The Future of the Palestinian Cause

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The Palestinian cause is a pivotal cause, the most important among the Arab causes, and it is affected by the changes and developments occurring in many arenas, even a geographically distant one — so how much more so when major events are unfolding right on Palestine’s doorstep?

What is happening in the Arab arena is a great earthquake, a historical development whose preconditions had already ripened, and it will inevitably affect the political, social, and economic structures of the Arab homeland, with important repercussions for the various Arab causes and concerns, both national and pan-Arab, foremost among them the cause of Palestine.

The Arab street’s movement is expected to constitute a vital, stirring subject for the Palestinian people and the various Palestinian factions concerned with the future of Palestinian national rights, hoping this might help in charting the steps that must be followed in order to put what is happening to work in the service of these rights: assessing the event, examining its causes, dimensions, and developments, and sketching out hypothetical scenarios for what political, security, military, and unity-related structures it may produce or lead to.

The Palestinian people, in all its components, must look closely at what is happening, and gauge how to act so that opportunities capable of reinforcing Palestinian aspirations are not lost. This is why it is necessary to proceed deliberately, without disengaging from the event, so that neither hasty action leading to regret, nor sluggishness leading to loss, occurs.

A New Historical Era

With the Tunisian revolution, the Arab homeland entered a new historical phase feeding on a historical era in which backwardness, tyranny, and disgrace prevailed, extending since the end of the phase of direct colonialism.

The Arab lived through the phase of independence in interaction with his surroundings, in defiance of the prevailing conditions, achieving what he thought was an independence that would lead to fulfilling great aspirations — represented, in that period, by Arab unity, the liberation of Palestine, and achieving progress so that the nation would take its place among the rising nations.

The Arab regimes — tribal and non-tribal alike — did not live up to these ambitions, and the Arab homeland entered a phase of darkness in which it could not keep pace with other nations, nor uplift the human being.

The threshold of this new historical phase, still in the process of forming and taking shape, is distinguished by several features, foremost among them:

First: the Arab revolution now is a revolution of peoples, and in this it differs entirely from the military coups witnessed by several Arab states in the previous historical era, and differs from the internal wars witnessed by non-Arab states, with the exception, so far, of Libya.

And since it is the peoples who are rising up, the banner of demands is not private interest but the public interest, according to each Arab revolution’s own definition of what it sees as the public interest.

In other words, the peoples moved because of shared suffering, and to achieve shared goals, and this leads us to assess that Arab causes will be at the top of these peoples’ concerns, and matters will not be confined to national concerns alone.

The Arab peoples still possess a sense of allegiance and belonging to the nation, and there is no people that turns its back on the concerns of another people. The best evidence of this is that the revolutions erupted nearly simultaneously, or in overlapping succession, as though there were a single Arab revolution, and that most Arab peoples are living the Arab revolutions moment by moment through the media, mostly hoping for the downfall of the rulers. In the end, a people that possesses a free will enjoys a collective national belonging that overwhelms the will of a ruler trying to buy loyalty.

Second: it is noteworthy that the revolutions erupted independent of parties and organizations, and that their leaderships have been crystallizing in the street, but without organizational formation. This means partisan interests are also absent from the revolutions, and that general, non-partisan dimensions, unaligned with this or that party program, are the main banner. Parties tried, after the revolutions erupted, to catch up, offering support to the youth movement, but no party dared to put forward its own program as a basis for action, or as a guide for the street.

Third: the masses held fast to two vital slogans: freedom and national unity. Freedom is the foundation of conscious creativity, the strong cornerstone of building and progress, while national unity is the protector of freedoms and the means of achieving numerical equality among people and justice for all citizens without discrimination.

Fourth: it is clear the Arab masses have grown weary of the divisions of Muslim and Christian, Sunni and Shiite, Arab and Kurd, northerner and southerner, Palestinian and Jordanian. They have found that internal discord reflects on everyone, and that people cannot achieve their interests except by standing together in confronting despotism.

Fifth: the Arab revolutions are distinguished by a lofty moral level, in that the masses did not deliberately engage in sabotage and destruction, and insisted on the peacefulness of the demonstrations, preserving people’s lives and property. This reflects the moral dimension within which future developments may unfold.

Arab Subjugation of the Palestinian Cause

The morals of the Arab regimes and the Palestinian leaderships never rose to the level of the challenge posed by the Palestinian cause and the various Arab causes. Every nation has aspirations that face challenges, and it is required to develop capabilities and resources so the nation can rise to the level of the challenge and achieve its goals.

