The Unity of the Palestinian People

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

I begin by noting that I am among those who believe there is no future for the nation without unity, and that there is no place for small entities in this world buffeted by great powers; and if Arabs or Muslims are to make a future for themselves, and to be contributors to the making of world civilization, then there is no path before them but unity. For this reason, what I write here is governed by circumstance and not by principle — and of course the greater principle cannot be realized through fragmentation, and the solidity of the smaller community contributes directly to the crystallization of the wider community.

The masses of the nation aspired to Arab unity after the First and Second World Wars, and many thinkers and writers spent much ink explaining the goal and educating people about it. Arab leaders took the idea seriously when they came to power, but they lost their way amid corrupt administration, security apparatuses, and the ganging-up of states against them, and the idea lost its way with them. Then came the 1967 war to break the back of those calling for unity, and the unionist idea retreated in favor of statism, replaced by the slogan of Arab solidarity, or joint Arab action. Matters deteriorated to the point that national unity within Arab countries themselves became threatened, and internal conflicts have been invading these countries at an increasing pace over time. The disintegration is clear now in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Mauritania, and Western Sahara. Palestine stands out as a special case given its long experience confronting colonialism and occupation, but it too has been afflicted by the disease of internal disintegration, which weakens its resolve and keeps its people from achieving some of their aspirations.

How Many Palestinians Are There?

After 1948, Palestinians were classified into two categories: refugees and non-refugees. But the classification has now diversified, such that there are West Bankers and Gazans, and the Palestinians of ‘48, or the Arabs of ‘48, or “Israeli Arabs” as some prefer to call them, and the Palestinians of Lebanon, and the Palestinians of Syria and Jordan, and Fatah-affiliated and Hamas-affiliated, and the Arabs of the Galilee, and the Arabs of the Negev, and Popular Front-affiliated, and “Islam of the North” and “Islam of the South,” etc. We have been torn into various sects and factions, all of them tied to place, to a closed-off, narrow-horizoned political dimension, and to particular concerns manufactured by others for people according to where they happen to be. It is quite possible that tomorrow we will become Haifans and Jaffans, Nabulsis and Hebronites, camp-dwellers and peasants and city folk, the upper neighborhood and the lower neighborhood, the family of so-and-so and the family of such-and-such.

The greatest factor in scattering Palestinians into multiple identities is our own response, as Palestinians, to the policies of others in manufacturing special concerns and preoccupations according to place of residence. And “response” here does not mean voluntary compliance, but rather our inability to develop Palestinian programs capable of neutralizing the effect of these policies. For example, we responded to the policy of division between Palestinians and Jordanians in Jordan, so that those in Jordan came to have concerns of their own different from the concerns of others; and we responded to the policy of the Lebanese government in depriving Palestinians of jobs and work, because we were not equal to the responsibility of arranging our security affairs in a way that protects us without harming the Lebanese. And in the West Bank and Gaza, we responded to the idea of the Palestinian Authority, then responded to factional fanaticism, etc.

The Tribal Mentality

External forces, in cooperation with many Arab regimes and leaderships, developed a policy of manufacturing narrow, special concerns, which in the end is followed by the manufacture of separate cultures. But let us not forget also the tribal mentality that still nests within the Arab conscience generally, and that feeds on the idea of unity, whether at the national or the state level. Indeed, this mentality, which draws on fanaticism, often dominates even religious Muslims, even though they know full well that Islam encouraged mutual acquaintance among people and utterly rejected tribal fanaticism. This mentality continually expresses itself through family conflicts in every city and village, through mediation and favoritism in public institutions, and through partiality, partisanship, and the resolution of disputes, and it often pulls people toward internal fighting more than it pulls them toward fighting external enemies.

This tribal mentality is not confined to families or clans alone, but has extended to include parties and factions, such that parties and factions now look like tribes governed by the same fanatical behavioral patterns that dragged the Arabs into internal disputes and destroyed the idea of the broader society. This is the Palestinian condition now, in that factions and parties largely behave according to tribal standards rather than scientific, professional ones. And every faction and party claims it is concerned with the Palestinian national interest, which in the end amounts to the interest of the party or faction itself.

The Inevitable Fighting

External forces have always combined with the flaws in the Palestinian social fabric, causing the people to suffer internal conflicts of multiple dimensions and forms. Our family feuds before 1948 distracted us from the loftier goal, and some of us went so far as to cooperate with the Zionists and the English in order to achieve internal “victories” over rivals, and Palestinian factions opened fire on one another in Jordan and in Lebanon, and we suffered splits, accusations, and counter-accusations, etc. We crowned this tragedy with the internal fighting whose chapters began to take shape in 1993.

