“THE FICTION OF RAMALAH”

The popular uprisings of May and June have exposed a reality that many already knew and today cannot be hidden. What autonomy does the Palestinian National Authority have? Do you really have one?

By Yossi Tevi

When the young Yasser Arafat together with some friends began the guerrilla actions against the Israeli occupation back in the early sixties, he could never have conceived in his imagination that a Palestinian would oppress or even murder another Palestinian on the orders or for the money of the Zionist enemy. Much less could he have imagined that one of his closest friends and associates of the cause will end up being functional to the Jewish entity. What happened last June and what continues to happen to this day in the West Bank has made it clear, Arafat was wrong.

It is true, you are not mistaken, we are talking about Mahmud Abbas or also known as “Abu Mazen”, the current de facto prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) who after being recruited in his youth by Arafat with the passing of Over the years and after the death of the PLO leader in 2004, he drove the hopes of the Palestinian people to the abyss.

To understand a little the current political situation of the Palestinian people, we must bear in mind that beyond the existing divisions (common in every community) and despite Israeli efforts, they have not broken the central objective of their platforms and it is, the liberation of the Palestinian territory from a foreign European occupation materialized in a political entelechy called Israel. In that there is no discussion between nationalists, socialists or Islamists and even among the Israeli left. Nor is there any doubt that this struggle is eminently political beyond the fact that Israel and the international Zionist organizations should disguise it as religious.

As usual, the Anglo-American media widely influenced by Zionism, made the personality of Yasser Arafat a hateful caricature that I do not even hesitate to get into aspects of her privacy that we understand from a distance the purpose she was pursuing. Likewise, and beyond these dirty campaigns, Arafat did not lose the respect, much less the support of his people and even sympathizers of the cause around the world.

In this context, the historic intervention of the United Nations through the sanction of various resolutions such as 242, 338 and 446 (non-binding) has been, to say the least, sterile. And it is precisely because of the legal characteristics of its resolutions that Israeli lawyers have given the interpretation that has suited them and have even failed to comply with them precisely because they are not binding. In addition to this, Israel has managed to evade sanctions for the flagrant violation of Chapter VII of the Charter for having the support of the United States, Great Britain and France, members of the Security Council demonstrating an abject complicity of international actors who continually tear their clothes -giving tricks to others- in the name of democracy and respect for human rights. Many wonder about this, what is the use of this body if it cannot enforce its resolutions with a little equity?

The beginning of the “Intifada” in November 1987 made the state of occupation and the constant increase in Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories visible worldwide. Along with this, the collapse of the USSR and the Persian Gulf War in 1991 catapulted the conflict to another level, from being a merely regional one to one with a global reach. This last event had definitive consequences for the PLO and in particular Yasser Arafat to seek to approach other Arab states with which it would have tried to avoid dealing and seek more pragmatic solutions with its intimate enemy.

When in the mid-nineties Arafat and Rabin began to establish secret contacts to reach a negotiation between both parties, both sides had to deal with internal pressures from the most extremist sectors of their political structures that were not willing to give up an iota. of their claims. In those moments, Arafat, who had not hesitated to fight for years against Israel, understood that it was time to put away his rifles and negotiate a peaceful coexistence, something that Yitzak Rabin would publicly agree with. Abbas, with a reserved personality and innate political pragmatism, was already actively involved in these tasks since 1989, was the ideal representative to contact and begin to negotiate with the Israelis.

It was thus after the Iraq disaster in the Gulf War and with advanced secret negotiations, on October 31, 1991 delegations from Israel, the PLO, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan met in Madrid where, despite the reluctance of the far right Israelis, the first guidelines for an agreement would be outlined.

Meanwhile, Israeli repression and the appropriation of territories to build settlements were on the rise. Similarly, Mahumd Abbas was still in talks with his Israeli counterparts.

In this way, at the beginning of 1993, another round of secret talks were carried out on neutral ground, with a department in Oslo, Norway, the place chosen to hold them. In this regard, the Mossad and the PLO's Mukhabarat established a ceasefire and focused on preserving calm and focusing on policing the dissident and more volatile elements within their own ranks.

After the negotiations, Israelis and Palestinians, under the auspices of Washington, would conclude an agreement that Arafat and Rabin would sign in the gardens of the White House. But that epic painting didn't last long. As soon as the agreement began to take effect, the Israeli ultra-rightists (including the settlers) did everything to violate it and even tried to incriminate the PLO in all kinds of events, even going so far as to point out that the Palestinians had been behind the terrorist attacks. in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, something that despite pressure and threats to abandon the negotiations, Rabin never accepted something that would cost him his life when he was assassinated on November 4, 1995 by a Jewish extremist.