Arab leaderships have faced many challenges since the codification of independence, but all of them required a moral elevation that would allow for mobilizing energies and capabilities, and would raise the level of individual freedom, thereby easing the path toward reinforcing belonging — considered a fundamental prerequisite for elevating the level of collective action and mutual cooperation.

Arab leaderships busied themselves with tribal, status-driven, arrogant, and hedonistic values that took them far from the logic of conscious building and the drive toward achievement. This is why the nation failed to achieve Arab unity, to expel colonialism, and to liberate Palestine. It failed to leave behind educational, scientific, and pedagogical backwardness, and so on, to the point that national unity in most countries began to disintegrate.

The Palestinian cause requires this moral dimension that sees the human being emerge, affirming himself through accomplishment, not through boasting, extravagance, and excess.

Arab leaderships, Palestinian ones included, distracted themselves with much resounding rhetoric and beautiful phrases, turning their backs on the values of sacrificing time, effort, and money, and the values of preparedness and taking the necessary means, until Palestine became a sack of flour or a box of aspirin. Indeed, Arab and Palestinian leaderships even cooperated with the Zionist entity under the banner of liberating Palestine.

Is it possible for the current Arab revolutions to hold fast to moral values different from those of the past? I am certain they will, because they constitute a movement of peoples against a deep moral breach that produced policies inflicting great harm on the nation and on individual peoples alike. It is a popular movement aimed at removing the morals of injustice, enslavement, and tyranny, and establishing the morals of participation, justice, and freedom.

Awareness of what must be done is clear, and it differs from the awareness that accompanied the phase of expelling colonialism, because the current generation is aware of the sites of internal decline, and will work to change them.

If the moral level rises, the level of commitment within the nation will rise accordingly, and consequently the level of performance will rise at all political, economic, and social levels, and, more importantly, at the level of the nation’s causes.

In other words, the Palestinian cause will begin to take its rightful place in practical terms — a place it has, until now, occupied only theoretically, and also within a scattered resistance dominated by moral disorientation.

The Opposing Forces

Israel and America are the two states most confused about what is happening in the Arab arena, and the most confused in searching for how to confront what is happening. From the statements of the two states, we sense their fear of the future, because they anticipate the development of popular oversight over the policies of coming Arab governments, and it will not be easy for any Arab government to act contrary to what it says, or to secretly ally with America and Israel independent of the peoples’ will.

Even the regimes that political change may not reach will find themselves facing a new popular reality characterized by intelligence and a search for truth, which is bound to be reflected across the entire Arab political environment.

The two states have supported the despotism and moral decay characterizing the Arab regimes, because this provided them with the appropriate atmosphere to run the regimes according to their own whims.

The hedonistic, repressive conduct of the Arab regimes has served to sustain the two states’ dominance and contain the forces of progress and change in the Arab homeland. This situation is now very seriously threatened, and it is quite possible that despotism will gradually collapse, and an atmosphere of dignity and honor will be established, entirely contradicting the atmosphere of humiliation and submission that provided Israel with further strength and success.

The new atmosphere is bound to threaten Israel’s Arab strategic depth, which, over decades, constituted the finest strategic depth enabling Israel to record repeated victories over the Arabs.

Accordingly, the two states are now trying to enter into the Arab revolutions with the aim of sabotaging them from within. It is difficult to know exactly what Israel is doing now, especially since it has an abundance of agents and spies in various Arab countries, through whom it can create chaos through assassination operations, random shootings, sabotage, and the like.

America, meanwhile, is working to support its traditional allies, and trying to intervene in the affairs of the two interim governments in Tunisia and Egypt, and also in the affairs of Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. It is trying to twist the arm of the forces of change, and support traditional forces hiding under the banner of change and freedom.

Will Israel and America succeed in their attempts to pollute the course of change in the Arab homeland? I doubt they will achieve great success, but they will create an atmosphere of confusion so that people come to long nostalgically for the bygone days.

The two states will not achieve major success in diverting the course of the revolutions from their goals of freedom and independence, because the logic of history is too strong to be nullified by the logic of force.

The logic of history is a logic of strength, because it rests on the will of the peoples, and it is logical and rational because it expresses a historical dialectic tied to the negation of the existing situation in favor of a new one. No matter how hard the two states try to halt the movement of history, they will only be able to hinder it.

In the Short Term

Some observers say the Arab revolutions do not focus, in their slogans, on the Palestinian cause, which raises doubts about the future commitment of the Arab peoples to the Palestinian cause.

