Palestinians and the choice of resistance
“Man, at the end of the day, is the issue” – from Gassan Kanafani’s famous novel Returning to Haifa.
Since the 1993 US-designed Oslo Accords were signed between the late Fatah-PLO Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel, Palestinians’ lives have gone from bad to worse.
Over the next decade, gross national product dropped 35 percent. Unemployment reached 40 percent in some areas. In addition, Israel extended its control of the West Bank via a massive settlement building program. The pace of construction increased during all stages of the futile “peace process” negotiations. That pressure cooker situation led to the second intifada.
Today under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, the situation has deteriorated further : the erection of the illegal separation wall; the increased settlements; the Israeli-only roads; the humiliation and delays at checkpoints; the uprooting of olive trees; the Israeli control of water resources, which forces Palestinian farmers to rely on primitive wells contaminated with fertilisers; and the ongoing confiscation of land and eviction of people from their homes in which they have lived for generations. People are oppressed twice as much as they were a decade ago.
The Israeli occupation remains while the Palestinian Authority oversees mere Bantustans. The Palestinian Authority Security Forces and the Preventive Security Service serve as Israel’s loyal collaborators. Since Oslo, they have been hired, trained and paid for by Israel, the USA, the CIA and the EU. Their aim is to maintain the stability of Palestinian society while preventing the formation of a Palestinian state. This is the Israeli-Palestinian security coordination that Abbas recently reaffirmed as “sacred”.
If we go back to the PLO Revolutionary Penal Code 1979, articles 144 and 148, we will find that Abbas’ “sacred” security coordination, which rightly has infuriated Palestinians, amounts to treason.
Article 144 states: “Any person who provides the enemy with documents, or is considered to have harmed military action or the security of military sites and centres, or any other military institutions shall be punished by death.”
Article 148 states: “Any person who leads the enemy to the sites of the revolutionary forces, or the allied forces, or misleads these forces shall be punished by death.”
The Arab working classes rose up in 2011 and brought down dictators. Even though the Arab revolutions have hit roadblocks, they provided proof for the peoples of the region that the barrier of fear can be broken and that real power lies within. Many wondered then: where is the third Palestinian intifada?
In the past few weeks Israel’s brutality in Palestine has escalated. The excuse was the killing of three Israeli teenagers. Israel launched Operation Brother’s Keeper, in which hundreds of Palestinian homes have been raided and Hebron’s 300,000 residents have been placed under siege. Palestinians in all areas of the West Bank have been detained and some killed.
Raids were coupled with hysterical, racist incitement by top Israeli officials. Settlers ran over Palestinian children with their cars and tried to kidnap and kill them. Seventeen-year-old Mohamad Abu Khdeir was tortured and burned alive.
The death of Abu Khdeir sparked an uprising in Jerusalem, all areas of the West Bank and most of the Arab-dominant areas of occupied Palestine ‘48. Hamas and other factions resumed their firing of rockets into Israel. Riot police and Israeli occupation forces (IOF) attacked the Palestinians with tear gas and live bullets, as well as arresting protesters. On 9 July, the IOF arrested 38 Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied Palestine ’48, bringing the total to 936.
Israel launched another offensive called Operation Protective Edge, in which naval and air strikes pummelled Gaza’s residential areas. So far, more than 100 have been killed and more than 900 wounded. The number is rising as you read these lines. In the meantime, confrontations with the IOF, which began after Abu Khdeir’s horrific death, were transformed into solidarity with Gaza.
Abbas and Co are hiding behind their “sacred” security coordination while Palestinians are busy developing their popular committees, throwing themselves into confrontations with the IOF and getting more creative. Fireworks against the IOF is their latest craze. They are learning as they go how to organise in resisting the occupation.
Hanan Aruri, a Palestinian activist from Ramallah put it most eloquently: “Good morning to a homeland that is reunited on the choice of resistance. The only division we allow is the division between the entire Palestinian people and that tiny isolated top layer of collaborators.”
