With Statehood in Tatters, What about Nationhood?
// The price of the question
The conflict among the Palestinians both should and should not be looked at in the context of the Middle Eastern peace process. It should be, because it is not understood where Hamas arose from and why it cannot get along with Fatah without a larger context. And it should not be, because the intra-Palestinian conflict already its own murderous logic.
The wider context is that it took the Palestinians and Israelis decades to move from unrealistic positions to the realization that they have no alternative but to live two peoples and two states on one land. The hawks on both sides gave way to realists in the 1990s, but the realists could not take the initiative because of the heavy burden of problems, both old and new. The problems of the Israelis will wait for another time. But what's happening with the Palestinians?
The secret of Fatah's long survival is its flexibility. Under Yasir Arafat, the organization was able to absorb rightists and leftists, Christians and Muslims, radicals and moderates. And Fatah remained what it was, rendering senseless from pressure from Israeli intelligence, Syrian generals and oil sheiks. But that flexibility worked against Fatah when the Palestinian proto-state arose. Decisiveness is needed to rule a state, not flexibility, which gives way to inefficiency, corruption and a scramble by former freedom fighter for high government posts. All of that could have been tolerated if the Palestinian “Autonomy” had become a full-fledged state.
When those plans failed, Fatah began to lose ground to its competitors. Hamas was simply closer to the people. It fought poverty and backwardness not only with radical words, but with real aid in critical situations. Many might take exception to the stagnation at the negotiating table and the real terrorist fight against the “occupation,” but not the desperate inhabitant of Gaza. Equally important, the secular nationalism of Fatah stopped providing hope for a better future. The same thing can be seen in less problematic Muslim countries, where the populace is tired of the corruption and inefficiency of its authorities and, most of all, of the disdainful neglect by the leaders of the people's needs.
And in Palestine, the neediness is worse and the government is weaker. Algeria, Egypt and Turkey suppress their fundamentalist powers through authoritarian rule. Mahmoud Abbas couldn't do that if he wanted to.
If there is any hope left, it is that the warring Palestinian will realize that the main victim of their fighting will not be their opponents, but the very idea of Palestinian statehood and a Palestinian nation. That instinct for self-preservation has gotten the Palestinians though hard trials before. If it works this time too, that will be the greatest victory of the Palestinian liberation movement.
Boris Makarenko, first deputy director, Center for Political Technology
All the Article in Russian as of June 15, 2007
|
