. Who is Mahmoud Abbas?

ABBAS, Mahmoud (ABU MAZEN) - 0305 - Medea

Born in 1935 in Safad (Galilea), Mahmoud Abbas studied in Damascus and Moscow. He is, with Yasser Arafat and Faruq Qaddumi (Abu Lutof), one of the remaining founders of Fatah. In 1980, he was elected to the PLO Executive Committee of which he is now the Secretary General (ie. Nr 2 of the PLO). He was appointed head of the PLO Department of National (Arab) Affairs in 1984. He returned to Palestine in July 1995. He is since then the Secretary General of the PLO.

In the seventies, he already played a leading role in encouraging contacts between the PLO and left-wing Israelis. His moderate and pragmatic views caused him trouble with hard-liners of his own camp.

In the early nineties, he officially became a key player in the design of the PLO's negotiation strategy. Aware of the limits of the Madrid process, his work resulted in the establishment of much of the basis for the eventual secret negotiations which were held with Israel in Oslo, and which led to the Declaration of Principles that Yasser Arafat signed on behalf of the PLO on September 13, 1993 in Washington (see Oslo peace process). His influence on Yasser Arafat was strong and evident. Thereafter, in the follow-up of the agreements, Abu Mazen attended several discussion groups with the Israelis (he headed, among others, the first session of the final status talks on May 5, 1996). He is famed for his high sense of pragmatism and propensity for secret diplomacy; which Israeli negotiators seemed to appreciate. Nonetheless, he expressed some bitterness towards the state of the peace process in the years following the agreement. In 1994 he even refused to become Minister in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

Abu Mazen is considered to be politically close of Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala). Since the outburst of the Intifada “El Aqsa”, Abu Mazen had called for a halt to armed attacks on Israeli targets to avoid giving Israel a pretext for its armed campaign against the Palestinian autonomy. A broad part of Palestinian population see him too much conciliatory with Israel.

As a high-profile member of the Palestinian leadership, he is respected as a statesman both regionally and internationally. He is recognised by his pragmatism and considered a valuable interlocutor for Israel. Following a campaign by Israel and the US for the dismissal of Yasser Arafat, Abu Mazen was appointed Prime Minister by the Palestinian Legislative Council on the 29th April 2003. After his nomination as Prime Minister the US called for the publication of the ‘road-map’ drafted by the Quartet and negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority resumed.

However, Mahmoud Abbas announced his resignation on the 7th of September 2003, following a power struggle with Yasser Arafat over the control of security forces. Arafat’s refusal to hand him over crucial powers, and his maintain of control over several security services limited Abbas’s ability to act, as well as undermining his authority. He maintained in power on a provisional basis until he was replaced by Ahmad Qurei, appointed head of a new emergency cabinet on the 5th of October 2003.

Following the death of Yasser Arafat, on November 11, 2005, Rawhi Fattouh, Speaker of Parliament, took over as provisional leader of the Palestinian Authority until the holding of elections which were to be organized within 60 days. The elections were held on January 9, 2005. Mahmoud Abbas was victoriously elected (62.32%) President of the Palestinian Authority for a term of 5 years. This election was welcomed with optimism by the international community. However, leading Israelis, more circumspect, demand of Mahoumd Abbas an end to assaults against the Hebrew state. Upon his entering into duty, he decided to meet with the principal Palestinian terrorist factions in order to obtain a cease-fire. Ariel Sharon, Israeli Prime Minister, and George W. Bush have declared satisfactory the decisions taken by the President of the Palestinian Authority. On the eve of the summit at Sharm al-Sheikh, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, encouraged Israelis and Palestinians to find a peace agreement. February 8, 2005, at the end of the summit, Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon formally announced the end of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. After a string of attacks perpetrated by Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas participated in a series of meetings with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The two organizations pledged, then, to sustain a lull.

