Conventional wisdom here in DC has it that the Palestinians somehow need to “prove” they’re capable of running a state before they’re allowed to have one….
Never mind that the Palestinians are an extremely– one might even say, obsessively– well-educated bunch of people… Never mind that during the 1950s and 1960s, the proto-state administrations that were built all up and down the Arab coast of the Gulf were all established overwhelmingly by Palestinians… Never mind that in Palestine, the PA had built up one entire set of administrative institutions in the West Bank and Gaza, some of which functioned pretty well under the circumstances of occupation– but they were then all smashed to smithereens in the paroxysm of destructive vengeance unleashed by Ariel Sharon in 2002…
No, never mind all that history. The CW here in Washington DC says that the Palestinians, yet again, have to “prove” their capabilities before they can be allowed to have a state. (As if their backwardness in administrative affairs was the major impediment to their gaining their independence!)
And Salam Fayyad is earnestly setting out to supply the required proof to the Americans on this score… and doing this by trying to build (yet again) the institutions of a Palestinian proto-state in, thus far, just the occupied West Bank.
Fayyad’s whole approach has now been very forcefully challenged by the veteran Palestinian social activist Dr Mustafa Barghouthi.
Barghouthi argues for a hard-hitting program of action for national liberation built around these four basic pillars:
- * Resistance
* Steadfastness
* National unity, and
* Global solidarity.
On the crucial issue of resistance, he writes:
- In all its forms, resistance is an internationally sanctioned right of the Palestinian people. Under this strategy, however, it must resume a peaceful, mass grassroots character that will serve to revive the culture of collective activism among all sectors of the Palestinian people and, hence, to keep the struggle from becoming the preserve or monopoly of small cliques and to promote its growing impetus and momentum.
Anyway, go read the whole of his program there.
Dr. Mustafa has considerably more legitimacy and political credibility in Palestinian society than Fayyad. It’s based on the lengthy, dangerous, and visionary work he has pursued since the early 1980s to organize Palestinians throughout the OPTs in the crucial field of grassroots medical relief. Because of his strong and sustained emphasis on grassroots self-organization and self-empowerment he has always been 100 times more “political” than Fayyad. (Hence his strong and now long-sustained call for national unity; a topic on which, at the political level, Fayyad is strangely silent.)
At the end of the article, Barghouthi makes some points about a one-state versus two-state solution that seem a little unclearly written. Maybe I’ll write him and ask for some clarifications.
But the four-point program looks excellent.
They don’t have to prove they can run anything, they are already running Gaza for God’s sake, you want to test that, there you have it.
What remains to be proven is that they can overcome their dependency from charity bankrolled now by EU, US, and UNRWA.
There is nothing more dangerous than a young population that doesn’t have to work for a living immersed in a Petri dish of Koranic matter. Ask the Yemenis or Saudis.
The idea behind the apartheid regime in South Africa was that the Blacks were not capable of running a government by themselves and needed the period of colonization to become educated and capable. Helena you want to project this racist idea onto anyone who questions the Palestinian state. But no one cares if the Palestinian Department of Education leaves children behind. No one cares if the Department of Streets and Sanitation actually picks up the garbage. No one cares if the Department of Transportation has the buses running on time. A future Palestinian state is being judged by a single criteria: will it stop terror attacks by it’s citizens against neighboring states, i.e. Israel.
The record to date is that a Palestinian state will view these attacks as legitimate resistance and not do anything to stop them, if not actually support them.
When the Palestinians decide they will build a state that will stop attacks, they will get a state. It may not be the state meeting all the criteria envisioned by all, e.g. sovereignty over air space or borders (at least not right away) but it will be a state where Palestinians can build a future for themselves and their children.
“When the Palestinians decide they will build a state that will stop attacks, they will get a state.”–David
That’s actually an echo from old South Africa, in advocating the continuation of Apartheid rule.
The parallels are unescapable.