Breaking the Palestinian impasse

[ProgressiveMuslim]

Arjan El Fassed



To end the Palestinian political impasse, elections for the Palestine National Council (PNC) should be the top priority for all Palestinian parties. The 669-member Palestinian "parliament-in-exile" has not held a meeting since 1998 and its members have never been elected. Once a central body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), what is left of the PNC lacks all legitimacy.

Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal caused an uproar recently when he stated that in its current form the PLO is no longer a reference point for Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as president of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority expired on 9 January, reacted with fury. Having himself lost all legal and political legitimacy, Abbas told a crowd in Cairo that "There will be no dialogue with those who reject the PLO."

Of course Meshal did not reject the PLO, but he asserted that the PLO has become "a center of division for the Palestinian household." Speaking to Al-Jazeera on 30 January, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan clarified that the "PLO represents a good framework that can be used to solve a lot of our problems and disputes." Hamdan added that the body "is the only organization that is capable of continuing the negotiations and the signing of political agreements with internal factions and external sides alike." Fawzi Barhoum, another Hamas spokesperson, said that when Hamas made the suggestion to create "a new representation" it was not meant to suggest the creation of an alternative to the PLO. "We want to add opposition factions to the PLO, factions that are still not included within the body," he told reporters.

Yet Abbas' own reaction to this challenge to reactivate and democratize the PLO demonstrated why the once iconic organization has lost so much credibility. Trying to shore up the appearance of legitimacy, Abbas summoned the surviving unelected members of the PNC for an emergency meeting in Ramallah. Only a handful of opportunistic relics showed up. PNC speaker Salim Zanoun urged Hamas to withdraw its statements. Salih Rafat, the secretary-general of Fida, a tiny pro-Oslo splinter of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, suggested that the PLO could hold "internal" elections -- whatever that means -- and expand itself to include all Palestinian parties. Indeed, the 2005 Cairo agreement between Abbas' Fatah faction, which long dominated the PLO, and the other groupings including Hamas, called for reform and democratization. But for four years, Fatah has used its dominance of the PLO to stubbornly resist reform. Such undemocratic tactics have a long history.

Before the PLO began secret negotiations with Israel in Oslo in 1992, the old Fatah leadership refused to mobilize the PLO's various dispersed constituencies, in the words of the late Edward Said, "to attract its people's best talents." Already in 1993 Said wrote: "Central to the opposition's thought is the desperate need for internal reform within the PLO, which is now put on notice that noisy claims for 'national unity' are no longer an excuse for incompetence, corruption, autocracy." He added that "such opposition cannot, except by some preposterous and disingenuous logic, be equated with treason or betrayal" ("The lost liberation," The Guardian, 9 September 1993). Said had harsh words for Yasser Arafat, Abbas' predecessor.

"By signing an agreement with Israel to be Israel's collaborator in occupation," Said wrote, " left the PLO -- a body that did in face once represent Palestinian aspirations and, throughout the Third World, was seen as a peculiarly beleaguered but nevertheless authentic liberation organization, acknowledged as such by Nelson Mandela himself -- to dry up abroad" (Edward Said, Peace and its discontents (London: Vintage), p.167).
more...
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10286.shtml

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. EI is not a legitimate source. Its up there with WND