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After a brief and relatively useless tenure, the Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas threw in the towel on Saturday. With enemies left, right and center, his resignation should come as no surprise.

Abbas gained the PM nomination in late March, after the United States and Israel decided that Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yassir Arafat wasn't the man for the job, despite the fact that he had come so close to securing peace with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1995. That near-peace accord only proved that militancy thrives on both sides of the conflict, when the historic event was cancelled after the brutal assassination of Rabin by fellow Israeli Yigal Amir.

From the start of Abbas' short-lived tenure as the go-to Palestinian, problems were plentiful. Despite having the usual credentials of a Palestinian politician, such as being driven from his home and having served time in Israeli prisons, Abbas remained unpopular with his people. The Road Map requirement of eliminating Arafat from the process and his subsequent forced appointment made Abbas seem like a U.S./Israeli puppet who would cave into demands at which Arafat, the symbol of Palestinian resistance, would simply laugh.

Arafat, ever the strategist, stayed a move ahead despite his diminished role. He retained control of the Palestinian security forces, which Israel demanded be used against Hamas and a slew of Palestinian militants. It is debatable whether the security forces, smashed beyond recognition by Israeli forces during the first two years of the second Intifada, were even capable of such a feat.

However, without credible internal security forces and a battered and furious public at home, the only hope of successful Palestinian implementation of the Road Map would be a Rabin-like peace partner in Israel and a bold American president to iron out the wrinkles. Abbas had no luck on either count.

On the other side of this Palestinian diplomatic infighting stands perhaps the No. 1 enemy of peace in the region: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Abbas was either incredibly optimistic in future American pressure on Israel, or just incredibly naïve, to think for an instant that Sharon would help deliver peace.

Sharon, a former minister of defense, fell from grace in 1982 after being found indirectly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of unarmed Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during Israel's disastrous invasion into Lebanon. He then tried to sue Time magazine for publishing the story, which he lost. And if that wasn't enough, Sharon visited the Muslim holy site known as the Temple Mount 18 years later with hundreds of armed soldiers, successfully re-igniting the fire of the Intifada that Rabin gave his life to extinguish.

First and foremost on Abbas' blame list for the failure of his short tenure should be Ariel Sharon, whom he criticized from day one for failing to alleviate any of the misery of Palestinian life in settlement areas. There was no cessation in the creation of settlements, which the first step of the Road Map clearly called for, or even a worthwhile lifting of the choking roadblocks in the West Bank during the brief and volatile cease-fire. The U.S. also shoulders some blame for failing to pressure Israel to abide by the Road Map. Arafat is also culpable for not granting Abbas the necessary power he needed to more forcefully confront Hamas.

The resignation of Abbas may prove to be tragic or to be a blessing in disguise. Let's hope that forcibly sidelining Arafat was not Israel and the U.S. setting a precedent of removing Palestinian hopefuls who won't cede to unnecessary or humiliating demands.

Let's all hope that the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia, does a better job at stifling Hamas violence than he has the past few days, so the pressure returns to where it should be: squarely on the shoulders of Sharon.

Christian Palmer is a journalism senior. Reach him at christian.palmer@asu.edu.


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