[News] Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 18 July 2007
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7116.shtml



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Mohammed Dahlan's 13 July 2003 letter to then Israeli defense 
minister Shaul Mofaz.

"Be certain that Yasser Arafat's final days are numbered, but allow 
us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be sure as well that ... 
the promises I made in front of President Bush, I will give my life 
to keep." Those words were written by the Fatah warlord Mohammed 
Dahlan, whose US- and Israeli-backed forces were routed by Hamas in 
the Gaza Strip last month, in a 13 July 2003 letter to then Israeli 
defense minister Shaul Mofaz and published on Hamas' website on 4 
July this year.

Dahlan, who despite his failure to hold Gaza, remains a senior 
advisor to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, outlines his 
conspiracy to overthrow Arafat, destroy Palestinian institutions and 
replace them with a quisling leadership subservient to Israel. Dahlan 
writes of his fear that Arafat would convene the Palestinian 
legislative council and ask it to withdraw confidence from then prime 
minister Mahmoud Abbas, who had been appointed earlier in 2003 at 
Bush's insistence in order to curb Arafat's influence. Dahlan wrote 
that "complete coordination and cooperation by all" was needed to 
prevent this, as well as "subjecting [Arafat] to pressure so that he 
cannot carry out this step." Dahlan reveals that "we have already 
begun attempts to polarize the views of many legislative council 
members by intimidation and temptation so that they will be on our 
side and not his [Arafat's]."

Dahlan closes his letter to Mofaz saying, "it remains only for me to 
convey my gratitude to you and the prime minister [Ariel Sharon] for 
your continued confidence in us, and to you all respect."

This letter is a small but vivid piece of evidence to add to the 
existing mountain, of the conspiracy in which the Abbas leadership is 
involved. In the month since Abbas' appointment of a Vichy-style 
"emergency government" headed by Salam Fayad, historic Fatah leaders, 
such as Farouq Qaddumi and Hani al-Hassan have signalled their 
opposition to Abbas' actions, specifically rejecting his order that 
Palestinian resistance fighters disarm while Israeli occupation 
continues unchallenged.

This underscores that the split among Palestinians today is not 
between Hamas and Fatah, nor between "extremist" or "moderate," or 
"Islamist" or "secular," but between the minority who have cast their 
lot in with the enemy as collaborators on the one hand, and those who 
uphold the right and duty to resist on the other.

Israeli leaders, at least, are crystal clear about what they expect 
from their Palestinian servants. Ephraim Sneh, until recently deputy 
defense minister, expresses the consensus view of the Israeli establishment:

"The most urgent and important mission for Israel at this time is 
preventing a Hamas takeover of the West Bank. It is possible to do 
this by weakening Hamas through visible diplomatic progress; helping 
the effective and successful functioning of Palestinian Prime 
Minister Salam Fayad's government; and the creation of conditions for 
the total failure of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip" ("How to 
stop Hamas," Haaretz, 17 July 2007).

Sneh makes clear that "in order to emerge victorious, military 
campaigns and arrests are not enough -- it is imperative to bring 
about [Hamas'] political-public defeat via another Palestinian 
element." This element is Fatah. Sneh lists a number of measures 
designed to achieve this, including employing more Palestinians as 
low-wage laborers in the Israeli economy, releasing Fatah prisoners 
and giving back Palestinian tax money stolen by Israel -- but says 
absolutely nothing about stopping the construction of Jewish-only 
Israeli colonies, ending military occupation and abrogating racist 
laws and practices. With characteristic vagueness he only asserts 
that "it is necessary to embark on a discussion with the Palestinian 
president about the principles of the permanent status agreement." 
Fourteen years after Oslo, this is not likely to convince too many skeptics.

Since the Oslo accords were signed, Israel has done all it can to 
undermine the prospects of Palestinian statehood, consistently 
hobbling the Palestinian Authority. What lies behind Israel's 
determination to prop up Abbas' quisling leadership? Why not just let 
it all collapse and declare victory?

Israeli leaders know that shoring up support for an ethnic "Jewish 
state" depends on concealing the reality that Jews are no longer the 
majority population in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- the 
territory controlled by the Israeli state. Israel needs the fig leaf 
of a Palestinian sovereign to take millions of Palestinians off its 
books, the way apartheid South Africa attempted to deploy the cover 
of "independent Black homelands" -- Bantustans -- to prolong white 
rule and give it a veneer of legitimacy. If the Palestinian Authority 
collapses, Fatah which has no popular base, will collapse with it.

As for Hamas, it stands at a crossroads. It can survive the collapse 
of the Palestinian Authority, but what will it become? It grew from a 
segment of Palestinian society -- poor, religiously mobilized masses, 
yet it draws much broader support for its resistance against Israel 
from Palestinians orphaned by their turncoat leaders and hungry for a 
principled alternative. Hamas has the choice to articulate an agenda 
that can live up to the aspirations of Palestinian society in all its 
diversity, or it can leap into the traps that are being set for it.

Hamas leaders have made exemplary statements in favor of pluralism, 
genuine democracy, and the rule of law, and were rightly proud of the 
release of BBC journalist Alan Johnston. But they must be judged by 
their actions, and there are discouraging signs. The Palestinian 
Centre for Human Rights has reported several cases of abuse, 
kidnapping and torture by members of Hamas' Executive Force, and the 
death of a prisoner held by Hamas' military wing. It is true that 
these incidents do not occur in a vacuum -- Israel and its Fatah 
allies continue to engage in far more widespread murder, torture and 
kidnapping directed at Hamas members, and Hamas is engaged in a 
struggle for survival. But Hamas earned legitimacy by promising to 
end the ugly practices of Israeli-backed Fatah militias. It must 
fulfill that promise or see its hard-earned support disappear. At the 
same time it must begin to articulate a vision for the future that 
takes into account the reality of 11 million Israeli Jews and 
Palestinians living in a small country. We know what Hamas is 
against, but no one is clear what it is for.

Hamas is edging towards accepting a two-state solution just as the 
reality is beginning to dawn even on stalwarts of the Oslo peace 
process industry that the two-state solution, needed to save Israel 
as an enclave of Jewish privilege, is slipping out of reach. As a 
two-state solution "is becoming less likely," observes Aaron David 
Miller, a 25-year veteran of the State Department and senior Clinton 
Administration official at the 2000 Camp David summit, "there is more 
talk among Palestinians of a one-state solution -- which of course is 
not a solution at all, and which would mean the end of Israel as a 
Jewish state." ("Is peace out of reach?," The Los Angeles Times, 15 July 2007).

Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein predicts that "sooner or later 
Hamas will fail in its war against Israel. But that [doesn't] mean 
that there will then be a return to the days of Oslo and the 
two-state vision." Rather, he fears, "there will be increasingly 
strong demands by Palestinian Arabs, who constitute almost half the 
inhabitants of this land, who will say: Under the present conditions 
we cannot establish a state of our own, and what remains for us is to 
demand civil rights in the country that is our homeland. They will 
adopt the slogans of the struggle of the Arabs who are Israeli 
citizens, who demand equality and the definition of Israel as a state 
of all its citizens." ("Nothing to sell the Palestinians," 16 July 
2007). Thus we can see that Abbas is now Israel's last best hope in 
the struggle against democracy. Such a pathetic coalition cannot 
stand in the way of liberation.

Ali Abunimah is cofounder of The Electronic Intifada and author of 
<http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/store/548.shtml>One Country: A 
Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.




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