Tag: Yasser Abbas

On the separation of powers in Ramallah

Excerpts from an interview with Yasser Abbas (son of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) in his office in Ramallah, 18 December 2008:

Previous excerpts:
Part 3: Business and Businessmen in Palestine
Part 2: Fatah and Hamas – what’s the problem?
Part 1: Fatah and Hamas – and the Abbas family house in Gaza

Marian Houk (Question): Can I ask you, what do you know about the relations between your father, the President, and his Prime Minister (Salam Fayyad)? Is it true they’re not speaking to each other at the moment, or they’re fighting?

Yasser Abbas (Answer): That’s absolutely not true. That’s absolutely not true. They have a very good relationship. Every now and then the President says, “this is MY Prime Minister”, and “this is MY Cabinet, I’m the one that appointed it”. Eventually, they might have differences. Definitely, they might have differences in dealing with things. But I know, I know from the President’s point of view, he gives the authority to the Prime Minister to deal in the Ministry, in the internal issues, the way he sees fit. He comes back to him with difficulties, with problems, with things that really he cannot really decide on as a Prime Minister, he needs the President’s decision, and he gives him his honest opinion. I believe that the President, our President, has confidence in this Prime Minister. So none of what you said is true.

…
(X): Can I just add one thing about this, Marian? President Abbas is not like Yasser Arafat – he never takes any professional differences personally.  So, this is really amazing.  I don’t know where you heard this from, but it’s a ridiculous, silly…

Marian Houk: You know it’s published in the media.

(X): Even if it’s published in the media, it’s really silly.

Yasser Abbas: Ok, if they have a small difference with each other, people make it…

(X): “They don’t talk to each other”… Yaeni [I mean], we’re not in a kindergarten, at the end of the day.  And, it’s really weird…
…

Mahmoud Abbas casts ballot in Fatah elections in Bethlehem - his son Yasser Abbas stands behind to the left in the photo - 9 Aug 09

Photo from the Ma’an News agency website – Mahmoud Abbas puts the ballot it took him 20 minutes to complete (because of the long list of names of candidates) into a Fatah ballot box during the 6th Fatah General Conference in Bethlehem in August.
His son, Yasser Abbas, stands behind and to the left in the photo.

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Marian Houk (Question): Is it true that your father deals with the negotiations and leaves all the running of the government machinery to the Prime Minister?

Yasser Abbas (Answer): Well, the majority of it, yes. This is how it goes. This is how it is supposed to go. Because if the President has to start putting his nose in any Ministry’s work, then the Prime Minister will be there, doing nothing. And the President will, his job will be, day and night, how’s this Ministry doing? How’s that Ministry doing? But he meets with the Cabinet eventually, like once every God knows, I don’t know, how many sessions they are meeting, he goes and meets with them. And he interferes on a part-time basis, because that’s his job. His job is to appoint a Prime Minister that he really trusts, that the Prime Minister is in full charge of the running of the internal issues of the ministries. That’s why Salam Fayyad, our Prime Minister, Dr. Salam, he does not get himself involved in negotiations, eventually, because this is the PLO job, it’s not the Authority’s job. And the way I see it today, it’s a very clear relationship between the President and the Prime Minister, and if anybody looks at it really under a microscope, he will understand how things are run. Salam Fayyad, and the Ministries, and the Cabinet, have nothing to do with the Israelis in terms of the final status negotiations, and this is the way it should be.
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Q: Can I just ask you, who has responsibility for decisions about security now – is it the President, or the Prime Minister?

A: I think the higher decision is the President, implemented partially by the Prime Minister, because the Prime Minister, according to the by-laws, has the control over the Police, the fire-fighting, and the Preventive Security, I believe. The Secret Service, the National Guard, and the rest, and the Presidential Guard, are by the President. And yet, they are in agreement that one way or another, in any way, we have to have security all around the West Bank. It’s very simple, loud and clear. So he takes the orders from the President, he implements them, he believes in them. The Prime Minister believes in all the instructions that he gets from the President – so they are in agreement on those terms.

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Business and Businessmen in Palestine – a glimpse into the views of Yasser Abbas

Excerpts from an interview with Yasser Abbas in Ramallah – 18 December 2008 – by Marian Houk – Part 3
Other excerpts:
Part 4: Separation of Powers in Ramallah
Part 2: Fatah and Hamas – what’s the problem?
Part 1: Fatah and Hamas – and the Abbas family house in Gaza

Question (Marian Houk):  Let me start by asking you what you do here, what your business is?

