[WCUSP] Fw: [ccds_midwest] Fwd: Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine

Wed Jul 18 17:52:10 CDT 2007

Forwarded to me -- quite something.  Libby

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Dennis Dixon 
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Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 4:59 PM
Subject: [ccds_midwest] Fwd: Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine

For those of you who may not get this regularly.....I suggest you subscribe....Dennis

UPDATE FROM THE
ELECTRONIC INTIFADA

http://electronicIntifada.net
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Overcoming the conspiracy against Palestine 

By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 18 July 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article7116.shtml

"Be certain that Yasser Arafat's final days are numbered,
but allow us to finish him off our way, not yours. And be
sure as well that ... the promises I made in front of
President Bush, I will give my life to keep." Those words
were written by the Fatah warlord Mohammed Dahlan, whose
US- and Israeli-backed forces were routed by Hamas in the
Gaza Strip last month, in a 13 July 2003 letter to then
Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz and published on
Hamas' website on 4 July this year.

Dahlan, who despite his failure to hold Gaza, remains a
senior advisor to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud
Abbas, outlines his conspiracy to overthrow Arafat,
destroy Palestinian institutions and replace them with a
quisling leadership subservient to Israel. Dahlan writes
of his fear that Arafat would convene the Palestinian
legislative council and ask it to withdraw confidence from
then prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, who had been appointed
earlier in 2003 at Bush's insistence in order to curb
Arafat's influence. Dahlan wrote that "complete
coordination and cooperation by all" was needed to prevent
this, as well as "subjecting [Arafat] to pressure so that
he cannot carry out this step." Dahlan reveals that "we
have already begun attempts to polarize the views of many
legislative council members by intimidation and temptation
so that they will be on our side and not his [Arafat's]."

Dahlan closes his letter to Mofaz saying, "it remains only
for me to convey my gratitude to you and the prime
minister [Ariel Sharon] for your continued confidence in
us, and to you all respect."

This letter is a small but vivid piece of evidence to add
to the existing mountain, of the conspiracy in which the
Abbas leadership is involved. In the month since the
Abbas' appointment of a Vichy-style "emergency government"
headed by Salam Fayad, historic Fatah leaders, such as
Farouq Qaddumi and Hani al-Hassan have signalled their
opposition to Abbas' actions, specifically rejecting his
order that Palestinian resistance fighters disarm while
Israeli occupation continues unchallenged.

This underscores that the split among Palestinians today
is not between Hamas and Fatah, nor between "extremist" or
"moderate," or "Islamist" or "secular," but between the
minority who have cast their lot in with the enemy as
collaborators on the one hand, and those who uphold the
right and duty to resist on the other.

Israeli leaders, at least, are crystal clear about what
they expect from their Palestinian servants. Ephraim Sneh,
until recently deputy defense minister, expresses the
consensus view of the Israeli establishment:

"The most urgent and important mission for Israel at this
time is preventing a Hamas takeover of the West Bank. It
is possible to do this by weakening Hamas through visible
diplomatic progress; helping the effective and successful
functioning of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad's
government; and the creation of conditions for the total
failure of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip" ("How to
stop Hamas," Haaretz, 17 July 2007).

Sneh makes clear that "in order to emerge victorious,
military campaigns and arrests are not enough -- it is
imperative to bring about [Hamas'] political-public defeat
via another Palestinian element." This element is Fatah.
Sneh lists a number of measures designed to achieve this,
including employing more Palestinians as low-wage laborers
in the Israeli economy, releasing Fatah prisoners and
giving back Palestinian tax money stolen by Israel -- but
says absolutely nothing about stopping the construction of
Jewish-only Israeli colonies, ending military occupation
and abrogating racist laws and practices. With
characteristic vagueness he only asserts that "it is
necessary to embark on a discussion with the Palestinian
president about the principles of the permanent status
agreement." Fourteen years after Oslo, this is not likely
to convince too many skeptics.

Since the Oslo accords were signed, Israel has done all it
can to undermine the prospects of Palestinian statehood,
consistently hobbling the Palestinian Authority. What lies
behind Israel's determination to prop up Abbas' quisling
leadership? Why not just let it all collapse and declare
victory?

Israeli leaders know that shoring up support for an ethnic
"Jewish state" depends on concealing the reality that Jews
are no longer the majority population in Israel, the West
Bank and Gaza Strip -- the territory controlled by the
Israeli state. Israel needs the fig leaf of a Palestinian
sovereign to take millions of Palestinians off its books,
the way apartheid South Africa attempted to deploy the
cover of "independent Black homelands" -- Bantustans -- to
prolong white rule and give it a veneer of legitimacy. If
the Palestinian Authority collapses, Fatah which has no
popular base, will collapse with it.

As for Hamas, it stands at a crossroads. It can survive
the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, but what will
it become? It grew from a segment of Palestinian society
-- poor, religiously mobilized masses, yet it draws much
broader support for its resistance against Israel from
Palestinians orphaned by their turncoat leaders and hungry
for a principled alternative. Hamas has the choice to
articulate an agenda that can live up to the aspirations
of Palestinian society in all its diversity, or it can
leap into the traps that are being set for it.

Hamas leaders have made exemplary statements in favor of
pluralism, genuine democracy, and the rule of law, and
were rightly proud of the release of BBC journalist Alan
Johnston. But they must be judged by their actions, and
there are discouraging signs. The Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights has reported several cases of abuse,
kidnapping and torture by members of Hamas' Executive
Force, and the death of a prisoner held by Hamas' military
wing. It is true that these incidents do not occur in a
vacuum -- Israel and its Fatah allies continue to engage
in far more widespread murder, torture and kidnapping
directed at Hamas members, and Hamas is engaged in a
struggle for survival. But Hamas earned legitimacy by
promising to end the ugly practices of Israeli-backed
Fatah militias. It must fulfill that promise or see its
hard-earned support disappear. At the same time it must
begin to articulate a vision for the future that takes
into account the reality of 11 million Israeli Jews and
Palestinians living in a small country. We know what Hamas
is against, but no one is clear what it is for.

Hamas is edging towards accepting a two-state solution
just as the reality is beginning to dawn even on stalwarts
of the Oslo peace process industry that the two-state
solution, needed to save Israel as an enclave of Jewish
privilege, is slipping out of reach. As a two-state
solution "is becoming less likely," observes Aaron David
Miller, a 25-year veteran of the State Department and
senior Clinton Administration official at the 2000 Camp
David summit, "there is more talk among Palestinians of a
one-state solution -- which of course is not a solution at
all, and which would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish
state." ("Is peace out of reach?," The Los Angeles Times,
15 July 2007).

Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein predicts that "sooner
or later Hamas will fail in its war against Israel. But
that does mean that there will then be a return to the
days of Oslo and the two-state vision." Rather, he fears,
"there will be increasingly strong demands by Palestinian
Arabs, who constitute almost half the inhabitants of this
land, who will say: Under the present conditions we cannot
establish a state of our own, and what remains for us is
to demand civil rights in the country that is our
homeland. They will adopt the slogans of the struggle of
the Arabs who are Israeli citizens, who demand equality
and the definition of Israel as a state of all its
citizens." ("Nothing to sell the Palestinians," 16 July
2007). Thus we can see that Abbas is now Israel's last
best hope in the struggle against democracy. Such a
pathetic coalition cannot stand in the way of liberation.

Ali Abunimah is cofounder of The Electronic Intifada and
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

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EI, found at http://electronicIntifada.net provides a
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