YawnYawn.

Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, Fatah’s candidate in yesterday’s PA elections for the Chairmanship, won with 65% of the vote. Ok, mazel tov and stuff, but when I urged the Palestinians to vote and vote often I was, you know, kidding. During the period that ballot boxes were open, the PA Central Election Committee decided to allow Palestinians who had not registered as voters to cast their ballots. According to Palestinian human rights activists , this served to allow some folks to vote up to 4 or 5 times. Second place finisher Mustafa Barghouti, running as an independent, claimed that the ink used in some polling stations to mark voters’ thumbnails could be easily removed thus also allowing multiple votes per voter. Oh well, no one really seems to care as Abbas’ victory was pretty much taken for granted, especially after Marwan Barghouti was “convinced” to bow out of the race.

Now we can look forward to the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails if Abbas cracks down on Palestinian rocket attacks. Unamed Israeli sources told AP that “the Israeli side would propose to Abbas that his security forces close Palestinian metal workshops and explosives labs producing the projectiles. Israeli intelligence would identify the targets for the Palestinian forces …” I hope that works out and all but I remain underwhelmed and skeptical.

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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

3 Comments

  • I posted this on Jewschool too:

    Abu Mazen declared in his acceptance speech that the Palestinians were now going from a “little Jihad” to a “large Jihad”.

    I really hope that we remain skeptical and finally demand that the Arabs make us some concessions. At the beginning of the war, all the talking heads criticized the army for fighting back saying that it was hurting Arafat’s chances of reigning in the terrorists. I really hope we aren’t so gullible this time.

  • I hope you are right, Josh. I expect there will be a lot of pressure on Israel from the Europeans and the US to compromise on certain things. Hopefully, Israel will be able to withstand the pressure. I don’t see any reason to move forward on any peace plan or “Road Map” unless the Palestinians show some honest, good faith efforts to control the terror. I don’t need 100% compliance, but I do want to see significant gains. Moving from big Arafat to little Arafat will help nobody here.