What is the future of the Palestinian national movement? Ghada Karmi, Ilan Pappe, Ali Abunimah and other experts discuss the unity deal and failure of negotiations with Israel. Whatever the future of the Palestinian national movement, it will not be decided by Hamas and Fatah and their unity deal. Whats notably missing from this deal is any proclamation of a programme that can unite Palestinians behind a strategy for liberation from Israels tightening colonial grip. Already, since the deal, both Hamas and Fatah figures have made contradictory statements. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has claimed, on the one hand, that the unity government he hopes to form will abide by his programme of recognising Israel, abandoning the right of return and cooperating with Israel. Senior Hamas figures have stressed that the new unity deal will forbid security cooperation. These competing claims underscore that the basic rift between Hamas and Fatah remains unbridged. Hamas, though abiding by a ceasefire negotiated with Israel in 2012, remains committed to military resistance and self-defence. Abbas and his US-supervised security forces, by contrast, continue to collaborate closely with the Israeli army and Shin Bet secret police; collaboration that, recently, earned the public praise of Martin Indyk, the career Israel lobbyist now in charge of the peace process at the US State Department. The unity deal therefore exists within the narrow confines of the regime established by the 1993 Oslo accords: for limited Palestinian self-government, or more accurately, self-policing under Israeli occupation and aggressive, ongoing colonisation. Meanwhile, Palestinian refugees in the diaspora and Palestinian citizens of Israel are totally sidelined from the failed process. A new Palestinian national movement will have to change the paradigm completely, uniting all Palestinians around a strategy that addresses and restores all their rights and ends the ongoing Nakba. The 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions might be a good starting point. It is obvious, however, that no faction or entity that works with Israels army and secret police to help administer occupation and apartheid can ever be part of such a movement.
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 15:20:51 +0000
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