The recent fragmentation within the Palestinian liberation movement, launched more than 50 years ago by Yasser Arafat, is no longer making any news here, especially the serious allegation that it was instigated, if not concocted, by an American general serving as security coordinator with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
General Keith Dayton was said by Hani Al Hassan, a respected Fateh leader who made the charge on the Al Jazeera Arabic-language television network, to have planned the failed putsch against Hamas with the support of Mohammad Dahlan, the top security aide of President Mahmoud Abbas, popularly known as Abu Mazen.
But Dennis Ross, the former US Mideast peace envoy and now counsellor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an influential pro-Israeli think tank here, dismisses Dayton, “despite his genuine efforts”, as having been able “to produce very little, and ... is not seen by Israelis or Palestinians as having much authority or clout”.
Whatever has been Dayton’s role in the splintering of Palestinian liberation struggle, the fact remains that Hassan, a member of the powerful central committee of Fateh, has been dismissed from his position as presidential adviser.
Yet, his charge has reverberated within the ranks of Fateh and underlined its weakness, particularly since Abbas had failed to purge its ranks of the old guard, several of whom are accused of corruption and abuse of power, after its surprise and humiliating defeat in last year’s decent parliamentary elections which Hamas won handsomely.
Whoever was behind the serious schism within Palestinian ranks, the continued state of malaise will not serve anyone’s interests, primarily not the Palestinians’ or the Israelis’, and certainly not the neighbouring Arabs states’ or the Western powers’, more directly the Europeans’, who have lately been footing the bill of this regional frustration.
Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj, a Gaza resident, put his finger on the general feeling in an e-mail published in Le Monde Diplomatique: “There is so much hatred and tribal calling for revenge. It is not just a political militaristic power struggle .... We all have been defeated by Israel and that feeling of humiliation is now venting out against smaller enemies within ourselves. Israel has further brutalised us through torture and oppression and had caused so much pain and trauma that now, as before, is showing the ugly face of toxic and chronic violence.”
The world, especially the United States, still stands hands folded in the face of continued Israeli aggression against the Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip, now controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, where Fateh is clinging to power while Israel continues its daily marauding into Palestinian cities.
The outgoing UN Middle East envoy, Alvaro de Soto, reportedly condemned this behaviour in a confidential report. The West, he says, treats Israel with great consideration, almost tenderness. The Quartet has become “a body that was all but imposing sanctions on a freely elected (Hamas) government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue”.
On the other hand, it has not put any pressure on the Israeli government over Israeli settlements and the separation wall.
Speaking last week before a group of American Muslims and Arab diplomats at the rededication ceremony of Washington’s famed Islamic Centre, President George W. Bush once again renewed his pledge: “We will work towards a day when a democratic Palestine lives side by side with Israel in peace.”
But it is doubtful that anyone took his high-sounding reiteration of his pledge as a signal of a new beginning. After all, dividing Palestinian ranks or favouring one group over the other, as seems to be the case at present, will not bring peace to the Middle East. If anything, it will serve as a reminder of the age-old colonial dictum of “divide and rule”.
Even Ross is not impressed by the Bush administration’s tack: “It prefers to invest its efforts in having an international conference to launch permanent status negotiations and then to take the easy road of simply putting out a plan for a permanent status deal. Such steps will unfortunately be seen as little more than abstractions, and abstractions won’t determine the outcome of the Fateh-Hamas competition.”
Nor compel Israel to control its greed.
The Middle East is on the brink of a widespread disaster that may engulf all, here and there. It’s time for some serious and honest thinking.