Who is Mahmoud Abbas? - Focus on Jerusalem Prophecy Ministry - Darrell G. Young - November, 2005

After Yasser Arafat abruptly walked out of the Clinton Camp David Summit fiasco in 2000, and took his whirlwind tour of Arab capitols to solicit support for the Palestinian pre-planned Al Aqsa Intifada war, the US under the Bush Administration sought to sideline Arafat by ignoring him. By this time it had become obvious even to the most blinded and fool-hearty diplomat that Arafat was an unreformed terrorist thug that was simply pursuing the peace process as a means to the Arab dream of wiping Israel off the map. The PLO simply adopted the strategy of the Trojan horse conquest through peace concept of the late Faisal Husseini. Arafat had long played the role of trigger point man for the Muslim Brotherhood, and knew it was akin to signing his death warrant if he coalesced with the Clinton-Barak peace overture and accepted statehood for Palestine in return for “an end of conflict” personal signature. As American lead negotiator Dennis Ross once stated, “Arafat just couldn’t change his stripes and become a statesman.”

Thus with the death of Yasser Arafat, the world saw a power vacuum created in the Palestinian arena that also brought fresh new hopes for an Israeli-Arab-Palestinian Peace deal. Enter Russia, the EU, and the UN as co-sponsors along with the US in a new peace process called the Roadmap. Enter a new peace partner, a man called Mahmoud Abbas.

But who is Mahmoud Abbas, and why does President Bush meet with him, and have confidence in him, when he wouldn’t even meet with his predecessor?

The Abbas of Today

Mahmoud Abbas is the President of the Palestinian Authority, and has also been the Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization or PLO, having been elected on November 11, 2004 after Yasser Arafat’s death. He served as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) from March to October 2003 when he resigned amid a power struggle with Arafat. His international reputation is that of a moderating influence in the Palestinian authority, with a genuine drive towards achieving peace. Abbas is considered a moderate, one of the Palestinian Arabs interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict with Israel. His strategy was often one that sought negotiations with liberal Israeli politicians and Jewish peace-pacifist movements. His international reputation became that of a moderating influence in the Palestinian authority, with a genuine drive towards achieving peace. Though he garnered little media attention as long as Arafat was alive, he is said to have had a powerful behind the scenes influence on the Palestinian Authority, and was widely regarded as a highly intellectual pragmatist. In particular, he is credited with initiating secretive contacts with left-wing and pacifist Jewish groups during the 1970s and 80s, and is considered by many to be a major architect of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords (evidenced in part by the fact that he traveled with Arafat to the White House to sign the accords).

In March 2003 Abbas was appointed as Prime Minister of the PS by Arafat, to placate American demands that "new leadership" without ties to terrorism, emerge to bring the Palestinian Arabs into the Roadmap Peace process. Abbas' very first speech as Prime Minister, on April 28, 2003, included demands that Israel release all terrorists, the opposite of what is called for under the Road Map. Abbas’s speech also included a special homage to Arafat when Abbas turned to Arafat and stated: “This government, Mr. President, is your government.” (a direct slap at American insistence upon new leadership in the PA) His statement confirmed suspicions that Arafat was still in power and that Abbas was not independent of Arafat, as called for by US President Bush. Whereas Abbas had been Arafat's top deputy for nearly 40 years, it was not surprising that he would feign compliance with the US request, yet secretly submit to Arafat’s authority.

Regarded as a political pragmatist, Abbas has called for an end to armed struggle (terror) against Israel, saying that the Palestinians are outgunned and cannot win. After becoming PA President, Abbas has sought to win western support for the PA government, and Palestinian Statehood in exchange for feigning conditional support for the Quartet sponsored Roadmap peace process. On December 14, 2004, after becoming PA President, Abbas called for an end to the Al Aqsa Intifada, which Arafat had instigated, and a return to peaceful resistance. Abbas is one of the only Palestinian leaders to recognize Israel, but still he maintains that terrorism is not an evil agent, (and will not act against it) but that it is simply a tool that has damaged Palestinian aspirations, and only impedes progress towards the PA gaining political leverage in the peace negotiations. Abbas maintains that terrorist organizations are legitimate Palestinian entities, and that they have a right to defend themselves against what he terms, the “illegal occupation” of Palestine by Israel.

In his presidential election speech, confusion in America arose over his position of terrorism, when Abbas stated to a crowd chanting "a million shahids," "I present this victory to the soul of brother martyr Yassir Arafat and to our shahids," then Abbas promised to protect the "strugglers" (terrorists) wanted by Israel for "terrorist" attacks, and that "the little jihad has ended and now the big jihad is beginning".

