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In
2006, the Palestinian diplomacy failed, almost completely, in achieving
its central goals.
These include, first, expediting the process of ending the Israeli
military occupation that began in 1967; second, lifting the draconian
siege imposed by Israel, the US, and EU, in connivance with certain Arab
regimes, for the purpose of punishing the Palestinian people for
electing Hamas; and, third, exposing Israeli brutality and criminality
against our people.
In
the past year, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas
visited many capitals, including Washington D.C. , and received in
Ramallah scores of foreign leaders and diplomats.
However, these high-profile meetings and encounters yielded next to
nothing in terms of positive tangible outcome, apart from the usual
pleasantries and public relations trappings.
Indeed, a meticulous review of Abbas’s meetings with foreign leaders in
2006 (2005 was no different) shows that the Palestinian leadership
failed utterly in communicating the messages that ought to have been
communicated to these foreign visitors.
For
example, Abbas made little or no efforts to tell the world community
that it was unfair and unwise to punish ordinary Palestinians because of
Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel and that it was illogical to demand
that Hamas recognize Israel without demanding a reciprocal Israeli
recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank, East
Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
He also equally utterly failed to effectively and clearly convey the
message that the election of Hamas in January 2006 didn’t really imply
that a majority of Palestinians were against peace with Israel or
dedicated to the destruction of the apartheid state as Israeli hasbara
has been successfully trying to convince the international community.
Indeed, Abbas’s statements and remarks in the presence of foreign
visitors often suggested that he more or less agreed that the
Palestinian people erred, to put it mildly, by electing Hamas, and had
to incur the consequences.
Furthermore, the PA leadership in 2006 was guilty of indulgence in
seeking to appease and please the West, especially the United States ,
by creating the impression that the PA, especially Fatah, was joining
the American-inspired “coalition of the moderates,” which includes
pro-American regimes in the Middle East against the anti-Israeli
coalition, which includes Hamas, Hizbullah , Syria and Iran .
Well, this impression is false and deceptive because Palestine and the
Palestinians are occupied and tormented by Israel whose occupation of
our land is supported, sustained and guarded by the United States , not
by Iran or Hizbullah or Syria .
More
to the point, we must take note of the fact that these artificial and
disingenuous classifications (the coalitions of moderates and
extremists) are being utilized by the bankrupt Bush administration in
order to redefine the essence of the Palestinian cause, from an enduring
criminal and racist occupation of Palestine and systematic repression of
its people to a mere psychological problem of moderates and extremists.
This is how the Bush administration, in coordination with some Zionist
circles, such as the so-called Peres Peace Center , has come to
understand the conflict in this region.
That
is why they are always trying to get Palestinian soccer players (usually
the young boys and girls uncorrupted by extremist thinking!!) to play
Israeli counterparts or play with them in one team against a foreign
soccer team, as happened recently in Spain . Well, they are trying to
spread the message that the problem is not the rape of Palestine by the
Jews, the expulsion of millions of Palestinians from their ancestral
homeland, but merely a psychological problem and some unresolved
psychological complexes.
Having effectively joined the “axis of moderates” (which actually is an
axis of liars), Abbas may have hoped that this false perceived proximity
vis-à-vis the Americans would have placed him in a better position to
extract Palestinian rights from Israel ’s criminal hands.
But
this view is short sighted if not outright naïve. This almost messianic
American administration, which believes that the invasion, occupation
and destruction of Iraq, was inspired by God, will not award or reward
Abbas for being moderate (in the American lexicon “moderate” means
coming to terms with the Israeli occupation and giving up Jerusalem as
well as the right of return and much of the West Bank).
This
is clear from the quality of the award the Bush Administration is
already giving the PA.
Indeed, instead of ordering Israel to stop building racist Jewish-only
colonies and put an end to the policy of narrowing Palestinians’
horizons, George Bush has decided to give us weapons and millions of
bullets to kill each other. More to the point, the fact that the
delivery of these weapons has been supported by the likes of Avigdor
Lieberman and right-wing Jewish extremists in the US speaks volumes in
itself.
This
is the same Bush that once described Ariel Sharon (we know well who
Sharon is) as a man of peace and awarded his artificial withdrawal from
Gaza by bestowing legitimacy to scores of Jewish colonies in the West
Bank .
Our
leadership must realize that the Palestinian people are not an Eidul
Adha ram, to be fed today in order to be slaughtered tomorrow.
It
is lamentable that PA spokesmen, from Abbas downward, are scandalously
failing to get the right messages through to the world.
For
these reasons, in 2007, we must seek to rethink our performance with
regard to media tactics and public diplomacy and do away with the often
jumbled and confused public discourse. And in order to do that, we must
concentrate on the following messages.
First, that the Israeli occupation is an act of rape and that it is the
mother of all problems in the Middle East and beyond, and that there can
be no peace or stability between Islam and the West, let alone between
Israel and the Muslim world, as long as the Israeli occupation persists
and the Palestinian people are denied their rights, including the right
to have a viable and sovereign state with East Jerusalem as its capital
as well the repatriation of Palestinian refugees to their original
hometowns and villages in what is now Israel.
Second, that Hamas is an authentic societal force that can’t be
marginalized let alone eradicated and that it is futile and unrealistic
to starve and torment the Palestinian people in order to weaken Hamas.
Third, that the Palestinian people will not be cajoled or bullied into
accepting a deformed state, one with a form but without a substance.
Furthermore, the PA should stop talking about Hamas in the presence of
foreign, especially American visitors since this would give the
impression that the real problem lies in the existence of Hamas, not in
the reality of the Israeli colonization and occupation of our homeland.
More
to the point, the PA should really tell the international community that
the PA itself is under the Israeli occupation and that the Israeli
occupation of Palestine is still as sinister and as direct as it was
prior to the conclusion of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Indeed, giving the false impression of Palestinian statehood, by
employing such bombastic but mendacious phrases as Palestinian
“sovereignty” and Palestinian “government” and Palestinian “security
forces,” is really self-defeating and very very harmful to Palestinian
aspirations for real freedom and real statehood. After all, real freedom
can only be attained following a real delivery from this Nazi-like
occupation of our country.
Finally, it is sad that the PA continues to employ poorly qualified or
unqualified spokespersons with inadequate political and linguistic
abilities to communicate the Palestinian view point to the outside
world. We need professional spokespersons with excellent knowledge of
the world and mastery of foreign languages, especially English, to tell
the world in straightforward manner that Israel is a murderer, liar and
land thief and that the problem lies squarely in the Zionist theft of
our land and savagery of our people. |