Answer (Yasser Abbas):  Well, I’m a civil engineer by profession.  I manage a group of companies called, mainly, the Falcon Holding Group that represents a few companies that deal with construction management, contracting, trading, and insurance – basically, that’s it – in Palestine and outside Palestine.

Q: Do you spend most of your time here, or are you mostly outside?

A: No, I’m most of the time outside. [But] I’m based in Palestine.  My family is here.  If you want to call where’s my home – home is Palestine for me, and that’s where my main business originally originated.  That’s where my family lived.  That’s where my kids went to school, and one of them is still in school.  My wife is around always, all the time.  [In the second part of this interview, published yesterday, Yasser Abbas also said: “the second company I established in my life was in Palestine, in Ramallah, 1996, when Mahmoud Abbas was not the President, not the Prime Minister.  He was Secretary-General of the PLO.  I decided to open a company, and to go and compete like any other company in the market.  And there you go, it happened.  And from 1996 until 2000, we had those rosy years that we’ve never seen back again.  Everybody was working.  So we went and started bidding, and we started making relations with international companies coming from outside, like any other engineering office.  So, that’s the way I started, and that’s the way I do business here, in Palestine.  I can claim that all my projects that I take are competitive bidding.  Nobody has any privilege to me, personally, to come and tell me, ‘I will give you this’, or ‘I will give you that’.  Nobody has any power to do so.  I have no power over anyone, and I mean anyone, to tell them, ‘This project is mine, nobody touches it’.   Or, ‘I have a concession on such-and-such sector, and nobody touches’.  I don’t have that.  I challenge, I challenge, though you, publicly, anyone – anyone – who can come to me and point his finger at me to tell me, ‘I, or we, or such-and-such agency or ministry, gave you the job’, or ‘I have a concession on any sector of this economy’.  I challenge him. ]

Continue reading Business and Businessmen in Palestine – a glimpse into the views of Yasser Abbas

Fatah and Hamas – What's the problem? A view from Yasser Abbas

Other excerpts from the interview with Yasser Abbas in Ramallah on 18 December 2008:
Part 4: Separation of Powers in Ramallah
Part 3: Business and Businessmen in Palestine
Part 1: Fatah and Hamas – and the Abbas family house in Gaza

Yasser Abbas (apparently named after Yasser Arafat), Palestinian businessman and older of the two surviving sons of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview in his office last December, just before the IDF military attack on Gaza:  “You have been politically confused due to the Hamas situation in Gaza – politically confused.  This country has one head, it does not has two heads.  One decides who the second one is.  It’s not two who decide how to run the country.   It’s the President [who] gives a mandate to the Prime Minister, and this President can take his mandate back any time he likes, when he doesn’t see it fit”.

Yasser Abbas continued: “The Ministry, the Cabinet, is ousted in three cases: either the President takes back the mandate from the Prime Minister, or the Prime Minister resigns, or one-third of the cabinet resigns, as a total.  OK?  So these three conditions decide the political relationship, political, in the by-laws, of the relationship between the President and the Prime Minister.  The issue with Hamas becoming, yeah, we are the government – that’s what created the problem here.  Ok?  So, two presidents?  Two heads?  Two governments?  There’s only one legitimate government.  There is no two governments.  This what so-called government of Hamas is pure garbage, they are nothing.  They don’t run nothing.  They run a bunch of gangs, ok, that they are trying to run the country but they are not.  They know nothing about how to run a country.  They are not legitimate whatsoever.  And I’m sure of what I’m saying”.

Q:  What’s interesting, though, about what happened when Hamas took over security in Gaza, was that they continued to recognize the President as the President –  at least until the 9th of January (2008) – and to some, to me, it looked like an occasion that was lost because of hostility, after the government was dissolved … How do you see this crisis?

A:  Well, they cannot deny the legitimacy of the President.  The President has more legitimacy than they do.  It’s very simple.  The President has been elected by all the Palestinians with a percentage of 62.8% percent, in January of 2005.  The President will maintain a President until January 2010, even though his term is four years, but the law says both two elections should take place together, legitimate [legislative] and presidency, simultaneously.  The word “simultaneously” means, both elections will be done in one day.  That’s what simultaneously means – this is how they taught me that in school.  If anybody interprets that in his own terms, that’s his own problem, he has to go and learn Arabic, or English.

