Politics & Power Quote by Mahmoud Abbas

Abbas frames the conflict as a procedural breach, not a tragic misunderstanding. By zeroing in on “terms of reference,” he’s arguing that the real battleground isn’t just land but legitimacy: what rules govern the conversation, and who gets to define them. Invoking “international law and United Nations resolutions” is less a neutral appeal to principle than a strategic attempt to relocate the dispute from asymmetrical power politics to a forum where Israel can be cast as the outlier and Palestinians as the party asking only for the system to work as advertised.

The phrasing does two jobs at once. “Refuses to commit” suggests bad faith, positioning negotiations as theater unless the baseline is pre-agreed. That’s a preemptive defense against the familiar accusation that Palestinians “walk away” from talks: Abbas is arguing that talks without legal anchors are a trap, a process that can be endlessly extended while facts on the ground change.

Then comes the accelerant: “frantically continues to intensify building of settlements.” “Frantically” isn’t just descriptive; it’s moral staging. It paints settlement expansion as panicked, almost compulsive, implying an Israeli awareness that time, demographics, or diplomacy could eventually narrow their room to maneuver. The subtext is that each new housing unit is not merely construction but a veto on the future, converting negotiation into retroactive consent.

Context matters: this is the language of a leader whose core tactic has been internationalization after the collapse of faith in bilateral talks. Abbas isn’t offering a roadmap so much as writing an indictment meant for capitals, courts, and cameras.