The
Struggle For Palestine's Soul
By Jonathan Cook
06 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Nazareth.
The message delivered to
Condoleezza Rice this week by Israeli officials is that the humanitarian
and economic disaster befalling Gaza has a single, reversible cause:
the capture by Palestinian fighters of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit,
in late June from a perimeter artillery position that had been shelling
Gaza.
When Shalit is returned,
negotiations can start, or so Rice was told by Israel's defence minister,
Amir Peretz.
If Peretz and others are
to be believed, the gunmen could have done themselves and the 1.4 million
people of Gaza a favour and simply executed Shalit weeks ago. Israel
doubtless would have inflicted terrible retribution, such as the bombing
of the Strip's only power station -- except, of course, it had already
done that to avenge Shalit's capture. But, with the Israeli soldier
dead, there would have been no obstacle to sitting down and talking.
Yet, as we all know, there
would have been. Because Israel's refusal to negotiate -- and its crushing
of Gaza -- long predates the capture of Shalit.
The international community's
economic blockade of the Strip, for example, has nothing to do with
the seizing of the soldier; that was because Gazans had the temerity
to cast their vote for the politicians of Hamas in March. The Palestinians'
exercise of their democratic rights is also the reason why Palestinians
with American and European passports are being torn from their families
in the occupied territories and expelled.
The recent unremitting Palestinian
death toll, of hundreds of civilians, is also unrelated to Shalit. That
is apparently the necessary response to the homemade Qassam rockets
fired from the Strip into Israel. As are the sonic booms of Israeli
warplanes in the middle of the night that traumatise Gaza's children.
And what about Israel's refusal
last year to coordinate its disengagement from Gaza with the Palestinian
security forces? That was because Israel had "no partner for peace",
even though the supine President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, was then in
sole charge.
Israel's bulldozing of large
sections of the densely crowded refugee camp of Rafah, making thousands
homeless, had nothing to do with Shalit either. That was related to
weapons smuggling tunnels. And the extra-judicial executions of Palestinian
political and military leaders, with the inevitable "collateral
damage" to bystanders, began before Shalit attended his first school.
That is supposedly an essential component in the never-ending war against
Palestinian terrorism.
In other words, Israel has
always found reasons for oppressing, destroying and killing in Gaza,
whatever the circumstances. Let us not forget that Israel's occupation
began four decades ago, long before anyone had heard, or dreamt, of
Hamas. Israel's rampages through Gaza have continued unabated, even
though Hamas' military wing refrained from retaliating to Israeli provocations
and maintained a ceasefire for more than a year and a half.
Shalit is the current pretext,
but there are a host of others that can be adopted should the need arise.
And that is because as far as Israel and its American patron are concerned,
any Palestinian resistance to the illegal occupation of Gaza and the
West Bank is unacceptable. Whatever the Palestinians do -- apart from
submitting willingly to occupation and permanently renouncing their
right to statehood -- is justification for Israeli "retaliation".
Absolute political and military
inactivity is the only approved option for the Palestinians, both because
it implies acceptance of the occupation and because then the world can
quietly forget about the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. On the
other hand, Palestinian activity of any kind -- and especially in pursuit
of goals like national liberation -- must be punished.
Heads I win, tails you lose.
All this provides the context
for decoding the latest events unfolding in Gaza, as rival fighters
from Fatah and Hamas confront each other violently on the streets.
This is the moment Israel
has long been waiting for, from the moment a Likud government that included
Ariel Sharon began seriously meddling in internal Palestinian politics
by helping to establish the Muslim Brotherhood organisation that later
became Hamas. Israel hoped that an Islamist party would be a bulwark
to the growing popularity of Yasser Arafat's exiled Fatah party and
its secular Palestinian nationalism.
Things, of course, did not
go quite to plan. In the first intifada that erupted in 1987, Hamas
adopted the same assertive agenda of Palestinian national liberation
(with added Islamic trimmings) as Fatah. The two groups' goals complemented
each other rather than conflicted.
Later, after Israel finally
allowed Arafat to return to the occupied territories under the terms
of the Oslo accords, the Palestinian president avoided as far as possible
carrying out Israeli demands to crack down on Hamas, understanding that
this would risk a civil war that would damage Palestinian society and
weaken the chances of eventual statehood.
Similarly, Arafat's successor,
Mahmoud Abbas, resisted confronting Hamas almost as studiously as he
has avoided challenging Israeli diktats. Instead, until recently at
least, we saw fighters from Hamas and Fatah in Gaza cooperating on several
attacks on military positions.
But this week's clashes in
Gaza are the first signs that Israel may be succeeding in its designs
to deflect the Palestinian resistance from its common goal of national
liberation -- to achieve a state -- by redirecting its energies into
fratricidal war.
Or as Zeev Schiff, a veteran
Haaretz commentator with exceptional contacts in the military, observed:
"Lesson number 1 is that the international financial and economic
siege of the Hamas government, which is being led by the United States,
is succeeding."
Certainly the economic blockade
has nothing to do with securing the return of Shailt, as even a senior
Israeli army officer and self-styled "counter-terrorism expert"
warned this week. "Due to the disagreements between the two sides
[Hamas and Fatah], the soldier's release is not in sight," Col
Moshe Marzouk told the website of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.
