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| Abbas's men doing the job of the IOF |
By Khalid Amayreh
There is no doubt that the vast majority of Palestinians would like to see Fatah and Hamas patch up their differences. Needless to say, the violent rift between the two groups has inflicted immense damage to the Palestinian cause and induced Israel to carry out some of the most daring assaults against our people.None the less, it would be a strategic mistake to restore national unity at any price. In real life, amputation of a hopelessly incurable limb is necessary to save the rest of the body. Similarly, when part of an apple is rotten, one has either to remove the bad part or throw the entire apple away.
In occupied Palestine, elections were organized in 2006 at US insistence, and in coordination with the occupying power, Israel. However, when Palestinian Islamic nationalists, namely Hamas, won the elections, all the gates of hell opened loose in Washington D.C. and the capitals of Europe. The same reverberations hit the capitals of America’s puppet Arab tyrants who saw Hamas’s victory as a destabilizing factor that might seduce oppressed Arab masses to rise up for freedom and democracy.
Soon, a hermetic financial, economic and even a human blockade was imposed on Gaza, which eventually became the biggest open-air prison in the world, a kind of Ghetto Warsaw of our time, all because the Palestinian people dared elect a political party that Israel, the US and Arab tyrants didn’t like.
The spasmodic reactions, especially from the US and its western allies, showed that western commitment to the issue of democracy was largely disingenuous and mainly contingent on the extent to which the outcome of a democratic process was compatible with America’s global interests.
In other words, the US and her allies would wholeheartedly welcome democracy if the “right people” e.g. Fatah, were brought to power. However, when the “wrong people,” e.g. Hamas, were the winners, then the democratic process, no matter how fair, free and transparent, would be rejected outright.
The scandalous American behavior, which is continuing under the Obama administration, underscored the fact that countries such as the US , Britain and Germany, were using the issues of democracy and human rights selectively to comfort “allies” and inflict “foes.”
This brings us back to Palestine , where the US has been paying billions of dollars in order to impede Palestinian reconciliation. First, the US induced and emboldened the infamous Muhammed Dahlan and cohorts to carry out a coup against the democratically-elected government in Gaza, forcing the latter to carry out a preemptive action which aborted the American-envisaged plots.
The Americans didn’t give up as Gen. Keith Dayton strove rather successfully to create a police state without a state in the West Bank, an entity whose main goal has been to eradicate Hamas on Israel’s behalf. For its part the Palestinian Authority did everything it could to please Dayton and his Israeli masters, often by torturing and murdering Islamic political opponents so much that some detainees wished they were languishing in Israeli jails instead of jails run by Dayton’s thugs.
The PA savagery was motivated by several factors including primitive urges of revenge. Low morality and cultural primitiveness also contributed to the serious abuse meted out to thousands of people imprisoned or summoned for interrogation.
However, the main driving motive behind the Fatah-run inquisition against Hamas in the West Bank has always been the acquisition of a certificate of good conduct from Israel. This is why the PA government always prided itself at being publicly praised by Israeli army officers with regard to “security coordination” between the two sides. Well, for those who don’t know, security coordination in the Palestinian-Israeli context is nothing short of “national apostasy.” It is a process whereby the ostensibly “national” Palestinian government is transformed, willingly, into a Palestinian judenrat, maintained by thousands of American-armed kapos whose main job is to torment and pacify their people on Israel’s behalf.
The PA, the legitimate daughter of the PLO, did everything it could to appease and please Israel in the hope that Israel would eventually award it with political achievements. However, Israel, which viewed the PA as a group of collaborators, informers, and cheap careerist-minded functionaries, saw that the PA deserved contempt and nothing but contempt.
Shocked and disappointed, the PA began behaving like a whore in the month of Ramadan, as the Palestinian proverb goes. It started blaming Hamas for the downfall of the “peace process” as if that process of ill repute would have succeeded even if Hamas had been completely nonexistent.
Like that proverbial rotten part of an apple, the PA would want Hamas to be a witness to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause under the rubric of national reconciliation.
Well, to hell with national reconciliation if the price is succumbing to Israel’s dictates. The Palestinian had agreed to a set of red lines with regard to a potential peace agreement with the Zio-Nazi entity, known as the “national constants.” So, why is it that Fatah is effectively reneging on these constants?
If Fatah wants to keep slipping down the slippery path, which leads to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause, then let it go alone. Hamas and other truly patriotic Palestinian factions won’t join the chorus of Oslo beneficiaries.
This is not to say though that Hamas is not interested in narrowing, even bridging, and the gap with Fatah.
However, the restoration of national reconciliation can only be realized on the basis of steadfastness in the face of Israeli insolence and arrogance of power, not on the basis of the outdated Oslo agreement which has long outlived whatever presumed usefulness it may have had.
Finally, if Fatah truly seeks national reconciliation, it must first stop being at Keith Dayton’s beck and call and immediately put an end to the vicious campaign of witch-hunting against Hamas supporters in the West Bank.
Indeed, the harsh, even draconian, measures being taken against Islamic activists suggest that reconciliation with Hamas is the last item on Fatah’s agenda.
In short, the ball is in Fatah’s court. It has always been there.
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