The Dangers Certain Palestinian Leaders Pose to Palestine

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

This is an article some people will hate to read, either because it exposes them and their aides, or because it storms convictions they hold, leading them to question their own ability to reach conclusions about political phenomena. But now that the Palestinian situation has become clear beyond any doubt, following the Palestinian Authority’s decision to postpone the vote on the Goldstone Report, I see the necessity of clarifying the dangers certain Palestinian leaderships have posed to Palestine — dangers that help explain why the Palestinian people offered all these enormous sacrifices over a hundred years, only for some of its own sons to end up standing guard over the Kingdom of Israel.

This disastrous failure the Palestinian people has suffered in recovering some of its rights and achieving a measure of self-control was neither an accident nor solely the doing of external forces.

There is no doubt that external forces, Britain foremost among them, followed by Arab leaders, then America and many Western states, contributed directly, actively, and viciously to displacing the Palestinian people, usurping Palestine, and carrying out killing, torture, and abuse against Palestinians, young and old, men and women.

But this does not absolve Palestinian leaders of responsibility, nor of conspiring with these external forces to bring the people to their knees, subjugate them, and turn them into mere wandering individuals searching for a loaf of bread, or waiting for their end-of-month salary from the hands of their enemies. Here I clarify some matters concerning leaderships or individuals who have played, or continue to play, a role in managing the affairs of the Palestinian cause.

The Era of Hajj Amin al-Husseini

Amin al-Husseini, who had not yet performed the Hajj pilgrimage, was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison for participating in a demonstration against British policy in Palestine and the Levant generally in 1920. Mr. Amin used his absence to enroll at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The head of the Palestinian Supreme Muslim Council died in 1922, and Britain saw a need to restore standing to the Husseini family, who were rivals of the Nashashibi family, to whom Britain had handed the presidency of the Jerusalem municipality after dismissing the previous, Husseini-affiliated president — part of its vile “divide and rule” game.

The instructions stipulated that the Jerusalem municipality nominate three people for the council, after which the British High Commissioner (the actual ruler of Palestine) would select one of them to be president of the Supreme Muslim Council. The Jerusalem municipality recommended three people, none of whom was Mr. Amin, but the High Commissioner pressured one of the three to withdraw his nomination, making Mr. Amin the third candidate. The High Commissioner chose Amin al-Husseini in defiance of the Nashashibi family.

Britain pardoned Mr. al-Husseini for his prison sentence, and sent word for him to return to Palestine to take up the position. Was this British generosity, or did it carry political consequences? Someone might say that Hajj Amin al-Husseini hid in Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1937 because Britain wanted to arrest him. Historical evidence indicates that Hajj Amin had become fully convinced Britain had no desire to do justice by the Palestinian people, following its decision to partition the country, so he contacted certain rebels who may have had a hand in assassinating the British officer who was then governor of Nazareth. Britain wanted to arrest him for interrogation, so he fled to Al-Aqsa. But it is important to know that Hajj Amin al-Husseini did not flee from the mosque to Lebanon by his own means — history has revealed that he escaped with the help of a British officer, with the knowledge of the British authorities.

The Era of Arafat

In 1979 I wrote that the PLO would recognize Israel, and many people’s nerves flared up against me on the grounds that my words distorted the revolution — among them the martyr Khalil al-Wazir. I wrote my prediction because I was seeing, in Lebanon and Jordan, conduct by Palestinian leaderships and by individual fedayeen that made one’s brow sweat with shame, and I wondered whether anyone was monitoring this conduct and working to curb it.

The overall pattern of conduct — carrying weapons in city streets and firing them, interfering in others’ private lives, mistreating young women or government employees and ministers — indicated that someone had an interest in pushing the Jordanian and Lebanese peoples toward hating Palestinians. I was a young man at the time, and only realized years later that the goal was ultimately to isolate the Palestinian cause from its Arab and Islamic surroundings.

Palestinian combat patrols used to set out — supposedly in complete secrecy — from East Jordan and from South Lebanon to fight the Zionist enemy, but in the overwhelming majority of cases they ran straight into the Israeli army waiting for them at the very point they were supposed to cross. The Israeli army would use loudspeakers to tell the Palestinian fedayeen it knew of their coming and their target, advising them to surrender or die.

It was very rare for a Palestinian fighters’ military operation to succeed, and over about 13 years, Palestinians succeeded in only a handful of operations, fewer than the fingers on one hand. The Israelis slaughtered our sons because of their advanced weapons, while Palestinian leaders issued statements announcing the fighters’ safe return to their bases after inflicting heavy losses on the Israelis.

This kept happening, and no one investigated the matter, and we never once heard of the capture of the spy networks that ate away at the body of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian factions, at home and abroad, nor who was responsible for the security laxity, nor why the Palestinian fedayeen’s backs were left exposed the whole time.

At the very moment Palestinians were chanting for the resistance, supporting it, and offering it absolute support, there were those buying loyalty at the expense of competence in military work. The fighters were distracted with salaries and military ranks, and Hamra Street turned into a fiefdom for military commanders.