Instead, the economic strangulation
of Gaza has been the catalyst for internal Palestinian conflict. Inevitably,
social bonds grow weak and fragile, even tear, when nearly half the
population is unemployed and more than three-quarters are living in
poverty. If children are hungry, parents will contemplate opposing their
government -- even if they agree with its goals -- to put food on the
table.
But the immiseration of Gaza
does not, of itself, explain why the clashes are taking place, or what
is motivating the factions. This is not just about who will get the
scraps from the master's table, or even a struggle between two parties
-- Hamas and Fatah -- for control of the government. It is now no less
than a battle for the very soul of Palestinian nationalism.
It is no coincidence that
the international community, at Israel's behest, has been making three
demands of the Hamas government that supposedly justify the throttling
of Gaza's economy. The conditions are now well-known: recognising Israel,
renouncing violence, and abiding by previous agreements.
Let us put aside Israel's
worse failure -- as the stronger party -- to honour any of these conditions.
Observers rarely note that Israel has never recognised the Palestinians'
right to statehood, not even in the Oslo accords, nor has it defined
the extent of its own borders; it has not for one moment renounced violence
against Palestinian resistance to occupation; and it has consistently
broken its agreements, including by expanding its illegal settlement
programme and by annexing Palestinian land under cover of building the
West Bank wall.
But more strangely, observers
have also failed to note both that Fatah, first under Arafat and then
Abbas, agreed to all three conditions years ago and that Fatah's compliance
to Israeli demands never helped advance the struggle for statehood by
one inch.
Arafat and the PLO recognised
Israel back in the late 1980s, and the Palestinian leader put his signature
to this recognition again in the Oslo accords. In returning to the occupied
territories as head of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat also renounced
violence against Israel. He headed the new security forces whose job
was to crack down on Palestinian dissent, not respond to Israel's many
military provocations or fight the occupation. And of course, Arafat
and Fatah, unlike Israel, had every reason to want previous agreements
honoured: they mistakenly believed that they were their best hope of
winning statehood. They did not factor in Israel's bad faith, and its
continuation and intensification of the settlement project.
So the lesson learnt by Hamas
from the Fatah years of rule is that these conditions were and are only
a trap, and that they were imposed by Israel to win Palestinian obeisance
to the occupation, not national liberation. During the Oslo years, the
benefits of accepting Israeli conditions accrued not in a peace dividend
that led to Palestinian statehood but in rewards that flowed from collaboration
with the occupation, a stealthly corruption that enriched many of Fatah's
leaders and kept its followers in the large government bureaucracy at
a basic standard of living.
Following the outbreak of
the second intifada, a majority of ordinary Palestinians voters began
to understand how terminally damaging Fatah's complicity with the ocupation
had become. For example, as Palestinian, Israeli and international activists
tried to demonstrate against the building of Israel's wall across the
West Bank, and the subsequent annexation of large swaths of Palestinian
land to Israel, the protesters found obstacles placed in their way at
every turn by the ruling Fatah party. Its leaders did not want to jeopardise
their cement and building contracts with Israel by ending the wall's
progress. Liberation was delayed for the more immediate prize of remuneration.
By signing up to the same
conditions as Fatah, Hamas would be as good as abandoning its goal of
national liberation, as well as forsaking the majority of voters who
realised that Fatah's corrupt relationship with Israel had to end. Hamas
would self-destruct, which is reason enough why Israel is making such
strenuous demands of the international community to force Hamas to comply.
"The Palestinians need
a government that can provide for their needs and meet the conditions
of the Quartet," Rice said this week, adding that she wanted to
strengthen the "moderates" like Abbas.
The struggle on the streets
of Gaza is a defining moment, one that may eventually decide whether
a real national unity government -- one seeking Palestinian statehood
-- is possible.
The question is: will Fatah
force Hamas to cave in to Israeli demands and co-opt it, or will Hamas
force Fatah to abandon its collaboration and return to the original
path of national liberation?
The stakes could not be higher.
If Hamas wins, then the Palestinians will have the chance to re-energise
the intifada, launch a proper, consensual fight to end the occupation,
one that unites the secular and religious, and try to face down the
bullying of the international community. As with most national liberation
struggles, the price in lives and suffering is likely to be steep.
If Fatah wins and Hamas falls,
we will be back to the Oslo process of official Palestinian collaboration
with Israel and consent to the ghettoisation of the population -- this
time behind walls. Such an arrangement may be done under Fatah rule
or, more likely, under the favoured international option of government
by Palestinian technocrats, presumably vetted by Israel and the United
States.
The consequences are not
difficult to divine. If the hopes of ordinary Palestinians for national
liberation are dashed again, if Hamas falters just as Fatah did before
it, these frustrated popular energies will resurface, finding a new
release and one likely to have a different agenda from either Hamas
or Fatah.
If the goal of establishing
a Palestinian state cannot be realised, then the danger is that many
Palestinians will look elsewhere for their liberation, not necessarily
in national but in wider, regional and religious terms. The Islamic
component of the struggle -- at the moment a gloss, even for Hamas,
on what is still a national liberation movement -- will grow and deepen.
National liberation will take a back seat to religious jihad.
Do Israel and the United
States not understand this? Or maybe, like serial felons who cannot
de diverted from the path of crime, they are simply incapable of changing
their ways.
Jonathan Cook
is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author
of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish
and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in
the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website
is www.jkcook.net
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