By
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Every year at this time, Palestinians around the world and under occupation “celebrate” or let us say “mourn” what is referred to as “Nakba” or “Catastrophe” and it seems every day is a Nakba for Palestinians under Israeli Occupation and those who lost their homes and position to the Israeli state in 1947-48.
I too must not allow this occasion to pass without having something to say. This time, I am not going to go into how the Israeli militias and terrorist groups drove over 700, 000 Palestinians from their homes on Jaffa, or Acre or Lod or Ramleh, or Beersheba or Safad.
I will not talk or write about how the Jewish terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun terrorized people to leave or how they committed massacres in Dier Yassin and bombed King David Hotel or detonated bombs in market squares as happened years later in Sarajevo.
This time I am devoting my article to the stupid, reckless, incompetent, corrupt even collaborating Palestinian leadership including the late Yasser Arafat and present day Mahmoud Abbas, and the utter defending silence even acquiescence of the Palestinians under Occupation and in the Diaspora and how through their inaction they enabled a bunch of incompetent crooks and thieves and collaborators to take charge of what is perhaps the most noble cause of modern history. The disposition and continued exile of some 8 million Palestinians.
I do not want to blame the so-called leadership of the PLO, an illegitimate, corrupt incompetent, organization and an illegitimate leadership as anything the world has seen in decades. The PLO and its leadership have every reason to have nothing but contempt for the Palestinian people who sat in silence and who simply enabled such organization and leadership to lead it from one Nakaba to another.
The people never held Yasser Arafat or the PLO leadership accountable for its reckless criminal behavior in Amman, Jordan in 1970 that still today has left fear and suspicion between Jordanian and Palestinians.
The people never held Yasser Arafat and the PLO leadership to account for their reckless and endangerment of Palestinians in Lebanon, when Arafat boasted that he governed Lebanon from his seat in “Fakhani” resulting in the Lebanese Civil war and the invasion of Lebanon, the exile of the PLO, leaving behind a community of 300,000 at risk without jobs, without protection from the Lebanese state denied the right to engage or practice 35 professions and of course we all remember the massacres of Sabra and Shatila and Tal-Zaatar and the Camp wars, when residents of camps resorted to eating cats and dogs.
Once again, the people never held Arafat or the PLO leadership to account for the exile of 350,000 Palestinians from Kuwait after Arafat’s buddy Saddam decided to invade Kuwait. They lost everything, over $15 billion in assets and no one was ever held accountable for.
The people talk and complain but never took action when Arafat and Abu-Jihad decided to “abort” the First Intifada, injecting few millions of the billions lost and unaccounted for in order to save Rabin and save Arafat and the PLO from oblivion after siding with Saddam.
Both Arafat and Abu-Jihad were caught off guard with their pants and guns down when the First Intifada broke out with the Israeli army in the news every day, as the world watched on television, the killing, the breaking of bones, putting entire cities under 24 hour curfew.
Arafat thought this was his chance, and it was to save his “ass” and his looted corrupt PLO from extensions, making secret overtures to Rabin, with a deal that ended the First Intifada, (Perhaps the closest thing the Palestinians came to ending the Israeli Occupation) in return Rabin will open secret channels with Arafat.
As I mentioned before, Arafat dispatched money and agents to take over and abort the Intifada, and with the help of Israel dispatched two of his cohorts to Tunis only to return with Arafat to manage his security forces under Oslo.
Of course, I should not blame only the people, but must also blame the shameless faceless Palestinian National Council, a farce, a big Zero, selected by Arafat and his cronies masquerading as the Palestinian Parliament that never took an independent decision, never held anyone accountable for looting, for in-house political assassination and murder committed within the ranks of the PLO, never really had the backbone to represent the interests of the Palestinian People.
Arafat desperate to fulfill his promise to Rabin entered into secret negotiations with Israel in Oslo sending perhaps incompetent, inept, certainly corrupt team of negotiators with no clue about anything, without legal, geographical, even demographic data to negotiate Oslo, an agreement under which the PLO and Arafat returned to Occupied Territories to manage and pay for the Israeli Occupation while Israeli continued to have military and settler control over the entire Palestinian territories.
More criminal and collaborating with the enemy, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to give full unconditional recognition to Israel with its open borders, declaring that all resistance prior to and after Oslo was deemed an “act of terror” against the State of Israel with a commitment that the cohesive mission of the Palestinian security forces to give security and comfort to the IDF and to the armed criminal trespassing settlers and to act as auxiliary forces to Israeli security forces as Israel went about targeted killings, home demolitions, arrests of “agitators”.
