Redress Information & Analysis argues that both Fatah and Hamas have forfeited the privilege of representing the Palestinian people and calls upon Palestinians in the occupied territories to form a broadly-based, patriotic national liberation movement that would represent all the people.
For the first time since the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964, the Palestinian people have no leaders and nobody to represent them: no one to defend them in the occupied territories, and no one to speak on their behalf internationally.
Paradoxically, there is no shortage of entities that purport to represent the Palestinians. In addition to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), there are 10 factions that make up the PLO, and there is also the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which was chosen by the Palestinian people to head the PNA in free and fair elections held in January 2006.
Yet, in truth none of these entities cares for, let alone represents, the Palestinians, whether in the occupied territories or in the diaspora.
For one thing, it is now beyond any reasonable doubt that the one faction which holds absolute sway over the PLO, the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fatah), is not only thoroughly discredited because of its corruption and nepotism, has not only completely lost its sense of purpose since the Oslo accords of 1993 and is no longer sure of its raison d'être, but has also turned into an agent, a tool, a proxy of the sworn enemies of the Palestinian people, Israel and the United States.
There are of course many people among the rank and file of Fatah members who are honest patriots but they, like us, would find it hard to describe the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and Mohammed Dahlan as anything but traitors – traitors to their people and traitors to the Palestinian cause. Why else, if they were not traitors, would they receive arms and intelligence from the Israelis and the Americans to use against fellow Palestinians? Why, if he were not a tool of the enemies of his people, if he were not a collaborator, a traitor, would the Israelis and the Americans heap praise on Mahmoud Abbas?
However, our contempt for Abbas, Dahlan and other traitors in the Fatah leadership cannot, and must not, translate into support for Hamas.
Up until this month, Hamas had held the moral high ground in its struggle with Fatah, and it did so for four fundamental reasons. First, it had won the Palestinian legislative elections, which international observers had deemed free and fair. The fact that the corrupt and traitorous Fatah leadership, aided and abetted by Israel and the United States, did its utmost to undermine its rule and conspired to reverse the will of the Palestinian people by force, only added to its moral authority. Second, Hamas’s reputation for steadfastness and courage was legendary. Third, Hamas ran a well-organized network which provided practical support to the poorest in the occupied territories. Fourth, Hamas leaders were both modest and honest, in stark contrast to their counterparts in Fatah.
Up until this month, Hamas had our respect and support. But no more, for no amount of moral credit could withstand the thuggery and wanton bloodletting shown by Hamas fighters towards fellow Palestinians. Nothing, no religious or secular law or any customs or traditions, bar those of gangsters and common criminals, could possibly justify throwing your opponents from rooftops, murdering your opponents in their hospital beds or shooting peaceful demonstrators, as Hamas gunmen did on 10, 12 and 13 June respectively. Murder and indiscipline are not the hallmarks of a responsible movement that deserves the support of its people.
But to withdraw support from Hamas is not to condone the sanctions imposed on the Palestinian people by the United States and its satellites in Europe and the Far East. These are criminal sanctions orchestrated by Israel and aimed at forcing the Palestinians to recognize the legitimacy of their own dispossession. They have so far failed, and all right-thinking people throughout the world must do their utmost to ensure that they continue to fail.
The Hamas gunmen who committed the above-mentioned heinous crimes against Palestinians over recent weeks may try to justify their behaviour from a narrow, sectarian-religious perspective, one which legitimizes any means in order to achieve the supreme objective, in this case not the liberation of Palestine but the establishment of an Islamic state governed by shari’ah law on any part of Palestine.
No one has ever asked the people of Palestine whether they want to live in an Islamic state under shari’ah law but it would be reasonable to hypothesize that, if they were asked, the answer would be a resounding “No”. The fact that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the 2006 elections is not tantamount to a desire to live in an Islamic state. Hamas must know that those who voted for it did so because of its reputation for honesty and courage, not because they wanted to be governed by the laws of 1,500 years ago. There is no contradiction between being personally devout and God-fearing, as many Palestinians are, and wanting to be governed by modern, secular laws Besides, any party that seeks to lead and represent the people of Palestine must speak for all the people of Palestine, Christians as well as Muslims. Palestinians are not fighting to dismantle the racist, Jews-only Zionist state in order to install a “Zionistan” a Muslim equivalent of Israel.
Both Fatah and Hamas have forfeited the privilege of representing the Palestinian people. It is now high time for Palestinians of all persuasions to seize control of their own destiny, to organize themselves in order to protect their national cause and to work for their liberation and the right of return. The people of Palestine must organize at the grassroots to form an all-inclusive, progressive, truly patriotic liberation movement that will pull the rug from underneath the feet of the likes of Fatah and Hamas. It may seem like a long shot but it is not, for the foundation stones of such a movement already exist in the trade unions, professional associations, farmers’ organizations, women’s groups and other bodies. The Poles did it in the 1980s when they created Solidarity; the Palestinians too can do it. The alternative is the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the triumph of the racist Zionists and their evil backers.
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