Friday June 15, 2007, Dialogue is the only way forward for the Palestinians, but dialogue based on some fundamentals; respecting the will of the people, resistance to occupation and colonization.
By Ben WhiteThe events in Gaza this week, which represented the dramatic climax of
months of tense bouts of fighting between Hamas and Fatah, were painful
to watch. Those who stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, like the
thousands who marched in London last weekend, need not be shy about
speaking out, despite the pressures of the cynical, smug analysis that
laughs at Palestinian ‘self-rule’ and says ‘I told you so’.
Responsibility for the current crisis is shared amongst most of the
protagonists.
Fatah’s leaders should reflect that they
are now reaping what some party members have sown. Elements within the
party are indeed guilty of the charge of ‘collaboration’ with the
Israeli occupation, as well as with US designs. This has not just been
in recent times, since the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC)
elections, but has a history dating back to the pre-Oslo negotiations,
through to the plutocratic Palestinian Authority and the days when
Arafat’s men would detain and torture Hamas activists. Many of the
Hamas members who now pose for the cameras in the captured Fatah
operation centers may have been tortured in the very same buildings.
But
it is Israel, as the occupying power, that has primary responsibility
for creating the conditions in which Palestinians have turned on each
other. The Gaza Strip is a prison, where the prisoners are hungry,
unemployed, and brutalized from 40 years of occupation. Israel’s
military onslaughts of the Second Intifada – which killed thousands and
demolished tens of thousands of homes – have left its inhabitants
mentally scarred, bereaved, angry, and reduced to the level of penned
in animals .
Israel, however, has been assisted by the US
and EU, who, in imposing sanctions on the occupied have pushed the
region towards its current predicament – to the shame of American and
European leaders and their political class. Incredible that in the last
few weeks, newspaper leaders have denounced in the strongest terms the
decision to merely debate boycotting Israel, yet uttered mealy-mouthed
concern (or nothing at all) about this collective punishment.
Since
the PLC elections, carried out democratically and transparently, the
legitimate Palestinian government has been subjected to boycott,
sanction and threats, and the US and EU have done everything in their
power to undermine and destabilize the representatives of the
Palestinian people. Sanctioning the occupied has made an economy
already stunted by years of Israeli colonization and siege, a
disaster-zone. This is not rocket science; it was highlighted from the
beginning by charities, NGOs and the few politicians willing to stand
out from the consensus.
Moreover, together with Israel,
the US has been openly working to arm Fatah for a coup against Hamas,
moves that the latter – who had been elected on the basis of their
resistance to Israeli occupation and their track record of humanitarian
commitment to the people – were not going to sit by and idly watch.
This came only after the attempt to starve the Palestinians into
submission appeared not to be working. This context is strangely (or
perhaps not so strangely) missing from most mainstream media coverage,
despite the basic facts being widely in the public domain.
However,
while Hamas themselves feel understandably justified in taking the
action they have done in the Gaza Strip – under siege, and threatened
with the prospect of a US-Israel sponsored Fatah coup – it is perfectly
appropriate to question their strategy of the last week. Hamas has
extended their logic of force that emerged in the context of fighting
Israel into the internal arena, but it is a short-term perspective that
will be difficult to sustain. Even as they look at a defeated Fatah
movement, the Hamas leadership faces difficult questions about how Gaza
will now be ruled, how it will relate to the rest of Occupied
Palestine, and how they can best serve the desperate population in the
Gaza Strip.
Let us be clear though, that despite shared
responsibility, most of the blame must lie squarely with Israel, the US
and EU, for creating in Gaza conditions in which Hamas felt like they
had little choice but to act, and where their program can seem so
attractive. Starving and imprisoning a population, destabilizing a
democratically-elected government; these are the actions of gangsters
and thugs, not peacemakers or statesmen.
And now? It is
obviously a defeat for US/Israeli designs in the sense that the
attempts to destroy Hamas through a Fatah have failed. Israel is
already trying to take advantage by introducing the idea of a ‘two
state’ Palestine, a division of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that
Israeli policy has already created (not to mention the fragmentation
within the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem).
Hamas is already calling for dialogue with Abbas, while the latter talks of emergency rule and elections. Dialogue is the only way forward for the Palestinians, but dialogue based on some fundamentals; respecting the will of the people, resistance to occupation and colonization, and a break from the collaborating political class of Oslo. The US, Britain and the EU, meanwhile, must be forced to stop their blood-stained interference in the Middle East, policies that have led to a ‘crescent of death and destruction’, from Iraq, to Lebanon and Palestine. That is the real threat.