So, who is taking Abbas’s threats to suspend security cooperation with Israel seriously? Not Israel, not the Americans, and certainly not many Palestinians. Abbas is caught between two bad places — both of his very own making. On the one hand, he knows that security cooperation with Israel is his only insurance policy to remain in power and alive. On the other hand, Abbas is acutely aware of his status among many Palestinians, who would be more than happy to replace him with someone more… to their taste.
Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj’s message was directed to the Israeli public with the goal of pressuring the Israeli government and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cave in to Palestinian threats and remove the metal detectors. This is why Faraj chose an Israeli journalist who is known to be sympathetic to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. Faraj and his boss — Abbas — wanted to scare the Israeli public and turn them against Netanyahu by telling them that Palestinians will stop security coordination with Israel unless the metal detectors were removed.
Abbas is still playing his old game. Out of one side of his mouth he claimed a desire for a peaceful solution to the metal detectors crisis, and out of the other side, he egged his people on to murder more and more Israelis. As it turns out, whether security coordination is “sacred” or “suspended,” Abbas is in it for one person only: himself.
The conflicting reports emerging from Ramallah concerning security coordination with Israel serve as yet another reminder of the Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders’ astounding hypocrisy.
Israel, for its part, has brushed aside reports about a suspension of the security coordination with the Palestinian Authority as yet another Abbas gimmick.
It is far from lost on Mahmoud Abbas and his PA that such security coordination is what stands between a very hungry Hamas and Abbas served up on toast for breakfast.
In the past, Abbas has rightly and reasonably described security coordination with Israel as “sacred,” saying he will never succumb to pressure from Hamas and many Palestinians to stop working with Israel in the West Bank.
“I wish to say this openly – security coordination (with Israel) is sacred and will continue regardless of our political differences,” Abbas declared in 2014.
Abbas’s statement came amid reports that Israeli intelligence had thwarted a Hamas assassination plot against him in 2014.
Security coordination is indeed sacred for the Palestinian Authority president — not to mention his family members and senior officials, who without such cooperation would also be dead, imprisoned or forced into exile. Abbas has yet to recover from the nightmare of 2007, when Hamas brought about the collapse of his Palestinian Authority and violently seized control over the Gaza Strip. The last thing Abbas wants is a recurrence of that horrific scenario; thousands of his police officers and Fatah loyalists were severely humiliated, and many either lynched in public, thrown off the high floors of buildings, imprisoned, or forced either to surrender or flee to Israel and Egypt.
The latest fiasco pertaining to the issue of security coordination with Israel began on July 21, when Abbas announced his decision to “freeze contacts with the occupation state (Israel) on all levels.” Abbas’s announcement came during a meeting of Palestinian leaders in Ramallah to discuss the crisis surrounding Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This decision came in response to a shooting attack on July 14 carried out by three Arab Israelis that resulted in the murder of two Israeli police officers.