The authority of the Palestinian Authority
It's a moot point; the Palestinian Authority is struggling to maintain the fiction of its authority in the face of belligerent intransigence on the part of the youth group of its own military contingent. In a way it would be surprising, given the history of the area, if that were not the case. After all, the evil of the Israeli government and military's oversight of the Palestinian Territories is an everyday fact of life for Palestinians, right? In this viewpoint Israel is not a neighbouring country to those others of the Middle East whose right to exist goes uncontested. Hamas and Islamic Jihad and others of their ilk owe their existence to their success in persuading Palestinians that Israel is an interloper in the area and has, through its evil manipulations, managed to wrest land from the Palestinians which is rightfully theirs.No matter that Jews have a time-honoured history in the area, no matter that Jews have always lived in the area, both in what is now Israel itself, and in other countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, for example, from which they have been expelled, their goods and properties seized by the very governments which claim that Israel displaced native Palestinians from land long their ancestors'. This exchange of Palestinians into the general Middle East countries surrounding Israel, for a like number of Jews who sought refuge in Israel was fairly even population-wise, but whereas Israel gladly absorbed these homeless Jews, the Arab countries surrounding it refused to absorb the Palestinians, preferring to leave them a festering sore of discontent whose support was left to the world body to accept.
Palestinian children have been fed a vicious menu of hate against Jews and Israel through the medium of their school textbooks and bitter oral accounts of land wrested from their parents and grandparents. The truth that the combined Arab armies of the surrounding hostile countries chose to attack the nascent State of Israel, recommending to the Paltestinians that they temporarily flee until it would be safe to return after the destruction of the State of Israel, has never formed part of any curriculum.
The PLO under Yasser Arrafat found it expedient to preserve their own version of the truth. The truth was, after all, as they perceived it, and so it was presented and continues to be presented to the present time. When Israel made its agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization to assist it to become the Palestinian Authority and welcomed it however cautiously to begin the long process of establishing itself as a neighbouring country it did so with hope and trust that the PLO was finally sincere in its acceptance of the existence of the State of Israel. The two Intifadas proved the extent of the sincerity. Both of these 'uprisings' were deliberately engineered with a view to destabilizing Israel's security in the region and the world well knows the disasters that unfolded as a reslt.
Now the Palestinian Authority is striving to maintain control of its fractious Palestinian groups. In the middle is the weary general population of Palestinians who wish nothing better than to be able to live their lives with dignity in the pursuit of a decent mode of life, absent the carnage visited upon them by the disruptions of armed militants taunting Israel. Whether there is sincere regret among this mass of misery who surely deserve a better existence, for the brutality of suicide bombings against innocent Israelis is questionable. After all, those who have been found to be complicit in any way with the Israelis have died quick and brutal deaths as traitors to the general Palestinian cause of revenge and the wish to take back the land ceded to Israel through the United Nations.
If any society can be thought to be dystopian surely the Palestinian one would qualify with flying colours. The vast majority wish to be allowed to live their lives in peace, hoping for some modicum of prosperity to be visited upon them in some fabled future. The Palestinian Authority is committed to see that future come to fruition. Yet there are so many die-hard factions of murderous intransigence whose sole purpose appears to be to maintain the untenable situation of destruction - of lives, of hope in the future - that its purpose is continually thwarted.
It's a truly vicious cycle. Until some order can be brought to bear on the society as a whole, where its neighbour can feel a degree of comfort in security then there can be no forward momentum toward statehood and respectable co-existence. Poverty will continue to embitter Palestinians as the insecurity of this no-win position continues to keep them in thrall to the status quo. Foreign investment will be slow to come, opportunities will not present themselves, unemployment will be unabated by failing to open the gates to cross-border commerce.
There is the good-will example of Jewish philanthropists having bought out the deserted greenhouses abandoned by Jewish settlers in their displacement from the Gaza Strip. These greenhouses were earmarked as a starting point for Palestinians living in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority was glad to have them for the support of thousands of indigent families. While the greenhouses are now being worked by thousands of workers now producing cash crops, they face an uncertain future. Some Palestinians began plundering the greenhouses of their integral parts immediately after the Gaza withdrawal, and they have not abandoned their criminal activities since then, even though the greenhouses are providing invaluable support both to the Authority and to the thousands dependent upon them as a resource.
Is this a society working toward the common good, or one that is determined to extinguish all hope for a better future in its determination to fully savour revenge for wrongs real and imagined? When do cooler heads prevail against the dire passions of hate? Israels have long become inured to the devastating hatred. The world has turned its head away, rather than deploring unequivocally the destructiveness of the Palestinian terrorists' intentions.
If the Palestinians are well and truly sick of death and destruction, of a future that continues to be bleak with worry and disappointment, then they must take steps themselves to convince their youth that the path to the future can be joined through co-operation, not ongoing murderous belligerence. Freedom to live decent and rewarding lives will depend on noting less than ending the terrorist attacks continually launched on Israel.
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 25, 2005
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