I am writing this with an aching heart. I have postponed writing it as long as I could.
In Jewish tradition, there is a searing phrase: “The Temple was not destroyed but forgratuitous hatred.” It sums up the events in beleaguered Jerusalem , in the year 70 AD, when thetown was surrounded by the Roman legions. While Titus’ soldiers were maintaining the siegeand the population was beginning to starve, inside the town ferocious battles took placebetween various factions of zealots, who killed each other and burnt each other’s last storesof wheat.
Something like this is now taking place in the Palestinian territories. While theoccupation forces are tightening the siege and carrying out “targeted killings”, battlesbetween the Palestinians themselves have broken out, with militants shooting at each other,targeting leaders and burning headquarters.
Occupation generals, politicians and commentators in Israel follow the events withglee or click their tongues sanctimoniously: “Didn’t we tell you? The Palestinians can’trule themselves, there is no one to talk with, we have no partner for peace. When they are left tothemselves, anarchy reigns.” On many Israeli tongues the Greek word “chaos” (pronouncedwith an American accent) was rolling.
Since the Sharon government is responsible for the present situation in Gaza in thefirst place, it resembles the son who kills both his parents and pleads in court: “Have mercy! Iam an orphan!”
Paradoxically, the Palestinian factions, of all people, seem to believe Sharon ’sannouncement about his intention to leave Gaza . What is happening there is, first of all, afight about the skin of the bear that has not yet been caught.
Everybody talks about “reforms”, a word dear to the Americans, but the battle is aboutpower and control.
Muhammad Dahlan’s faction hopes to take possession of the Gaza Strip before Sharon ’spromised withdrawal. Sharon ’s people are open about their preference for this group. TheAmericans support them in order to suit Sharon , and the Egyptians support them to please theAmericans.
The rival faction supports Mussa Arafat who was sent by his relative, Yasser Arafat, tocontrol the security apparatus. He may not be the most popular appointee, but the leader infar-away Ramallah appointed his most trusted lieutenant in order to fend off the danger hefears most: that the Gaza Strip will cut itself off from the West Bank and become a kind ofautonomous Bantustan under Israeli-American-Egyptian tutelage.
This is what is happening on the surface. But the events also have deeper roots in thepresent Palestinian situation, which consists of an existential contradiction.
On the one side, the Palestinian war of liberation is far from over. It is at its height. Itcan well be said that never has the very existence of the Palestinians – both as a nation and asindividuals – been in greater danger than now.
On the other hand, on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip there has come into being a kind ofmini-state that requires a state-like administration: security, economy, education,justice, welfare and so on.
The surreal situation in Gaza reflects this contradiction: while Mussa Arafat,Muhammad Dahlan and the other Fatah leaders fight each other for control of the PalestinianAuthority and its security organs, a brutal war is going on between the occupation forces andthe Tanzim, Hamas and Jihad militants.
The leader of the Palestinian war of liberation is Yasser Arafat. Among thePalestinians, no one contests that. He is the only person able to safeguard the unity of thePalestinian people. He is the only leader with a wide strategic grasp of all the geographic andfunctional aspects of the dispersed Palestinian people. He has the attributes necessary fora leader in such a situation: an uncontested personal authority, physical courage, theability to make decisions and a talent for manoeuver. Palestinians call him the ‘Father of theNation” and compare him with George Washington, David Ben-Gurion and Nelson Mandela.
The criticism of Arafat, prevalent mostly among the intellectual and political elite -concerns his functioning as the chief of the “mini-state”. Unlike the Prime Minister ofIsrael , Arafat is not suspected of personal corruption. He is being blamed for the fact thatthe Palestinian Authority is too much like the other Arab regimes, suffering fromconcentration of power, proliferation of security apparatuses, corruption, cronyism andthe undue influence of big families.
As a Palestinian member of parliament told me recently: “Arafat leads the nationalstruggle, and all of us support him. But he neglects the domestic order, and against that weprotest.”
However, Sharon is not fighting against Arafat to encourage him to delegate power orbecause he has seven different security formations (the United States has 15 intelligenceagencies, four military services and an untold number of police organizations.) He isfighting against Arafat because his elimination will cause the disintegration of thePalestinian nation into splinters and thus clear the way for ethnic cleansing. Arafat is verymuch aware of this danger and, in comparison, all the diseases of the Palestinian Authorityseem to him secondary.
The strategy of Sharon and his generals is simple and brutal: to destroy the PalestinianAuthority, turn life in the occupied territories into hell, disintegrate Palestiniansociety and drive the survivors from the country, not in one dramatic sweep (as in 1948) but in aslow, continuous, creeping process.
Up to now, this has not succeeded. In spite of inhuman conditions, the Palestiniansociety has held on in a manner that arouses wonderment. The events of the last few weeks look toSharon and the army chiefs like signs of collapse. I believe they are wrong and that thePalestinian society will draw back from the abyss.
It is reasonable to expect that the prisoner in the Mukata’ah, who has already led hispeople out from so many existential crises, will do so again. I sincerely hope so, becauseArafat is the only person who can make peace with us. We will know no peace, as long as ourneighbors do not.