Filled with the usual lies and hate, the speech was an extended fact-challenged rant about the evils of Israel with barely a passing mention about Hamas, which controls 40% of his supposed people.
Some lines were almost laughable for their obvious hypocrisy:
Our people will continue to build the institutions of their State and will continue to strive to achieve national reconciliation to restore the unity of our nation, people and institutions via resorting to the ballot boxes, which will confirm our people’s pluralistic democratic choice.Given that the last election results were overturned by Abbas himself and that he is now in the eighth year of his "final" four year term, his support of democracy is more than suspect.
He also invoked "historic Palestine" again - an area that included Jordan and didn't include the Negev.
And even his much-ballyhooed promise to mention the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, given to Alan Dershowitz, was watered down so much that no Muslim would even recognize it as such:
The Security Council is called upon to urgently adopt a resolution comprising the basis and foundations for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that would serve as a binding reference and guide for all if the vision of two-States, Israel and Palestine, is to survive and if peace is to prevail in the land of peace, the birthplace of Jesus (peace be upon him), and ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and the final resting place of Abraham (peace be upon him), the land of the three monotheistic religions.
Abbas couldn't even bring himself to say "Judaism." In fact, this absurd formulation is also consistent with the idea that today's Jews aren't the Jews of the Bible, a consistent formula in Palestinian Arab media.
Abbas' speech did nothing to improve his standing with his own people:
Palestinians who were galvanized a year ago by the launch of a campaign for statehood in the United Nations were left cold on Thursday by a watered-down bid from their leader President Mahmoud Abbas.Abbas and the Fatah leadership keep thinking that they can repeat the same lies and the same gimmicks over and over again and get the same results. They are utterly clueless that the international community is sick and tired of a fake, corrupt leadership that has thrown away every single chance for peace in favor of more demands and more intransigence.
Citizens seemed wary of investing hope in the new plan.
"To tell the truth, we see it as all talk, and we know it will have no concrete results," said Hussein Izzat, a construction contractor, lighting a cigarette as cars and pedestrians clogged squares which last year hosted euphoric rallies and a live broadcast of Abbas's address.
"The last time around, there was real attention to the speech. But in the time since we have gotten bored and depressed by the lack of action. I have no confidence in the president's words," he said.
..Waiting for a fare beside his taxi, with the presidential speech at top volume on the radio, Mohammad Hammad questioned whether the president's rhetoric matched his people's reality.
"He sounds eloquent and knowledgeable of all the facts, but it seems to me that he has lost touch with what truly matters to the Palestinians," he said.
UPDATE: If you missed the speech and want to see the gist of it, this music video shown on official PA TV pretty much describes 80% of Abbas' speech - and his "peace" plan.
And as we've seen from Abbas' censorship efforts in the past, nothing goes on his official TV station unless it reflects the actual positions of the PA. This one was broadcast on September 6.