What did Abbas mean by that statement? Obviously, he meant that the Intifda was no longer the means for accomplishing the Palestinian goal, although it had been useful, but that the Big Jihad would bring Palestinian dreams through the fruition of a completed peace process that would be sanctioned by the Quartet Sponsors.

Abbas Was Born In Galilee

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is now seventy years old, (Abu Mazen) and was born in 1935 in the town of Safad in northern Israel, which at that time, as was all of Israel-Jordan, a part of the old British Mandate. Safad is actually a sizable town in Israel, located northwest of the Sea of Galilee, and to the west of the Golan Heights. Abbas was 13 years old when Israel became a nation in 1948.

Rather than live in an Israeli state, the Abbas family left Safed (Zafet) in 1948, when Israel was created, and moved lock stock and barrel to Syria. It should be remembered that this was at the same time that the Arab nations launched a full scale war on the new nation of Israel, and required Palestinian Arabs living inside Israel to leave, so as to avoid the advancing armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. This era marked the beginning of what would later become the Palestinian refugee problem, culminating in the enclosure of Palestinian displaced Arabs in UN financed camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza.

Thus, Mahmoud Abbas, because his family was more financially equipped, grew up as a teenager in Damascus, Syria and attended the University of Damascus, where he acquired a BA in Middle Eastern Law. During the Cold War, Syria was a client state of the Soviet Union. While a young man, Abbas moved to the former Soviet Union and earned his Ph.D. in history from Moscow's Oriental College. His life spent in the Soviet Union came at the very height of the Cold War, and therefore much of his philosophical training became rooted in Communistic anti-American ideology. This ideology paralleled his own anti-Israel fundamentalism, and led ultimately to his association with the Marxist backed Fatah movements agenda to liberate all of Palestine from Israel.

In the mid 1950’s Abbas became heavily involved in underground Palestinian politics, joining a number of exiled Palestinians in Qatar, where he was positioned as Director of Personnel in the emirate's Civil Service. While there, Abbas recruited a number of people who would later become key figures in the PLO, and was one of the founding members of the notorious Fatah terrorist organization. Yasser Arafat first brought Abbas into the embryonic PLO after the Sinai Fedayeen raids in 1956, any by 1959 they were organized enough that Arafat could incorporate Abbas as the principle Fatah financier who could begin raising funds for Fatah’s guerrilla campaigns in Palestine.

Abbas Joins up With Arafat

Abbas’s background in anti-Israel propaganda and indoctrination with Soviet Marxist geo-political strategies in the Middle East made him a likely partner for another anti-Israel client with Soviet backing, Yasser Araafat. Apparently, at the behest of the Soviet Union and the Arab League, Arafat recruited an inner band of underground Palestinian political agitators. Among those who collaborated on the formation of the Syrian based Fatah movement was Mahmoud Abbas. These two figures met for the first time while both were still in their 20’s. Abu Mazen's duties on behalf of the PLO were thus built on his abilities for securing funding for the Palestinian guerrilla movement rather than actually formulating the terrorist infrastructure of Fatah, as was the case with Arafat, who had a hands-on managerial role of the terrorism. Unlike Abbas, who was a legitimate Palestinian Arab, Yasser Arafat was an Egyptian, (Egypt was also then a Soviet-Russian client) born in Cairo, and served in the Egyptian military against Israel in the 1948 war.

Yasser Arafat was born into an Egyptian bourgeois family and was easily turned into a devoted pan-Arab Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The Soviet KGB trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow in the mid-1960s and decided to groom him for its potential use as the future PLO leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth. The KGB's disinformation department then went to work on Arafat's four-page tract called "Falastinuna" (Our Palestine), turning it into a anti-Semitic monthly magazine for the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah. Arafat, with assistance from the Arab League, had headed al-Fatah since 1957, and was eager to gain the Russian platform. Arafat served as an important undercover operative for the KGB. Right after the 1967 Six Day Israeli-Arab War, Moscow got him appointed as chairman of the PLO. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Soviet client, proposed the appointment. In 1969 the Soviet KGB asked Arafat to declare war on American "imperial-Zionism" during the first summit of the Black Terrorist International, a neo-Fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.

