|
11 September 2012
By Khalid Amayreh
In the presence of a visiting Israeli delegation in
Ramallah last week, Palestinian Authority (PA) and
Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas said " Israel was created
in order to stay for ever."
The Zionist delegation included Talmudic religious
leaders, including the rabbi of a Bethlehem-area
colony, Menachem Fruman.
Abbas's remarks have been vehemently rejected and
condemned by many Palestinian intellectuals, who
called the remarks, inter alia, catastrophic, shocking
and crossing all redlines.
Most Palestinians and much of the world consider the
Israeli entity a gigantic crime against humanity, a
war crime unlike any other in the annals of history.
The extirpation of millions of Palestinians from their
ancestral homeland and dispersing them to the four
winds can never be allowed to acquire historical or
more legitimacy, regardless of any practical or
pragmatic considerations. Hence, Abbas's remarks
should be condemned in the strongest terms.
In fact, Abbas has no right to make such statements,
despite his prerogative as PA chairman and Fatah
leader. The vast majority of the Palestinian people,
including Fatah, wouldn't and don't condone the
sell-out of their rights in what is known today as
Israel.
This includes the paramount right of return for more
than five million Palestinian refugees scattered all
over the world, awaiting the opportunity for
repatriation to their former home-villages and towns
from which they were expelled at the murderous hands
of Zionist invaders from Eastern Europe.
Needless to say, one of the shocking implications of
Abbas's misstatements is a de facto acknowledgement of
the validity of the Zionist narrative as opposed to
the invalidity of the Palestinian national narrative.
But that would be the most scandalous and most
treasonous pronouncement a Palestinian, let alone a
Palestinian leader, would make.
Abbas should have thought elaborately before uttering
the unutterable. Palestine from the River Jordan to
the Mediterranean belongs to the Palestinian people
and the Muslim Umma, not to the Abbas' family. Which
begs the question of whether Abbas had consulted with
the Palestinian people and Muslims around the world
before uttering these stunning words.
We all realize that the Zionist entity is powerful
militarily, thanks to its domination of the American
government. But does military power spell moral
legitimacy? Does the control by a few Jewish
kleptocrats and robber barons of the American
political arena mean that East European Jewish
invaders were correct and justified in stealing
Palestine from its legitimate Arab proprietors?
Once again, Abbas has no right whatsoever to renounce
our rights in our ancestral homeland on the ground
that the foreign occupiers are militarily powerful and
have powerful countries at their beck and call.
The Crusaders occupied Palestine and Jerusalem for a
period longer than the lifespan of the Zionist state,
but the Muslim powers of the time didn't succumb to
the fait accompli created by the Franks in the Holy
Land. And, eventually, the Crusaders were vanquished.
Perhaps Abbas is too demoralized and too un-Islamic to
be expected to emulate or even imitate Salahuddin al-Ayyoubi.
This is quite understandable.
But in our Islamic culture, he that can't pay a
pride's dowry has no right to commit fornication.
Similarly, if Muslims can not liberate Palestine due
to their military weakness, they have no right to come
to terms with the usurpation of Muslim land.
Again, Israel is a regional military superpower, due
to the Jewish domination of American political life.
But that is in no way translated into historical or
moral legitimacy for the Zionist entity. In the final
analysis, moral legitimacy overrides political
reality, and Israel has no moral legitimacy whatsoever
as far as 1500.000 million Muslims and billions of
other honest-minded men and women are concerned.
I realize that the Fatah movement is too weak and too
unprincipled to look Abbas in the eye and tell him
"you are wrong Mr. President."
Abbas's PA can't survive without western handouts. If
Abbas disappears, so will the politically-motivated
money. Hence, Fatah is not in a position to challenge
Abbas even if he commits political apostasy with
inalienable Palestinian rights, which he has already
done.
That is really sad and lamentable to say the very
least because Fatah has always argued, rather
correctly, that the Palestinian people are far greater
than their leaders.
However, the fact nearly all Fatah leaders at home and
in the Diaspora are quite reticent and speechless
following Abbas's brashly embarrassing remarks means
that Fatah is either tacitly accepting its president's
stance or is too weak and two cowardly to confront him
on this paramount matter.
Fatah is not a treacherous movement. It shouldered the
burden of national struggle for many years during
which it made numerous sacrifices.
However, Fatah has been doing injustice to its own
image and its own history by capitulating to a status
quo shaped by demoralized politicians and mediocre
leaders who would go to any extent in order to meet
Zionist ambitions and vagaries.
The balance of power between the president of Fatah
and the group's grass-root followers and supporters is
probably too oblique to allow us to ask the group's
authentic leaders, e.g. those still loyal to the
legacy of Yasser Arafat (whatever this might mean), to
rebel against their ( Abbas's) leadership. He would
simply cut off their financial lifeline.
None the less, Fatah, in light of its leadership's
unrelenting march toward the liquidation of the
Palestinian cause, will have to choose between
maintaining its financial lifeline and maintaining its
survival.
The choice may not be easy for those who go by the
slogan "feed me today, and kill me tomorrow."
However for those who won't fornicate with our just
cause, no matter how grave the consequences, the
choice is simple and easy.
In the final analysis, there is no verse in the Holy
Quran stating that the Palestinian problem must be
resolved during Mahmoud Abbas's life time. Khalid Amayreh is an American-educated
journalist living in the southern West Bank town of
Dura near Hebron. He graduated from the University of
Oklahoma in Norman in 1981. He also, received a Master
degree in Journalism from the University of Southern
Illinois at Carbondale in 1983. |
Add Comments