FEAR OF FRANCHISE:

The people of Palestine must finally be allowed to determine their own fate: The drivers of violence in Gaza are clearly external. When all Palestinians can vote for sovereign rule, peace will be within reach (Karma Nabulsi, June 18, 2007, The Guardian)

How did we get here? The institutions created in occupied Palestine in the 1990s were shaped to bring us to this very point of collapse. The Palestinian Authority, created through negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993, was not meant to last more than five years - just until the institutions of an independent state were built. Instead, its capacities were frozen and it was co-opted into performing the role of a security agency for the Israelis, who were still occupying Palestine by military force, and serving as a disbursement agency for the US and EU's funding of that occupation. The PA had not attained a single one of the freedoms it was meant to provide, including the most important one, the political liberty of a self-determining sovereign body.

Why did we get here? Once the exact nature of its purpose emerged, the Palestinians began to resist this form of external control. Israel then invaded the West Bank cities again and put President Yasser Arafat's compound under a two-year siege, which ended with his death. Under those conditions of siege the international "reform" process created a new institution of a prime minister's office and attempted to unify the security apparatus under it, rather than that of the president, whom they could no longer control. Mahmoud Abbas was the first prime minister, and the Israeli- and US-backed Fatah strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, was appointed head of security. After the death of Arafat, Abbas was nominated to the leadership of the PLO, and directly elected as the president of the PA.

Arafat had followed the strategy of all successful liberation movements: a combination of resistance and negotiation until the conclusion of a comprehensive peace treaty. Abbas's strategy was of an entirely different order: no resistance in any form and a complete reliance on the good faith of the Israelis. After a year of achieving nothing - indeed Ariel Sharon refused to negotiate with him and Israeli colonisation was intensified - the Palestinian people's support for this humiliating policy of submission wore thin. Hamas, polling about 20% in previous years, suddenly won 43% of the vote in 2006.

This popular reaction was a response to the failure of Abbas's strategy as much as the failure of Fatah to present any plausible national programme whatsoever. The Palestinians thus sought representation that would at least reflect their condition of occupation and dispossession. Although the elections were recognised as free and fair, the US and Britain immediately took the lead in applying sanctions against the Hamas government, denying aid - which was only needed in the first place because the occupation had destroyed the economy - and refusing to deal with it until it accepted what had become, under these new circumstances, impossible "conditions".

The US administration continued to treat Fatah as if it had won the election rather than lost it - funding, arming, and directly encouraging agents within it to reverse the outcome of that democratic election by force.

Much nonsense here wrapped around a core truth: to exactly the extent that Fatah has become the chosen vehicle of the West for dealing with Palestine it has been delegitimized among Palestinians. Thus, the current American/European/Israeli scramble to save Fatah just makes it less and less viable as a political party and essentially places those who support Fatah in a position of opposing democracy. This is, of course, exactly the position that George W. Bush recognized after 9-11 had done so much damage in the Middle East. It's unfortunate to fall back into the same rut.

MORE:
Palestine between delusion and destruction (Rami G. Khouri, 6/16/07, Daily Star)

Even in Abbas' moment of utter failure and complete humiliation - his presidential compound occupied, his guards dispersed, his government non-existent, his orders meaningless, his people sanctioned and starved - this quintessential Arab moderate found himself being defined in public by the US secretary of state primarily in terms of his willingness to negotiate peace with Israel. Nevertheless, Abbas soldiers on, somewhat heroic and moving at one level, but overall a tragic and hapless figure whose ineptitude is matched by his irrelevance - except in the eyes of the US government that uses him as a prop for its diplomatic games in Palestine. Even the Israelis long ago gave up on Abbas and his sclerotic Fatah movement, which has spawned the same sort of local militias and militant gangs that plague many other dysfunctional Arab countries.

The first lesson of this Palestinian catastrophe involves the Palestinians themselves, who must endure a fate that reflects the quality of their own leadership. Fatah dominated the Palestinian national movement since its inception over 40 years ago and forged a unified national movement, with realistic diplomatic goals later based on a two-state solution that garnered great international support. All this was systematically wasted and negated in the past decade. Gaza looks like the ravaged Somali capital, Mogadishu, because its political turmoil is slowly mirroring the Somali legacy of a disintegrating state replaced by feuding warlords.

Hamas shares some of the blame for this also, but much less than Fatah, because Hamas has only shared power for just over a year, and then only barely because of the international financial boycott. We don't know if Hamas will do a better job than Fatah, because it has not had the time to prove itself. Perhaps we will find out in the months ahead.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 18, 2007 7:12 AM