IT’S NEVER easy, although a sure assertion, to maintain that the Palestinian front, at home as well as abroad remains as fragmented and self-consumed, thus ineffective, as ever before, but most notably during the disastrous post-Oslo period.
Such a realization wouldn’t mean much if the inference is concerned with any other polity; but when it’s made in regards to a nation that is facing an active campaign of ethnic cleansing at home, and an international campaign of sanctions and boycott — as shameful as this may sound — then, the problem is both real and urgent.
Palestinians in the West Bank, especially in areas that are penetrated by the imposing Israeli imprisonment wall — mostly in the north and west, and increasingly everywhere else — are losing their land, their rights, their freedoms and their livelihood at an alarming speed, unprecedented in their tumultuous history with the Israeli military occupation. The 700 -kilometer wall, once completed, will further fragment the already splintered West Bank. Israel’s settlement project since 1967 has disfigured the West Bank using Jews-only bypass roads, military zones and so forth, to ensure the viability of the country’s colonization scheme, but rendered Palestinian areas disunited and isolated, thus the entire two state solution, under the current circumstances simply inconceivable.
Other major issues such as settlements, water, refugees, borders, etc, continue to be dictated by Israel’s unilateral actions, while the Palestinian role is relegated to that of the hapless, submissive and often angry victim. It must also be acknowledged, as uncomfortable as this may be to some, that the Palestinian democratic experience is rapidly succumbing to Israeli pressures, American meddling — tacitly or otherwise coordinated with Arab as well as other governments — and the fractious Palestinian front that has been for decades permeated with ideological exclusivism, cronyism, and corruption. Though one cannot help but rail against the American government’s abortion of what could have been the prize of Arab democracy, still, the joint American-Israeli anti-democratic scheme would’ve faced utter defeat if Palestinian ranks where united, rather than self-absorbed.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization, since its formation by the Arab League in 1964, but most significantly since its reformation in the early 1970s under Palestinian leadership, was for long regarded as the main body that eventually brought to the fore the Palestinian struggle as — more than a mere question of a humanitarian issue that needed redress — a national fight for freedom and rights. There was, more or less, a national movement that spoke and represented Palestinians everywhere. It gave the Palestinian struggle greater urgency, one that was lost, or willingly conceded by Arafat on the White House lawn in September 1993, and again in Cairo, May 2004.
Aside from snuffing out the Palestinian national project, reducing it to self-autonomous areas, rendering irrelevant millions of Palestinians, mostly refugees, scattered around the world — thus demoting the international status of the PLO into a mere symbolic organization, Oslo had given rise to a new type of thinking in the rank of Palestinians adopted by those who see themselves as pragmatic and whose language is that of real-politik and diplomacy. This, as it transpired, revealed itself as the most woeful case of self-defeatism that continues to permeate most Palestinian circles whose new “strategy” is confined to the acquiring of qualified funds from European countries, which eventually dotted the West Bank with NGOs, mostly without a clear purpose, examined agenda and no coordination. Involving oneself in such useless projects is ineffectual, while rejecting them without a clear alternative can be equally frustrating, if not demoralizing. An official within the circle of President Mahmoud Abbas chastised me during a long airplane ride once for subscribing to the Edward Said school of thought, whose followers, I was told, wish to parrot criticism from the outside, and refrain from “getting their hands dirty”, i.e. getting involved in the Palestinian Authority’s institution building, and so forth.
The problem is indeed more exhaustive than mere ideological or even personal quarrels between two rival political parties; rather, it’s an expression of a prevailing Palestinian factionalism that seems to consume members of various Palestinian communities regardless of where they are based. My frequent visits and involvement in many activities organized by Palestinian groups seem to leave me with the same unpleasant feeling: That there is no collective national strategy, but incoherent actions undertaken mostly by groups.
With the absence of centrality everywhere, individuals hoping to fill the vacuum are offering their own solutions to the conflict, once more without any serious or coordinated efforts and without a grassroots constituency, neither in the Occupied Territories nor among major Palestinian population concentrations in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc.
Oslo has lost its relevance as a peace treaty, but the individualism it imposed on Palestinians still prevails; its legacy was that of self-preservation, instead of the collective good, and in my mind, no Palestinian party, including Hamas is immune from subscribing to its luring values. To avoid further debacles, Palestinians must ditch their factionalism and quit thinking of their relationship with their struggle in terms of funds, ideology (though flexible to fit political interests) or religious interpretations. They are in urgent need of strenuous efforts to formalize a new collective strategy that pushes for specific principles that can only be achieved through national consensus.
Individual initiatives will further confuse the Palestinian ranks. Only a consistent, cohesive and reasonable strategy that emanates from the Palestinians themselves can engage international public opinion. Reforming and revitalizing the PLO is not an option — it is a must.
