« The GOP 'Scorched Earth' PolicyThe questions of 9/11 are still unanswered »

Does the Palestinian Diaspora Care Enough To Become Engaged?

September 16th, 2010

By Alan Hart

The real history of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel invites the conclusion that the Arab regimes - more by default than design in my view - betrayed the Palestinians. The question this article addresses is: Will future historians conclude that the Palestinian diaspora betrayed its occupied and oppressed brothers and sisters?

There’s no mystery about the Arab (regime) betrayal. When the Palestine file was closed by Israel’s 1948 victory on the battlefield and the armistice agreements, the divided and impotent Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as the Zionists and the major powers. It was that the file would remain closed for ever. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency.

Nor is there any mystery about why the Arab regimes were at one with the Zionists and the major powers in hoping that there would never be a regeneration of Palestinian nationalism. They all knew that if there was, there would one day have to be a confrontation with Zionism; and nobody wanted that.

When Yasser Arafat, Abu Jihad and a few others lit the slow burning fire of the regeneration, it was the security services of Eygpt, Jordan and Lebanon which took the lead in trying to put it out.

Fast forward to today.

The incredible almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians is the reason why Zionism will never be able to close the re-opened Palestine file again unless it resorts to a final round of ethnic cleansing, to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or wherever. In my analysis it is more likely than not that Zionism’s in-Israel leaders will create a pretext to do just that at a point in the foreseeable future

What point?

When it becomes apparent even to them that with bombs and bullets and brutal repressive measures of all kinds they can’t break the will of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians to continue the struggle for their rights and compel them to accept crumbs from Zionism’s table.

As things are I think it is unrealistic to expect the governments of the major powers either to use the leverage they have to call and hold the Zionist state to account for its past crimes, or to intervene to prevent the crimes it will commit in a foreseeable future.

And it can be taken as read that the Arab regimes will not lift a finger to prevent a final Zionist solution to the Palestine problem. (Before Sharon sent the IDF all the way to Beirut to exterminate the PLO’s leadership and destroy its infrastructure, Gulf Arab leaders met in secret, without advisers present, in order to agree a message to the Reagan administration. The message was to the effect that they would not intervene in any way when Sharon made his move. After that message was sent, one of the Arab leaders present, Oman’s Sultan Qaboos, said to Arafat: “Be careful. You are going to ask for our help and it will not come.” Last year I had a private conversation in London with a major royal from the Arab world. I said to him, “Nothing is going to change in the Arab world until your regimes are more frightened of their own masses than they are of offending Zionism and America”. He replied, “You’re right.” I also said to him, “If the Zionists do resort to a final round of ethnic cleaning to close the Palestine file, Arab leaders, behind closed doors, will give thanks and celebrate.” His reply was the same, “You’re right.”)

Question: What can the Palestinians do to help themselves?

My view is that they should wind-up (close down) the discredited Palestine National Authority (PNA), and put policy making and implementation back into the hands of the Palestine National Council (PNC), which is supposed to be (it once was) the highest and most supreme Palestinian decision-making body. To become relevant again it would have to be reconstructed and re-invigorated by elections in every place where there are Palestinians - the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza concentration camp and the diaspora.

The fact that the PNA is corrupt, impotent and discredited is reason enough for it to be put out of its misery, but there’s more to it.

In their claim for justice, the Palestinians have 100% of right, legal and moral, on their side (whereas the Israelis have 99% of the might, conventional and nuclear, on their side). If this claim was properly presented and pressed by a credible Palestinian leadership, by definition a democratically elected leadership duly authorized to represent the views of all Palestinians, it would be more difficult for the governments of the major powers, the one in Washington DC especially, to go on refusing to use the leverage they have to end Israel’s occupation of Arab land grabbed in the Zionist state’s 1967 war of aggression. (Not self defense as Zionism asserts).

Because Israel and the major powers won’t talk to Hamas (despite the fact that its leaders have signalled their willingness to live in peace with an Israel inside its pre-1967 borders), and because the Fatah-dominated PNA is so discredited (I imagine Arafat is revolving with anger in his grave), the occupied and oppressed Palestinians are effectively leaderless in the sense that they are without an institution to represent them in the corridors of power.

It follows, or so I believe, that a demand for putting policy making and implementation back into the hands of a reconstructed and re-invigorated PNC must come from the Palestinian diaspora - from Palestinian communities in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Eygpt, Kuwait, Iraq, Yemen, Western Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, Chile, Honduras, Brazil, Columbia and Guatemala.

The question arising is the one of the headline for this article: Does the Palestinian diaspora care enough to become engaged?

I have long been of the view that the major difference between Jews and Arabs is that Jews know how to play the game of international politics and Arabs don’t. The Palestinians could prove me wrong. The world, not just the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, needs them to do so.

-###-

By Alan Hart

No feedback yet

Voices

Voices

  • Robert David Robert David examines Holocaust purism and its denial of genocides like the Holodomor and Armenian Genocide, highlighting the ethical and political consequences of selective historical memory. #GenocideRecognition #HolocaustPurism…
  • By David Swanson, World BEYOND War According to Columbia Magazine , published by Columbia University’s Office of Alumni and Development, but ultimately named for a brutal imperialist mercenary, in 1933 while Nazis in Germany were burning books by Jews,…
  • Paul Craig Roberts Trump and Zelensky have agreed on a cease fire, a pause in the conflict. How does this benefit Russia? It doesn’t. The Ukrainian military is collapsing on all fronts. 86% of the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk has been retaken, and the…
  • Tracy Turner Chupacabra America: A nation gripped by greed, excess, and decline. Explore the stark contrast between America's stagnant Trumpcession societal rot and Europe's prosperous sustainable progress in this eye-opening critique by Tracy Turner.…
  • Cathy Smith Explore the decline of modern Christianity from televangelist scandals and prosperity gospel corruption to church schisms and socioeconomic divides, this analysis reveals how materialism and greed have overshadowed the transformative spirit…
  • Chris Spencer Syria's Alawites were seen as favored by the regime of Bashar al Assad, now more than 1,300 Alawites have been murdered in 2025 in Syria. Early 2025 saw Syria's fragile post-Assad situation degenerate into a brutal cycle of sectarian…
  • Fred Gransville There was something unusual on the White House driveway on March 11, 2025. Elon Musk was selling Tesla vehicles in collaboration with Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States. From conducting business at the White House…
  • By Tracy Turner Uncover the toxic history of U.S. industrial and military pollution, from Hanford to Camp Lejeune. This inquiry exposes how government and corporate inaction have led to cancer clusters, ecological destruction, and human agony. Explore…
  • By Mark Aurelius 70% of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza are women and children This essay contains controversial statements that could alarm people who are not tolerant of contentious assertions or questions, such as regarding religious beliefs,…
  • Tracy Turner The economic crisis of 2025 under the leadership of Donald Trump and Elon Musk draws alarming parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, exacerbated by the dismantling of critical U.S. infrastructure and the breakdown of federal regulatory…
March 2025
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
 << <   > >>
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

  XML Feeds

Build your own website!
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted articles and information about environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. This news and information is displayed without profit for educational purposes, in accordance with, Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Thepeoplesvoice.org is a non-advocacy internet web site, edited by non-affiliated U.S. citizens. editor
ozlu Sozler GereksizGercek Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi Hava Durumu Firma Rehberi E-okul Veli Firma Rehberi