Pity the poor Palestinians. They have had to endure the horrors of occupation for decades, and now, in addition, have to watch their leaders fail them. Despite outstanding examples given by several brave individuals, Palestine has drifted into chaos and division. This week the situation got worse, as both Fatah on the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, rounded up tens of their opponents and jailed them, accompanied by probably justified accusations of torture.
All this has left the rest of the Arab world stunned by the completeness of the failure, but horrified by the way events on the ground are harming individual Palestinians. For years the Palestinian cause was at the heart of the Arab movement. Palestine was so much part of Arab thinking that it helped define what is to be an Arab. Whether a country was monarchical or republican, revolutionary or reactionary, everyone could agree that Palestine had to be free.
But then in 1993, Yasser Arafat signed the historic Oslo agreement with Israel, setting up the Palestinian Authority, but accepting far less than he and the Arab world had been asking for over decades of struggle. Arafat accepted Oslo hoping that it would lead to more, but it never did and the Palestinians were left with the miserable arrangement that they still live with today: continuing occupation, no sovereignty, no control over their own security, little packets of land cut up by Israeli corridors, and no economic identity.
At that time, most of the Arab world decided that if the Palestinians were happy with what they got, then they would also get on with dealing their own problems and stop worrying about Palestine. The international political struggle ground to a halt, and the Palestinians got on with building their state as much as they could within the continuing limitations of the Olso environment.
This was a great success in some areas as Palestinians were able to manage their affairs to a certain extent, and some magnificent civil leaders came to the fore. This new Palestinian civil society then challenged the long-established political and military leadership over the style of government. One example was a stunning vote of censure by the Palestinian parliament over corruption in various ministries and government bodies, but the vote was ignored and nothing was done.
Then the situation was transformed by the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, as a popular mass movement of Palestinians refused to accept that the stagnating situation was all that they had. They refused to agree that the only way forward was to wait for a thoroughly untrustworthy Israeli government to offer them what it felt like, and do nothing in the meanwhile. In addition, the corruption and lack of vision in the Palestinian leadership did not help channel this frustration away from the armed struggle.
Today the situation is drifting into serious chaos. Palestine is split into two separate political entities. The various hopes from the past decade of political movement have vanished, and the Palestinians themselves are disillusioned and in despair. In addition, their separate leaderships are not talking, despite rumours at the start of the summer. The recent round of violence and arrests makes any good relations very unlikely.
Viable route
On the other side, the Israelis are led by a prime minister weakened by corruption charges, which will not go away, and there is an election looming which will wreck the governing coalition. No Israeli leader (or would be leader) is in any position to take any risks, even if they wanted to, to make the Two-State Solution a viable route forward. The results of the 2009 Israeli election will determine the next step from Israel.
In Washington, Bush is continuing his hopeless faith in the non-performing Annapolis round of negotiations, and the luckless Fatah leadership is committed to trying to make it work, while the Israelis are able to stonewall and refuse to move. Without sustained pressure from a committed and vigorous American administration (which will never happen in election years, anyway) they are able to ignore the demands of the Annapolis non-process.
After more than 10 years of post-Oslo politics, Fatah is stuck with its commitment to a peaceful solution, which has placed it in a completely impossible position. It does not have a viable option, since to go back to the armed struggle would give all moral authority to Hamas, who would say 'I told you so', and Fatah would then face international ostracism. But peace requires partners with whom to make peace, and Israel is well aware that by refusing peace they are destroying Fatah's authority.
Hamas looks like being the winner in all this, but the miserable citizens of Gaza, suffering months and months of blockade, would be hard pressed to agree. Hamas has continued the armed struggle, and its politics recognise that Israel cannot be trusted. This gives it more integrity than the struggling Fatah leaders, but does not help it when trying to run an administration.
And there is nothing coming up that will help. There are no unity talks planned in Palestine between Fatah and Hamas. The Israelis do not want to make peace. The US is embroiled in its election, so Annapolis is going nowhere. Men and women of goodwill should never give up, but they do not have much to work with!
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