Abbas Momani/Agence-France Press/Getty Images Mahmoud Abbas announcing in a televised speech on Thursday that he will step down as president of the Palestinian Authority.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, announced on Thursday that he would not seek re-election in a presidential vote he has called for in January. While he said that this was not a “maneuver,” some of his aides have said that his decision is part of a strategy to persuade President Obama to support a full peace plan for an independent Palestinian state.

What’s behind this unexpected announcement?

* Fawaz Gerges, London School of Economics and Political Science
* Daoud Kuttab, Palestinian journalist

An Act of Desperation

Fawaz A. Gerges is a professor of the international relations of the Middle East at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His most recent book is “The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global.”

Although Mahmoud Abbas said his decision to not stand for re-election is not a negotiating tactic, it is clearly a move aimed at the Americans whom, in his televised speech, he accused of “favoring the Israeli position.” Mr. Abbas wants assurances from President Obama that the peace process is on track, and that Washington is still committed to helping bring about a viable and an independent Palestinian state.

The Palestinian leadership was shocked and disappointed when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her recent visit to Jerusalem heaped praise on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to curb some settlement construction in the West Bank. They were still counting on President Obama’s initial demand to freeze all settlement construction.

Moreover, Mr. Abbas was deeply annoyed when Mrs. Clinton joined Israeli calls demanding that he return to the negotiating table without preconditions. And he was further upset by Mr. Netanyahu who, bolstered by Mrs. Clinton’s backing, urged the Palestinians to “come to their senses” and restart peace talks without insisting on a settlement freeze.

This new stance by the U.S. was the final straw for Mr. Abbas. Even if he swallows his pride and rescinds the precondition to freeze settlements and returns to negotiations, he does so at his own peril, risking a revolt from within his ruling party, Fatah, and a potent challenge from radical Hamas. The Islamist movement has publicly stressed that Mr. Abbas does not speak for or represent the Palestinians and cannot sign any peace agreement without a public mandate.

In the last election, Hamas won a comfortable parliamentary majority and trumped Fatah. Any hint of compromise on settlements could weaken Mr. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority further in a run-up to elections he has scheduled for January.

Although Mr. Abbas’s public approval ratings have improved slightly in the past year because of Hamas’s military blunders and political recklessness, he was crippled politically by the U.S. after he was persuaded to withdraw support for a United Nations report that accused Israel of war crimes during its winter offensive in Gaza. Facing unprecedented public uproar from within his own party, Mr. Abbas had to back down. (He was also severely criticized at home after he attended a tripartite summit with President Obama and Mr. Netanyahu in September and returned empty-handed.)

Mahmoud Abbas’s threat to resign is his last card. He has run out of options. Will the Obama administration come to his rescue?

Abbas Has Not Resigned

Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and a former Ferris professor of journalism at Princeton University.

President Abbas’s decision not to seek another term as head of the Palestinian Authority complicates issues but it also clarifies them. The announcement comes at the end of a turbulent few weeks that saw President Obama humiliate him in New York by asking him to a photo op with Prime Minister Netanyahu and then ordering him to withdraw support for the Goldstone report, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lecturing him in Abu Dhabi and then lavishing praise on Mr. Netanyahu for the unprecedented act that the right-wing Israeli has yet to take.
The Israelis and the Americans couldn’t dream of finding a better Palestinian leader than Abbas.

The Palestinian leader has also been kicked around by radical Palestinians and the Islamic Hamas movement for his unwavering faith in a peace process that seems to be politics as usual in yet another spineless U.S. administration.

The Israelis, the Americans, the international community and any genuine proponent of a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict couldn’t dream of finding a better Palestinian leader. Mr. Abbas has publicly attacked his own party’s hot heads declaring his opposition to the militarization of the intifada. He also mocked Hamas for its useless rockets against Israel and convinced delegates to the Sixth Fatah convention that nonviolent negotiations are the way forward.

Mr. Abbas’s frustration is understandable. Instead of the other parties responding to his moderation, they interpreted them as a reflection of the weak party to the conflict. Palestinians might be weak but they are clearly stubborn on what it is that they will not concede on.

In his public statement Thursday, Mr. Abbas laid out his own red lines: an independent state on the 67 borders including East Jerusalem and a fair solution to the refugee problem. By restating that position he has declared a shift in the paradigm. Instead of negotiations leading to a solution, he has said that his involvement in any negotiations has to be based on how to implement this universally accepted two-state solution.

Late last month, Mr. Abbas signed a decree announcing the Jan. 24 date for presidential and parliamentary elections. Two weeks earlier, he had also signed the Egyptian reconciliation agreement with Hamas in which he was willing to accept a six-month postponement of such elections if there is reconciliation. The Hamas refusal to sign that document left him with little choice but to carry out the constitutional mandate. Mr. Abbas, of course, has not resigned. Any such resignation will mean that the Hamas-supported, recently released by Israel, speaker of the Palestinian legislative council, will become president for 60 days until new elections take place.

The announcement that he will not seek another term becomes crucial only if elections will indeed take place. In 2006, Mr. Abbas refused all suggestions to the contrary and organized elections that led to the overwhelming victory for Islamists. While his and other Palestinian Liberation Organization nationalists will certainly win, it is highly unlikely that he will go ahead with such elections without Gaza’s participation and without some type of national unity agreement.