[The disintegration continued after the declaration of independence in] 1988, and the signing of Oslo in 1993. We overstepped our own charters, and did not honor our words and the covenants that govern our internal relations, and there was nothing in that which led to the unity of the people.

Defeats and frustrations and failures played a major role in stoking internal strife. We failed to achieve part of our hopes and aspirations, and in the end accepted many positions we had once considered betrayal and taboo. This led to internal withdrawal, and to an attempt to flee responsibility and place it on the internal enemy or on external conspirators. Under the weight of retreat, peoples lose their internal balance, and society disintegrates further, accusations multiply, morals deteriorate, the level of internal tension rises, and patriotism turns into a false slogan smeared with flowing blood and burning homes.

A Path to the Unity of the People

I mention briefly some points I consider important toward achieving the unity of the Palestinian people, and halting the continuous deterioration of the moral and social fabric — points that lose much of their value if we do not acknowledge that we have failed, and have persisted in claiming illusory victories, and that we must review many of the policies we have followed over time:

First: it is necessary to develop cultural and educational programs that unite the Palestinian people wherever they are present. It is true that the concerns of place matter, but these concerns should be addressed within a broader, more comprehensive cultural and educational dimension than the narrow circle of place. This work is the task of intellectuals and educational experts, not the business of the factions, which have done far more educational harm than good. These people should work under a comprehensive Palestinian umbrella, and I believe that the PLO, after being restructured according to a new charter that brings together the various sectors and segments of the people, should be that umbrella.

Second: adherence to two important principles on our path toward reclaiming our rights: (a) Palestinian national unity takes precedence over appeasing or placating external forces, and our internal strength is the basis of our continuity, not external props. National unity is embodied in the idea of self-reliance as much as possible, and the rejection of everything that leads us to dependency and reliance on others; (b) any Palestinian encroachment on the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people requires Palestinian consensus, otherwise the result will be further internal fighting.

Third: focusing on internal construction to acquire sufficient strength to enable us to wrest our rights, or, if circumstances require, to sit at a genuine negotiating table. Until now, Palestinians have engaged in supplicant negotiations, not negotiations of equals, and in the end the supplicant receives nothing but a bit of charity.

Fourth: it is impermissible to monopolize Palestinian decision-making, whether related to place or to person. Here I point to the monopolization of decision-making that has characterized the Palestinian scene for decades, and to the confinement of the Palestinian cause to the West Bank and Gaza. Others wanted to turn the cause of Palestine into a matter of an occupation that occurred in 1967, and we fell into a trap that works every day to obscure Palestinian awareness and steer people toward their own private interests. Palestine is not the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinian people are far greater than the people present in the West Bank and Gaza.

Fifth: not putting forward initiatives for a solution. We are an oppressed, displaced people, subject to continuous aggression for about a hundred years, and nothing remains for us but to insist on our rights, foremost among them the return of the refugees and the right to self-determination. We have distracted ourselves greatly by proposing solutions that the other side will not hear unless we are strong, and so we have exhausted ourselves, torn ourselves apart, and been treated with contempt by others. Let others propose solutions, and let it be our part to discuss them; others will not propose solutions so long as we ourselves keep proposing solutions whose ceiling keeps lowering with time.

Sixth: the Palestinian Authority as it currently exists is merely a tool, possessing no independence, its neck and the neck of the people encircled by the belt of money coming from donor states, and it is necessary to gradually dispense with it in favor of a Palestinian administrative council composed of independent, patriotic professionals with no ties to states or organizations, tasked with managing people’s civil and daily affairs. This would pave the way toward rebuilding the PLO, which would take over the administration of the Palestinian people’s affairs in various fields.

Reconciliation

Activists focus on Palestinian reconciliation, that is, reconciliation between the Fatah and Hamas movements, and this is a focus I do not see as hitting the mark of the problem. The fighting between Fatah and Hamas is not a cause but rather a result of accumulated problems and failures that have afflicted the Palestinian people; it is not a rare occurrence, but rather one that has repeated itself for a long time: from fighting between families, to fighting between Fatah and the Popular Front, Fatah and the Democratic Front, Fatah and the Nasserists, Fatah and Fatah itself, etc. If we are to address the matter, we must address the roots, some of which I mentioned above. We have reconciled before, exchanged kisses and embraces, but that did not eliminate the causes of the bloody conflict. Hamas and Fatah have signed the Cairo Agreement of 2005 and the Mecca Agreement of 2007, but the practical implementation of what was agreed upon never happened.

It is hard to find a Palestinian who objects to reconciliation, but the matter is far deeper than a mere meeting and the signing of an agreement; it relates to free Palestinian will and the people’s participation in decision-making. So do we possess a free will resting on popular engagement capable of restraining the factions and correcting the national course?

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “وحدة الشعب الفلسطيني” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.