The big question now is whether Hamas can repair the damage done by Oslo.
Palestinians under Fatah had to endure not only the brutality of the Israeli occupation and the shortcomings of Oslo, but also the autocratic police rule of the Palestinian Authority.
January 28, 2006
Hamas victory over Fatah in the legislative race should not come as a surprise to any Middle East observer after the failure of Oslo. This is a democratic revolt against Oslo and its architects and the second phase of the Palestinian Intifada.
The political leadership of Fatah has not been capable of correcting the mistakes and repair the damage inflicted on the Palestinian cause by Oslo that empowered Israel to create the facts on the ground. The Palestinians have realized that Oslo has only provided the legal cover for Israel to colonize what was left of Palestine while ironically the PA under Fatah pretends that there is a peace process in place.
And to make things worse, the top leadership of Fatah who had made all the decisions on behalf of the Palestinians never made the transition from a revolutionary organization to a state builder although Fatah revolution was over, especially for the millions of refugees in Lebanon and Jordan after the signing of the Oslo agreement. Oslo has defused the Palestinian resistance, undermined the resiliency of the Palestinian cause, maintained Israeli control over what is left of Palestine and installed a corrupt Authority (PA) in power.
Oslo has become the obstacle to peace rather than the solution and the reason for the present stagnation of the peace process.
It did not provide principles that would affect the outcome of the proposed negotiations. It reduced the Palestinian issue to how to divide the West Bank and Gaza rather than how to free them and it made the Palestinian refugees feel irrelevant. The late Edward Said warned that Fatah focused only on establishing for itself a presence in part of the post-1967 Palestine and ignored the future of the refugee population in Lebanon and elsewhere in its dealings with Israel and Washington since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accord.
Oslo deprived the 1948 and 1967 Palestinian refugees from the basic right of participation in the Palestinian elections.
It is ironic that Iraqis who acquired citizenship in the US, Britain and other European countries have been given the right to vote in the Iraqi elections for their candidates while the Palestinians who are classified as refugees living in camps have been denied by Oslo the right to participate in the Palestinian elections. Oslo relegated the Palestinian refugee to a non-person status.
The Palestinians under Fatah had to endure not only the brutality of the Israeli occupation and the shortcomings of Oslo, but also the autocratic police rule of the PA including serious human rights violations.
According to Human Rights Watch, "Abuses by Palestinian security forces included torture, suspicious deaths in custody, and incommunicado detention for long periods without charge or trial". The PA under Fatah leadership has become a self-serving quasi-government run as a personal fiefdom and established by Israel to control the Palestinians.
The PA has been perceived by the Palestinians, including young members of Fatah movement who struggled against Israel in the first Intifada, as a dysfunctional administration run by an inert bureaucracy entrenched by a system of patronage and patrimony. The disorder and violence in the West Bank and Gaza are symptoms of resentment and disapproval of the PA performance even among the PA rank and file.
Instead of creating democratic state institutions the late Arafat established authoritarian regime where he ruled by personal fiat and his word became the law. For five years, Arafat chose not to sign any of the laws that the elected Legislative Council had passed. He continued to use the donor’s contributions to control the leadership of different factions of the PLO and enrich the cronies who returned with him from exile instead of building a self-sufficient viable economy to employ the labor force.
Arafat’s cronies and their families have been granted monopolies on importing and selling commodities such as wheat, sugar, gasoline, cattle and chicken feed and building materials to name few. Five years after Oslo, the international donors were alarmed by the corruption and lack of transparency by the PA as reported by a task force. With no productivity or public work, the PA policies created an economy of dependency on exporting cheap labor to Israel. The young Palestinians had to work as day laborers in Israel just to put food on their tables, because they couldn’t hope for finding jobs in the local economy.
Most young job seekers under Fatah rule had to join the police force or wait for a permit to work in Israel. On Fatah’s watch, the Palestinian labor built the houses, schools and stores, paved the streets and watered the gardens of all the settlements in the West Bank and around Jerusalem while its leadership continued to promise establishing a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Fatah leadership cronies imported cement from Egypt and sold it to Israel for use in building the settlements and the wall. Nothing has changed in the leadership rhetoric since Oslo except the size of the promised Palestinian land. The Palestinian leaders have been providing Promises, lip services and rhetoric, but the boundaries of the promised state is continuously shrinking.
After the signing of Oslo, more land was confiscated and the settlements were expanded. It has been estimated that more than 450,000 settlers are living in the West Bank land. Given these conditions that have been created by Israel as "facts on the ground", Palestinians fear that an independent Palestinian entity if ever materialized will comprise only islands within an Israeli dominated West Bank and Gaza. It will be an Israeli protectorate that does not satisfy the interests and ambitions of the Palestinians.
The press office of the Israeli government stated on January 21, 1997 that the policy of settlement building in the West Bank and Gaza was "consistent with the terms of the Oslo Accords".
Acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres who had been described as a moderate and a man of peace said in a 1994 speech: "From our point of view…[the Palestinians] don’t have land, they don’t have authority, they don’t have means. In many ways, …[The negotiations with the Palestinians] is a negotiation with our selves, because what is driving us is the question: what sort of an Israel do we want to have in the future."
The Palestinians found out the hard way the answer to Peres question. The big question now is whether Hamas can repair the damage done by Oslo.
Born in Nablus, Palestine, Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Ph.D. in political science (UC Riverside) is a political analyst and an author. He is currently working on a book entitled: "The betrayal of the Palestinians: How Palestine was delivered." He has been living in the United States since the mid 1960's and has dedicated 30-years of his life to Avionics Engineering. He also holds an MS. in Electrical Engineering (UC Santa Barbara).
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