Palestinian
Power-Struggle:
Siege Within
By Ramzy Baroud
06 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
It
is no secret that the Palestinian people have always struggled with
the problem of impotent, self-seeking leaderships, who have historically
invested far greater time fending for their own status and position
at the helm — however worthless — than representing the
legitimate rights and aspirations of an occupied nation. Alas, the present
fails to deviate from that role, although it offers an unprecedented
lesson.
To differ is only human,
indeed. But when political and ideological differences within the Palestinian
leadership milieu turn into wide chasms that split further an already
weakened and oppressed society in urgent need of national cohesion —
amid incessant and sadly successful attempts to splinter its national
identity — then one must dare question the wisdom and merit of
such leadership that would allow for, in fact, instigate such a travesty.
The current leadership struggle
in Palestine is an illustration of the misguided priorities of Palestinian
leaders, and for once, Palestinians must possess the courage to realise
and confront it.
It has been well established
that the current Hamas-led government was a direct manifestation of
the democratic choice of the Palestinian people; a choice that was fought
resolutely by an alliance that encompasses the United States and other
Western allies, Israel and a few Arab governments. It was not the transparency
of the elections they have rejected, rather the outcome. Each party
in that alliance had good reason to disallow genuine Palestinian democracy
— from their own self-absorbed viewpoint.
Of course, that rejection
was not a mere political position, but quickly translated to the withholding
of aid to the Palestinian government, needed to run the affairs of an
occupied nation, robbed blind and collectively punished by Israel, a
nation that lives, for obvious reasons, under utter economic dependency.
With over 160,000 civil servants not receiving their paychecks, however
meagre, or the last seven months, the Palestinian economy has descended
into chaos.
The UN special rapporteur
on human rights in the occupied territories told the UN Human Rights
Council on September 26 that the Gaza Strip — ironically the ‘liberated’
part of the territories — has sunken into the most severe crisis
in 13 years. “The Palestinian people have been subjected to economic
sanctions — the first time an occupied people has been so treated,”
he said. He also warned that the West Bank is also on the verge of an
imminent humanitarian crisis because of the 700km-long Israeli Separation
Wall. What is taking place in the West Bank is ethnic cleaning, he said,
“but political correctness forbids such language where Israel
is concerned.” Dugard’s heart-wrenching view is wholly inline
with similar reports coming out from the occupied territories.
While Western media reports
tend to focus on the political scuffling between the Hamas government
and Fatah, the once dominant party of President Mahmoud Abbas, the humanitarian
crisis is duly ignored. If not for the sensitive and perceptive reporting
of a few individual journalists such as Amira Hass of the Israeli daily
Haaretz and Donald Macintyre of the British Independent, the untold
suffering of the Palestinian people would have gone completely unnoticed.
(Raja Khalidi’s September 22 piece in the British Guardian, ‘It
Can Only Get Worse’ revealed most devastating statistics regarding
the direness of the Palestinian economy. Gaza however remains the most
intense example where, according to Dugard, three-quarters of its 1.4
million residents are now dependent on direct food aid).
However, it must be admitted
that while the inhumanity and apathy towards the plight of the Palestinians
is part-and-parcel of the West’s general attitude toward that
historically ill-treated nation, thanks to internal Palestinian division
and ineffectual power-struggles, Palestinians are being reduced and
humiliated with the full cooperation of their own leadership.
History is rife with examples,
starting with the Palestinian failure to devise a legible strategy to
face the Zionist colonial project in the early half of the last century:
with a dirty power-struggle quickly surfacing between the Husseini and
Nashashibi families, both claiming to be true representatives of Palestinians,
the latter labelled a ‘moderate’ while the rest were designated
extremists and terrorists. History has repeated itself, many times and
so cruelly since then, and many segments of the Palestinian people,
whether in Palestine or outside either willingly or out of desperation
for a platform to resist, fell victim to factional and sub-factional
divisions. Dissension, disunity and discord had indeed become Palestinians’
worse enemy. While Israel cleverly capitalised on these divisions, various
Arab capitals played a similar game, buying political allegiances with
hard cash.
Facing an endless campaign
of military violence and all sorts of collective punishment, Palestinians
in the occupied territories and the equally wretched dwellers of refugee
camps in Diaspora, had little choice but to hold on their straw-man
leaderships, which grew incredibly wealthy, detached and hardly representative
of the people and their true aspirations.
In recent years, particularity
under the Oslo dictates, the Palestinian leadership upgraded its status
to that of Israel’s iron fist and most faithful prison guard,
in exchange for special privileges to its members of old and emerging
elites. Though this episode presumably came to an end in the legislative
elections that brought a new government to power in March 2006, the
Palestinian people are being pressured to repent and return to the status
quo, corrupt or not, so long as Israel is satisfied with the outcome.
Mainstream Fatah is desperate
to reclaim its past position, even if unity with Hamas means the sparing
of the Palestinians further humiliation and misery. Hamas, wrangling
with the taxing nature of politics, is sending mixed messages, injudicious
ones from abroad, and more realistic, yet often indecisive ones at home.
Both Fatah and Hamas are allowing their desire for self-preservation
and advancement to supplant the self-preservation of the Palestinian
national unity, or whatever remains of it.
It’s most poignant
that such a reminder is hardly emanating from among Palestinian leaders
and intellectuals — many of them immersed in the illusive power
struggle — but from journalists like Amira Hass, who concluded
a recent article (Missing the Government of Thieves) with a distressing
reminder: “Apparently both movements are now competing for power
and are forgetting that their job is to shorten the days of foreign
Israeli rule over their people.”
Palestinians are long used
to betrayal and indifference; but being let down by one’s own
leadership is most painful, indeed.
Ramzy Baroud’s
latest book: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of
a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is now available on
Amazon.com. He can be reached at [email protected]
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