“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.