Another tragedy for the Palestinians

June 17, 2007 at 7:56 pm (Jim D, liberation, sectarianism)

The Hamas coup in Gaza is a tragedy for the Palestinians. It sets back (possibly fatally) the only programme with any realistic prospect of bringing peace and justice to the Palestinians: two states. It divides Gaza and the West Bank, making a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel an impossibility for the time being. And whatever the corruption and decadence of Fatah, it was at least nominally a secular nationalist organisation with a democratic programme that recognised Israel’s right to exist behind pre-1967 borders: hence Hamas’ denunciation of them as “traitors” and “collaborators”. 

Hamas have a democratic mandate and its government should have been recognised by Israel, Europe and the US as the democratically-elected representatives of the majority of Palestinians. But to state that is not to give Hamas any sort of credit as a progessive force, as some on the Israel-hating “left” are only too keen to do. Hamas are anti-semitic clerical fascists. And that’s not just my opinion: here’s what Ziad Abu Ein, a Fatah leader in Ramallah and a close ally of the jailed Fatah hero Marwan Barghouti, had to say (quoted in the Guardian of June 16 2007): “What we have witnessed is a fascist, military coup. Hamas cannot control the Palestinian people with their machine guns”. Abu Ein’s prediction of “a new uprising in Gaza (in a few days) when people dicover the truth about Hamas” may be wishful thinking, but his description of Hamas and their military defeat of the Fatah rabble is accurate.

Worst of all, for the Palestinians, is the fact that Hamas’s victory now means that Israel is “encircled” by Hamas to the south, Hizbollah to the north and Iran to the East – all openly and outspokenly pledged to Israel’s destruction and to driving the Jews out of the region (if not “into the sea”). Israel is not, of course, under any immediate ‘existential’ threat, but this situation can only strengthen the Israeli Right and make a just accomodation with the Palestinians less likely than at any time since the failure of the Oslo accord. 

The refusal of most Arab states and of Islamic fundamentalists like Hamas, to recognise Israel’s right to exist in any shape or form, has been a deadly factor in the Middle East conflict ever since 1948 – and the main victims have (paradoxically) been the Palestinians. The fact that large sections of the “left” in Britain support this anti-semitism (as manifested in the present “boycott Israel” campaign) is nothing less than a disgrace.  The AWL pamphlet Two Nations, Two States summed things up back in September 2002, and the message is all the more true today:

“Thus, though it is indeed the beginning of wisdom to side with the weak and the oppressed Palestinians facing the Israeli army, to support the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and demand the immediate setting up of an independent Palestinian state, more than that is necessary.

“If we are to understand the present stage of the conflict, and avoid falling into ‘the anti-imperialism of fools’, then an understanding of history is essential.

“The account most widely accepted on the left, of the Arab-Jewish conflict and of how and why Israel came into existence, and of why the conflict has dragged on for decades, is, in fact not history but envenomed scapegoat-making mythology. On this, much of the British left has for decades followed the line of argument laid down by the Stalinist USSR fifty years ago when it fell out with Israel, purvaying not only pseudo anti-imperialism, but a real and malignant anti-Semitism too.

“It is not racist anti-semitism, of course – there are many strands of anti-semitism in history – but it is a comprehensive hostility to most Jews alive, branded as ‘racists’ if they refuse to support the destruction of Israel.

“The vicarious Arab chauvinism of the pseaudo-left on this issue cannot but repel fair-minded, thinking people who side with the Palestinians, in the sense that (the AWL) does. Thereby, it works against the creation of the mass solidarity movement which the Palestinians need”.

NB: Bob from Brockley (link on the right) has been following events in Gaza with a despairing eye, and provides this interesting link.

Addendum (June 18 2007): this pretty much sums up what passes for “politics” in middle class, ex-pat Palestinian opinion in the West: denial, self-pity and self-righteousness, combined with a refusal to believe that any problems the Arabic people of Palestine are experiencing, can have any origin other than the Israelis and the USA. Pernicious stuff.