became clear that the two men were at odds with each other on other scores. In early 2001, after Abbas reportedly traveled to the United States to be treated for prostate cancer, he met with Secretary of State Colin Powell in Foggy Bottom and apparently did so without authorization from Arafat, who subsequently “froze” Abbas out. One Fatah official admitted that “Abu Mazen is sick of Arafat. . . . He has lost hope of any progress.”102
Such reports seemed to imply that Abbas was the reformer, seeking to change the ossified and corrupt regime that Arafat had fostered in the West Bank and Gaza. Accordingly, Western officials began to hold up Abbas as a logical alternative to Arafat, who ultimately was responsible for spurning the US-brokered peace deal at Camp David. What appeared to be most important to Western decision makers were his calls for an end to military operations in the second intifada.
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