The Strike of the Strikers

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization announced they would carry out a strike in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Sunday, September 9, 2007, in protest against Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip, or in protest against what they call the bloody coup and against the coup-makers.

As a Palestinian citizen, I want to know exactly what these factions are going to strike from. Are these factions — some of which can barely fill a single taxicab with all their members — really going to strike from work? From what work, exactly, will they be striking? And have these factions even left the people any work to do in the first place? If the average Palestinian Authority employee works fourteen minutes a day, then from what work will they be striking? If it weren’t for the education, health, and social-affairs departments, the average daily workload within the Authority would come to two minutes — just two minutes. Whoever wants to carry out a strike must first actually work, so that his strike might mean something.

If you gentlemen of the factions truly cared about the national interest, you would have staged sit-ins and protests long ago, protesting the overreach and the disbursement of money to people who do not deserve it. You have averted your gaze from the facts, and left the Palestinian people to keep drowning and drowning, all to preserve your own interests. You receive money from the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, the very body encouraging you to strike, the very body that pays your office rent and gives you the cars that come at the expense of the people of Palestine.

The Palestinian factions now want to sell the people of Palestine patriotism, wanting to claim they care deeply about the unity of the homeland. Since when, gentlemen of the factions, have you shown such zeal? The country has sunk into the mire of internal corruption; a number of Palestinians have turned to security work alongside the Israelis; they have arrested Palestinians, Ahmad Sa’adat among them; mediation deals and favoritism have eaten away at the body politic; and many Palestinian rights have been signed away — and all the while you issue your fiery statements by day, and creep back at night to your true benefactor, begging for jobs, money, and pleasures. Do you know there is a paralyzed judiciary, before which the citizen can find no legal remedy for his problems? Have you heard of the security lawlessness, the assaults on citizens and their property? Have you heard of the suppression of opinions and the tyranny over the media? Have you only now remembered that there is a Palestine, and a people of Palestine? Enough with the outbidding — we can no longer stomach you, and we no longer trust a single one of you. You use Palestine for your own whims and tribal interests, wrapped in tired, hollow patriotic slogans that no longer convince even children.

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…negative stance, which ultimately harmed the forces of change that were pushing to stop corruption. You wanted to flee your responsibilities and hide behind the lie of Syria and Iran; you made peace with corruption and marched along in its procession, until the country reached the state you have brought us to. You were told the country was heading toward the abyss, but you preferred to entrench yourselves behind your own interests, at the very moment you curse Oslo. You surely remember how you talk in your private gatherings about the Authority’s leadership and its policies, and how you deal with the Authority in practice. You lie, you engage in hypocrisy, you cover things up, you go along, and you outbid one another.

I ask you, before God: why did you not declare a strike when hundreds of Palestinians from Islamic Jihad and Hamas sat inside the Authority’s prisons? Why strike now, when crimes against Palestinians are being committed day and night, in the West Bank just as much as in Gaza? It is true that beating a Palestinian in Gaza happens in front of the cameras, but the beating in the West Bank happens secretly, intensively, and far from any lens.

Balance in how we deal with things is essential, and bias leads straight into the abyss. None of us have acted the right way; we have all preferred a life of lying, charlatanry, and hypocrisy for the sake of our own interests. Money coming from abroad has blinded us, and hollow, false positions have seduced us, and now we deserve exactly the state we are in, because it is of our own making. The harvest is of the same kind as the seed you sowed, gentlemen of the factions.

What do you say — if striking from your two minutes of work appeals to you so much — to striking instead against the policy of relying on our enemies to secure our daily bread? Do you not see that the policy of depending on America for our very plate of food poses a danger to the Palestinian cause far greater and far more terrible than anything Hamas did in Gaza? Let us strike now against the greater danger, and save the lesser danger for later. Or, what do you say to searching instead for ways to strengthen Palestinian production, activity, and work, so that we become capable of relying on ourselves, rather than sacrificing those two minutes that are not even being put to precise use?

We need arms that build, mattocks that dig, and saplings that are planted, so that we may rise, so that we may exist. This childish, foolish behavior we are now amusing ourselves with only deepens the wound, kills the spirit further, drags down our resolve, and hands the enemy the advantage. Spare us your nonsense, and turn instead toward productive work that future generations will remember you for.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “إضراب المضربين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.