This ideology also appealed to Mahoud Abbas, as he viewed American support for Israel as the stumbling block to the liberation of Palestine. In fact, "imperial-Zionism" was a Moscow invention, and long a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to foment ethnic hatred in the Middle East against Israel and America. The KGB always regarded anti-Semitism plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism, with which to inflame the Arab world, so the Soviets could displace America in the oil-rich Arab region.

Later, Arafat would use the covert technical training he received from the former Soviet Union special ops units to lead the militant wing of Fatah in guerrilla operations against Israel. These points are noteworthy because the former Soviet Union helped to facilitate the Arab wars against Israel by supplying weapons and expertise to client states such as Egypt and Syria, as a means to expel American geo-political strongholds in the Middle East, especially Israel. And so, like Arafat, Abbas’s early philosophical indoctrination was inclined towards Marxist, pan Arab Socialism as a means to liberate Palestine from Israeli possession.

Abbas Refuted the Jewish Holocaust

In 1982, Abbas wrote a doctoral dissertation, referring to so-called “Holocaust deniers,” claiming secret ties between the Nazis and the Zionist movement. In 1984, a book based on Abbas' doctoral dissertation was published in Arabic. His doctoral thesis later became a book, The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, which, following his appointment as Palestinian Prime Minister in 2003, was heavily criticized by some Jewish groups as an example of Holocaust denial. In his book, Abbas raised doubts that gas chambers were used for the extermination of Jews, and suggested that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was "less than a million."

Thus his doctoral thesis, constructed in theory while at the Moscow Oriental College in essence denied the fact of history that six million Jews died in World War II at the hands of the ideology of the Nazi Hitler-Arab/Islamic Al Husseini Final Solution of the Jewish problem. In his book, "The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism," Mahmoud Abbas rejected the Holocaust as being a "Zionist fantasy,” and Abbas was thus the man that perpetuated the theory that Zionists intentionally led the world to believe that six million Jews were killed by Germany in order to gain the worlds sympathy for granting Zionists a Jewish state in Palestine. Abbas even suggested in his thesis that the limited number of Jews that were indeed victims of WWII, were just canon-fodder material for a joint Nazi-Zionist plot to gain notoriety for Zionism.

Abbas claimed that the World Zionist movement of the pre WWII era had a stake in convincing world public opinion that the number of victims was high; thus, it would achieve "greater gains" after the war when the time came to "distribute the spoils." Abu Mazen's intent with his thesis was to undermine the legitimacy of the Zionist movement by proving that during a critical stage in the history of the Jewish people, the rise of Nazism and World War II, that the Zionist leadership would stop at nothing to achieve its aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. He wrote, "The truth about the Nazi crimes has another aspect" that the West preferred to disregard; instead, the West concealed "a basic partner in crime," that is, the Zionist movement. The study pointed to a convergence of the interests of the Nazi and the Zionist movements, and the fundamental similarity in the two movements' theories. The central claim Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) sought to prove is that the Zionist movement, with all its factions, conspired against the Jewish people and collaborated with the Nazis to annihilate it, because the movement considered "Palestine" the only appropriate destination for Jewish emigration from Europe.

Abbas further claimed in his dissertation that the Zionist movement sabotaged various aid and rescue plans by the Allies and withheld information regarding the bitter fate of Europe’s Jews "in order to free itself from the need to take necessary action." Abu Mazen added, "the Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government’s hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination. Abbas goes on to suggest that number of actual Jewish victims of this pre-conceived Zionist plot was well under the acclaimed 6 million figure, and that the number was contrived by Zionists to extract spoils of war from the victorious allies.

* Perhaps Abbas also believes that Zionists also conspired to get Adolph Hitler to meet with Faisal Husseini to carry the Final Solution to the Mid-east once the Jewish problem in Europe was completed.

Abbas and the PLO

A fact that absolutely cannot be overlooked is that Mahmoud Abbas was one of the founding members of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) along with Yasser Arafat. Fatah was completely functional by 1964, and received backing as a Muslim Brotherhood-Arab League rogue organization established to launch terrorist operations dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Arafat was the pistol packing gunmen of the outfit, and Abbas was he high-stepping bankroller. *It should be noted here that the Fatah organization of the PLO was founded before Israel acquired the so-called “occupied territory” in the 1967 six day war.

