Abbas Threatens to Quit.
The PA agitprop machine is out to feed the falsehoods that the Temple Mount disturbances of the last news cycle were caused by "Israeli provocations." Total fabrication. This news cycle we learn from Haaretz that PA President Mahmud Abbas, the old man in Palestinian politics, is threatening the Obama administration -- and POTUS personally -- that Abbas will resign his post, not stand again for election on January 24 or whenever, because, Abbas claims, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will not make peace. Abbas tells the White House that Netanyahu will not make concessions about building new family units in established settlements on the West Bank. Abbas also warns that he break off talks in Egypt with the Hamas gangsters, because, he claims, there is no possibility of reconciliation. How are these events all related? Why are they all the same thing, Arab shenanigans and sneakiness with implied threat to Washington and Jerusalem?
Abdullah of the House of Al-Saud
The comprehensive answer is that the trouble-making by Abbas in Jerusalem is part of the succession struggle in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, barely 17 million ill-educated and superstitious people, is an uncivil society, which mostly means there is not reliable, established method for passing power from the used-up to the wannabees. The aged and desperate King of Arabian, Abdullah of the bad knees and broken promises, is even now preparing for his certain death by making deals around the Ummah so that his family can keep their money and power of the oil pool. It is about the money. The first well of note was 1933, and the desert gangster Ibn Saud decided to make the exploration deal with the Americans (Aramco) and not with the arrogant and drunken British colonizers (BP). Seventy-four years later, that oil pool is what gives the al-Sauds and Ibn Saud's sons their significance. Just the oil and the money it brings. The tricked up traditional extremism cult of Wahhabism is not about religion, it is about the money. After the storming of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1980, old dead King Fahd (son of Ibn Saud), and now new king Abdullah (son of Ibn Saud), turned the mechanism of state control to flooding the schools and mosques with cant about Islam and Arabs. It is 99% make-believe of the moment. The Ummah never was and never will be the Wahhabist fantasy of Koran-centric prohibitionism. The aim of this invention is to protect the House of Al-Saud from scrutiny and challenge. It does not work. The Ummah sees the fakery. So Fahd and now Abdullah believe that Riyadh must show a victory in Jerusalem over the hated Jews and Crusaders. It is also a fantasy, but it is an expensive and blood-minded fantasy. Abdullah of the make-believe extreme Sunni Wahhabism is now in open competition with the Supreme Leader of the make-believe Shia Twelver cult in Tehran. A fist fight, on a landscape of the Ummah, with cash and surrogates and real nukes. To protect the House of Al-Saud. To provide a successor king to the deranged and cowardly sons of Ibn Saud. Yes, it is about the money.
Abbas Works for the House of al-Saud.
Abbas obeys his paymaster in Riyadh. Hamas at Gaza obeys its paymaster at Tehran. Abdullah and Riyadh know that Abbas is much weaker than Hamas and cannot compete without cash and chicanery. Abdullah has made the deal with the Obama administration to help in Afghanistan in exchange for POTUS delivering naked concessions from the Jews. Bibi Netanyahu will not budge. Abbas feels the frustration from Riyadh and from Washington. Abbas backed down on the Goldstone Report in order to maintain credibility with his own gunmen in their civil war with Hamas. Abbas will now badger POTUS for concessions, anything to show Riyadh. The Abbas/Fatah concocted riots on the Temple Mount these last weeks are a ploy by Abbas to show that he is tough and aggressive. Also to rally support from the Ummah, which does not work. Riyadh grows impatient with Abbas. Meanwhile, Tehran outmaneuvers the UN Security Council in the nuke dance at Vienna. In sum, Abbas and Abdullah and the Sauds weak, whiney, out of ideas, resentful. Washington and POTUS frustrated and out of ideas and whiney. Tehran cocky. Jerusalem and Bibi cautious and vigilant. Temple Mount, a three ring circus that no one believes and yet everyone watches as if there is a plot twist coming. Not tonight. It still is about the money.
Wonderful explanation of how all of it intersects in Jerusalem and how any possible resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - whether in blood or peace - will have wider repercussions throughout much of the world. Nice to know that Netanyahu - unlike Washington and Riyadh - is resisting the easy, shameful solutions. In the end, character always wins out.
There may be a timetable to this (peace talk) farce that everyone appears to be perpetuating so desperately at this particular time. Yes, there's the succession struggle within the House of Al-Saud. But that's a factor in every house and cannot be considered as unusually significant. The startlingly new element is the collapse of the dollar and that of financial paper in general. It means that the House of Al-Saud will see itself stripped of influence. All the money they have amassed over the years is about to be unmasked to show that nothing of value was ever done with it. The currencies themselves - surely stored in large, elaborate vaults - might just as well be stored in incinerators.
In the new world order, only value will have 'value'. Mere money in the hands of the undeserving will turn to sand. That time is near. It will happen before Obama's first term ends. It will unleash a maelstrom, sweeping aside all the corrupt and broken pieces. There will also be much collateral damage. Only 'value' will survive - and 'character'. The Saudis, as well as most of the rest of the Middle East, are not particularly strong on either point.
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