Last month, Mahmoud Abbas resigned from his position as chairman of the PLO while keeping his position as president of the Palestinian Authority. He then tried to convene a meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) in hopes of winning a vote of confidence, but was blocked when a rival PLO faction refused to attend. Pinhas Inbari explains these machinations and what’s behind them:
The Palestinian leadership has kept clinging to its old agenda and to outmoded institutions as if the struggle for a Palestinian state is the cardinal issue for the Arab world, and not the very survival of the Arab peoples themselves—including the Palestinians—as they suffer assaults from Shiite and Sunni radical armies as well as stream into Europe for refuge. . . .
The immediate reason for the postponement of the PNC conference was the refusal of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to attend. . . . At present the PFLP, together with Fatah of Lebanon, is fighting a war of survival against al-Qaeda, and the political calculations of Ramallah are hardly its overriding concern. . . .
Abbas . . . is [now] threatening to retire from politics and to announce the cancellation of the Oslo Accords as part of his upcoming speech to the UN General Assembly. . . . The planned PNC conference this month and the forthcoming seventh convention of Fatah are aimed, in line with Abbas’s plans, at creating a sense of revivifying the Palestinian leadership. At the same time, Abbas is unable to offer a new diplomatic horizon to the Palestinians or even a temporary solution for their state of affairs.
Read more on Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: http://jcpa.org/palestinian-predicament-part-1/#sthash.b9eH5JiL.dpuf