Abu Mazen and the Lubyanka
10th September 2016
Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, has been the president of “Palestine” since he was first elected in 2005. He was supposed to serve a four-year term, but somehow the 2009 election got postponed indefinitely, and he has been president of the Palestinian Authority ever since.
Ever since the death of the photogenic Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas has been the go-to guy for the international media whenever they need a nice white-haired gentleman in a suit to say the expected words about justice for the Palestinians and the misdeeds of the Israelis.
On Monday the unusual announcement was made that President Vladimir Putin had offered to broker talks between Abu Mazen and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow. The very next day the story broke that Mr. Abbas had been a KGB agent — not just an informant, but a full agent — back in the 1980s.
The timing of those two news stories seemed more than coincidental to a seasoned old paranoiac such as myself. However, it’s hard to figure out who is playing whom in this shadowy game, and why.