Oslo's
Baleful Legacy
By Nimer Sultany
18 June 2007
The
Electronic Intifada
The
Oslo endless-fruitless-negotiations peace process has created an ambiguous
situation: the Palestinians are caught somewhere between state-building
and liberation struggle without being or having either. As a result
they bear the responsibilities of freedom without actually enjoying
freedom. The world looks at them as if they were in a postcolonial stage
while the colonialists are still around.
Additionally, the Oslo process
has transformed the Palestinian revolutionary project into a corrupted
comprador class that enjoys some benefits from the occupier. The victory
of Hamas in the elections has caught this comprador class by surprise.
Since then, the Fatah movement has refused to acknowledge its defeat,
refused initially to join Hamas in a unity government, and waited eagerly
to prove that Hamas has failed without initially giving it a chance
to succeed.
The EU, United States, and
Israel have boycotted the government and contributed their fair share
to its prospected failure and to the Palestinian bloodshed. Hamas had
refrained for more than two years prior to its elections from suicide
attacks and has decided to participate in the electoral process created
by Oslo. Ariel Sharon who rejected Oslo had his chance in power and
was not boycotted by the world; Hamas was not given the same chance.
Today, Ha'aretz reports that
Israel intends to release the Palestinian taxes money it withheld since
Hamas came to power, because the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas,
has just decided to fire the government. This seems like another immediate
reward and encouragement of one faction over the other to inflame the
civil war. The media has reported on several occasions in the last two
years about money, training, and weapons from the US and Israel to Fatah.
All of it is intended to overthrow a legitimately elected government.
Abbas's personality and lack of leadership is one of the causes to the
current crisis. He is a weak leader who lacks ability to handle such
complex situations, he lacks charisma, he behaves like a faction leader
rather than a president, and he lacks the symbolic capital that Arafat
had enjoyed. Additionally, he is viewed as someone who is willing to
make concessions far beyond what the Palestinian public is willing to
contemplate. But Israel is not willing to accept anything less than
full and unconditional capitulation.
The fighting in Gaza is shameful.
In spite all of the above, Fatah and Hamas bear the main responsibility
of the bloodshed. Oslo, it turns out, was a mistake. The reality of
Palestinians killing each other over a meaningless authority (while
the occupier is laughing down the road) is tragic. The Palestinian factions
should have known better. They need to focus on unified strategies that
will drive the colonizers out. This primary mission has been forgotten
in the ebb and flow of mundane politics. The Palestinian Authority should
be perceived as nothing more than a means to an end. If it is not helping
the Palestinians to achieve self-determination then it should be dissolved
altogether.
Oppressed peoples have known
similar experiences. At the end of the 80s, a monthly average of 100
black South Africans were killed in black-on-black violence, and between
1990-1993 an average of 259 blacks per month were killed. These were
the last days of the apartheid. One hopes that the Palestinian internal
bloodshed will come to an end soon and with it the dawn of freedom.
Nimer Sultany
is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and currently a doctoral candidate
at Harvard Law School. He has worked as a human rights lawyer in the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel and as the head of the political
monitoring project at Mada
al-Carmel (the Arab center for applied social research).
This commentary was originally
published by The Guardian's Comment is Free and is republished with
the author's permission.
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