Pages

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

After the Abraham Accords, the Palestinian Authority announced it would boycott the Dubai Expo. They didn't.

In August 2020, in protest of the UAE normalizing relations with Israel, the Palestinian government announced quite publicly that it will boycott the Dubai Expo this year.


They can't even keep the promises they make to their own people, let alone to Israel.

There is a Palestine pavilion at the Dubai Expo. It must have taken months to build - after this announcement.


This week, the head of the Palestinian intelligence service, Majed Faraj, made an official visit to the expo.



 He was accompanied by the ruler of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid.

The Emirates News Agency described Faraj as "the special envoy of President Mahmoud Abbas."

That's as official as it gets.

Palestinian media that is not part of the PA is noting the hypocrisy. 

There is nothing wrong with changing one's position. Sometimes one has to bend to realpolitik,. But there is a mature way to do it, and a puerile way to do it.

The Palestinian Authority is now nearly thirty years old, yet it continues to act like a spoiled toddler, who hopes that no one will notice when they do something they weren't supposed to. 

This drives another important point. The announcement about the boycott came from the Palestinian cabinet, led by the prime minister. But in the end, the cabinet is a joke - they don't make any decisions. Every week they make announcements but those are more declarations than governance. 

The "State of Palestine" is a dictatorship, and what Abbas says, goes, with no regard to any other institutions or processes. 

This is reason #10,432 why peace is impossible: the Palestinians cannot act like adults. They cannot admit their mistakes. They scream, threaten, bully, and mope but they never, ever take responsibility. They spent decades building the trappings of institutions to attract Arab and European money but those institutions are fig leaves on top of a core that is irredeemably corrupt and where the most moderate leader in their history is still a ruthless tyrant.