JERUSALEM — Hounded by his moderate supporters and militant rivals alike, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is facing a leadership crisis that will make it harder for the Obama administration to draw him into peace talks with Israel.
For months, Abbas enjoyed broad Palestinian support for his refusal to meet with the Israelis unless they stopped expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Then he made two concessions that ignited fury at home and across the Arab world:
First he joined President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a meeting in New York last month to explore prospects for formal talks. Then last week he agreed, under American pressure, to postpone the Palestinians' demand for a United Nations Security Council debate on a U.N. report accusing Israel of war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
The United States and Israel had warned the Palestinians that pursuing the accusations now would thwart attempts to revive a peace process. But the outcry against Abbas appears to be having the same effect.
When he meets today with U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell, Abbas will do so under intensifying pressure from his Fatah movement to stand by conditions that Israel rejects: a settlement freeze and a commitment to negotiate all issues of the Middle East conflict.
Moving to limit the damage, the Palestinian leadership Wednesday reversed its decision on the war crimes debate and joined Arab nations in calling for the Security Council to take it up next week.
The shift came a day after hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in Ramallah, the West Bank seat of Abbas' government, and called for his resignation. In Gaza, run by the rival Hamas movement, protesters threw shoes at posters depicting the 74-year-old Palestinian leader and branding him a traitor.
The Obama administration's push for peace talks is also under attack in Israel. As Mitchell began a round of meetings here Thursday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared in a radio interview that there is no chance of reaching a final accord with the Palestinians for many years.
"Whoever says it's possible . . . simply doesn't understand reality and spreads delusions, ultimately leading to disappointments and all-out confrontation," Lieberman said.
Entering a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Mitchell said that firm positions on both sides were to be expected. But resuming the Israeli-Palestinian talks is essential, he said, for a comprehensive treaty creating a Palestinian state and ending conflicts between Israel and its Syrian and Lebanese neighbors.
