The move could have been the last "constitutional" resort to extend his term as PA president before it expires on January 9 next year in order to secure himself as the supreme "legitimate" authority on Palestinian decision –making in the context of the "make - or – break" bloody wrangling with the rival Hamas on the leadership of the Palestinian national movement.
The symbolic position secures his presidency for life in line with the "tradition" of his predecessor, but without any constitutional stipulation to support it as the PLO regulations lack even an official text of a presidential oath, an embarrassing fact that threw his senior aides into a whirlwind of frenzied last minute efforts to write down an oath for him to read out on November 23.
The position has been vacant since the death of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004. The PLO lawmakers in exile withheld the position from Abbas because they were demanding a separation between the PA presidency and the PLO chairmanship as a precautionary measure lest Israeli tanks bulldoze away the PA as they did in 2002 taking down with it the PLO, the internationally – recognized sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, which legitimized the creation of the "Palestinian National Authority" (PNA) in 1993 as a subsidiary reporting to the PLO.
Abbas' move was intended to pre-empt an expected vacuum in power after announcement by Hamas that it would not recognize him as PA president after January 9 while insisting on its opposition to holding simultaneous early presidential and legislative elections before the Hamas – dominated Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)'s mandate expires in January 2010. The League of Arab Nations had warned against any vacuum in power in the Israeli –occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the league anticipates as a realistic possibility that threatens to relieve Israel of legitimate Palestinian negotiating partners and consequently of its obligations in accordance with the U.S. – sponsored Annapolis diplomatic process.
PLO commitment to the Annapolis understandings was a milestone that vindicated Hamas fears and accusations that Abbas was leading and pursuing an older political coup d'etat to deprive the Islamic movement from its electoral victory and at the same time, for all practical and realpolitic reasons, foreclosed Abbas' options to end what his leadership condemns as Hamas' military coup d'etat in Gaza through national dialogue or political mediation.
Commitment or non-commitment to what the Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russian mediators in Middle East peace – making described as the "Annapolis Process" in a statement they released after their meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on November 8 has become the terms of reference to make or break the Palestinian unity of ranks, which has so far failed the Egyptian mediation efforts, the latest in a series of national, Arab and non-Arab similar reconciliation endeavors.
The Annapolis conference, which was hosted by the United States in Meryland on November 27, 2007 and attended by all members of the Arab League, convened with much fanfare and re-launched the Palestinian – Israeli negotiations after a seven – year interruption since the collapse of the trilateral Camp David summit with the U.S. in 2000.
In Annapolis, Arab leaders and the Palestinian presidency were lured by a promise of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008 and a wider Arab – Israeli peace process therafter, mainly on the Syrian track, to coexist with the inter-Palestinian divide between the PLO and Hamas and to grudgingly hide their bitter resentment of the U.S. – Israeli threat of siege, which had aborted Qatari, UAE, Saudi, Egyptian, Yemeni and other Arab and non – Arab mediation efforts to unify Palestinian ranks, as well as two landmark inter – Palestinian accords (the Cairo agreement in 2005 and the "national consensus accord," known as the "prisoners' document" agreement the next year).
The Annapolis plan to implement the first stage of the 2003 Road Map for a Palestinian – Israeli political settlement has built on two pillars, the first a Palestinian – Israeli security coordination that is solely and directly monitored by three senior U.S. generals, namely James Jones, William Fraser and Keith Dayton, and the second pillar is the inter – Palestinian divide between Ramallah and Gaza.
However, the failure of the "Annapolis process" could be better proved by the unmet deadline of 2008 and the un-honored promise of a Palestinian state, but the two pillars nonetheless survived the failure of Annapolis so far to perpetuate and exacerbate the Palestinian rift, with the security coordination raising accusations by Hamas of PLO collaboration with Israel and the divide developing into what threatens to become a permanent separation between the West Bank and Gaza.
There remain too at the core of the Annapolis process and at the heart of the Palestinian divide the three Israeli – U.S. "good conduct" preconditions that qualify Palestinians to be partners to peace negotiations as well as to evade military siege, economic blockade and diplomatic isolation, namely to unilaterally renounce violence without any guarantees of Israeli reciprocity, recognize the existence of the state of Israel without any Israeli reciprocal recognition of the state of Palestine, and commitment to the accords signed by the PLO with Israel regardless of Israeli reciprocal respect thereto.
Israel's lack of reciprocity has come recently under spotlight by the refusal of the U.S. State Department to publish a report by its Middle East security envoy General James Jones on Palestinian – Israeli security, which the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, quoted by AFP on November 26, described in August as "an extremely critical report of Israel's policies" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."
It is now public knowledge that the Palestinian partner to the Annapolis process, represented by President Abbas, the PLO and the PA, are wholeheartedly committed thereto irrespective of any Israeli reciprocity. The emergency meeting of the Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on November 26 concluded similarly committal, encouraged beforehand to let go the undelivered promises of the Annapolis conference by indications floated by both the Israeli President Shimon Peres and the U.S. President – elect Barak Obama's team of their willingness to deal with the collective Arab peace initiative.
Hamas is consequently left in the cold to fend off a Palestinian and Arab diplomatic isolation as much as to survive the Israeli ongoing economic blockade and military siege, "hopefully" to gradually be finished off or alternatively to surrender to those same three preconditions to which its Palestinian rival had subscribed to as early as the Oslo accord was signed with Israel in Washington D.C. in 1993.
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