‘Disappointing’ does not even begin to describe the failure of the Palestinian leadership to sideline pathetic factional differences, at a time when Palestinian people around the world are mourning the loss of more than 2,150 Gazans who perished in Israel’s latest war.
Yet, what many are referring to as an act of genocide, was not enough to compel a rethink in Palestinian National Authority (PNA) President Mahmoud Abbas’ attitude towards Hamas. His recent threat to break the unity deal with the Islamist group, which led the resistance against the Israeli war, was truly untimely. As an Arab commentator recently put it, Abbas is giving Israel in politics what it failed to achieve in war.
Even PNA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, who was virtually absent and remained mostly mute during the Israeli onslaught, is now joining the fight, citing salaries to thousands of Gaza workers employed by Hamas as a reason behind the national unity crisis. The fact that many of those thousands lost their loved ones during the war seemed an unimportant irritant in the face of the impending crisis over money.
But the insistence of the political class on placing factional interests ahead of the Palestinian cause altogether, does not reflect the changing sentiment amongst Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
The 51-day Israeli war may not result in a paradigm shift so far as regional politics is concerned. At least, not yet. Its lasting impact, however, can already be felt in the collective mentality of Palestinians and Israelis, who are beginning to realise that despite the massive death toll and destruction caused by the Israeli war, something fundamental has changed. And it is the kind of transformation that simply cannot be measured in numbers.
“Raef had never been to a demonstration before,” wrote Mohammad Omar from Gaza. “But after the announcement of the latest ceasefire agreement between Israeli and Palestinian factions, the 13-year-old borrowed a green Hamas flag from his neighbours and ran to the centre of Gaza City to cheer on the Palestinian faction at a victory rally.” The war and the legendary resistance exhibited by Palestinian factions, led by Hamas, gave real meaning to the term “unity” — one that is predicated on the principle of resistance in all of its manifestations.
The situation in Israel, however was broadly different, and not surprisingly so.
Although often presented in terms of “self-defence”, in reality, Israeli wars have always had a decided colonial objective (as in land expropriation) or were wars of convenience. Gaza, being a tiny stretch of land, was never truly an essential component in Israel’s colonial project. Historically, however, Gazan’s were the most troublesome bunch. For them, words like “defeat” do not exist. They also rarely considered how ridiculously imbalanced the fight between them as Israel has always been and still remains. Even threats from their own leaders, like those of Abbas’s warning of ending the unity government — claiming that Hamas was running a parallel government — are of little consequence when Palestinians and Gazans in particular consider the “big picture.”
From the Israeli government’s perspective, Gazans had to be taught a lesson for more than one reason: To keep their “military defences” in check, to frighten occupied Palestinians in the West Bank, to distract from whatever battle Israel’s political elites are fighting amongst themselves to present Israel, as always, as the victim. But there is more to that war. One could argue that Operation Protective Edge, starting on July 7, would have taken place even if Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was someone other than Netanyahu. All signs were in place to make the Israeli military move impending. Rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, reached a unity agreement, despite strong Israeli disapproval. Alone, that would have been a compelling reason for Israel to feel the need to squash Hamas and end the need for unity in the first place. But more importantly, the mood in the West Bank was begging for change. Protests and rallies were reported throughout the West Bank in June, despite Israeli attempts to crush them, with the help of the US-backed PNA security.
In fact, Netanyahu succeeded, at least temporarily, to distract from the looming confrontation in the West Bank. But what he expected was a relatively easy battle. Hamas and other resistance groups were arguably weakened, due to the advent of the so-called Arab Spring. They were partly disowned by Iran and entirely disowned by Syria, which is busy fighting its own civil war. Moreover, the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt left Hamas politically frail and exposed. In fact, it was such vulnerability that pushed Hamas to a unity deal with Mahmoud Abbas, who, according to the deal, maintained a degree of dominance over all Palestinian factions, including Hamas itself. Just before the war, a June public opinion poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), showed that Abbas was winning the trust of 53 per cent of Palestinians, while Hamas’ Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh received the support of 41 per cent.
Netanyahu’s war was the Israeli leadership’s attempt to capitalise on Hamas’s purported decline. It was, perhaps, the last push that the group needed for it to completely collapse. “Operation Protective Edge” was most destructive, genocidal even, not simply because it was about killing as many Palestinians as possible, but because it was meant to be the war that would eliminate Hamas from the political equation and allow Netanyahu to once more set the agenda without any interference or resistance. But the war was a disaster. It failed miserably. The Israeli army was held back by a unified Palestinian resistance front. It lost 64 soldiers, while hundreds more were injured. It cost the Israeli economy billions of dollars. And the war to end Hamas gave birth to the strongest Palestinian resistance front ever.
When the war ended on August 26, Netanyahu, the keen politician who insisted on defining the political discourse of any war or major political event, simply disappeared. Two days later, he held a press conference in which he declared that Israel had “won”. But both Israelis and Palestinians disagreed. His approval ratings simply collapsed, down from 82 per cent on July 23, to less than 38 per cent shortly after the ceasefire announcement. According to a poll conducted shortly after the ceasefire announcement and reported in Israel’s Jerusalem Post, 54 per cent of Israelis believed they lost the war.
On the other hand, numbers among Palestinians have dramatically shifted as well. According to PCPSR, 61 per cent of Palestinians would now vote for Haniyeh, a huge climb from few weeks earlier; 94 per cent were satisfied with the resistance’s military performance; and, more astoundingly, 79 per cent said that Palestinian resistance had “won” the war.
Israeli bombs that victimised thousands of Gazans cared less for the ideological or political affiliations of the victims. Palestinians got the message. “My mum and dad support Fatah’s Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], but they have sympathy for Hamas,” said Raef. That sentiment is now felt across all sections of Palestinian society, which seem to finally unite around one overriding notion: The Resistance. Abbas’ recent statements and Hamdallah’s quarrel over salaries may indicate that the ruling class is adamant in placing its interests over that of the majority, but most Palestinians seem to disagree. And that is a most notable change.
Ramzy Baroud is a PhD scholar in People’s History at the University of Exeter. He is the Managing Editor of Middle East Eye. Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
