There
Is Still Another Way
For Palestine
By Hasan Abu Nimah
& Ali Abunimah
20 December 2006
The
Electronic Intifada
After months of anticipation,
Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction
finally launched their attempted coup against the democratically-elected
cabinet headed by the Hamas party and prime minister Ismail Haniyeh.
Days of interfactional violence,
following Abbas' speech in which he threatened to call new elections
(something most legal experts agree he does not have the authority to
do), claimed at least seven lives. A shaky truce continued to be violated,
and the events of the past week have provided a terrifying glimpse of
what may yet await Palestinians if Abbas decides to continue on his
disastrous path.
Since Hamas won the PA legislative
election last January, the Fatah leadership has colluded with the Western-backed
Israeli siege. They intended to force Hamas from office or to force
its capitulation to Israeli demands that Palestinians relinquish the
right to resist in any form against Israeli colonialism and occupation,
and to recognize an Israel that is a racist sectarian state, that has
no fixed borders and that has refused to say whether such recognition
will change anything.
Abbas claims that a crisis
exists necessitating elections because Palestinians voted for two programs
(his, by electing him chairman of the PA in January 2005), and that
of Hamas (which won the legislative election a year later). But this
is disingenuous. Abbas was elected following the death of Arafat, after
a massive campaign by the "international community" claiming
that Arafat had been the "obstacle to peace," and Abbas would
be the Palestinians' salvation. Although fewer than half of eligible
voters turned out for the 2005 election, most of those who did dutifully
voted for Abbas, hoping that international promises would be kept. For
a full year, Abbas was powerless as Israel continued its violence against
Palestinians, including the massive confiscation of land, and accelerated
construction of the apartheid wall, while the world stood by and watched.
At the first opportunity,
in January 2006, Palestinians under occupation (this time over 80 percent
turned out) gave Hamas an overwhelming majority. They delivered the
same message of rejection to Abbas and his "program" that
Americans sent to Bush in the recent congressional election.
If Fatah leaders are trying
to dress a blatant power grab in the legitimacy of new elections, Hamas
has perhaps exercised its best option by declaring it will boycott them
if they even take place. After all, why should the movement participate
in elections since the results will only be respected if Palestinians
submit to blackmail and make the "right" choice? In such a
situation, the only way to win is not to play the game.
It remains unclear whether
Abbas' ploy will succeed. All other Palestinian factions immediately
rejected new elections. Last July, Abbas announced a referendum, also
an attempt to override Hamas' victory, but he did not have the strength
to bring it about against the will of other Palestinians.
By contrast, Israel, the
US and the UK rushed to endorse it. And only a day before Abbas' speech
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would ask Congress for
tens of millions of dollars to provide additional arms and training
to Abbas' militias. These facts underscore for many Palestinians that
Abbas' only significant bases of support are foreign powers widely regarded
as implacably hostile to Palestinian rights, and which have tried, as
in Palestine, to impose governments that serve their agendas in Iraq
and Lebanon (precipitating civil war in the former, and threatening
it in the latter).
Although Abbas' move was
no surprise, the less than decisive results indicate that he may have
felt forced to act before he was ready. Two factors might have contributed
to this haste. First despite months of Fatah-organized strikes and protests
over wages unpaid due to the siege, Hamas' efforts to break the siege
without political capitulation were beginning to bear fruit. Ismail
Haniyeh had secured pledges from several countries to pay the wages
of tens of thousands of public servants.
Second, in late November,
Israel, for the first time ever, publicly accepted a Hamas truce offer
to halt the massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza in exchange for a halt
to rocket fire by Palestinian resistance groups into Israel. This truce
clearly suited both parties, but it may have worried the Abbas camp
that one day Israel might no longer need them to play their traditional
role as brokers between Israel and the resistance groups.
There are a number of parallels
to the confrontations between Hamas and Fatah in earlier anti-colonial
struggles. There are strong echoes of the Irish civil war in the 1920s.
A more recent analogy can perhaps be seen in the latter days of the
South African apartheid regime, when supporters of the African National
Congress (ANC) on the one hand, and the Inkatha Freedom Party on the
other engaged in bloody battles. This violence was marketed by the apartheid
regime as "black on black violence" supposedly demonstrating
how unfit blacks were to govern. ANC supporters saw Inkatha as colluding
with the apartheid regime, and indeed foreign backers of apartheid hoped
to foster an alternative black leadership that could accomodate itself
to white rule.
Palestinians seem to have
reached a bleak pass, but they are not condemned to repeat history.
Abbas and his faction should not be permitted to drag Palestinians into
civil war. The worst miscalculation Hamas could make is to confuse the
Abbas camp's zeal for the prize with evidence of its value. It is clear
that the Palestinian Authority cannot be a vehicle for Palestinian liberation.
It is better to withdraw all recognition from it, let it collapse, or
let those who want it inherit its empty shell, than spill a single drop
of blood trying to preserve it. In the eyes of its supporters, Hamas'
legitimacy, which has grown despite the international boycott, does
not stem from its formal position within the PA, but from its steadfastness
in the face of the occupation.
Hamas and all other factions
committed to resisting occupation should focus on intensified civil
struggle and solidarity. This is the best way to isolate those who would
push for civil war in order to retain their privileges and power. Recent
acts of civil resistance in which thousands of unarmed Palestinians
intervened to prevent Israeli assassinations and air raids in Gaza demonstrated
the immense potential for creative nonviolence that could make Israel's
apartheid system powerless.
Hasan Abu Nimah is a regular contributor to and Ali Abunimah is a co-founder
of EI. Ali Abunimah is author of "One Country: A Proposal to End
the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse" (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
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