Palestinians Trapped At Crossroads
By Nicola Nasser
02 June,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Firing
home-made primitive rockets at Israeli targets from the Gaza Strip,
the mass sweeping through the Palestinian - Egyptian border crossing
of Rafah in January and the series of ongoing peaceful demonstrations
at Gaza's crossing points with Israel are not an aggressive demonstration
of self-confidence, but more a show of defensive despair and weakness
against the tight Israeli military siege, as much as Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas' threats to resign are passive defensive reaction to
the political siege imposed on him by the United States and Israel,
who so far fail to deliver on their promises to bring about an agreement
to create a Palestinian state by the end of 2008.
Given the corruption investigations, which have already heralded either
a premiership change or early elections that would lead to a government
change in Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is likely nearing the
end of his term to join Abbas and US President George W. Bush, whose
terms will come to their end next January, as outgoing leaders whom
all their protagonists are counting down time until their departure,
before they could deliver on their promised vision of a two-state
solution for the Palestinian - Israeli conflict.
Their failure is trapping the Palestinian national movement at a historical
crossroads by a peace option that could not deliver, with no other
alternatives, and a peace process that is meant for itself as a crisis
management tactic, while a multi-layer internal division is paralyzing
its central decision-making to render it incapable of being up to
the challenge of breaking through the impasse.
The Palestinian national movement finds itself in a deteriorating
state of paralysis. "There's almost no Palestinian leadership,"
Kadoura Fares, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister and a leading
member of President Abbas' Fatah party, told the Washington Times
on May 15.
This state of affairs is old enough. On May 31 2007, former Palestinian
negotiator and senior associate member of St. Antony's College, Oxford,
Ahmad Samih Khalidi, wrote in The Guardian: "What was once a
dedicated and vibrant Palestinian national movement is today almost
bereft of effective leadership."
The emergence of Fatah al-Islam in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon,
"the infestation of al-Qaida-type salafism," which has already
reached Gaza Strip, according toKhalidi, and the wide-spreading attraction
of the one-state or bi-national state option among the Palestinians,
as an alternative for the two-state solution for the Palestinian Israeli
conflict, are manifestations of the deteriorating influence of the
national movement led by both the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) and "Hamas."
Several interrelated and interdependent factors are sustaining the
status quo:
First, the US-sponsored political process launched with much fanfare
in Annapolis, Maryland on November 17 last year has almost lost steam,
leaving the two-state solution doomed and the PLO disillusioned, but
in a loss of what the next step should be.
The PLO is now aware that they were used by the US-Israeli allies
to appease the Arab "moderates" into being tricked in their
turn into closing their eyes to the US free hand in Iraq and vis-à-vis
Iran and Syria. The Quartet of the Middle East peace mediators, comprising
the US, UN, EU and Russia, subscribes to the same policy.
Second, Peace alternatives, like the one-state solution, have slim
chances to find Israeli subscribers and are already ruled out by the
US-Israeli determination to impose the recognition of Israel as a
"Jewish state" on Palestinians as a precondition for making
peace.
Third, Both Amman and Cairo as well as a Palestinian semi-consensus
decisively rule out an old Israeli alternative to annex the West Bank
to Jordan (the so-called Jordanian option) and Gaza Strip to Egypt.
"Jordanians consider the mere talk on this ... a conspiracy against
them," former minister of information and member of the upper
house of parliament, Saleh Qallab, wrote in Asharq al-Awsat on January
31, adding that Egypt "knows" that restoring Gaza to its
pre-1967 status would be an Egyptian "time bomb."
Forth, the peace "contacts" via Turkey between Syria and
Israel is further proof of the impasse on the Palestinian - Israeli
track. Marc Perelman, in The Jewish Daily Forward on May 22, quoted
Aaron David Miller, who was part of American peace negotiation teams
in the region for three decades, as saying: "Leaving one track
and going for the other is a way for Israel to get some leverage on
the Palestinian track that seems stuck."
Fifth, the multi-layer internal division (between Hamas and Fatah,
within Fatah itself, the presidency and Hamas, which dominates the
Palestinian legislative Council (PLC), the governments of Ramallah
and Gaza) is paralyzing Palestinian central decision-making. "Neither
the peace process, nor the (upcoming) sixth Fatah conference can succeed
without national reconciliation," senior Fatah leader and former
national security adviser, Jibril al-Rjoub, told Al-Arabiyya satellite
television on February 17. However, national reconciliation remains
hostage to US-Israeli veto and anti-Hamas preconditions.
Sixth, the crossroads is not only visible because the US sponsor of
the peace process is already preoccupied with the electoral campaign
that will bring about a new administration next January, but it is
more visible by the internal Palestinian division.
National institutional terms of reference have almost been obsolete
for years now. The last Fatah conference was held in 1989. The PLO
has been practically overtaken and marginalized by the Palestinian
Authority (PA) and its marginalization doomed its leading role among
the Palestinian Diaspora and refugees in exile, leaving a vacuum that
was filled by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
Moreover the PA institutional references are either in no better legitimacy
or their legitimacy will expire by the end of the 2008. President
Abbas' term expires next January; the PLC, whose term will expire
in January 2009, is paralyzed by Israeli detention of more than fifty
of its lawmakers. Palestinian Central Election Commission is already
bracing for local elections be the year end.
Convening the Fatah sixth conference, reviving the PLO back to its
leading role, inclusion by the PLO of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other
emerging non-PLO political parties, are overdue prerequisites for
a "legitimate" national unity, while renewal of the PA institutional
references is already on the agenda.
If the national institutional references are not revived for whatever
reason, be it the US-Israeli veto or other, and the renewal of the
PA institutions is adversely affected by the national division and
not properly done according to the Basic Law, the ensuing inaction
would not only exacerbate the divide but it would render the Palestinian
people leaderless, deprive Israel of a credible Palestinian peace
partner and rule out peace and any credible peace process for a long
time to come; in the end this could be the real undeclared US-Israeli
strategy!
Nicola
Nasser is a veteran Arab Journalist based in Bir Zeit of
the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank.