By Sami the BEDOUIN
Over the Past year or more, there was a lot that has been written analyzing, anticipating, urging or denying the possibility of a Palestinian Third intifada. Most of the writing about the Third Intifada were naive or superficial without analyzing in depth the causes and results, without naming the names of who is with and who is against the Third Intifada and why, without analyzing what kind of Intifada we want and how. Most of the articles about the Intifada were wishful thinking and hypocritical, ESPECIALLY those who are against the eruption of the inevitably current, spontaneous mass uprising of the oppressed.
I Will try in the following lines to analyze the politics of the Palestinian Intifada, and I will name names:
Firstly, The Third Intifada (or any intifada in the world) doesn't need to wait for anybody to issue a majestic decision to start, nor is there a political power that can stop a people yearning for a long awaited freedom. You can never expect a people who are under a racist brutal occupation like the zionist one to stay silent forever, ESPECIALLY given that they have been long-deceived by slogans proclaiming “peace” and economic prosperity.
In 1994, one of our PLO relatives (who works in the Palestine Authority--PA-- intelligence apparatus) visited our tiny village. At that time the PA ruled only Gaza and Jericho First (and last of course) and the PA agents used to visit their relatives in the Palestinian towns and villages with a zionist permission. I was a kid then and as there were over 40 men sitting and discussing, I told him: “And do you trust the zionists to give you a state? You don't know how the zionists think, they will give you nothing.” He got very angry and threatened: “Don't worry, we will come to rule here and get you.”
Another story was when I was in my last year of college. My roommate was visited by one of his relatives ( a Major in the PA police apparatus) and we sat to chat. I told him: “You got to change your way of dealing with the people. The West Bank is not Lebanon nor Iraq, we are a rebellious people who are looking for freedom and can't be ruled as it is the case in the Arab states.” Then he said: “The Palestinian people are insurgent and can't be ruled, except by stepping on them.” I was thunderstruck at the way he thought and didn't utter a word afterward. The PA was brought (or actually was gradually turned) to rule and suppress the Palestinian people but not to fight the occupation, and hence they were to suppress (even with force, if they could) any coming Intifada. The PA was given the role of molding a new submissive Palestinian generation who were ready to cooperate with the enemy against his own people. This is not a secret and it has been clear all the time.
And far from bringing peace closer, the Dayton Agreement's ‘capacity-building’ initiatives are facilitating the creation of an autocratic and totalitarian ‘state’ led by Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad. Political debate is almost nonexistent, criticism not allowed, and the extent of collusion between the Abu Mazen/Salam Fayyad government and their security forces with Israel is so extensive that both the Palestinian public and members of the security forces themselves are beginning to question and criticize what they see as the PNA’s attempt to increase repression and curtail freedoms “We have security forces serving the United States Security Coordinator and Israel. Where is our executive authority? Who decided to bring in the United States Security Coordinator?,” a resident of Nablus asked. “It is known to everybody”, said another, “that we have the occupation at night and the Palestinian forces during the day.” Another commented, “Now we start to live under the same conditions as our brothers in other Arab countries: oppression, unlimited power and fear.”
There are two political tendencies within the Palestinian political arena.
THE FIRST is against any Intifada. It supports only peaceful Palestinian demonstrations. It pleads for liberal international supporters and zionist “peace” activists. These demos usually end with orgies of sex and drugs, and are very pleasing for both the PA and the zionists. It is not a secret that these people say openly that they are against any kind of Intifada, and they work on preventing it. They are obsessed with their “sacred” security cooperation with the zionists to suppress the rebelling Palestinians. They hope to set the “rule of law under occupation” or the rule of occupation, actually. These are the PA agents and those who have business with the zionist occupiers.
THE SECOND political tendency, which is the revolutionary party, demands any kind of rebellion against the zionist occupation. They are socially diverse from the suppressed people of the street to the leftist parties and also the Islamist ones, and in addition lots of the Fateh cadre and "peaceful" formations that have discovered the duplicity of both the PA and the zionist regime.
The general Command of the Intifada:
In the first Intifada, the people revolted spontaneously and innocently against the zionist occupation for months before the“United National Commandment of the Intifada” (as it was called then) emerged to lead the scene. People needed to be organized and set an aim for their struggle with specific program that organizes their struggle and give the broad lines for the local fighters to struggle.
The General Command of the First intifada appeared suddenly after month of leadership vacuum in which people struggled aimlessly. The zionist occupation tried all it could to locate the members of the General Command and arrest them, but it was just like the mushroom plant, once you cut one another emerges. In the first Intifada, I met in jail one of those leaders, and I innocently asked him, as a kid, “Are you really one of the General Commandment leaders?” Then he laughed and said, “Are you really serious in your question? I have been interrogated for months specifically about this question.” In other words, he didn't answer my question, and i got it that I should just shut up and keep that “secret.”
What the mushroom-like General Command of the first Intifada did was to issue manifestos. It is very important for the rebelling people to not only feel that they have a rebellious leadership that stands with them and among them, but also a program to follow, a program that allows the people to revolt at the time they are doing their daily work, a leadership that creates a sustainable rebellious culture. The Manifestos were actually programs for the coming week, two weeks or a month. For example (in the next two weeks there are several national, religious and cultural days) the General Commandment’s “program” assigned the activities in these days (for example, Next Thursday is the Day of Israa-and Miraj “the ethereal visit of Muhammed PBUH to Al-Aqsa) which might be assigned for massive visits to Al-Aqsa Mosque during which people might and can break through the zionist Apartheid wall. Another example, at Christmas time, the General Commandment might ask people to go and visit the families of the martyrs instead of partying and drinking alcohol… etc.