Abbas served as a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) and rose to Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee. The Executive Committee and the PNC are the top two decision-making bodies of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

The Shield of the Palestinian Liberation Organization shows a flag with flames over a red-colored diagram of the Promised Land. The PLO emblem shows all the territory west of the Jordan River as being areas of Palestine, leaving no space for any State of Israel. When the PLO speaks of liberation, they succinctly mean wiping Israel off the map!

The Palestine Liberation Organization was undoubtedly one of the most infamous terrorist organizations in the world. Its terror-laden image has been surpassed in recent years though because of two factors. (1.) The PLO’s public political charade of having abandoned terror. (2.) Its post-Oslo reliance on sub-structured terrorist cells to carry out terrorist operations. (3.) the rise of comepting terrorist organizations. The mere letters PLO used to conjure images of murder and mayhem. Those three letters gained world-wide notoriety in the 60’s and 70’s for many insidious acts of terrorism, including the massacre of Jewish athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games. Under the cunning leadership of Yasser Arafat, the PLO created havoc in Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and throughout Europe. Yasser Arafat made the PLO organization a euphemism for modern terrorism, and with covert skills acquired from the Soviets, basically invented airline hijackings. Yasser Arafat was the face of international terrorism for much of the 20th century. Yasser Arafat and his Fatah operatives won the support of the Palestinian Congress in 1964, and pledged to give a voice to the large number of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Lebanon by waging guerrilla terrorist attacks on Israel. It was not long before the group began to splinter into various factions, all of whom believed they knew the best way to achieve Palestinian liberation. Most notable of these groups were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, and al-Fatah. Each of these factions remained more-or-less under the umbrella of the PLO and never strayed too far from the fold of Yasser Arafat’s direction. By 1967 the PLO had decided that their primary goal was the total destruction of the state of Israel. For the next ten years, this goal was the primary focus of the massive terrorist campaign by which their infamous reputation was formed. And in this mission, Mahmoud Abbas continued as Arafat’s right hand man, and continued to raise funds throughout the Middle East for the PLO campaigns against Israel.

Abbas and Fatah

Before the PLO existed, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas were among the founding members of the Soviet-styled Fatah movement. The Movement for the National Liberation of Palestine (Fatah) was founded in was originally opposed to the founding of the PLO, which it viewed as a political opponent. Fatah members were the original clandestine organization that invented the modern terrorist war on Israel. Abbas was a charter member! Backed by Syria, Fatah began carrying out terrorist raids against Israeli targets in 1965, launched from Jordan, Lebanon and the Egyptian-occupied Gaza (so as not to draw reprisals against Syria). Dozens of raids were carried out each year, exclusively against civilian targets. Fatah's popularity among Palestinians grew until it took over control of the PLO in 1968. Since then it has been the PLO's most prominent faction, under the direct control of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. "Fatah" is a reverse acronym of the Arabic, Harekat at-Tahrir al-Wataniyyeh al-Falastiniyyeh. The word "Fatah" means "conquest by means of jihad [Islamic holy war]".

Fatah was the first Middle East terrorist organization to call for the total annihilation of the state of Israel, and to include a statement in its charter justifying the use of terrorism against civilians as a means to achieve its aims of liberating the whole of Palestine.
Note the grenade and crossed rifles, superimposed on the map of Israel in the emblem. This emphasizes the dedication of Fatah, along with the other "liberation" groups, to the "armed struggle" against Israel, a euphemism for terrorism against civilians.

Abbas Traveled With Fatah & PLO in Exilic Wars

Following the humiliating defeat of the Arab forces in the 1967 Six Day War; Fatah and the PLO decided that it could not rely on the Arab states to achieve its objective of destroying Israel. For the next ten years, this goal became the primary focus of the massive terrorist campaign by which the PLO’s reputation was formed. Meanwhile, Fatah established a guerrilla base in the Jordanian city of Karameh. From its new base in Jordan, the Fatah led PLO created chaos and subversion in the state of Jordan. The PLO organized an outright civil insurrection against the Jordanian monarchy when it used its fedayeen militants in 1970 to hijack and destroy three commercial jet-liners in Amman. The Assad regime in Syria backed the PLO insurgency, and itself invaded Jordan with a force of around 200 tanks. The US became involved and dispatched the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean to lend support to King Hussein, if necessary. But, the Jordanian army was able to defeat the PLO forces, causing most of the Palestinian leadership, including Arafat and Abbas to fled first to Syria, and later to Lebanon, where they soon set about undermining the central government of that country, and causing yet another civil war that had the backing of Syria.

