What Is Required of Diaspora Palestinians

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The mill of the Palestinian cause keeps turning, the cause’s standing deteriorates at every level, and the mass sense of responsibility toward the fixed national rights, inside Palestine and outside it, weakens gradually, on a dangerous downward slope.

At the internal Palestinian level, there is a noticeable decline in national culture and national sentiment, and private concerns have begun to forcefully overshadow the national concern. The reason is essentially due to the conduct of the Palestinian Authority and its normalization and security relations with the Zionist entity, and because of most factions’ disregard for the national cause. National culture has even declined sharply, with daily livelihood concerns replacing concern for public and national causes.

The decline of the Palestinian cause in Palestinian culture in the Gaza Strip and West Bank does not annul the responsibility of diaspora Palestinians toward the cause — if a flag falls from this hand, another hand is supposed to catch it and keep it flying high.

If the policies of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have caused a great chasm in internal Palestinian belonging and commitment, it is all the more fitting for diaspora Palestinians to stand in defense of their fixed national rights, especially since the policies of the Palestinian leaderships have neglected the diaspora just as they have neglected Palestinians inside the territory occupied in ‘48. Relations with Israel have taken precedence over internal Palestinian relations, and reuniting the Palestinian people and uniting it under a single political creed has become one of the matters that might anger Israel and touch relations with it, exposing the falsified leaderships to Israeli pressure.

The PLO cast aside the right of return when it recognized Israel and signed the Oslo Accords, despite its media adherence to this right. Adherence to the right requires setting implementable programs to keep the right of return alive in international forums and in relations with the world’s various states.

So where are the people of the diaspora regarding the right of return, and where are they regarding Palestinian national culture? And where is their role in uniting the Palestinian people? We in the West Bank and Gaza are unable to pump life back into national culture, and unable to unite the people and its energies. So what are you, people of the diaspora, going to do?

We have appealed to you again and again to do something, to carry out activities that would preserve some of our dignity and some of our rights, and found no response. We turned to our people in the refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon to affirm their existence and speak their word, but there was no sign of life. How many times have we turned to the Palestinian factions outside Palestine to develop a Palestinian institution concerned with Palestinian affairs and pushing toward the people’s unity, but it seems they are no different, in their lifelessness, from the Palestinian factions existing inside Palestine. It would be more fitting for the refugees to respond to these calls, since they are the greatest victims of the futile negotiating march that has been underway for long years, but movement in the camps is nearly absent.

In short, the following is required of diaspora Palestinians:

First: inviting senior intellectuals, thinkers, academics, and opinion-holders to a Palestinian conference they might choose to name something like the “Palestinian Diaspora Conference,” to deliberate on the Palestinian cause and come out with preliminary visions regarding its future and all our responsibilities toward it. This responsibility falls on the shoulders of prominent Palestinian names such as Abdel Bari Atwan, Ibrahim Hammami, Sawsan Barghouti, Bassam Abu Ghazaleh, Munir Shafiq, Nabil al-Bashnaq, Ahmad al-Dabbas, Ibrahim Alloush, Abdel Qader Yassin, and so on. There are many Palestinian talents and expertise present abroad, and their numbers are far greater than the numbers of talent within Palestine, and they are supposed to participate in crafting the internal and external Palestinian roadmap.

Second: the Palestinian people is in dire need of drafting a Palestinian charter concerned with Palestinian rights, setting the national and moral principles, foundations, standards, and values that must be upheld at every level. It is unreasonable for the land to be usurped and part of the people to be under occupation while no charter or constitution exists organizing the people’s life and obligating individuals and parties to their responsibilities toward the Palestinian cause. We have repeatedly tried to press toward writing a charter, but the factions are not concerned, and terror grips the hearts of senior intellectuals and thinkers, who do not want to move.

Third: it is required to craft a special reference point for Palestinian culture, not separate from Arab culture, in order to achieve Palestinian cultural unity. The Zionists and Jews united behind the texts contained in the Old Testament, and this Testament formed common ground they meet upon no matter how much they differ or how scattered they become. In our case, the PLO never even undertook to craft a cultural reference point uniting the people wherever they may be — all it cared about was being the sole legitimate representative of the people, until it recognized Israel and employed some of our sons as soldiers serving Zionist security.

We need a cultural reference point that establishes an integrated moral system, clarifies the foundations of social cohesion and the principles of public relations among people, clarifies the responsibilities of individuals, parties, and organizations toward the Palestinian cause, and attends to the foundations of national culture at the artistic, administrative, heritage, and behavioral levels, and so on.

This is a national responsibility of priority and trust, and it is now an individual obligation. The Palestinian situation needs rescuing, and we await the diaspora’s contributions toward turning the clock’s hands back to their proper course.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “المطلوب من فلسطينيي الشتات” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.