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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"
dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/09/mahmoud-abbas-stop-exploiting-ahed-tamimi-for-personal-gain/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/09/mahmoud-abbas-stop-exploiting-ahed-tamimi-for-personal-gain/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Mahmoud Abbas: Stop Exploiting Ahed
Tamimi for Personal Gain</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cet6s/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a> - August 9, 2018</span></div>
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<p>The father of 11-year-old, Abdul Rahman Nofal contacted
me, asking for help. His son was shot in the leg during
Gaza’s ‘Great March of Return’ protests. The Strip’s
dilapidated health care system could not save the little
boy’s leg, as it was later amputated.</p>
<p>His father, Yamen, himself a young man from the Buraij
Refugee Camp in central Gaza, only wants his child to
receive a prosthetic leg so that he can walk to school.
The Israelis are refusing the boy a permit to cross into
Ramallah to receive treatment. Desperate, Yamen composed
a video, where he pleads with Palestinian Authority
President, Mahmoud Abbas, to help his son. So far, his
pleas have gone unanswered.</p>
<p>“What did this innocent child do to deserve such
mistreatment?” he asks in the short video. The same
question can be asked regarding the ill-treatment of all
of Gaza’s children, of all Palestinian children.</p>
<p>Abbas, along with Israel, has subjected Palestinians in
Gaza to a prolonged campaign of collective punishment.
As cruel as Israel’s repeated wars on the impoverished
and besieged Strip have been, it is consistent with Tel
Aviv’s history of war crimes and apartheid. But what
Abbas is doing to Gaza is not just unfair, but also
puzzling.</p>
<p>Why is an 83-year-old leader so keen on engaging Israel
through the so-called security coordination, and, yet,
so insistent on isolating and punishing his own people
in the Gaza Strip?</p>
<p>Instead of helping Gazans who are reeling under the
destructive outcomes of Israeli wars and over a decade
of hermetic siege, he has been tightening the noose.</p>
<p>Abbas’ Authority has, thus far, cut salaries it
previously paid to Gaza employees, even those loyal to
his own faction, Fatah; he has cut salaries to the
families of Gaza prisoners held in Israel; he has even
withheld payments to the Israeli electric company that
provided Gaza with some of its electricity needs,
plunging the Strip even further into darkness.</p>
<p>Like Israel, Abbas also wants to see Gaza on its knees.
But, unlike Israel, he is humiliating his own brethren.</p>
<p>Starting on May 14, when thousands of Palestinians in
Gaza went out to the fence separating the imprisoned
enclave from Israel, Abbas’ supporters in the West Bank
understood the ‘March of Return’ protests as a
validation of Fatah’s rival, Hamas. So they, too, took
to the streets in ‘celebration’ of Abbas’ imaginary
achievements.</p>
<p>Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza were killed and
thousands more wounded in the ongoing ‘March of Return’,
many of them children; but Abbas and his Fatah allies
were far more interested in ensuring their own relevance
rather than joining the protests in demanding an end to
the Gaza blockade.</p>
<p>When much larger rallies were held in Ramallah and
elsewhere in the West Bank calling on Abbas to end his
punishment of the Gaza Strip, they were attacked by
Abbas’ security goons. Men and women were beaten up, and
many were arrested for solidarity with Gaza, now an
unforgivable act.</p>
<p>The truth is that Palestinians in the West Bank, not
just in Gaza, loathe Mahmoud Abbas. They want him and
his violent corrupt apparatus to go away. He refuses,
however, crafting all sorts of tactics to ensure his
dominance over his opponents, going as far as working
with Israel to achieve such a dishonorable objective.</p>
<p>However, Abbas still wants to convince Palestinians
that he is resisting, not the type of ‘useless
resistance’ displayed by Gazans, but his own style of
‘peaceful civil resistance’ of Palestinian villages in
the West Bank.</p>
<p>Such emphasis was made once more in recent days.</p>
<p>As soon as Palestinian teenage protester, Ahed Tamimi,
was released from an Israeli prison after spending 8
months in jail for slapping an Israeli soldier, Abbas
was ready to host her and her family.</p>
<p>Footage of him hugging and kissing the Tamimi family
was beamed all over Palestine and across the world. His
official media apparatus was keen on placing him at the
center of attention throughout the days following Ahed’s
release.</p>
<p>Abbas then, once more, lectured about ‘peaceful civil
resistance’, failing, of course, to underscore that
thousands of Gaza children, who were injured near the
Gaza fence in recent months, were also ‘peacefully
resisting.’</p>
<p>True, Ahed is a symbol for a rebellious Palestinian
young generation which is fed up with having no rights
and no freedoms, but Abbas’ shameless attempt at
harnessing that symbolism to polish his own image is
pure exploitation.</p>
<p>If Abbas truly cared for Palestinian children and
agonized over the pain of Palestinian prisoners – as he
claims he does – why, then, worsen the plight of Gaza
children and punish the families of Palestinian
prisoners?</p>
<p>Of course, Ahed, a strong young girl with an empowered
political discourse to match, cannot be blamed for how
others, like Abbas, are exploiting her image to uphold
their own.</p>
<p>The same can be said of Pakistani activist, Malala
Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by Taliban militants
at the age of 14. The West’s exploitation of her
struggle to recover from her wounds and breach peace and
justice for her people, is unfortunate. In Western
psyche, Malala’s struggle is often, if not always, used
to highlight the dangers of so-called radical Islam and
to further validate US-western military intervention in
Afghanistan and Pakistan.</p>
<p>This issue was addressed firmly by Ahed’s mother,
Nariman, who was also imprisoned in an Israeli jail and
released 8 months later. Nariman bravely spoke of the
racist notions that made Ahed popular in Western media.</p>
<p>“Frankly it is probably Ahed’s looks that prompted this
worldwide solidarity and that’s racist, by the way,
because many Palestinian children are in Ahed’s position
but weren’t treated in this way,” she said.</p>
<p>With this in mind, it is important that Ahed Tamimi is
not turned into another Malala, where her ‘peaceful
resistance’ is used to condemn Gaza’s ongoing
resistance, and where the fascination with her blonde,
uncovered hair, drowns the cries of the thousands of
Ahed Tamimis throughout besieged Gaza, in fact
throughout Palestine.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Dr. Ramzy Baroud</strong> has been writing
about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an
internationally-syndicated columnist, a media
consultant, an author of several books and the founder
of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father
Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press,
London). His website is: ramzybaroud.net</em> </p>
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