In the 1982 war, all the military leadership in South Lebanon did was flee. The leadership turned its back and ran, leaving the fighters to face the enemy on their own. It was reported that the force commander said Arafat himself had ordered him to withdraw immediately from South Lebanon. This did not sit well with the martyr Saad Sayel, who was the commander-in-chief of the revolution’s forces, but he was assassinated after opening an investigation.

Under Arafat’s era, the Palestinian National Charter was violated repeatedly, and no one listened to the protests. The Charter was breached when the PLO announced its plan to establish a secular democratic state including all religions, when Arafat visited Egypt in 1983, when the declaration renouncing terrorism was issued in 1985, when the Palestinian National Council recognized Israel and the Security Council resolutions and declared a state under the 1988 partition resolution, when it went to Madrid in 1991, and when it signed the Oslo Accords in 1993. According to the PLO’s own revolutionary code of justice, still nominally in effect to this day, many Palestinian leaders would deserve to be shot several times over for their violations. Why was the Charter bypassed? And in whose interest?

Here I must say that a Western journalist once asked me what I wanted to tell Arafat, since this journalist was going to meet him the next day. I told him to inform Arafat that I knew of his relations with West German intelligence in the 1950s and 1960s. I was arrested that very same day.

In the West Bank and Gaza

Just as security laxity occurred in Lebanon, there was security laxity in the West Bank and Gaza. It is clear that the number of Palestinian detainees held by Israel is completely disproportionate to the scale of what they actually accomplished against Israel. Palestinian cells would fall before they could carry out their operations, because of the information the enemy possessed. Our sons fell prey to a security laxity that persists to this day, inflicting successive losses on the people. Naturally, a leader who does not care about security laxity and the enemy’s security infiltrations becomes himself a suspect.

Among the most dangerous developments in the West Bank and Gaza is begging, and the habituation to being the lower hand, inevitably indebted to the owner of the upper hand. There also emerged paid “national work,” which turned the Palestinian struggle into a financial investment. This disgrace became entrenched after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and for many Palestinians it no longer became shameful to accept humiliation and disgrace in exchange for money. How can you liberate a homeland with people who do not eat by the sweat of their own brow, and who feel no shame in bowing their heads?

After the Palestinian Authority’s arrival, favoritism and nepotism spread on a massive scale, corruption spread into every corner, and thugs and bullies spread to bully and extort people. The social and moral fabric suffered grave, brazen damage. How can a leader establish a state or achieve independence with people who lack competence, and possess no ability except to harm themselves and others? And how can he achieve a future with a collapsed judiciary, elevating the ignorant over the learned, the base over the noble, the thug over the respectable? These acts do not indicate, in the slightest, an intention to establish a state — they indicate a deliberate, programmed intention to turn the Palestinian people into a herd searching for a loaf of bread, and I do not think anyone in the Palestinian arena has failed to hear Palestinians wishing for the occupation’s return because of the Authority’s practices.

The Palestinian leadership carried out a very dangerous act after Oslo: placing the Palestinian people’s daily bread in the hands of the enemy, through what are called the donor states. What leader, throughout history, places his people’s loaf of bread and his people’s children’s sustenance in his enemy’s hands? This is the enslavement of the people, turning it into a captive of salaries and material benefits, and ultimately a flagrant theft of the free political will of the people of Palestine.

The Era of Abbas

It was the Americans who forced Arafat to install Abbas as prime minister after they decided the Palestinian Authority must establish a premiership, and it was they who pressured for many powers to be transferred from the presidency to the premiership, and it was they too who pressured for these powers to be transferred back from the premiership to the presidency after Hamas’s election victory.

A number of Arafat’s aides described him, before Arafat’s death, as “Palestine’s Karzai,” and public opinion polls indicated his popularity did not exceed 6% in the territory occupied in 1967. Suddenly his rivals stood with him in the presidential election, and he received nearly 63% of the voters’ votes.

Abbas brought in Dr. Salam Fayyad, whom the Americans had long praised and insisted on placing in a senior post as a condition for continued financial flows to the Palestinian Authority, and they insisted even on keeping him as finance minister under the national unity government formed after the Mecca Agreement of 2007. Under Abbas’s era, the authority of the Palestinian security apparatuses over the people increased, and the West Bank came under the control of the American consul and General Dayton, with silent, intensive, secret intervention by the American Central Intelligence Agency.

Abbas and Fayyad turned the West Bank into land laid open for Western and Zionist aggressors, working to erase people in exchange for money or false promises of achievements, and turned the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people into a salary, a car, and “a breath of fresh air.” Under their era, matters reached the point that a Palestinian military unit — according to what Dayton himself, who trained this unit and others in Jordan, stated — killed a Palestinian resistance fighter, Abdel Majeed Doudin of Dura/Hebron, under the command of an Israeli officer.

