Abbas rejects plea to disarm groups

Abbas rejects plea to disarm groups



Wednesday 21 September 2005, 21:39 Makka Time, 18:39

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has brushed aside an appeal from the Quartet of international peace mediators to dismantle resistance groups, saying he knew best how to handle them.


"With regard to dealing with the Palestinian organisations, this is our affair," Abbas said in the town of Rafah on Gaza's border with Egypt on Wednesday.

"We know more and are more capable than others in dealing with our brothers."

Ministers of the Quartet - United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union - said in a joint statement on Tuesday that following Israel's pullout from Gaza, Palestinians needed to "dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructures".
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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/49507A87-B6ED-40A9-BB71-9DAA6053D155.htm

for peace in the Middle East. Why can't Abbas just incorporate anyone who is armed into a disciplined army/militia and take responsibility for what the army/militia does, direct it and control it and use it for the good of the Palestinian people? Terrorist acts have gotten the Palestinians nowhere in the nearly 60 years since 1948. Why don't they get smart? They could get much closer to what they want if they just harnessed the energy of the violent resistance groups into peaceful resistance and nation building.

solution... it would be wonderful if they could buy into a such a solution and the fighting would stop.

Why can't Abbas just incorporate anyone who is armed into a disciplined army/militia and take responsibility for what the army/militia does, direct it and control it and use it for the good of the Palestinian people?


WTF do you think Abbas has been trying to do? The point of *disarming* militants is to take away or persuade them to give up their weapons, it's not forming them into cohesive units with lots of fire-power at their disposal...

From the article:

The moderate Palestinian leader has preferred to co-opt resistance fighters with jobs after having coaxed them into a ceasefire in February.

Abbas believes that to try to crush the resistance would risk civil war while Palestinians remain far short of achieving a state on lands occupied by Israel in a 1967 war.

While there's some DUers that would love nothing more than to see even more misery rained down upon Palestinian civilians by a full-fledged civil war where the likely victor would be much better organised and armed militant groups, I think most people see the rationality and pragmatism of Abbas' approach. Unlike some other folk I've encountered, I hope that Abbas succeeds in his attempts to disarm militants using non-violence means...

Violet...

But not surprising.