Despite having established a Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in 1994 and exercising a fairly limited jurisdiction, Israel and especially the extremist Zionists were not willing to accept its progress and it was for this reason that they began to look for all kinds of arguments to erase with the elbow what they had signed by hand. In this context in which Mahmoud Abbas was the prime minister of the incipient ANP (and at a time when Ahmed Quorei and Ehud Barak were negotiating to implement the agreements in Washington) came in September 2000 the provocations of Ariel Sharon and his supporters on the Esplanade of the Mosques, the continuity in the appropriations of territories to build settlements of settlers brought from other latitudes, the massacres against Palestinian civilians and the retaliation of the Islamic resistance against Israeli civilians was escalating to the point that Yasser Arafat was losing control of the This situation was used by Israel to dismantle the infrastructure of the PNA (such as destroying the Rafah airport and its political headquarters in the West Bank) and, if possible, physically eliminate Arafat and his bosses.

The generation of this atmosphere was clearly functional to Tel Aviv and this would become clear only a few months later.

As Prime Minister Abbas could do nothing. Tensions with other branches of the Palestinian resistance due to the failure to obtain results on what was negotiated in Oslo, was exceeding it, leaving him the only endorsement of Arafat's support. At the same time in Tel Aviv the most recalcitrant Zionists knew that they could not do without Abbas since he was an obligatory interlocutor between Arafat and them with whom they could also establish conversations, something that they could not with the more radicalized of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others, leftist branches of the Palestinian resistance whom they directly only sought to destroy.

With the second intifada generated that September 28, 2000 by the deliberate provocation of Ariel Sharon and some very suspicious murders -such as that of the Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi-, Israel attacked and degraded the PNA forces to such an extent that they no longer it could control its own dominions in the West Bank and Gaza, something that would end in internal conflict with Hamas. In this chaotic framework, Ariel Sharon and his cabinet took the opportunity to try to completely eradicate the PNA and even, in March 2001 after cornering the old Arafat and his main leaders of "Force 17" in the bunker of the "Rais" in Ramallah had to back down due to increasing international pressure. At that time, the toughest, such as Mossad chief Meir Dagan, considered that the opportunity should be seized to eliminate them. The most lucid and cautious such as Yigar Palmor and his chief of staff Yair Yitzaki suggested to Sharon that he stop the actions since a bad image was being created before the international community and they would leave Arafat as a martyr.

By 2002, 73 years old Arafat, who already had strange symptoms in his health, became clear that he could no longer command the affairs of his people. Abbas, subjected to unbearable pressure, decides to resign and gives way to Ahmed Quorei, who from October 2003 would serve as prime minister until 2005. In the meantime, on November 11, 2004, Arafat ends up dying of poisoning with “Polonium 210” (an agent radioactive that could have leaked into cigarettes or food) at the “Percy” Military Hospital in Paris, making it clear that for a long time -since the process of this is not immediate- sought to eliminate it.

From that moment the PNA was emptied of power and little by little it was transformed into a mere administrative entity subject to and obedient to the decisions of Tel Aviv. Abbas's pragmatism became an obsequence that does not help the Palestinians and that the resistance opposition led by Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashal abroad would not tolerate. From then on, Abbas's authority was gradually dissolving to reach an irrecoverable unpopularity. Added to this, his alignment with Tel Aviv politics seen with the bloody repression of the demonstrations that broke out throughout the West Bank (with 11 dead) after the usurping attempts of the Jewish settlers in Shiekh Jarrah, Jerusalem and the massacres in Gaza showed that Abbas and his people only try to maintain their privileges and their "power" by condescending with Israel at the cost of the injustices and brutalities suffered by its own residents.

For greater evils and demonstrating the close and sinister cooperation that exists between the "Shin Bet" (responsible for all kinds of crimes against the Palestinians) and the intelligence of the PNA (who work together with the Israelis to arrest Palestinian children and youth) , they target those who post photos, videos or articles on social networks against the actions of Israel and the PNA. Thus the arrests of critics of his management have become a common thing in recent weeks with surprise raids and arrests. Such is the case of the renowned Palestinian activist Nizar Banat, who in the early hours of the morning of June 24, after his house in Hebron was raided and subjected to blows with iron bars, was removed by the Mukhabarat and later ended up dead. The relatives of Banat and his neighbors do not hesitate to accuse Abbas's PNA's collusion with Israel since the videos and documents that Nizar uploaded on the internet showed with crude realism the arbitrariness, corruption and bestiality with which they usually proceed. both governments. Today, the demonstrations calling for his resignation are increasing, but at the same time, the repression and arrests (especially against women) of his Mukhabarat and "Al Fatah" cells that are directly functional to the ultra-right administration of the current Israeli Prime Minister Bennett.

In conclusion, a government that lacks real power, that survives and economically maintains its structure - police, intelligence and administrative - through clandestine agreements (mediated by the CIA) with an enemy that daily oppresses its own people cannot be anything else. than a mere fiction. A mirage of what Yasser Arafat had long envisioned has turned the “Muqataa” (Palestinian Government House) into Abbas Prison.