Surely to Israel's delight, Palestinian unity has collapsed -- an ominous sign for the future, and a tragedy for all Arabs, writes Mustafa El-Feki* As the Arab nation endures ever more difficult circumstances and harsh challenges we are always surprised that they are not the worst, for the worst is still yet to come. In 1948, the Jewish state was established under what is called a declaration of independence. Palestinians and Arabs continued to bewail the events of this Nakba (catastrophe) until 1967 and its Naksa (setback) with a military defeat unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet the permanent wager has always been embodied in Palestinian national unity and its unyieldingness, in it being impenetrable and cohesive. In 2007, however, in June, the month of the Naksa, tragedy struck when Palestinian national unity fell victim to internecine warring and bloody violence, when the Palestinians finally realised Israel's most fervent dream a full 40 years following the June defeat of 1967. It is striking, perhaps, that while both the Nakba and the Naksa were the result of external events and foreign interventions, this time it seems that we are enough. Our Palestinian brothers, and especially those in the Hamas movement, joined together to overthrow authorities under fiery regional circumstances and unfavourable international conditions. This situation leads to the following 10 observations: First, the separation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is a dream that Israel has long sought to achieve. Thus it has engaged in roundabout practices and policies throughout the period since the 1967 Arab defeat. It has always wished to see Gaza once more under Egyptian administration, and it perhaps wanted for the West Bank to fall under Jordanian administration as well, for it prefers to have shared borders with Egypt and Jordan than to deal with the Palestinian Authority. This kind of foolish thinking has always been a part of the Israeli strategy seeking to ruin relations between Palestinian sisters and brothers and to isolate the West Bank from the Gaza Strip. There is a great deal of evidence for this, all of which proves that Israel is the only winner in recent tragic developments. Second, what took place on 14 June 2007 was a geographic dismantling of the Palestinian cause after it had already come apart politically over recent years. We used to always be proud about Palestinian national unity, considering it a rock on which Israeli conspiracies had floundered on numerous occasions. In this context, I must point out that Palestinian national unity endured many difficult tests and complicated situations, remaining steadfast when confronting extremely sensitive circumstances, until its sudden collapse over the last few months following its gradual deterioration since the results of the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Third, the scope of violence that took place in Gaza reflects the state of extreme tension, the crisis of lost confidence, and the state of mobilisation of Hamas and Fatah in a manner that calls to question the reasons behind events. Hamas's overthrow of the legitimate Palestinian Authority -- despite the fact that I don't much contest the legitimacy of Hamas in reaching power through legislative elections that were undoubtedly fair -- is the outcome of serious developments embedded in the context of what is taking place in the entire region. The United States, Israel, Iran, and all the Arabs are playing in the Palestinian arena, either directly or through agents. Yet the peak of the crisis seemed to be in the violent actions Hamas resorted to when a number of its leaders raised the issue of Gaza's second liberation to the point that some of them removed the Palestinian flag and replaced it with Hamas's and some threw members of Fatah from high storeys to fall to their fate between the hands of their brethren rather than Israel. Some Fatah members corpses found in Gaza have been riddled with more than 300 bullets, in addition to their feet having been broken with swift shots. The situation even extended to the memorial statue of the Unknown Soldier, which represents Egyptian and Palestinian martyrs of the Arab cause, in a manner reminiscent of the tearing down of the statue of former president Saddam Hussein in 2003. All of this has overstepped the conventions by which Palestinians have lived for hundreds of years. It has also occurred after the leaders of Hamas and Fatah swore before the Kaaba to respect the Mecca Accord and then broke their oath and the agreement. Fourth, the Palestinian cause is a national one before it is religious. All experiences that have used religion in politics have been at the expense of religion because they rely on the absolute, whereas politics deals with the relative. Muslims, Christians and probably Jews have participated in the Palestinian national movement, and so turning the struggle into a religious one is a serious mistake. When we talk about East Jerusalem, for example, we are talking about Palestinian territory that was occupied 5 June 1967, and as such UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 