Because of Lebanon’s weak central government, the PLO was able to operate virtually as an independent state (called “Fatahland” by Israel). The PLO helped destabilize the government of Lebanon and incited the Lebanese civil war. Palestinian fighters also mounted intermittent cross-border terrorist attacks against Israel, which provoked repeated Israeli counterattacks in an effort to prevent the Palestinians from threatening Israelis in the north. Finally, in June 1982, Israel mounted a full-scale assault that escalated into the Lebanon War. In September, the United States brokered a cease-fire deal in which Arafat and his leadership were allowed to take refuge in Tunisia, which became the PLO’s base of operations for the decade of the 1980’s.

Syria actually used the Lebanese civil war instigated by the PLO, as a pretext to move into Lebanon and occupy that country until it was forced recently (2005) to withdraw when it was found to be complicit in the assassination of a high profile Lebanese politician. (Rafik Hariri) It was undoubtedly the plan of Syria and the PLO to establish a similar puppet government in Jordan.

But throughout the 1960’s, 70’s,and 80’s, Mahmoud Abbas moved with Yasser Arafat and the rest of the PLO leadership in exile to from one Fatah conspired civil war to another. During these decades in exile, Abbas was little known to Palestinians living in the West Bank, as he hadn’t been in the area since the late 40’s. After fleeing Jordan, and the Lebanon, Arafat and Abbas took up refuge in Tunisia. The constant change in geographical locations did not effect the PLO’s commitment to terror, nor Abbas’s role as the PLO moneyman to finance the plots. In September 1972, a terrorist arm of Fatah, named Black September for the debacle in Jordan, kidnapped and murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. This terrorist attack was bankrolled by none other than Mahmoud Abbas, according to Mohammed Daoud Oudeh (Abu Daoud), the mastermind of the Munich Massacre.

After Arab armies were defeated yet again on the battlefield in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the PLO gradually decided it was necessary to alter their political strategy. While the PLO remained committed to the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle, (Fatah’s euphemism for terrorism) it decided to shift from strictly terrorist activities to waging a diplomatic Trojan horse type of war against Israel.

Abbas’s long held strategy of liberating Palestine through diplomatic negotiations came to the forefront when the New World Order turned its attention to resolving the Israeli-Arab Conflict after the Persian Gulf War. Abbas had the political foresight to know that the Palestinian Liberation movement needed to accommodate Western political interests in the wake of the fall of the old Soviet Communist system, and thus he undertook the initial steps to approach western diplomats with Palestinian proposals to recognize Israel’s right to exist, somewhere.

As a political pragmatist, Abbas has voiced support for President Bush’s call for a “Two State’ solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Nevertheless, President Abbas is just as adamant as Arafat was about Jerusalem becoming the capitol of Palestine. “The conflict with Israel will not end until the creation of a Palestinian state,” Abbas says. "The occupation will not end until the objectives of the peace process, namely the creation of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in the territories which were occupied in 1967, have been met," he said.

Abbas is therefore in complete accord with his Roadmap sponsors.

After the recent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Abbas delivered the usual PLO rhetoric about Jerusalem. “Jerusalem is our capital, and Gaza is but the first step towards realizing the dream of Jerusalem as the capitol of Palestine. Interestingly enough, Mahmoud Abbas was one of the first Palestinian leaders to sit down with Israeli political leaders and discuss a power-sharing plan for Jerusalem.

And less we forget, according to Bible Prophecy, a seemingly workable solution to the Jerusalem dilemma is a key component of the peace-with-security craftsmanship alliance that Israel is desperately seeking in these Last Days. It is just my own speculation, but it seems to me that Mahmoud Abbas might be just the right kind of Palestinian leader that could enable the type of geo-political environment that would enable the emergence of the Antichrist in the very near future.

The coming Antichrist will use the burdensome dilemma of Jerusalem to divide the Promised Land for His own gain. He may in fact divide the city of Jerusalem between the Israeli’s and Arabs, reserving the Old City and its Temple Mount for his own designs!

Daniel 11:36-39 And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done. Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all. But in his estate shall he honour the God of forces: and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things. Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory: and he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain.