By Alan
Hart
November 14, 2011
In advance of the formal burial of the Palestinian
Authority's bid for state recognition at the UN, BBC Radio 4's flagship Today programme was on the
right track. In his introduction to a quite revealing report, presenter John
Humphrys said reporter Kevin Connolly had gone to Israel to find out "what
hopes there are, if any, for the establishment
of a Palestinian state."
Among those Connolly interviewed were Akiva
Eldar, the Ha'aretz
columnist who has been a constant critic of Israel's settlement policy.
He said. "
As I have written from time to time in the past, the possible
consequences include Israel tearing itself apart in a Jewish civil war; Israel
going down and taking the whole region with it; and/or a final Zionist
ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
If I take it as a given (I do) that Israel's leaders are not
remotely interested in peace on terms that would satisfy even minimum
Palestinian demands and needs for justice, and that as things are the major
powers will continue to allow Zionism to go on calling the policy shots, the
question arising is this:
What can the Palestinians do themselves
to advance their cause?
It's not for the gentile me to tell the Palestinians what to do
but if I was a Palestinian the following is what I would want to happen.
The first and immediate priority ~the dissolution of the PA, effectively making Israel fully and completely responsible and accountable for its occupation.
Having to take complete responsibility would be quite costly for
Israel financially and in terms of the additional call on its security
resources. And in theory it ought to be less difficult (at present it's
impossible) for the Palestinians, with the assistance of concerned and caring
agencies and governments, to hold Israel accountable to international law for
its occupation policies and actions.
Why should the PA be dissolved? Apart from the fact that
it's corrupt and useless (has become just another Arab regime, some might say),
the short answer is in two parts.
One is that under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah cronies,
the PA's main role has been to keep the Palestinians, Hamas supporters
on the West Bank in particular, under control for Israel. In that context the
PA has been more or less a quisling authority collaborating with Israel, and by
so doing it has undermined the liberation struggle.
The other is that under Abbas's leadership the PA has subverted
Palestinian democracy. He was elected as chairman in January 2005 for a term of
four years which expired in January 2009.
There should then have been new elections. In the absence of
them Abbas and his PA are without legitimacy and thus any real mandate to
represent the occupied and oppressed Palestinians.
Abbas's response to the statement by the Security Council's
admissions committee that it had failed to reach agreement on the PA's bid for
full membership and state recognition was to say that he would "keep on
trying." He also ruled out the possibility of
dissolving the PA.
I think it's not unreasonable to speculate that his prime
concern is to preserve the good life and privileges he and his Fatah leadership
colleagues enjoy. Arafat was never a member of the discredited Arab Leadership
Club. Abbas is a fully paid up member.
On reflection I also think his decision to seek UN recognition
of a Palestinian state was entirely self-serving. He
knew the bid could not succeed but he calculated, correctly, that it would
focus global attention on the Palestinian cause in a way that would improve his
low standing in the eyes on his people.
It did but only briefly.
Obviously the dissolution of the PA will only happen if enough
Palestinians demand it. But in my view it's not only the occupied and oppressed
Palestinians who need to
do the demanding. In my view it's time for Palestinians everywhere to become
engaged by peaceful and democratic means in the struggle to end the Zionization
of their homeland and secure their rights.
Put another way, if the Zionist colonial project
is to be contained and defeated, the incredible, almost superhuman
steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians must now be
supplemented by practical, effective and co-ordinated Palestinian diaspora
action. For what purpose?
Not only to bring about the dissolution of the PA but to have it
replaced as soon as possible by a re-structured and re-invigorated PNC (Palestine National Council). Once upon
a time this now side-lined, parliament-in-exile was the supreme decision-making
body on the Palestinian side.
Even Arafat was accountable to it. (It did, in fact, take him
six long years to persuade a majority of PNC delegates representing
Palestinians nearly everywhere to endorse his policy of politics and compromise
with Israel. That happened towards the end of 1979. The PNC vote in favour of
Arafat's policy ~ the two-state solution ~ was 296
for it and only four against. From then on the
Palestinian door was open to peace on terms which any rational government in
Israel would have accepted with relief).
For the PNC to be brought back to life re-structured and
re-invigorated, there would have to be elections to it in
communities/constituencies throughout the Palestinian diaspora. The following
by country and numbers of Palestinians is the most recent available estimate of
its composition that I am aware of.
The occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip - 4,200,000
Jordan - 2,900,000
Israel - 1,600,000
Syria - 800,000
Chile - 500,000
Lebanon - 490,000
Saudi Arabia - 280,245
Egypt - 270,245
United States - 270,000
Honduras - 250,000
Venezuela - 245,120
United Arab Emirates - 170,000
Germany -159,000
Mexico - 158,000
Qatar - 100,000
Kuwait - 70,000
El Salvador - 70,000
Brazil - 59,000
Iraq - 57,000
Yemen - 55,000
Canada - 50,975
Australia - 45,000
Libya - 44,000
Denmark - 32,152
United Kingdom - 30,000
Sweden - 25,500
Peru - 20,000
Columbia - 20,000
Spain - 12,000
Pakistan -10,500
Netherlands - 9,000
Greece - 7,500
Norway - 7,000
France - 5,000
Guatemala - 3,500
Austria - 3,000
Switzerland - 2,000
Turkey - 1,000
India - 300
That
global spread of the original (1947/48) and subsequent (1967) Palestinian
refugees and their descendants is an awesome tribute to the success of Zionist
ethnic cleansing.
The prime task of a re-structured and re-invigorated PNC would
be to debate and determine Palestinian policy and then represent it by speaking to power with one credible
voice. That, I believe, would significantly improve the
prospects for getting a real peace process going. By definition a real peace
process is one that would require the major powers led by the U.S. to confront
the Zionist monster.
The organizational effort required to bring the PNC back to
life, re-structured and re-invigorated, is massive, but what might have taken
years in the past could be done in months by making best and most effective use
of the internet.
If diaspora Palestinians do not now make the effort and put
their act together, I think it's possible, even probable, that future
Palestinian historians will conclude that they betrayed their occupied and
oppressed brothers and sisters as much as the regimes of an impotent, corrupt
and repressive Arab Order did.
Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars
and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in
the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The
Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor
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