By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

I think it would be safe to say that virtually all Palestinians, including Hamas, would like to see Fatah’s upcoming Congress succeed in rehabilitating the movement, mainly by extricating it from the quagmire of corruption, treachery and “security coordination” with Israel, the Nazi-like occupier of our homeland and tormentor of our people. Fatah is a large movement and its role in leading Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonialism can’t be denied. But it is also true that for many years Fatah has been metamorphosed into a “contra force” working, knowingly or unknowingly, against the national interests of the Palestinian people.

Fatah officials and spokesmen would vociferously deny such descriptions. However, the facts speak for themselves. The ongoing inquisition against Hamas in the West Bank , which is fully coordinated with the Israeli occupation army, serves as a clarion proof underscoring to the extent to which Fatah has deviated from its original goals.

This disgraceful de facto alliance between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) against the forces of resistance effectively transforms the American-backed and American-funded security forces into a quisling entity, a Palestinian Judenrat.

I know the words might be harsh and painful, but truth must be told, even at the expense of upsetting and alienating many people. A painful treatment is often necessary to eradicate a malignant malady.

The original raison d’etre of Fatah had always been to liberate Palestine and enable Palestinian refugees, brutally uprooted from their ancestral homeland, to return home.

However, since the scandalous Oslo Agreement, Fatah’s main function has been redefined and re-oriented toward fighting “the enemies of peace” and “the extremists” in order to obtain a certificate of good conduct from the criminal Zionists and their western supporters and allies.

Many important but gullible Fatah leaders thought naively that Israel might award them a state in return for doing Israel ’s bidding.

However, instead of getting a Palestinian state with al-Quds as its capital, as the Olso-era mantra was constantly invoked, Israel dotted the West Bank with hundreds of malignant colonies, stepped up ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem and nearly succeeded in redefining the Palestinian cause from a struggle against foreign occupation and apartheid into a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict between Fatah and Hamas.

This scandalous Kafkaesque distortion of the Palestinian struggle wouldn’t have occurred had the free-minded Fatah leadership prevented certain thugs within the movement, who acted on America’s and Israel’s beck and call, from igniting inter-Palestinian civil war which eventually forced Hamas to oust the criminal provocateurs from the Gaza Strip.

We do hope that it is not too late for the free-minded forces within Fatah to rectify the situation and fix the immense damage done by the saboteurs and apostates who disguise themselves as Palestinian patriots while having the heart and mind of a traitor.

Today, Fatah faces a host of complicated problems endangering the very survival of the movement as a liberation movement.

First, Fatah must deal with the aftereffects of the death of Yasser Arafat who, despite all his mistakes and shortcomings, managed to preserve the cohesion of the Palestinian national movement.

Now, a new power structure has been created, a power structure that views national resistance against the Israeli occupation as anachronistic and even repugnant.

More to the point, this power structure would be willing to go to any extent to safeguard its criminal interests. Needless to say, the current police-state apparatus in the West Bank shows that the Ramallah junta and its numerous cohorts and hangers-on can’t be entrusted to deal with the national burden. They are simply too subservient to Israel and too enslaved by their own parochial interests to honestly represent the true collective conscience of the Palestinian people and its enduring struggle for freedom and Justice.

Hence, it is amply wrong for the free-minded forces within Fatah to think that the sole goal behind “security coordination” with Israel is to fight or eradicate Hamas.

In truth, the real goal is to intimidate, suppress and if necessary eliminate any opposition to any attempted liquidation of the Palestinian cause. Therefore, the free men and women within Fatah who might be tempted to say “NO” to an imposed deal, which would perpetuate the Israeli domination over Palestinian land and life , would be crushed by the faithless soldiers of Dayton who have been brainwashed into believing that the enemy of the Palestinian people is “Hamas and the forces of resistance,” not Israel.

Second, the free-minded forces within Fatah must also recognize that during the past few years a huge bureaucracy of Fatah officials, clerks, operatives, security commanders and business people whose interests and financial and economic well-being depend largely on the preservation of the status quo, namely the persistence of the master-slave relationship between Israel and the PA.

These people would fight tooth and nail to prolong or even perpetuate the present situation, namely PA subservience to and subjugation by the Israeli occupation.

One more point, it is an open secret that Fatah’s financial survival depends to a large extent on the coffers of the American-backed government of Salam Fayyad. Hence, any genuine effort by Fatah to deliver itself from the American-Israel stranglehold would be strongly resisted by the Fayyad government.

Indeed, there are those who believe that one of the main reasons for the creation of the Fayyad government is to emasculate and “domesticate” Fatah. Unfortunately, their view has been largely vindicated by events in the past few years.

This means that Fatah can’t exercise its free will, even if it wants to, as long as it remains financially dependent on the Fayyad’s government’s coffers. Which will eventually force Fatah to choose either of two choices, to coalesce into the PA government structure and kiss all pretensions about resistance good by, or be financially independent in order to be politically free and able to resist Israeli dictates.

In the final analysis, you can’t say “No” to the hands that feed you.

Fatah should devote itself to ending the rift with Hamas as soon as possible mainly by purging its ranks of Israel’s agents, and, sadly, they are many.

Fatah should realize that it alone can’t attain the goals of liberation and independence. This is why one of the central goals of the Fatah convention should be to mend relations with Hamas and restore Palestinian national unity

It is simply unacceptable and scandalous for a liberation movement to have some of its leaders telling Israeli occupation army commanders that “We are allies, and our goals are the same, and our common enemy is Hamas.” Some years ago, those uttering such words would have met a harsh fate.

This is why such people shouldn’t stay in their jobs, let alone in Fatah, for one minute.

In the final analysis, the real contradiction is between us, the Palestinian people, and Israel , the Nazi-like occupier of our country, not among ourselves. This is what every Palestinian, including every member of Fatah, ought to understand.

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By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank