Palestinians
Must Redefine Struggle
By Ramzy Baroud
17 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org
It’s never easy, although
a sure assertion, to maintain that the Palestinian front, at home as
well as abroad remains as fragmented and self-consumed, thus ineffective,
as ever before, but most notably during the disastrous post-Oslo period.
Such a realization wouldn’t
mean much if the inference is concerned with any other polity; but when
it’s made in regards to a nation that is facing an active campaign
of ethnic cleansing at home, and an international campaign of sanctions
and boycott – as shameful as this may sound – then, the
problem is both real and urgent.
Palestinians in the West
Bank, especially in areas that are penetrated by the imposing Israeli
imprisonment wall – mostly in the north and west, and increasingly
everywhere else - are losing their land, their rights, their freedoms
and their livelihood at an alarming speed, unprecedented in their tumultuous
history with the Israeli military occupation. The 700 kilometre wall,
once completed, will further fragment the already splintered West Bank
– Israel’s settlement project since 1967 has disfigured
the West Bank using Jews-only bypass roads, military zones and so forth,
to ensure the viability of the country’s colonization scheme,
but rendered Palestinian areas disunited and isolated, thus the entire
two state solution, under the current circumstances simply inconceivable.
Gaza, which Yitzhak Rabin
had once wished would sink into the sea, and which Israel has laboured
to dump on any one foolish enough to take responsibility for it - so
long as it’s not part of any comprehensive agreement that would
include Jerusalem and the West Bank - maintains its ‘open air
prison’ status. Palestinians there are being reduced to malnourished
refugees, manipulated into violence and discord, a spectacle that Israel
is promoting around the world as an example of Palestinian lack of civility,
and their incapacity to govern themselves.
Occupied East Jerusalem has
completely surrendered territorially to the Israeli colonial scheme;
the Israeli government insistently refuses to consider Jerusalem as
an issue that warrants negotiations; nothing to talk about, according
to Israeli officials who see Jerusalem as their state’s undivided
and eternal capital. Vital movement from and into Jerusalem is increasingly
impossible for West Bank Palestinians. Muslim and Christian properties
in the city are interminably threatened, targeted or desecrated. The
most recent targeting of al-Haram al-Sharif - underground digging and
similar Israeli schemes - is intended to further exasperate Muslim fury,
and emphasize the point that Israel retains the upper hand in its relations
with the Palestinians.
Other major issues such as
settlements, water, refugees, borders, etc, continue to be dictated
by Israel’s unilateral actions, while the Palestinian role is
relegated to that of the hapless, submissive and often angry victim.
It goes without saying that if such decisive matters go largely unchallenged
by a solid, popular Palestinian strategy, one mustn’t be surprised
if other issues: such as the need to restructure the progressively more
fragmented Palestinian national identity, the need for a powerful, sustained
and articulate Palestinian voice in the media and an influential body
that unites and channels all Palestinian efforts around the world to
serve a clear set of objectives, are receiving little or no attention
whatsoever.
It must also be acknowledged,
as uncomfortable as this may be to some, that the Palestinian democratic
experience is rapidly succumbing to Israeli pressures, American meddling
– tacitly or otherwise coordinated with Arab as well as other
governments – and the fractious Palestinian front that has been
for decades permeated with ideological exclusivism, cronyism, and corruption.
Though one cannot help but rail against the American government’s
abortion of what could have been the prize of Arab democracy, still,
the joint American-Israeli anti-democratic scheme would’ve faced
utter defeat if Palestinian ranks where united, rather than self absorbed.
The Palestinian Liberation
Organization, since its formation by the Arab League in 1964, but most
significantly since its reformation in the early 1970s under Palestinian
leadership, was for long regarded as the main body that eventually brought
to the fore the Palestinian struggle as – more than a mere question
of a humanitarian issue that needed redress – a national fight
for freedom and rights. There was, more or less, a national movement
that spoke and represented Palestinians everywhere. It gave the Palestinian
struggle greater urgency, one that was lost, or willingly conceded by
Arafat on the White House lawn in September 1993, and again in Cairo,
May 2004.
Aside from snuffing out the
Palestinian national project, reducing it to self autonomous areas,
rendering irrelevant millions of Palestinians, mostly refugees, scattered
around the world – thus demoting the international status of the
PLO into a mere symbolic organization, Oslo had given rise to a new
type of thinking in the rank of Palestinians adopted by those who see
themselves as pragmatic and whose language is that of real politic and
diplomacy. This, as it transpired, revealed itself as the most woeful
case of self-defeatism that continues to permeate most Palestinian circles
whose new ‘strategy’ is confined to the acquiring of qualified
funds from European countries, which eventually dotted the West Bank
with NGOs, mostly without a clear purpose, examined agenda and no coordination.
Involving oneself in such useless projects is ineffectual, while rejecting
them without a clear alternative can be equally frustrating, if not
demoralizing. An official within the Abbas circle chastised me during
a long airplane ride once for subscribing to the Edward Said’s
school, whose followers, I was told, wish to parrot criticism from the
outside, and refrain from “getting their hands dirty”, i.e.
getting involved in the Palestinian Authority’s institution building,
and so forth.
While such a claim is utterly
fabricated, no viable institution can possibly come out of the current
setting: an amalgam of a most violent occupation and the utter internal
corruption, sanctioned, if not fed by both Israel and the US government.
The truth is that there have been no serious collective Palestinian
efforts to redress the mistakes of Oslo and to breathe life into the
PLO. (The Intifada was a popular expression of Palestinians disaffection
with Oslo and the occupation, but, alone, it can hardly be considered
a sustainable strategy). Neither a religious movement like Hamas, nor
a self exalted one like Fatah, is capable of approaching this subject
alone, nor are they individually qualified to alter the Palestinian
course, which seems to be moving in random order.
The problem is indeed more
exhaustive than a mere ideological or even personal quarrels between
two rival political parties; rather, it’s an expression of a prevailing
Palestinian factionalism that seems to consume members of various Palestinian
communities regardless of where they are based. My frequent visits and
involvement in many activities organized by Palestinian groups seem
to leave me with the same unpleasant feeling: that there is no collective
national strategy, but incoherent actions undertaken mostly by groups,
however well intended, whose work never boasts a unified national agenda.
With the absence of centrality
everywhere, individuals hoping to fill the vacuum are offering their
own solutions to the conflict, once more without any serious or coordinated
efforts and without a grassroots constituency, neither in the Occupied
Territories nor among major Palestinian population concentration in
Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc. Others like the Geneva Initiative enthusiasts
find it acceptable to negotiate a solution on Palestinians’ behalf
– without any mandate whatsoever - and obtain sums of money to
promote their ideas, though the whole enterprise is run by a few individuals,
who has no representations or sustained grassroots work among what one
would expect to be their primary constituency, Palestinians themselves.
Oslo has lost its relevance
as a ‘peace’ treaty, but the individualism it imposed on
Palestinians still prevails; its legacy was that of self-preservation,
instead of the collective good, and in my mind, no Palestinian party,
including Hamas is immune from subscribing to its luring values. To
avoid further debacles, Palestinians must ditch their factionalism and
quit thinking of their relationship with their struggle in terms of
funds, ideology (though flexible to fit political interests) or religious
interpretations. They are in urgent need of strenuous efforts to formalize
a new collective strategy that pushes for specific principles which
can only be achieved through national consensus. Waving flags in the
face of passers by, and the proverbial ‘preaching to the choir’
alone will lead nowhere. Individual ‘initiatives’ will further
confuse the Palestinian ranks. Only a consistent, cohesive and reasonable
strategy that emanates from the Palestinians themselves can engage international
public opinion - with the hope of breaking the patronage system that
unites the West, especially the United States to Israel - can possibly
slow down the Israeli army bulldozers currently carving up the West
Bank into a system of cantons, and high walled prisons. Reforming and
revitalizing the PLO is not an option - it is a must.
Ramzy Baroud
is an Arab American writer. His latest book: The Second Palestinian
Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle is now available.
His website is ramzybaroud.net.