By Mohannad El-Khairy
Picture this scene.
A demonstration somewhere in the West Bank against occupation and Apartheid. The red, green, black and white colors flying in unison above the heads of hundreds gathered for a cause, as the heavily equipped riot-police form a barricade in a soul-less, mechanistic order, the chanting slogans for justice, freedom, and peace become louder as emotions run high; and frustrations run even higher. Then, suddenly, the beatings begin.
You would expect the attackers to be from the so-called Israeli Defense Forces. Alas, ladies and gentlemen, you would be mistaken. Welcome everyone to the Palestinian Zionist.
I am fully aware of what such a term implies. And it is implying what it says it implies. Yes, the Palestinian Zionist does exist and in his most elaborate characteristic comes in the form of a President. President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is run by Palestinian Zionists. Their operations are supported by Palestinian Zionists. Their policies aim to promote more Palestinian Zionists.
The emergence of traitors and collaborators emanating from within the circles of resistance movements is not uncommon. It is usually a rogue element within the resistance that for whatever reason decides to or is cultivated by the enemy to divide, dismantle, and ultimately destroy the resistance itself.
In 2005, the international community called on the Palestinians living under occupation to engage in democracy. And unlike in most of the Arab world, democracy was applied in January 2006. Yet the unexpected victory of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas caused shockwaves through-out the region. Its triumph was rejected by Fatah and the international community. Then through a systematic financial, economic, and political embargo, the elected government was cut off from the rest of the world. After several bitter clashes, Mahmoud Abbas & Co. declared themselves as the “legitimate” government of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, further entrenching a divide between Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian nation.
A psychological divide was also in place, attempting to penetrate the minds with the physical separation of the Palestinian people living under occupation: Fatah in the West Bank vs. Hamas in Gaza. For the first time in 60 years, Qadiyat Filisteen (The Palestinian Cause), known for its unity against an occupying force, was in jeopardy of losing itself to politics. Ten years ago, no one could have predicted this ruthless divide imposed on the Palestinian people. And it was the sell-out elements of the Palestinian Zionists that were to benefit the most.
For example, take one of the most important issues at the heart of the cause for Palestine: the Right of Return of Refugees. At a recent conference held in Syria, senior Fatah leaders Farouk Al-Qaddumi and Hani Al-Hassan were lambasted by the higher-ranking PLO/Fatah officials for attending the event. The entire initiative was even denounced as contrary to the party’s ideological position. According to Ramallah-based journalist Khalid Amayreh, “The PA didn’t specifically object to what was said in Damascus, although critics argue that Mahmoud Abbas and his aides are not sincere about their declared commitment to the right of return. Indeed, Abbas reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on more than one occasion that the Palestinians would accept any "just and agreed upon resolution" of the refugee issue. This is a clear departure from the erstwhile PLO position that resolution of the refugee plight would have to be pursuant to UN Resolution 194, which calls for both repatriation and indemnification”. Who gave Abbas and his government the right to speak on behalf of 5 million Palestinians in Diaspora, I have no clue…except if one thinks of who is the benefactor from a cancelation of the Right of Return.
Where Hamas has failed to ideologically unite the Palestinian people and isolated themselves in the process, the PA quite simply sold out. Palestinians in the West Bank have become to be one of the worst ruled, worst treated, and less represented people in today’s world. Accelerated since the death of Yasser Arafat, it has become an agent of the Apartheid State of Israel (ASI). Its entire political agenda has worked against the Palestinian people. The constant use of threats, the silencing of all dissenting voices, the thuggish behavior of it’s police force through mass arrests of civilians and the vandalism of their properties, have reduced them to the role of Police State; a police state that is securing the ASI’s long term policies in the region.
The PA’s corruption has reached unthinkable levels. In addition to the rampant misuse of government funds for personal enrichment, many Fatah political figures have deepened their pockets with the ASI’s occupation. In 2004, a Palestinian parliamentary committee found that Ahmed Qurei – self-proclaimed Prime Minister of the PA – helped build the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank. His family’s company Al-Quds Cement ships cement to Israel from Egypt. That cement, the committee found, was specifically used for building the Wall.
As the slaughter of Gaza takes place at the ASI’s hands, the terms “defensive measures” and “protection of citizens in the south of Israel against Hamas rockets” are named as the prime reasons for the attacks. Yet none expose the PA regime’s true nature as the real motives behind the genocide in Gaza. In 2000, extensive natural gas reserves were discovered off the coast of the Strip. The exploitation of these gas reserves was to be managed by three major participants, with the approval of the government of the ASI. According to a study conducted by Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research – a Canadian-based independent research and media group – “British Gas (BG) and the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC), were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority. The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively BG (60 percent), CCC (30 percent), and the Investment Fund of the PA (10 percent). The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline”. The proposed gas pipeline is aimed to link up a Levant energy corridor extending from Gaza to the Turkish port city of Ceyhan.
In fact, one of the henchmen who controlled Gaza prior to Hamas’ victory is Mohammed Dahlan, a member of Fatah and the Palestinian Legislative Council. Throughout Palestine and the Arab world, he is well known for his intimate ties with the CIA and Shin-bet/Mossad agencies. The Israeli connection with Dahlan can be traced back since his brutal Preventive Security Forces were created in 1994. Instead of uniting Palestinians, they were involved in acts of violence and intimidation against critics, journalists and members of opposition groups, imprisoning them without formal charges for weeks or months at a time. Ever since, a number of prisoners died under suspicious circumstances during or after interrogation by Dahlan’s forces, according the Electronic Intifada.
The PA’s illegitimate control of the government, the coercive tactics used by it’s brutal police force against the Palestinian people, the trade and economic agreements with Western and regional multinational corporations for profits, and the policies enacted that serve the ASI’s ambitions; all characterize the very nature of the PA. As a client regime serving the purpose of the ASI, the aim of the PA is to achieve capitulation and the liquidation of all Palestinian rights, the unconditional normalization with an Apartheid regime in order to protect and consolidate the Zionist occupation and help the US Empire achieve all its regional hegemonic and geo-political goals.
By tallying up the PA’s track record, one can only come to one conclusion: that they are in fact servants of the Apartheid State of Israel. Like the South African kings that were given power by the Whites to control the masses; like the corrupt Native American chiefs that were bribed with money to render the First Nations movement powerless and infested with drugs and alcohol; like the selection of a corrupt Scottish elite (nobles) to quell the resistance movement for a free Scotland from the English throne, and quite ironically like the Nazi-appointed Judenrat who were policing their fellow Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto towards the concentration camps that killed millions; the PA is destroying the cause for Palestine by submitting to arrangements that benefit only themselves. They have gone as far as to sacrifice thousands of dead and injured Gazans, and attempt to silence the masses in the West Bank that demonstrate against the ASI’s current genocide.
For the scene in the first paragraph above isn’t fictional. It is a real occurrence that happened at the main gate of Birzeit University in Ramallah on January 5th 2009, on which day 200 students marched in support of their fellow countrymen that are being slaughtered by the ASI in Gaza. The students advanced in the direction of an Israeli checkpoint, but were blocked by more than 300 club-wielding Palestinian riot police. Police beat some of the students. At least five protesters were dragged into police vans. Such stories have been reported across the entire West Bank. What the ASI used to do, the Palestinian Zionist now does.
As the 17th Century English essayist Joseph Addison, in his most famous work of fiction entitled ‘Cato’ once wrote, “Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin?”
By suppressing their people, these Palestinian Zionists have categorically delegitimized themselves as representatives of the Palestinian people.
-Mohannad El-Khairy is a Palestinian who moved to Dubai after living in Canada for 18 years. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
