The Palestinian cause is priority, not Hamas or Fatah

If we are to think with the same logic as Fatah, the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, then maybe we would be happy to celebrate the announcement of the new unity government. The president and minister of defence (who remain unchanged) are reportedly going to announce the rest of the ministers today. Yet, we are trying to think outside of the box, the status quo and the narratives that explain all the disastrous events that have occurred in the history of our national division. We cannot pretend everything was alright before mid-2007!

Personally, my main concern is the Palestinian cause, and there are many who share this view. The cause is far more important than Fatah, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, all of which experience the occupation. The Palestinian Authority merely functions as an extension of the occupation as it caters to it by breathing from the same set of lungs. It has long been known that the Palestinian Authority cooperates with Israel on matters of security.

The Palestinian Authority and the occupation are inextricably linked in virtually every issue. Moreover, these officials get “VIP passes” to move around freely within all territories. What would grant someone such as Azzam Al-Ahmad permission to enter Gaza through the Beit Hanoun crossing if the Zionists were not okay with this? Fatah may have begun as a liberation movement but it is now nothing more than a political party that functions in the occupation’s shadow and Hamas lost its way after it entered the Oslo agreement. They are now forced to bear the burden of Gaza’s entire population after the military takeover, which seems to have been a trap. They were offered a sector in the West Bank as payback for this but they have managed to turn their political base into a means of resistance and have fought battles accordingly.

Bringing an end to the chaos affecting the occupation will not end by forming a reconciliatory government. To be clear, we also do not believe the propagandist lies that Benjamin Netanyahu is against the reconciliation because if he were truly against it then the United States would have also been against it and they would not have invited its head (Hamdallah) to go to the US for a meeting.

The Israelis know very well what the path to reconciliation will be like and they are thrilled with the outcome because Netanyahu always responds to such situations with blackmail. Do you not see for example how he is dealing with the negotiations on nuclear programmes between Iran and the West?

What is the fate of the reconciliation to come and the cause for Israeli joy? The answer is very simple: they will have to deal with a unity government that does nothing to change the Palestinian Authority’s political process or security measures. The foreign minister will remain the same and as the new government works to announce its new “sacred” security coordination (according to Abbas), they will soon also announce their decision to remove all current ministers from both governments from their posts as they prepare for the reconciliation. According to Abbas, the new government will renounce all acts of terrorism meaning all acts of resistance and it will abide by international protocol. All of these new occurrences will give observers a new and wider range with which to reflect on our current route.

To put it quite simply, this new path will give Abbas the opportunity to regain all of the legitimacy he lost in 2006. This development is both in regards to signing a final agreement (with the occupation) and it will also allow him the opportunity to cling to the so-called constants, which allegedly enable him to refuse signing deals with the occupation but instead allow him to deal with Israel as a neighbouring state, one that he could coordinate with on matters of security as well as gas and water resources.

They will say that they gained their legitimacy by way of elections and that they were chosen through the ballot box. However, the ballot box means nothing to a population living under the occupation, one were a third of its people are living in refugee camps and others in the diaspora. There is no power on earth that grants them the authority to claim that they represent all of us. Do not ask us about elections when we have a gun held to our heads threatening us to prepare for another siege if Hamas is elected again.

The priority here is freedom not democracy. For the record, I need to remind everyone that I personally was against Hamas entering the Oslo elections and I was also against the Oslo path and the Palestinian Authority as well. I have repeated myself a hundred times and I have emphasised that this Authority was designed to cater to the occupation and I am not only saying this because I am worried that Hamas will lose the majority vote in the new legislature (for this is not even guaranteed).

What concerns me and the majority of my Palestinian brethren, both at home and abroad, is the fate of the Palestinian cause. In this context, one can say that Abbas wants to regain the majority vote by creating an alliance with other parties. This majority rule will in turn be transferred to the national council, which will prevent any elections from taking place anywhere outside of Palestine (as if elections could occur in Palestine to begin with. Would the Zionists allow this?) After this happens we will return to the futile negotiations and cooperating with Israel on matters of national security.

Everyone is well aware of the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu will not negotiate with Abbas and he also refuses to grant the Palestinians the same offer that Ehud Barak agreed to in Camp David in the summer of 2000. After all, are these not the fruits of previous negotiations? Despite the harsh reality we place our hopes in the amazing people who will revolt against all of this hardship, just as they did at the end of September in 2000. This time the revolt will follow a better plan and people will be more aware. The Arab street will show more liveliness and support for this revolt, despite the fact that a counter-revolution has succeeded in its plans (in Egypt) thanks to plots supported by America and the West as well as China and Russia. Oh what a paradox!

Translated from Addustour newspaper, 2 June, 2014

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.