Continue reading Fatah and Hamas – What's the problem? A view from Yasser Abbas

Fatah and Hamas – Yasser Abbas and the house built for his father, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza

Other excerpts:
Part 4: Separation of Powers in Ramallah
Part 3: Business and Businessmen in Palestine
Part 2: Fatah and Hamas – what’s the problem?

Yasser Abbas is the second son of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (known as Abu Mazen, after the given name of his oldest son, Mazen, who died following surgery in Qatar some years ago).  He is also an international businessman who is based in Palestinian West Bank, but who also travels frequently.

Last December, he spoke to me at length in his office in Ramallah about his businesses (Falcon Holding Company), his views, and the development of Palestine.

A few days later, when Israel launched a massive military attack against Gaza — Operation Cast Lead — from 27 December to 18 January, I took a decision not to publish anything from the interview at the time, in case it might have inadvertently made anyone more vulnerable, or anything worse.

Now, as Fatah and Hamas are on the verge of possible reconciliation — or a possible slide to the worse — Yasser Abbas’ views give us an insight into the mind-set in Ramallah:

(Marian Houk) Question: In every country in the world, of course, Presidents and leaders have relatives who make their living. But the question is – your position gives you so much more influence, how do you decide, for you what’s ethical, and what’s not ethical? How do you make these decisions? How do you decide how you’re going to function?

(Yasser Abbas) Answer: Well, first of all, the first company that I’ve ever established in my life – no, it’s not the first company, I established one in Canada, but maybe the second company I established in my life was in Palestine, in Ramallah, 1996, when Mahmoud Abbas was not the President, not the Prime Minister. He was Secretary-General of the PLO. I decided to open a company, and to go and compete like any other company in the market. And there you go, it happened. And from 1996 until 2000, we had those rosy years that we’ve never seen back again. Everybody was working. So we went and started bidding, and we started making relations with international companies coming from outside, like any other engineering office. So, that’s the way I started, and that’s the way I do business here, in Palestine. I can claim that all my projects that I take are competitive bidding. Nobody has any privilege to me, personally, to come and tell me, “I will give you this”, or “I will give you that”. Nobody has any power to do so. I have no power over anyone, and I mean anyone, to tell them, “This project is mine, nobody touches it”. Or, “I have a concession on such-and-such sector, and nobody touches”. I don’t have that. I challenge, I challenge, though you, publicly, anyone – anyone – who can come to me and point his finger at me to tell me, “I, or we, or such-and-such agency or ministry, gave you the job”, or “I have a concession on any sector of this economy”. I challenge him.

After the coup, Hamas – before they went into the Presidential headquarters – they went into my store, and they robbed it: goods, desks, office equipments, computers, worth half a million dollars. So I had the great lost [the greatest loss], money-wise, out of all the Palestinians, as an individual.

Q: Yours was the greatest loss?

A: Yes – as an individual. I’m talking about, as an individual. Maybe other companies lost much more than me, companies.

Q: What was the company?

A: Falcon, Falcon Tobacco Company – we are the importers of British-American tobacco. We have negotiated this, and it is one company, and it is not the monopoly of the importation of cigarettes in the world. I hope you understand this. British-American is one company. Philip Morris is another company. Gauloise is another company. And all the other importation from Israel is another company. So. it’s a big, broad market. BAT – British-American Tobacco – happens to be one of the largest in the world. We are their importers since nine years. Hamas went into my stores and robbed all my stores, and our loss was greater than any other.

Q: They took cigarettes?

A: Yes, and they sold them in the market. That’s one of the things.

Q: You know, when I was there, right after the coup, first we were met when we arrived in the parking lot by these people who careened up, some of them had black uniforms, and some of them looked like Taliban … with different layers of robes, and vests, and turbans. It was a little bit tense. And then, I asked them where they got the car – and they said, “from Abu Mazen”…

A. You know, they took Abu Mazen’s house.

Q: This is what I wanted to tell you. Then, we went to the house.

Continue reading Fatah and Hamas – Yasser Abbas and the house built for his father, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza