Abbas promotes 'popular resistance' to occupation, such as Bil'in protests

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said over the weekend that he supports popular resistance to the occupation along the lines of the protests at the West Bank villages of Na'alin and Bil'in.

The people must struggle to remove the occupation," Abbas told the BBC. With the present Israeli government refusing to negotiate, the PA does not have many options, Abbas said. "There is the military option, which is not realistic, and when I talk about a military solution I mean the Arab countries starting a war against Israel, and there is no Arab country ready for such a scenario. There is the armed struggle and I am against that because it will only bring destruction and devastation to the Palestinian people, which the last war in Gaza proved."

Abbas said he was disappointed that the Americans and the Europeans had been unable to pressure Israel on construction in the settlements. The PA chairman said statements by senior PA officials regarding a unilateral declaration of statehood through the United Nations do not reflect his view. "We will turn to the United Nations and the Security Council to strengthen what has been agreed on in the road map and approved by the Security Council, a two-state solution based on the June 4, 1967 borders."

Abbas also criticized Hamas for what he said were indirect negotiations with Israel based on the idea of establishing a Palestinian state within temporary borders. Hamas has denied this claim.

Abbas' statements are in the context of recent statements by senior Fatah officials in the West Bank on the possibility of a third intifada as a response to the failure of the peace process and what they call Israel's rejectionism. In an interview with the Nazareth-based newspaper Hadith al-Nas, senior Fatah officials said Fatah wants to implement resolutions made at the Fatah convention in Bethlehem last summer. One senior official said "We want thousands of Palestinians to demonstrate daily near the settlements of the occupation, carrying out a human siege and calling for the end of the occupation," one senior official said.

However unlike the previous intifada, the movement will not endorse an armed struggle or the use of firearms, the official added.

Abbas, who is also head of Fatah, has reportedly agreed in principle to the decision on a new intifada, on condition that it would not be an armed struggle. It is believed that Abbas' declaration that he would not run for re-election as PA president, and the possibility of his resignation, which would lead to the dismantling of the PA, is intended to lay the groundwork for renewed confrontation.

Senior Fatah officials have recently endorsed expanded protests against the separation fence and focusing such protests against the settlements. A senior official in an Arab Israeli political party with close ties to senior Fatah and PA officials said he believed protests against the fence would be the spark that would ignite expanded popular resistence. The official said he believed such an uprising, which would be directed against symbols of the occupation in the West Bank, would be received with understanding in international circles.

"The first intifada gained significant diplomatic ground as far as the Palestinians are concerned since its symbol was children throwing rocks at a Merkava tank, and Israel could not claim it was defending itself against terror as it did in the second intifada following the city-center bombings," the official said.