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Ray Hanania

Gaza burns as leadership fiddles

Palestinians must realize Hamas won't win and return to peace path

In assessing the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip, nearly every Arab analyst has placed the blame on Israel, avoiding the real challenges posed by rising strife in Palestinian society itself.

 

Gaza remains in turmoil, but not solely because Israel maintains the upper-hand in the military conflict there. In other words, yes, Israel is a part of the problem, but focusing only on Israel is a fatal error.

 

Arab World analysts continue to turn away from the obvious, however, because Arabs as a culture reject the notion of accepting blame and responsibility. Instead, they prefer to embrace preposterous theories that cast all blame on the foreign element, Israel, hoping to rally the Arab and Palestinian spirit.

 

Some Arab analysts have argued that Israel is provoking the conflict between the mostly secular al-Fatah organization and the religiously-driven militants of Hamas.

 

Others look at the situation and contend that Israel faces a new Lebanon-front. They argue Israel is concerned Gaza might transform into a repeat of the disastrous confrontation with the heavily-armed and tougher Hizbullah militants in the north.

 

Others go further and insist that Gaza can become the new Lebanon, the southern front where Hamas militants can recreate the successes that Hizbullah achieved in driving Israel out of Lebanon last summer, licking its wounds and sending Israeli politics into a tailspin.

 

They are all the same old excuses of "blaming Israel" for everything whenever anything goes wrong, further undermining the Arab conscience and avoiding the fundamental truths that ensures the conflict will continue to rage.

 

Palestinians have distracted themselves from the only road to recovery, returning to the peace process and negotiations with Israel. Meanwhile the various internal Palestinian factions are pitted against each other in a rerun of the secular versus religious political strife that has become Palestinian daily life.

 

Palestinians must resolve their own internal conflicts before they can ever expect to see their own independence or achieve national self-determination. But they must do several things first.

 

Fleeing the tragedy

The most important is to recognize that their tragedy is multi-layered. There is the conflict with Israel, a speeding car that careens past solutions and crashes into every reasonable barrier of hope with tragic but predictable results. Today's 40 year anniversary of the 1967 War and the beginning of the Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem will quickly become a 50 year marker.

 

There are the challenges of Palestinian society itself that must be overcome. The Palestinians live in hopelessly impoverished economic and social conditions. They are oppressed by a seemingly never-ending military siege, divided by artificial but substantial barriers like the 26 foot tall concrete wall that is designed by Israel more to steal land than it is to build a barricade against terrorism.

 

Everything around them is tightening and in such a confined mental and physical world, it is easy to understand how a few will cross the breaking point to commit acts of insanity such as suicide bombings.

 

A transformation is also taking place among the Palestinians themselves. Scarred by generations of conflict and failed leadership, they are turning away from secular solutions and embracing the seeming comfort of religion mixed with politics, a new form of fanaticism that replaces logic and reason with blind faith.

 

Under the weight of all these problems, Palestinians are doing the one thing they cannot afford to do as people, fleeing the tragedy. Although leaving to rebuild their lives elsewhere in other countries may sound like a short term reprieve, it is undermining the national will.

 

Coma of hopelessness

What was once a secular and richly diverse Palestinian society is quickly now becoming a one-religion, one-identity and one-ideological entity of self-hatred. As Palestinians fall into that hole they begin turning their rage on each other. While it is easy to identify the fruits in this cornucopia of misfortune, Palestinians must place the various conflicts in priority and then deal with the most important first.

 

And the most important of all the challenges they face is uniting Palestinians so that they can successfully overcome all of the remaining challenges that keep them in a cycle of misery and hopelessness that is exploited by the opportunists who circle among them like vultures.

 

There is a desperate need for Palestinians, also, to have the confidence in their leadership restored. Palestinian leaders must unite and begin the process of defining a new national strategy that is secular and speaks to all of the religious and political niches.

 

Palestinians must be rallied back to the belief that there is a genuine hope of peace and national salvation in their future.

 

That will end the bitter and vicious conflicts we now see waged between Palestinians groups not just in the Gaza Strip but throughout the West Bank. With new leadership, Palestinians can then enter negotiations to resolve the conflict with Israel enforcing just demands such as a removal of the fence, the return of land stolen for illegal Israeli settlements, to share Jerusalem and to resolve the 800 pound gorilla of the conflict that looms over every discussion, the fate of the Palestinian refugees.

 

Palestinians can return to a path that leads to a hopeful future.

 

Or, they can continue to make excuses and blame everything on Israel. Dream of the ridiculous notion that the violent Hamas fanatics will somehow transform into a powerful military force and become a Palestinian Hizbullah, driving the "Yehude" into the sea, cleansing the New Palestine of it's Christian and secular Muslim non-believers, and imposing a regime that would make the Ayatollahs proud.

 

That won't happen.

 

Blaming everything on Israel, and refusing to deal with our own problems, will only reinforce the mental wall that now imprisons the Palestinian people in a coma of hopelessness.

 

Ray Hanania is an award winning Palestinian American columnist, author and standup comedian. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.27.07, 20:07
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