The current General Command of the Third Intifada is not clear yet, nor it would appear “on the surface” that its members will be immediately arrested by both the PA security police and the zionists, these two parties together don't want any Intifada, only the “rule of law under occupation.” The current leadership includes ALL the political parties, including Fateh, Hamas, The leftist parties and even national rebellious personages who have been struggling for freedom for ages. no Palestinian ever fought and died to be rewarded with the zionist-serving Oslo Accord, nor to support the “rule of law” under the zionist occupation.
Fateh is not completely composed of PA agents, nor totally corrupt. There are great nationalistic leaders from Fateh who oppose the Oslo Accord, and these are definitely in support of the Third Intifada. The General Command of the Third Intifada, might be composed of those (in the second or third line ) of the political parties, and mostly from the former prisoner who have both the experience and wisdom to draw the Palestinian national future.
People have long ago stopped to believing in the zionist peace and the PA political program, which could only lead to nothing more than our enslavement. All they produced were more illegal settlement and fanatical zionist squatters. We were treated with more political and economic suppression. Thankfully, the new, younger leadership might point the Palestinian future away from the zionist deception and overthrow the zionist occupation.
What Intifada?
What Intifada do we want? Why is the PA against any kind of Intifada?
Almost no one up to now has specified what kind of Intifada we want as a people. And I bet it is not what “we want” that is the decisive factor, but it is what is the most effective kind of resistance that should be sustained. That means we most develop a program that goes far beyond a few weeks or months of skirmishes with the occupiers. That means that we must have organization that prevents corrupt leaders from exploiting the blood spilled by our people from becoming the currency in vulgar business transactions between traitors to our cause and the occupiers.
Remember, there are two main political tendencies in the Palestinian society.
The PA team who openly and violently oppose any kind of violence against their zionist peace partners and call for a very very peaceful resistance that will not endanger their compradorial status under our colonization. They encourage and even fund the peaceful resistance kind that of Bil’in, Ni’lin, Nabi Salen and other places. This kind of resistance amount to weekly demos that are restricted in both time and place. They are easily controlled with a few zionist soldiers who come to throw tear gas for an hour or so then go back to their girlfriends. These demos are shared and organized by Palestinian youths, jewish and zionist “pro peace” activists and international supporters of Palestine. One hundred people or less usually show up for this weekly political theatre.
I have participated in some of these events. It is just fun to go there and hike with the European and Jewish girls then end up at a restaurant to dine and drink. This is not resistance, it is just hiking and taunting the zionists. The most ironic part is that the stones we throw rarely reach half the distance to the soldiers, but we always get teargassed. This is somehow supposed to make us feel like we were liberating Palestine. Moreover, the “israeli” Jewish activists are MOSTLY zionist intelligence agents (Shabak or Mossad) who come to study the Palestinians, practice and improve their Arabic skills and gather information preparing for future attacks against the Palestinians, either as an undercover zionist fighter or as an interrogator who studied the Palestinian language and mentality. I don't believe in “israeli” supporters of Palestine. How can he/she live in privilege as an occupier and claim to support my cause, in direct political opposition to the "Jewish State" that provides he or she privilege? Jews who claim to support Palestinian Liberation must be willing to commit class suicide in the process. Otherwise, they are just liberals surfing for an adventure or the police.
This kind of European-zionist-PA funded resistance is not innocent at all. It aims at spoiling the Palestinian youths and neutralizing them to follow a very passive approach that won't bother Palestinian collaboration with the zionist for a “common future” of humanity.
Is this the Intifada the suppressed Palestinians want? For the masses of Palestinian people, these demonstrations are dismissed as irrelevant..
THE SECOND tendency is composed of extremist leftist and some Islamist factions who call for a militarized Intifada. Can their strategy work?
No fool would believe that a Palestinian military confrontation with the US-armed and financed, fanatically white racist zionist society would lead to a victory for the Palestinians, at least under current political conditions. Thoroughly militarizing the Intifada would more likely lead to further lynchings and massacres and infrastructural destruction.
Culture
The normal relation between the occupied and the occupier can't be friendship, “peace” making, business deals and security cooperation (as it is the case with the PA), it is antagonistic. The current style of the Intifada is pretty good to be continued; it is targeting the zionist occupiers whenever it can, and allow fighters to live their daily lives as much normal as they can. Communication between all the political-social sectors is very important for a sustainable Intifada. Militarizing the Intifada would isolate the armed militants and prevent the public from engaging in wide range of resistance activities which are necessary to any successful revolution. Individual military heroics will not alone produce success.
What the General Command should do is to organize general Intifada acts with a weekly or monthly program that assigns certain days for massive demos and other days for curing pain and rest. Individual heroic acts against the zionist occupiers can and should be organized distinctly, in which every Palestinian should be feared as a potential knife attacker or suicide hero. We must instill insecurity within the occupier society.
Twenty five years of the zionist peace process have spoiled the Palestinian people (and especially the Palestinian leadership of Ramallah) to the core. It created a self-induced, illusion of “peace” with the zionist through which the opportunist not only lived well, but were enthusiastically empowered by the American-zionist axis to repress their own people This pseudo-reality has reached its final limit and can't go further. What we need is to create the sustainable resistance culture through which the zionist occupiers should pay in their blood and economy for their occupation, a culture that considers every single zionist on Palestine- All of historic Palestine- as an occupier who should be opposed with ALL the available and possible means.We must end the age of zionist impunity.
This resistance culture should be established and be sustained by the General Command of the Third Intifada.
--30--
No comments:
Post a Comment