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Avoiding national suicide
Anyone who has pondered the gradual loss of Palestine to the Zionists since the early 20th century knows that the Palestinians' defeat was due, at least in part, to their own internal rivalries. Factionalism was and is a Palestinian disease, perhaps even an Arab one!
- By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 May 29, 2006
Anyone who has pondered the gradual loss of Palestine to the Zionists since the early 20th century knows that the Palestinians' defeat was due, at least in part, to their own internal rivalries. Factionalism was and is a Palestinian disease, perhaps even an Arab one!
Palestinian disunity was, of course, not the only factor leading to defeat. Without British protection between the two World Wars the Zionist enterprise could not have prospered, and without the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the terrible persecutions of Nazi Germany, the flood of Jewish immigrants to Palestine would not have been so massive.
Yet, the fact remains that the Palestinians did not confront their enemies as a united front. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Hussainis fought with Nashashibis, hardliners fought with moderates, advocates of armed struggle fought with those who sought accommodation. Squabbles within the Palestinian camp were of the greatest benefit to the more disciplined Zionists.
The deepest and most bitter division was perhaps between those Palestinians who were prepared to be corrupted by the Zionists who sold land or accepted favours or took bribes and those who refused to be bought. Today, the Palestinians are at another decisive moment of their tragic history. Never has their unity been so important and yet never have they been closer to civil war. The key question is this: Can the Palestinians have the political wisdom to step back from the brink of national suicide?
Israel and the United States are seeking to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government, not only by isolating it internationally and starving it of aid, but also by arming and funding and backing its Fatah rivals.
Nothing would serve Israel's interests better than if the present bloody skirmishes in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah security forces escalated into full-scale war, which would put an end, once and for all, to Palestinian national aspirations.
That is the clear Israeli objective to get the Palestinians to destroy each other. This would confirm Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's claim that the Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves, that Israel has no "Palestinian partner" with whom to negotiate, and that the world must therefore support his plan to impose Israel's frontiers unilaterally.
Olmert's plan would gobble up some 35 per cent of the the West Bank, ruling out for the foreseeable future any possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
Fighting to retain privileges
The real reason Israel and the United States are frightened of Hamas, and refuse to deal with it, is not because of its past resort to suicide bombings. That is largely a pretext. It is because Hamas is a cleaner, more disciplined, more principled, and therefore more formidable opponent than Fatah which, in 40 years of power at the head of the Palestinian movement, was penetrated, manipulated and corrupted. Fatah made extensive concessions to Israel but received little of substance in return. With Israeli encouragement, Fatah is today fighting to retain its political and financial privileges in spite of its defeat at last January's elections.
On May 24, the various Palestinian factions started a series of heated meetings, billed as a "national dialogue", with the aim of reaching a national consensus. The following day, when the discussions seemed deadlocked, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, sprang a surprise by issuing an ultimatum to Hamas.
He announced that, if no agreement were reached within 10 days, he would put to a popular referendum this summer a "national conciliation document" drafted by a group of Palestinian faction leaders imprisoned in Israeli jails.
This important document proclaims that the Palestinians' national aim is the establishment of an independent state, with its capital in Jerusalem, on all territories occupied in 1967. This amounts, of course, to an implicit recognition of Israel within its Six Day War frontiers.
The document also calls for a Palestinian government of national unity, principally embracing Fatah and Hamas; it denounces all resort to arms between Palestinians; it calls for Hamas and Islamic Jihad to join the PLO, "the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people"; it entrusts negotiations with Israel to the PLO and the PNA; it calls for the creation of a unified "Palestinian resistance front", while stressing that the focus of resistance should be the Occupied Territories (rather than Israel proper, another major concession); it demands the release of all prisoners and insists on the return and compensation of refugees in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 194.
Signed by Marwan Barghouti, the charismatic Fatah West Bank leader, by Shaikh Abdul Khaleq Al Natsheh of Hamas, as well as by prominent figures of the Islamic Jihad and of two secular movements, the Popular Front and the Democratic Front, the document is a sensible statement reflecting the pragmatism of men paying for their militancy by long Israeli prison sentences.
But can the Hamas government accept it? Prime Minister Esmail Haniya might see it as a manoeuvre by Abbas to rob his government of authority and legitimacy, indeed as a way to blackmail it into making concessions, while none at all are forthcoming from Israel.
This then is the Hamas dilemma: boycotted by much of the world, struggling to feed its besieged people, facing an armed challenge from Fatah, it is being asked to compromise its principles on the altar of political necessity. But this may be the only way and a very slim chance at that to force Israel to the negotiation table.
The struggle for national liberation has never been a bed of roses.
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.
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