Is Fatah rocking chance for national unity

Is Fatah rocking chance for national unity

The ongoing Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip once again underscores the genocidal approach the Israeli state is adopting toward the Palestinian people.


Israel, after all, has always behaved in this manner toward our people. In fact, one can argue without a bit of exaggeration that the Zionist enterprise in Palestine was from the very inception a project of liquidation and eradication.  Just read Israel’s history and you will see that Israel is actually an uninterrupted chain of atrocities and massacres.


The daily killings in Gaza should also be viewed as a pawn in the intensive political competition between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the Kadima Party and Ehud Barak of the Labor Party.


And while both are certified war criminals, par excellance, it is amply clear that Barak is hell-bent on becoming  Israel’s next Prime Minister. And his way of effecting reaching  the helm of power in the evil state is by killing and maiming  more and more and yet more Palestinians, every day and every hour and every minute.


There are certain reasons for the shocking escalation of Israeli criminality. First, there is the disgraceful inter-Palestinian rift between Hamas and Fatah which has reached the point of absurdity.


Indeed, where in the world a “President” and his aides and so-called ministers meet and socialize and exchange kisses  and spend convivial evenings  with the leaders of their enemy,  while their people, including children and women, are being slaughtered en mass by that enemy?


One  is prompted to ask in all bitterness and in all honesty why would any rational person think that Israel would spare the lives of our children and civilians when the so-called legitimate  leadership in Ramallah is keeping up efforts to destabilize and implode the Gaza Strip , often by instructing  Fatah militiamen to plant bombs beneath cars and  in public places,  so that when these explosive devices go off innocent people will be killed and mutilated?


It is nice that the chairman of the Palestinian Authority has condemned the Gaza massacres. It is also an auspicious sign to see the Ramallah-based government declare a three-day national mourning for the victims of Zionist barbarianism and to see Mr. Salam Fayadh offer his condolences to Dr. Mahmoud al Zahar, who  has lost his second son, Husam,  to Judeo-Nazi hatred and criminality.


However, things should not stop at these symbolic gestures. The Palestinian people, at least for the sake of the blood of the martyrs, expect the Ramallah regime to immediately start a process of  true rapprochement with the embattled government of Gaza.  First, Abbas should carry out an honest and serious investigation into the failed assassination plot to murder the democratically-elected Prime Minister Ismael Haniya. Fatah has denied any involvement, however denials alone are not sufficient to dispel real fears that at least some elements within the organization are implicated from head to toe in this cheap and Zionist-inspired treachery.


The Palestinian people expect Abbas and Fayadh to immediately launch an investigation into this affair, otherwise what is the point in offering condolences to Mahmoud Zahar while consenting to treasonous efforts by a high-ranking Fatah leader to assassinate Ismale Haniya?


Launching a genuine investigation into this disgraceful plot to murder Haniya would foster a positive atmosphere between Gaza and the West Bank, while ignoring the matter and making counter-accusations would only exacerbate the rift and worsen the mutual distrust.


More to the point, we must stop the futile and pointless arguments as to who shall make the first step. It is a great shame to even  invoke such  questions when our children and men and women are slaughtered in droves by an enemy that knows no humanity or morality.


There is no doubt that the Palestinian masses will respect and honor the party that makes the first step, the party that swallows its honor and reaches out to the other side for the sake of national unity.


I am saying this because it is pointless to maintain the status quo between Hamas and Fatah since the only beneficiary from this pathetic state of affairs, where the Gaza Strip is reduced to a kind of Ghetto Warsaw and the West Bank  is morphed into a kind of Palestinian Judenrate,  is Israel and the enemies of the Palestinian people. This is the same Israel that views both Fatah and Hamas and all other Palestinians as a people that ought to be annihilated. Just take a look at Israeli talk-shows and you will know what I am talking about.


A few days ago, an Israeli Rabbi of Iraqi origin called Palestinians and Arabs “donkeys.”


According to the right-wing Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, the Rabbi, Yitzhak Basri, told followers  that “the Arabs are donkeys and beasts; they are inferiors, they are imbued with the filth of a snake, there are pure people  and impure people, and the Arabs are  impure. As to why did God not create them to walk on all fours, since they are donkeys?  The reason is that they must build and clean, but must always understand that they are donkey’s. There is no room for them in our schools.”


There should be no doubt whatsoever that Barak and most of the rest of Israeli political and military leaders, not to mention the Israeli military establishment from the lowest-ranking soldier to the highest-ranking officer, hold virtually identical  views toward the Palestinians.


After all, one wouldn’t murder all these innocent people with such a shocking ease and  shocking wantonness if one didn’t view the victims as animals and sub-humans that ought to be exterminated.


And let there be no illusion that Israel is committing these pornographic atrocities because of  the firing of “rockets” from the Gaza Strip onto Israeli settlements on the other side of the border.


Israel is a state that lies as often as it breathes. It is a country that would be willing to carry out a holocaust against another people and then defend the colossal crime as a legitimate exercise of self-defense. We are talking about a depraved state, ruled by vile war criminals who very much resemble the gurus of Nazism.


In light, it is imperative that Fatah and Hamas forget the past and start a genuine and honest process of national reconciliation now. This would be an appropriate response to ongoing genocide in Gaza.


Failing to do so, God forbid,  would spell disaster  for the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian people and for Hamas and Fatah alike. It would also give Israel a clear green light  to carry out even more pornographic massacres in the West Bank and Gaza and murder every Palestinian leader who dares  say “No” to Zionazism.