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Palestinian Leadership Debates Strategy for Post-Arafat Period
by Gerry Foley
Yasir Arafat’s death has added a new drama to the
crisis in the Palestinian leadership that has been
building for some time. This crisis will certainly
continue to deepen.
There is no one in evidence who can play the same role
that he had of bridging the gap between the fighters
and those who are looking for a compromise with Israel
that will enable them to enjoy the personal benefits
of presiding over a mini-state.
Arafat’s death will almost inevitably lead to a
head-on clash between the two contending forces,
regardless of any initial attempts to present a united
front. The division is too fundamental.
The only way it can be overcome is if a new leadership
emerges with a political strategy for uniting the
Palestinian people in a struggle for their human and
national rights. And that could only be a leadership
that is not beholding to any vested interests but only
to the oppressed and exploited people.
Both the Palestinian and Israeli press more and more
have been talking about the fading of the prospects
for a two-state solution and the growing belief among
Palestinians that the only possible solution is one
state in all of Palestine in which Jews and Arabs can
live together on the basis of equality.
A new debate on this question has started in the pages
of Haaretz, Israel’s liberal Zionist prestige daily.
Thus, in its Oct. 14 issue, Avraham Tal wrote that the
Palestinian interest in a one-state solution showed
that the real objective of the Palestinians was to
destroy Israel. He was answered as follows in the Oct.
20 issue of the liberal Zionist daily by Michael
Terazi: "The problem is not whether Palestinians want
two states or one—the problem is unilateral Israeli
action that is rapidly making, or has arguably already
made, a two-state solution impossible."
Terazi, in line with the general attitude of Haaretz’s
editors, clearly still had hope that the Zionist
rulers would see the need eventually to offer the
Palestinians a two-state solution that they could
accept. But he recognized how much their actions thus
far have made discredited the idea:
"To Palestinians, the strategy behind Israel's
two-state solution is clear. More than 400,000
Israelis live illegally in more than 150 colonies,
many of which stand on top of Palestinian water
sources. Ariel Sharon is prepared to evacuate settlers
from Gaza—but only in exchange for expanding
settlements in the West Bank.
"And Israel is building a wall not on its land but
rather inside occupied Palestinian territory. The
wall's route predictably maximizes the amount of
Palestinian farmland and water on one side and the
number of Palestinians on the other….
"Palestinians finally understand that Israel is
offering ‘independence’ on a reservation stripped of
water and arable soil, economically dependent on
Israel and even lacking the right to self-defense."
Of course, as Terazi recognized, and any reasonable
person would, there is no way that the Palestinian
people will accept such a solution. The only way it
can come about is if the Palestinian people are so
crushed that they will no longer resist and thereby
open the way for a corrupt minority to collaborate
with the Zionists.
Crushing the Palestinian people remains the primary
objective of the Zionist rulers and they have been
escalating their campaign to achieve that by carrying
out massive raids in the Gaza strip in particular,
which have already killed more of the oppressed people
than any other operation the Zionist military has
undertaken in the current phase of the Palestinian
resistance.
The British Guardian reported in its Oct. 18 issue on
the Israeli army’s terrorizing of the Jabaliya refugee
camp in Gaza: "The scale of the destruction, about 20
acres of homes, shops and roads razed or ground into
the sand—matched the Israelis' controversial assault
on Jenin refugee camp two years ago. But the death
toll in Jabaliya was double that, with about 130
people killed, one in six of them children 15 or
younger."
This year alone, The Guardian noted, the Israeli army
has destroyed the homes of 9000 people in the Gaza
Strip. The British paper pointed out: "A United
Nations human rights report on the Israeli occupation
to be presented to the general assembly this month
accuses Israel of ‘massive and wanton destruction of
property’ in the Gaza strip. ‘Bulldozers have
destroyed homes in a purposeless manner and have
savagely dug up roads, including electricity, sewage
and water lines,’ it says."
The Israeli government’s pretext for this flood of
destruction and death on a virtually defenseless
population has been the need to stop the firing of
homemade rockets at Israeli settlements. But the scale
of the destruction obviously goes far beyond such an
objective.
In fact, the brutality of the Israeli invasion
guarantees the continuation of the Palestinian
guerrillas’ indiscriminate attacks on Israelis, at
least up until the point that the Palestinian
resistance finds more effective responses or the
Palestinian people are completely demoralized.
The Zionist press, of course, eagerly plays up any
indications of the Palestinian population blaming the
resistance fighters for the Israeli attacks. But these
accounts also say that Palestinians will not express
publicly any criticisms of the fighters. Obviously,
they feel compelled to continue to support the
guerrilla attacks publicly, even when they are
counterproductive, so as not to show any sign of
surrendering to Israeli intimidation.
In a report posted Oct. 15 on the Al Jazeera website,
a correspondent in Gaza wrote: "Camp residents remain
… defiant, despite the Israeli propaganda leaflets
urging them to turn against the fighters, delivered to
them through the same aircraft that play havoc with
their lives."
On Nov. 1, another desperate Palestinian youth managed
to slip through Israeli security and blow himself up
in a crowded Tel Aviv market, killing four Israelis.
He was not from an Islamist group but from the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a left
nationalist organization.
Moreover, in their own corner, the Zionists have
locked themselves into a trap that it is difficult for
them to get out of. Sharon is determined to withdraw
the Zionist settlements from Gaza, which has little
potential value and much potential trouble for Israel,
in order to consolidate the Zionist hold on parts of
the West Bank that are important for Israel. But he
finds himself obstructed by Zionist fanatics, many of
them fundamentalists, who are determined to maintain
the project of the occupation of all of Palestine by
Zionist settlers.
Thus, the Israeli security services are warning that
there is a real threat that some Zionist kamakaze will
assassinate the country’s notoriously ruthless,
hardline premier in order to prevent even a tactical
concession to the Palestinians.
In all, the deadly logic of Zionism is obvious, and
there is no way out of the bloody impasse that it has
created without abandoning it and turning to a
solution that will enable Jews and Arabs to live
together in the same country—a democratic secular
Palestine.
The article above first appeared in the November 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
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