None of the missions of the Palestinian Security Forces are to provide safety and security for the Palestinians people with Israel, since Oslo over 650,000 Israelis settled in the West Bank, over 800,000 olive trees were uprooted, and a 360 km Apartheid Wall was built separating families from each other and separating people from their own farms, not to mention the more than 550 security checkpoints where over 3 million Palestinians are subject to daily humiliation.
With corruption rampant and security chiefs running the organizations like a criminal mafia and enterprise, things were bound to explode, especially in Gaza.
Never understood why Hamas, an organization committed to “armed resistance” decided to enter the political arena and compete with corrupt Fatah to manage the Israeli Occupation. The Hamas leadership is no less stupid and reckless and like Fatah should have known better that Abbas, the US, Israel, Jordan and Egypt will never allow Hamas to govern. It was an ambitious undertaking that backfired setting the stage for the takeover of Gaza by Hamas and the never ending political and geographical split between Hamas and Fatah.
Contrary to what the Israeli oriented Hasbara keeps repeating, when Israel evacuated its 3,500 criminal trespassers, it designated Gaza as “enemy territory” subject to blockades and to be placed under siege, to be hit any time and at any place, and this is exactly what happened a number of times when Israel used its might, the US supplied weapons, to destroy Gaza, killing thousands and destroying more than 250,000 homes in its three major wars on Gaza.
Abbas and the Ramallah leadership is too content with Israel’s war on Gaza and siege and blockade by both Israel and Egypt, that is why Abbas never bothered to visit Gaza not once, preferring to travel the world enjoying five star hotels, red carpets, shopping sprees, perhaps generating some business deals for his cohorts, since there is no business to be gained from Gaza.
As I mentioned before, Hamas is content with its “control” over Gaza keeping its cadre busy, generating income from the “tunnel” business and from what it gets from countries like Iran, and it too is not in a hurry to give up everything and hand over control to Abbas and Fatah.
Ramallah, as anyone who traveled and visited the city, is a booming town with high-rise high-class business and residential towers, a thriving nightlife, and restaurants generously funded and supported by the many corrupt officials who frequent these bars and restaurants. Ministers, existing and former, perhaps counting over 300 since Oslo, enjoy a lifetime salary, with present ministers enjoying cars, domestic servants, more than a dozen guards with SUV, VIP passes to travel to Tel-Aviv for dinner and entertainment, while millions of Palestinians have to wait hours if not days in total humiliation at Israeli checkpoints.
The NGOs are also experiencing a bonanza, with hundreds of millions given by donor countries for “research and studies” generating damn good income for the founding members and staff, but never with a mission to come close to ever advocating or developing a blueprint for ending the Israeli Occupation.
Business is also experiencing a boom, in construction, in deals with the manufacturer in settlements, while officially professing to support the BDS movements and with Palestinian businessmen investing over $2.5 billion in commercial enterprises in the Israeli settlements; Ramallah is living while everyone is dying.
I have to end with a question. How can the Palestinians ever expect to end the Israeli Occupation while not challenging and throwing this leadership out, a leadership that has been neglecting Israel for over 22 years giving away everything expect its role as manager and financial contributor to the continued Israeli Occupation, saving Israel over $50 billion since Oslo.
How can the people in exile from Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Lod and Ramleh among other towns and cities ever expect to go back when they keep giving an excuse to such incompetent, corrupt collaborating leadership? Never understood why the Palestinian people simply do not take matters in their own hands and simply throw Abbas and the entire PLO leadership out of Ramallah and challenge the PLO for its claimed “sole representative’ of the Palestinian people.
There will never be a Palestine while the Palestinian people remain lamenting their misfortune and not taking action to change history.
But then how can the Palestinians who simply did not demand the impeachment of all members of the Palestinian National Congress for malfeasance and misfeasance and never held their “representative” accountable feel they are entitled to go back home or expect the PLO to enable them go back home or end the Occupation, they will have to wait for Moses to come back.. My best recommendation is to forget the two state solutions, it will never happen and even if it happens it will be a police criminal mafia state. Time to pursue the One State solution, a state for all of its people, and yes why not? Palestinians have lived with others for many years; Jews have lived with others for centuries why the two could not live together. Salam/Shalom/Peace. Until next Nakba and next year.
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