21 May 2007
ReDress
Palestinians must organize from the grassroots upwards to form an all-inclusive, progressive, patriotic liberation movement to seize control from Fatah, Hamas and their like and refocus the struggle on liberation and the right of return.
If there was ever a time for the Palestinian people to wrest control of their own destiny from the parties, factions and foreign proxies that will lead them to oblivion, that time is now.
For the past weeks and months, friends of the Palestinian people throughout the world have been witnessing with growing despair the spectacle of Palestinian killing Palestinian, of parasites – from the Salafi Group, to mafia-style clans to common criminals and collaborators – exploit the resulting lawlessness for their own gain, all the time while the Israeli occupation consolidates and the land grabs continue at a spectacular pace.
Ever since the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, an unholy alliance of Israel, the United States, the European Union and Egypt embarked on a concerted effort to undermine Hamas by making the Palestinian territories ungovernable.
First came the use of starvation as a weapon. The United States, together with the European Union and Israel, colluded to starve the Palestinians into removing the Hamas government and replacing it with compliant politicians. While the US and its European satellites cut off all aid to the Palestinians, Israel expropriated Palestinian tax money, a practice known to the civilized world as robbery. The message to the Palestinian people was clear: you can have democracy only if you elect the people we want you to elect, otherwise you shall starve.
The result is there for all to see. According to Professor Sara Roy of Harvard University,
The combined impact of restrictions, notably the almost unabated closure and the ongoing economic boycott, has resulted in unprecedented levels of unemployment that currently approach 40 per cent in Gaza (compared to less than 12 per cent in 1999). In fact, Palestinian workers from Gaza have not been allowed into Israel since 12 March 2006, Gaza's primary market and all entry and exit points have been virtually sealed since 25 June 2006 when Israel's current military campaign in Gaza began...
By April 2006, 79 per cent of Gazan households were living in poverty (compared to less than 30 per cent in 2000), a figure that has likely increased; many are hungry...
The second part of the strategy consisted of finding a Palestinian collaborator to help undermine the rule of Hamas. To its eternal shame, the Palestine Liberation Movement (Fatah) under the leadership of Mahmud Abbas put itself forward as a willing proxy to implement the Euro-American-Israeli plot against the people of Palestine. Once the proud symbol of the Palestinian struggle for liberation, Fatah had over the years stooped to the depths of other Arab regimes. Seeped in corruption and nepotism, and unable to come to terms with the fact that it had been booted out of power by the people in free and fair elections, it offered itself as a tool for the Israelis and their American and European stooges.
For Fatah, collaboration with the enemy had become the means to the one and only end it cared for: power.
Enter Egypt, which since the Camp David agreements of the late 1970s had become the main instrument of Israel and its US stooge in the Arab world. According to several sources*, from January 2007 Egypt, acting on behalf of Israel and its American puppet, began to send large quantities of weapons to Fatah, with the aim of triggering a civil war in the Palestinian territories. Simultaneously, whenever tension between Fatah gunmen and forces loyal to Hamas reached the point of armed clashes, Egyptian intelligence officers began to mediate between the two parties, presumably to cover up Cairo’s role in igniting the situation in the first place.
The irony – in fact, the tragi-comedy – of this situation is that neither Mahmud Abbas, nor Fatah, nor Hamas have any power or authority over anything, not over the Palestinian people or even over their own gunmen. The “Palestinian National Authority” (PNA) itself is a misnomer: it never had, was never intended to have by the Oslo agreements that created it and never will have any power or authority over anything.
Even the killing of cockroaches and the collecting of rubbish is undertaken, if at all, by the grace of the real power in Gaza and the West Bank, Israel.
It is Israel which controls the land and sea borders, and the airspace, of Gaza and the West Bank. It is Israel which collects Palestinian customs duties and keeps them for itself, and it is Israel which pulls the strings in Washington, London and other European capitals. So what are Fatah and Hamas fighting over? For what exactly are Palestinians killing Palestinians?
