Despite ‘Incitement,’ Abbas Seen by Washington as Bulwark

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The Mahmoud Abbas whom Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused of incitement has said the Jewish state practices genocide and called the temporary closure of the Temple Mount after a terrorist attack a “declaration of war.” Yet virtually no one in Washington wants Abbas to do anything but what he’s done for nine years: be president of the Palestinian Authority.
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Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of the book “State of Failure” about the P.A., said Abbas was walking a high wire — accommodating anti-Israel sentiment while helping to rein in violence. The danger, Schanzer said, is that the violence may not be easy to control, something Abbas’ predecessor Yasser Arafat discovered amid the second intifada in the early 2000s.

“What he’s doing now is trying to ride the wave of this sentiment,” he said. “He’s flirting with embracing a popular uprising. You get a sense he’s walking in Arafat’s footsteps.”
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