There is truth to this claim, but the cause has not been entirely absent, at least from the angle of reproaching Israel. Egypt’s revolutionaries spoke of Mubarak’s poor policy in agreeing to the siege of Gaza and closing the Rafah crossing, of Israel’s aggressiveness, and of the Egyptian gas export agreement.

Egyptian crowds also held a demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy, denouncing Israel and the embassy’s presence in Egypt. It was clear the Egyptian public held a nationalist vision toward the Palestinian cause, embracing the defense of Palestinian rights. The Egyptian masses proved their commitment to the Palestinian cause on Friday, May 13, 2011, which was a victory for Egyptian national unity and for the right of return of Palestinian refugees. In Tunisia, the masses spoke of Ben Ali’s cooperation with Israel, and of the services he and his aides provided to Israeli security.

In Libya, the revolutionaries accuse Israel of supplying Gaddafi with weapons. In Yemen, they see the ruling regime as having remained a toy in American hands, and see liberation from American will as a fundamental popular goal.

Despite the initial signals given by Arab peoples, it is not required, at this stage, for these peoples to place the cause at the top of their priorities, because the internal problem and ridding themselves of the regime require effort, sacrifice, and vigilance. The Arab peoples are not currently preoccupied with the nation’s concerns, nor with foreign policy, but rather with changing conditions and bringing the revolution to fruition, and this is exactly the wisdom of the moment.

As for the two governments that emerged from the revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, they are interim, and cannot chart policy or make decisions related to high-level policy.

These are two caretaker governments, running affairs until elections are held that produce two governments representing the two peoples, after which we can speak of policies at the regional and global levels. My assessment is that the expected policies will not be sharply against Israel, but will be tempered, taking a gradual course toward insisting on Palestinian rights.

For this reason, it is expected that Egypt will ease its siege on Gaza, and begin adopting uncooperative positions toward Israel — not toward annulling the Camp David Accords, but toward gradually shedding its security obligations toward Israel, and building a new vision for how to corner Israel without losing political balance at the international level.

Palestinian Politics

There is no single Palestinian policy among Palestinians now — there are at least two policies, led by Fatah and Hamas respectively. Regardless of each side’s program, Palestinians ought to realize that the agreements with Israel emerged from a particular local, regional, and international political environment, that this environment no longer exists, and that what suits one environment does not suit a different one.

The environment of the agreements was characterized by a general Arab collapse, Palestinian faintheartedness, a serious imbalance in the global and regional balance of power, and the absence of the Arab peoples from the stage of events and influence.

This environment has undergone radical, major change since 2006, and is now undergoing further change. It seems the two movements have grasped the development occurring in the Arab arena and decided to sign a reconciliation agreement awaiting actual implementation.

The wise man is the one who does not carry a rock heavier than his strength, and does not leave a stone in his path if he is capable of moving it. There are now elements of military strength represented by the resistance in South Lebanon and in Gaza, and another force crystallizing in the Arab countries represented by the popular will, and it is expected that the Palestinian will not turn away from these two developments as though history stood still around him.

History is changing, and the awareness of those who own the Palestinian cause of this fact is vital, if they want to move from a phase of weakness to a phase of strength. If awareness and strategic assessment of the ongoing transformations are achieved, then Palestinian demands for rights are expected to take a new direction, no longer relying on the weak man’s power of begging.

My assessment is that Hamas will be more aware than Fatah of the dialectic of these developments, and will benefit from them, while the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah will drag its feet a great deal, to the point that it may find itself gradually fading away before the momentum of events.

Signs of an impact on Arab engagement with the Palestinian cause appeared on the anniversary of the Nakba, when modest demonstrations broke out in a number of Arab countries, and vast crowds also set out on the march of May 16, 2011, toward the notional borders between Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. One can easily sense a shift now in the Palestinian’s psyche and morale, and hear from him phrases expressing greater confidence in the masses of the Arab nation.

The Bottom Line

In sum, and if my assessment leans toward pessimism, I see the following:

First: the level of lying by the Arab regimes regarding the Palestinian cause will decrease significantly, and these regimes will commit to a degree of transparency that was previously lacking.

Second: Egypt will gradually shed some clauses of the Camp David Accords, and will try to extend its sovereignty over Sinai.

Third: the Arab Summit may gradually abandon the Arab Initiative.

Fourth: the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance will find new supporters, and peoples may press to volunteer for resistance factions.

Fifth: a new security vigilance will develop in a number of Arab countries to pursue agents of Israel and the United States.

Sixth: developments in the Arab arena will lean toward Hamas’s program at the expense of the Fatah movement’s program.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “مستقبل القضية الفلسطينية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.