The stark fact is that the fratricidal blood letting which is devastating Palestinian society and losing the Palestinians their hard-won international support is the logical consequence of the Oslo agreements of 1993 which set up the PNA. The sole purpose of these agreements was to establish disconnected enclaves, or bantustans, into which the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza can be squeezed, leaving the remainder of the post-1967 occupied territories populated by Jewish settlers – in fact, squatters and misfits brought over from the United States, Europe and the former Soviet Union. The intention was that these bantustans be controlled by a quisling Palestinian regime, a role which Fatah was happy to perform in return for a little power.
Hamas, which had never accepted the Oslo accords, made the strategic mistake of participating in the 2006 PNA legislative elections, which it won, thereby putting itself in a straightjacket. On the one hand, true to its principles, it refused explicitly to recognize the legitimacy of the events of 1947-48, which led to the usurping of Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. It is this refusal which triggered the Israeli-orchestrated Euro-American economic sanctions. However, Hamas’s partaking in the 2006 PNA elections amounted to recognition of the Oslo agreements with Israel which established the PNA and, therefore, was tantamount to recognition of the State of Israel itself, that is, recognition of the legitimacy of the events of 1947-48. Thus, Hamas ended up with the worst of all worlds: compromising its principles by implicitly recognizing Israel but, because its recognition was not explicit, prompting US and European sanctions against the people of Palestine. To compound the situation, its victory in the 2006 elections fuelled resentment within Fatah, which felt cheated out of the crumbs it got from the Oslo deal.
This is the underlying cause of the despicable fratricide in Gaza. It is also the reason why we do not believe that the latest ceasefire between Fatah and Hamas gunmen will hold. In fact, it would not be unreasonable to say that the next round of fratricide is likely to be worse than the one we have just witnessed, perhaps expanding into parts of the West Bank.
Amid this quandary, only the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people are losers. While the gunmen of Fatah and Hamas spill each other’s blood over turf that is ultimately controlled by Israel, the people of Palestine, in Gaza, the West Bank and the diaspora, have been forced into the role of wretched, humiliated spectators, watching their brothers undermine their national cause and fritter away their hard-won international support and solidarity. What the past few weeks and months have shown is that, for the gunmen of Fatah and Hamas, personal and factional interests are more important than the national cause and the interests of their people.
The men of Fatah have demonstrated their willingnss to sabotage the national cause for the sake of preserving their role as Israel’s quislings. In choosing to play this game, Hamas’s followers, too, have shown that they also are prepared to compromise the national interest in order to protect their admittedly legitimate captaincy of the thoroughly rotten and doomed Oslo project, the PNA.
The conclusion from all this is clear: the people of Palestine in their entirety – the men and women living under occupation and those in the diaspora – must seize control of their own destiny from the factions and parties that will doubtless lead them to oblivion. Palestinians at the grassroots – in trade unions, professional associations, farmers’ organizations, women’s groups and other bodies – must organize to protect their national cause and work for their liberation and the right of return. Whether Muslims, Christians, agnostics or atheists, Fatah, Hamas, Baathists or Marxist-Leninists, they must organize from the grassroots upwards to form an all-inclusive, progressive, patriotic liberation movement that will render the present, parochial parties, together with extraneous opportunists such as Al-Qaeda and the Salafi Group, and criminal parasites, utterly irrelevant. If they can begin to do that, then the blood that has been spilled in Gaza and elsewhere over recent weeks and months would not have been shed in vain.
Finally, a word for the friends of Palestine throughout the world who have been driven to despair by the recent fratricide in Gaza. Your support has always been for the Palestinian cause, for the Palestinian people, not for Fatah, Hamas or any other party. It is the Palestinian people – the ordinary men, women and children who are living below subsistence – who are suffering because of the occupation, the Israeli-orchestrated Euro-American economic sanctions and the resulting civil strife in Gaza. The people of Palestine need your support and solidarity now more than at any time since 1948. Do not abandon them.
*See, for example,
Egypt sent arms to Fatah with Israel’s help;
Israeli defence official: Fatah arms transfer bolsters forces of peace; and
With Israeli approval, Egypt sends arms to Abbas's Fatah movement
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