INSS Insight No. 1017, February 6, 2018 The PLO Central Council Convention: Impasse with Possible Opportunity Kobi Michael The climax of the recent PLO Central Council convention, which began on January 14, 2018 in Ramallah, was the speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. On the following day, the Council passed several resolutions that in effect are recommendations to the PLO Executive Committee, the organization’s executive body. Most of the resolutions were in the spirit of Abbas’s recommendations in his speech and resonated of past resolutions. The speech was no harbinger of any substantive change in Abbas’s policy, which rejects the use of terror as an operational strategy – as it harms Palestinian interests – and advocates a popular struggle and the delegitimization of Israel. Despite the sharp rhetoric, the declaration regarding the “death” of the Oslo peace process, and the claim that the Palestinian Authority has been pushed into a position where it has no real sovereign power (even if the term “under occupation” was not used), Abbas’s speech left the door open to negotiations and refrained from endorsing proposals of prominent Council members to abandon the idea of two states in favor of one state, with equal rights for all citizens. At the same time, Abbas emphasized his clear preference that the international community lead the political process, on the model of the group of states that negotiated the nuclear agreement with Iran, contending that the United States has ceased to be an unbiased mediator. Abbas was highly critical of the current US administration, hurling insults, inter alia, at US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. He reiterated his intention to continue the PA’s efforts to join several international organizations and strive for recognition of a Palestinian state by the Security Council. Abbas’s speech highlighted the Palestinian narrative that identifies Zionism and Israel as an illegitimate colonialist plot devised by the Western powers; this narrative ignores the historical-national connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Abbas views the US administration’s initiative toward renewal of a political process that in the Palestinians’ view ignores the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees as a continuation of the same conspiracy, and therefore rejects it out of hand. Against the backdrop of Abbas’s disappointment with the US administration and the pragmatic Sunni Arab Quartet’s meager support for the Palestinian cause, and given his skepticism regarding the prospects of the reconciliation process between Fatah and Hamas, his speech presented a decidedly