Summary
Senior Palestinian advisor at the Oslo negotiations and Yasir Arafat’s successor, in Makdisi’s account: one of the two Palestinian principals who negotiated in secrecy, without specialist knowledge, and who took over Arafat’s role as Israel’s Palestinian partner after Arafat’s death in 2005 (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.128, p.134).
Details
- Arafat and Abbas and their assistants at Oslo had no intimate or specialist knowledge of cartography, water aquifers, international law or the Geneva Conventions, and at best a very unsteady command of the English in which they were negotiating and signing documents; it had been thirty years since either had seen the West Bank (PDF p.128).
- Because of the secrecy of the negotiations they were unable (or perhaps unwilling) to consult with their own people (PDF p.128).
- After Arafat’s death in 2005, Abbas took over in the same capacity — the Palestinian partner willing to go along with Israel’s requirements and to accept that what the Oslo Accords designated as provisional would become permanent (PDF p.134).
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Yasir Arafat, Oslo Accords, Palestinian Authority