When PLO Arab leader Mahmoud Abbas recently showed his support for terrorists, even offering to protect them, soon-to-be-ex Secretary of State Colin Powell was disturbed, but hopeful that Abbas was merely trying to win support for peace.
The United States is concerned that Palestinian Authority presidential election frontrunner Mahmoud Abbas is failing to distance himself from the radical al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in an apparent bid to win votes.“It’s disturbing,” US Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC television. “I know that what Mr Abbas is doing is running for election. And he has to reach out to all parts of the Palestinian community.”But Mr Powell said he saw a disconnect between Mr Abbas’ failure to clearly repudiate the radical group and what he “has been saying with respect to the need to end terror and the need to try to persuade all segments of the Palestinian population to move away from terror and to move toward this opportunity for peace”.“That, I believe, is his prevailing position,” he said.
I wonder how Abbas’ latest performance fits into this naive theory.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called Israel “the Zionist enemy” Tuesday, unprecedented language for the relative moderate who is expected to succeed Yasser Arafat.“We are praying for the souls of our martyrs who fell today to the shells of the Zionist enemy,” he told a campaign rally in Khan Younis, a stronghold of militants waging a 4-year-old uprising.
Wow. Even AP have converted Abbas from “moderate” to “relative moderate” in the blink of an eyelid.
People have to realize that we will only ever have peace when the PLO Arab leaders start talking about peace – in Arabic.