They Manufacture Leaders for Palestine

Who are “they”? The Israelis and some Western states, the United States foremost among them. This is a thorny, lengthy topic requiring a whole volume to explain, but it must be mentioned so the picture is complete. I mentioned some time ago, on Al Jazeera’s screen, that the Israelis had offered to make me a Palestinian leader. They said they would use television cameras to cover my release from prison, would focus media attention on me and my activities, and within two weeks my Palestinian people would be carrying me on their shoulders, rejoicing.

I asked them what they wanted in return, and they said: give resounding, passionate speeches against Israel, call for the liberation of Haifa and Jaffa, but go home and do nothing. This is just one example, and I am certain many have agreed to such proposals — were it not for the legal pursuit I could expect, I would name a number of names, but I am prepared to name people who now decide matters for the people, having gained Israeli media support before investigation committees.

The Israelis and Westerners help their Arab and Palestinian agents financially and through the media, especially if they are seasoned Freemasons practiced in treachery, and they push for their rise up the ladder of responsibility. They provide them with the money necessary for movement, and to devote themselves to treacherous work without hindrances touching their livelihoods or recreational appetites. They facilitate many tasks and jobs for them, employ media on their behalf, promote them regarding so-called professionalism, genius, and extraordinary intelligence, and give the impression that the people’s conditions will worsen without them.

We are witnessing how intellectuals and academics are drawn in through government-affiliated associations to work for the West’s benefit through scientific research and conferences, and we are witnessing how money is lavished so that academics compete over betraying their own people and homeland.

Painting a patriotic image for agents is considered one of Israel’s most prominent tools in supporting its agents and elevating them up the ladder of Palestinian responsibility. Israel sometimes deliberately arrests its own agent for a period that may be long, and deliberately leaks news of his arrest through the media in order to influence the Palestinian public and the faction he belongs to, and may even leak false news of his torture, abuse, and steadfastness under interrogation. Inside the prison, it may isolate him in solitary confinement, or pretend to, so that the detainee becomes a leader participating in managing the detainees’ affairs and learning their secrets, which are ultimately passed on to intelligence, and so on.

I have noticed that Israel rushes to take some action to reinforce the standing of those who cooperate with it, such as launching a media attack against them over certain statements, or perhaps it asks them to be extreme against it in their speeches, in order to produce a reaction that inflames the masses’ sympathies in their support. Here I recall once that a Palestinian leader declared he would burn American interests in the Gulf states, at the entrance of a bar in Beirut. He was practically drunk, but the media covered his statement well, which inflamed the sentiments of Arabs and Palestinians resentful of America.

It is also possible Israel deports a person so he becomes a leader outside Palestine, or so he returns to Palestine as a leader. It is clear that these movements are supported by the Palestinian leadership establishment, which has not bothered with caution, security precautions, and thorough security vetting for those wishing to join the resistance or continue within it.

I mention here Israel’s attempt to drag me to the Madrid Conference in 1991, hoping this might serve as a lesson for the public across the homeland. An American tried to visit me at my home in Nablus before the Madrid Conference to convince me to be a member of the Palestinian delegation that was part of the Jordanian delegation. I refused to receive him twice. Afterward, the military governor in Tulkarm summoned me to ask why I refused to go to Madrid, and tried to convince me to go with soft words — I refused. He summoned me a second time two days later and threatened me with arrest or deportation if I refused to go to Madrid. I did not care about his threat, but I asked him whether he had the power to appoint me to our Palestinian delegation to Madrid, and he said I should not concern myself with that.

Of course, I understood he would contact Israel’s defense minister if I agreed, who would in turn contact the American consul in Jerusalem, and then the consul would contact a Palestinian from the city, and the Palestinian would contact Tunis, and the Tunis leadership would issue a decree appointing me to the Madrid delegation, and then crowds of the people would applaud me and praise the leader for his good choice. This pattern of harassment was not aimed at recruiting me, but at burning me, so that I would no longer be able, in the future, to speak with candor and clarity. As for the public, they would never know how I arrived in Madrid and became a leader boasting fiery words and political incantations.

What About Abbas?

Abbas will not resign from his position now based on calls from Palestinians, whether individuals or groups. The one who decides to resign is whoever earned his position by the sweat of his own brow, whereas those who receive support from abroad, or are manufactured from outside the ranks of the people, do not resign. These are dismissed or killed by whoever installed them, but they do not possess the freedom to resign.

My assessment is that Israel and America regret the uproar now occurring against Abbas, and are certainly thinking about how to mend the rift, and so I expect some move to restore Abbas’s prestige, at least among a portion of the Palestinian people, so that this portion returns to defending him.

For example, Abbas might issue a strong statement in support of the resistance, and Israel might pretend to be outraged, and Netanyahu might issue an order banning Abbas from traveling for two weeks.

Or it is possible a forged document might be leaked about a plan by Abbas and Palestinian Authority apparatuses to carry out a surprise attack on a settlement, after which Israel decides not to hand over the Authority’s clearance revenues, or something similar — and then people will forget Goldstone, and turn the tide to talk of Abbas’s heroism instead.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “أخطار قيادات فلسطينية على فلسطين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.