This Is Not National Unity: Hamas and Fatah Must Transform to Speak on behalf of Palestinians
By Ramzy Baroud
The reconciliation agreement signed between rival Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah, in Cairo on October 12 was not a
national unity accord - at least, not yet. For the latter to be achieved, the agreement would have to make the interests
of the Palestinian people a priority, above factional agendas.
The leadership crisis in Palestine is not new. It precedes Fatah and Hamas by decades.
Since the destruction of Palestine and the creation of Israel in 1948 – and even further back – Palestinians found
themselves beholden to international and regional power play, beyond their ability to control or even influence.
The greatest achievement of Yasser Arafat, the late and iconic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was
his ability to foster an independent Palestinian political identity and a national movement that, although receiving
Arab support, was not entirely appropriated by any particular Arab country.
The Oslo Accords, however, was the demise of that movement. Historians may quarrel on whether Arafat, the PLO and its
largest political party, Fatah, had any other option but to engage in the so-called ‘peace process’. However, in
retrospect, we can surely argue that Oslo was the abrupt cancelation of every Palestinian political achievement, at
least since the war of 1967.
Despite the resounding defeat of Arab countries by Israel and its powerful western allies in that war, hope for a new
beginning was born. Israel reclaimed East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, but, unwittingly unified Palestinians as
one nation, although one that is oppressed and occupied.
Moreover, the deep wounds suffered by Arab countries as a result of the disastrous war, gave Arafat and Fatah the
opportunity to utilize the new margins that opened up as a result of the Arab retreat.
The PLO, which was originally managed by the late Egyptian President, Jamal Abdul Nasser, became an exclusively
Palestinian platform. Fatah, which was established a few years prior to the war, was the party in charge.
When Israel occupied Lebanon in 1982, its aim was the annihilation of the Palestinian national movement, especially
since Arafat was opening up new channels of dialogue, not only with Arab and Muslim countries, but internationally as
well. The United Nations, among other global institutions, began recognizing Palestinians, not as hapless refugees
needing handouts, but as a serious national movement deserving to be heard and respected.
At the time, Israel was obsessed with preventing Arafat from rebranding the PLO into a budding government. In the short
term, Israel achieved its main objective: Arafat was driven to Tunisia with his party’s leadership, and the rest of the
PLO’s fighters were scattered across the Middle East, once more falling hostage to Arab whims and priorities.
Between 1982 and the signing of Oslo in 1993, Arafat fought for relevance. The PLO’s exile became particularly evident
as Palestinians launched their First Intifada (the uprising of 1987). A whole new generation of Palestinian leaders
began to emerge; a different identity that was incepted in Israeli prisons and nurtured in the streets of Gaza and
Nablus was sculpted. The greater the sacrifices and the higher the Palestinian death toll rose, the more heightened that
sense of collective identity grew.
The PLO’s attempt to hijack the Intifada was one of the main reasons why the uprising eventually faltered. The Madrid
talks in 1991 was the first time that true representatives of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories would
take on an international platform to speak on behalf of Palestinians at home.
That endeavor was short-lived. Eventually, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas (today’s head of the Palestinian Authority - PA)
negotiated an alternative agreement secretly in Oslo. The agreement, largely sidelined the United Nations and allowed
the United States to claim its position as a self-proclaimed ‘honest broker’ in a US-sponsored ‘peace process.’
While Arafat and his Tunisian faction were allowed back to rule over occupied Palestinians with a limited mandate
provided by the Israeli government and military, Palestinian society fell into one of its most painful dilemmas in many
years.
With the PLO, which represented all Palestinians, cast aside to make room for the PA - which merely represented the
interests of a branch within Fatah in a limited autonomous region - Palestinians became divided into groups.
In fact, 1994, which witnessed the official formation of the PA, was the year in which the current Palestinian strife
was actually born. The PA, under pressure from Israel and the US, cracked down on Palestinians who opposed Oslo and
justifiably rejected the ‘peace process.’
The crackdowns reached many Palestinians who took leadership positions during the First Intifada. The Israeli gambit
worked to perfection: The Palestinian leadership in exile was brought back to crackdown on the leadership of the
Intifada, while Israel stood aside and watched the sad spectacle.
Hamas, which itself was an early outcome of the First Intifada, found itself in direct confrontation with Arafat and his
authority. For years, Hamas positioned itself as a leader of the opposition that rejected normalization with the Israeli
occupation. That won Hamas massive popularity among Palestinians, especially as it became clear that Oslo was a ruse and
that the ‘peace process’ was moving towards a dead-end.
When Arafat died, after spending years under Israeli army siege in Ramallah, Abbas took over. Considering that Abbas was
the brain behind Oslo, and the man’s lack of charisma and leadership skills, Hamas took the first step in a political
maneuver that proved costly: it ran for the PA’s legislative elections in 2006. Worse, it won.
By emerging as the top political party in an election that was itself an outcome of a political process that Hamas had
vehemently rejected for years, Hamas became a victim of its own success.
Expectedly, Israel moved to punish Palestinians. As a result of US urgings and pressures, Europe followed suit. The
Hamas government was boycotted, Gaza came under constant Israeli bombardment and Palestinian coffers began drying up.
A Hamas-Fatah brief civil-war ensued in the summer of 2007, resulting in hundreds of deaths and the political and
administrative split of Gaza from the West Bank.
Officially, Palestinians had two governments, but no state. It was a mockery, that a promising national liberation
project abandoned liberation and focused mostly on settling factional scores, while millions of Palestinians suffered
siege and military occupation, and millions more suffered the anguish and humiliation of ‘shattat’ – the exile of the
refugees abroad.
Many attempts were made, and failed to reconcile between the two groups in the last 10 years. They failed mostly
because, once more, the Palestinian leaderships leased their decision-making to regional and international powers. The
golden age of the PLO was replaced with the dark ages of factional divisions.
However, the recent reconciliation agreement in Cairo is not an outcome of a new commitment to a Palestinian national
project. Both Hamas and Fatah are out of options. Their regional politicking was a failure, and their political program
ceased to impress Palestinians who are feeling orphaned and abandoned.
For the Hamas-Fatah unity to become a true national unity, priorities would have to change entirely, where the interest
of the Palestinian people - all of them, everywhere - would, once more, become paramount, above the interests of a
faction or two, seeking limited legitimacy, fake sovereignty and American handouts.
- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A
Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a
Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His
website is www.ramzybaroud.net.