on the Middle Eastern conflict apply. Such thinking saves us from the mazes of religious debate and spiritual argumentation among proponents of the three Semitic religions. Fifth, I think objectively and without bias that the Hamas movement has taken arbitrary positions. It rejected the Oslo Accords and then participated in the legislative elections that were one of its outcomes and one of the most important mechanisms of the Palestinian Authority. This arbitrary selection of positions raises concerns, for democracy is a comprehensive deal, not one that we pick and choose from. I think that this point, in particular, is a shared factor that brings together the Hamas movement with the other Muslim Brotherhood factions in the Arab region. Sixth, we cannot deny the resistance of the Hamas movement and the sacrifices of its cadre in the first and second Intifadas. Yet we also cannot ignore another certain fact, which is that the Fatah movement is a resistance movement that started its activity in January 1965. It has offered martyrs to the Palestinian nation of the likes of Abu Amar, Abu Ayyad, Abu Jihad, Abul-Hawl, Abul-Lutf, Abu Mazen, Kamal Nasser, Mohamed Adwan, and others among Palestine's martyrs and the leadership of Fatah's historical movement. Thus abbreviating Fatah's history to allegations of its being bloated or defiled by corruption dwarfs reality, does injustice to history, and denies facts. We cannot deny that the Fatah movement has made mistakes that led to the Hamas movement obtaining a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council for reasons related less to Hamas's programme than to the mistakes of Fatah and the deviance of its some of its leaders. This resulted in a type of punitive voting similar to that which brought the Muslim Brotherhood seats in the Egyptian parliament. Seventh, the birth of the Hamas movement in the mid- 1980s under circumstances known to all must also be connected to the future of its relations with the Jewish state and the international community. While the Fatah movement served as cover for external relations that excused the Hamas cadre from direct contact with the Israelis, given the movement's philosophy rejecting dealings with the racist Zionist entity, unconfirmed statements are circulating (and whose veracity I personally doubt) about continual channels of communication between Hamas leaders and Israeli authorities via Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails. This is surprising, and calls for clarity. Eighth, I had expected for the division to take place following the announcement of Palestinian independence, once the occupied territories were reclaimed and the capital of Jerusalem secured, as has happened in many national liberation movements. In south Yemen, for example, there were two resistance movements against British imperialism, the National Movement led by Abdul-Qawi Makawi and the Popular Movement led by Qahtan Al-Shaabi, who became the first president of the People's Republic of South Yemen upon independence. In southern Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, there were also two leaders of national liberation, Nikomo and Mugabe, the latter who has been the president of the republic since independence until today. What I want to say on this point is that the Palestinian national liberation movement, which has paid the dearest bill in blood of modern history, should have maintained its unity under occupation and only let divisions enter, if at all, after its removal. Ninth, the division that has taken place in the Palestinian arena and the fighting between Hamas and Fatah has led to another split in the Arab nation, that between supporters of Fatah and those enthusiastic for Hamas. When certain names connected to Palestinian security were brought up, accusations were ready from both sides in a manner that caused sharp polarisation in the Arab world. On an Arab satellite station I heard a Gulf citizen say, "the Palestinians don't deserve Arab material support as long as they are fighting each other rather than confronting Zionist ambitions." A crisis in mutual confidence has created a gap between Palestinians and their Arab brethren due to the fragmentation and frustration of recent years. Finally, Egypt is worried about what takes place on its eastern borders and realises the gravity of the situation should Hamas independently control the Gaza Strip given the longstanding problems between the Muslim Brotherhood organisation and the Egyptian government. This should lead us to evaluate actions in the near future so that Sinai does not remain an empty territory that agitates Israeli ambitions. The conflict has not ended. Israel will always be the same Israel that fails to offer constructive initiatives that pave the way for a just settlement in the Middle East. Through these 10 observations, I wanted to clarify the scope of the bloody tragedy in Gaza in 2007 and coinciding with the June anniversary of the Naksa. Didn't I say that it is always a month of tragedy and sorrow? * The writer is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the People's Assembly.
