[News] Confronting the obvious truth: Palestinian Authority vs. the people

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Confronting the obvious truth: Palestinian Authority vs. the people

Oct. 27, 2015

*http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768497*

By: Ramzy Baroud

Saeb Erekat is an enigmatic character. Despite minimal popularity among 
Palestinians, he is omnipresent, appears regularly on television and 
speaks with the moral authority of an accomplished leader whose legacy 
is rife with accolades and an astute, unwavering vision.

When Palestinians were polled by the Jerusalem Media and Communications 
Center (JMCC) in August, just prior to the current Intifada, only 3 
percent approved of his leadership -- compared with the still meagre 
approval rating of 16 percent of his boss, Palestinian Authority 
President, Mahmoud Abbas. Even those who are often cast as alternative 
leaders -- Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, and former Gaza-based Hamas 
Government Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh -- were nowhere near popular, 
achieving 10.5 and 9.8 percent of the vote respectively.

It was as if Palestinians were telling us and their traditional 
leaderships, in particular, that they are fed up with the old rhetoric, 
the constant let-downs, the unabashed corruption and the very culture of 
defeat that has permeated the Palestinian political elite for an entire 
generation.

Abbas has operated his political office on the assumption that, so long 
as Palestinians received their monthly salaries and are content with his 
empty promises and occasional threats -- of resigning, resisting against 
Israel, lobbing bombshell speeches at the UN, etc. -- then no one is 
likely to challenge his reign in Areas A and B -- tiny cantons within 
the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

Erekat has been the primary enabler of that PA charade, for he is the 
‘chief negotiator,’ whose protracted term in that precarious post has 
negotiated nothing of value for the Palestinians.

In 2002, I followed the Israeli invasion of the supposedly 
self-autonomous PA areas in the West Bank, when Erekat made an appeal on 
Al-Jazeera Arabic television to the Israeli Government to exercise 
sanity and common sense. The entire display of the PA leadership was 
beyond tragic, proof that it had no real authority of its own and no 
control over the events on the ground as Palestinian fighters battled 
the re-invading Israeli army. He appealed to Israel as if he felt 
genuinely betrayed by its military onslaught.

When Al-Jazeera released thousands of secret documents in January 2011, 
revealing discussions behind closed doors between Israeli and 
Palestinian negotiators, Erekat held the lion’s share of blame. With a 
clear mandate from his superiors, he appeared uninterested in many 
Palestinian political aspirations, including Palestinian sovereignty in 
occupied East Jerusalem -- the spark behind the current and previous 
Intifadas. He offered Israel the “biggest Yerushalaim in Jewish history, 
symbolic number of refugees return, demilitarized state… what more can I 
give?” he was quoted in the Palestine Papers.

What is particularly interesting about Erekat, and equally applicable to 
most PA leaders and officials, is that, no matter how devastating their 
roles -- which they continue to play out, whether through political 
incompetence or outright corruption -- they do not seem to go away. They 
may change position, hover around the same circle of failed leadership, 
but they tend to resurface and repeatedly regurgitate the same old 
language, cliches, empty threats and promises.

After retreating for a few weeks as Intifada youth took to the streets 
to protest the Israeli occupation, PA spokespersons, including Erekat, 
are now back on the scene, speaking of squandered opportunities for 
peace, two states and the entire inept discourse, as if peace was ever, 
indeed, at hand, and if the so-called ‘two state solution’ was ever a 
solution.

In a recent interview with Al-Jazeera’s ‘UpFront’, Erekat warned that 
the PA was on the verge of shutting down, as if the very existence of 
the PA was a virtue in itself. Established in 1994 as a transitional 
political body that would guide the process of Palestinian independence, 
the PA morphed to become a security arm that served as a first line of 
defense for the Israeli army, in addition to guarding its own interests. 
Billions of dollars later, and after intensive military training 
provided by the US, the UK, Italy, and other western and ‘moderate’ Arab 
countries, the PA security forces have done a splendid job of cracking 
down on any dissent among Palestinians.

So why is Erekat warning of the PA collapse as if the sorry leadership 
in Ramallah is the center of everything that Palestinians have ever 
aspired for? “Soon enough Netanyahu will find himself the only [one] 
responsible between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean because he is 
destroying the Palestinian Authority,” Erekat said. So what? According 
to the Geneva Conventions which designate Israel as the Occupying Power, 
Netanyahu is, indeed, responsible for the welfare, security and 
well-being of the occupied Palestinians, until a just political solution 
is assured and enforced by the international community.

Using the same tactic which, along with Abbas and other PA officials, 
was utilized repeatedly in the past, he vowed that “soon, very soon, 
you’re going to hear some decisions” about disbanding the PA.

It matters little what Erekat and his Ramallah circle determine as the 
proper course of action. Not only has his language become obsolete and 
his references irrelevant, but the entire Oslo ‘peace process’ travesty 
-- which delivered nothing but more illegal settlements and military 
torment -- was dead a long time ago. In fact, it was the Al-Aqsa 
Intifada in 2000 that killed Oslo and the ten years between the end of 
that uprising and the advent of a new one were filled with mere haggling 
and desperate attempts at breathing life into a ‘process’ that made some 
corrupt Palestinians a whole lot richer.

The hope is that the current Intifada will cleanse the residue of that 
dead process, and surpass the PA altogether, not through acts of 
violence and vengeance, but rather through the establishment of a new 
leadership manned by good women and men who are born in the heart of 
Palestinian Resistance, in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. The new 
leadership cannot be imposed from above, or achieved after deliberation 
with ‘moderate’ Arabs, but selected through an organic, grassroots 
process that is blind to factional allegiances, religion, gender and 
family lineage.

Palestinian Intifadas do not liberate land but liberate people who 
assume their role in the struggle for national liberation. The 1936 
Intifada liberated the fellahin peasants from the confines of the 
dominant clans and their allegiances to Arab regimes so that they could 
face up to the British and the Zionists; the 1987 Stone Intifada 
liberated the people from the grip of Tunisia-based factions, thus the 
establishment of the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada along 
with Hamas; the 2000 Intifada was a thwarted attempt at escaping the 
sins of Oslo and its empowered elite. For the current Intifada to 
achieve a degree of initial success, it must find a way to entirely 
dismiss those who took it upon themselves to negotiate Palestinian 
rights and to enrich themselves at the expense of the impoverished and 
oppressed Palestinian people.

If the Intifada is to be true to itself, it must seek to break not just 
the hegemony over the Palestinian political discourse which is unfairly 
championed by Erekat and his peers, but to break political boundaries as 
well, uniting all Palestinians around a whole new political agenda.

There are many opportunists who are ready to pounce upon the current 
mobilization in Palestine, to use the people’s sacrifices as they see 
fit and, ultimately, return to the status quo as if no blood has been 
shed and no oppression still in place.

After reiterating his support for the two-state solution which is now 
but a fading mirage, Erekat told Al-Jazeera, “We are fully supporting 
our people and their cry for freedom.”

I think not, Mr. Erekat. Twenty years is long enough to show that those 
who have taken part in their people’s oppression, cannot possibly be the 
advocates of their people’s freedom.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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