Honouring Traditions
Events marking celebrations of anniversaries related to conquest or attempts at unseating an enemy, characterized as bringing honour to the tribe resonates with popular opinion clinging to the belief that their struggle, not merely for autonomy, but for the purpose of bringing that enemy to its knees has no parallel in the West.Events that history has demonstrated brought no glory to its participants are better forgotten, as the society strives to better its future opportunities. Not so in the Palestinian Authority which recalls not bitter defeats but glorious uprisings and the delivery of not only the promise of death, but themselves as helpful pall-bearers to the Grim Reaper.
Here is the PA under Mahmoud Abbas, the universally acknowledged moderate among the Palestinian political elite, excoriating Israel and its negotiators for issuing building permits on disputed land which Israel has no intention of forfeiting in any discussions, while itself doing nothing whatever to halt the violent and frequent assaults against Israel.
A country born in hope, in an ancestral homeland, among the descendants of other tribal groups in whose apprehension the presence of a Jewish state in a Muslim-dominated and - Islamist-pledged geography is recognized as the ultimate intruder, a plague, an omen that the West has designs on the larger geography.
Its population held to the ransom of the encircling Arab majority, reeling at the insult to Islam, at the displacement of Arab inhabitants to accommodate the legitimate status of a new state. A Zionist entity loathed and virulently disparaged by the surrounding countries.
And when the group onslaught of combined states' attacks failed to solve their dilemma, a fanatical jihadist movement was born. Conquest would be achieved, by bloody jihad. With the help of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yasser Arafat formed his Palestinian National Liberation Movement, the PLO, and history added another chapter to grievance, vengeance and irresolvable land disputes.
The fact is, the land in question was not in the ownership of the Palestinian population to begin with; they were present under the administration of Jordan in the West Bank, and Egypt in Gaza. They were the modern equivalent of satrapies. The fact is, the Palestinians always chafed under their uneasy condition as dependents; their neighbours were always loathe to grant them the opportunity for independence and self-rule.
But a people, like individuals, always choose to remember what benefits them in relation to quasi-supporters, while elevating perceived wrongs to the status of unbearable constraints upon their potential advantages. Which is why dividing the territory between themselves as residents and the new State of Israel, as an independent country, was unthinkable and an affront to their honour.
But honour is recalled in the 43rd-year anniversary marking the first attempt of Fatah to launch a terror attack on Israel, through the attempted bombing of the National Water Carrier in 1965. The attack, although a failure, led to a continued campaign of bombing that year.
And Mahmoud Abbas stood out front and centre at Ramallah celebrations on New Year's Eve 2007, to honour that historic occasion - feting honour and jihad. Clinging to that same collective neurosis of honour in jihad, Fatah's charter still cherishes its original goal of the "eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence".
Not that the violence-driven militias haven't done their best to realize that goal. And affirmed it on occasion as well, as when in an earlier anniversary communique of 2001, Fatah issued a brief that it "believes that a legitimate Palestinian entity forms the most important weapon that Arabs have against Israel, the outpost of the imperialist powers".
Not too much has changed since that post-9/11 declaration. Al-Qaeda realized its greatest success in the impact its attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon had on world realization that it was a force to be reckoned with. The issue of the Palestinians and Israel's presence in the Middle East is still used as the primary instrument to bring Arab opinion to coalesce in outrage against both Israel and the countries seen as its sponsors.
Osama bin Laden can complacently issue calls for co-ordinated attacks on Israel by disparate terror groups. He feels that single issue should unite them all - regardless of other rivalry and tribal issues - in a single dedicated purpose of destruction.
The distance between Fatah and al-Qaeda seems to narrow as time goes on. The earnestness with which Fatah pledges itself to a search for peace with Israel, as long as Israel unhappily prepares to surrender itself to Fatah's demands is but the slim edge of the wedge.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 01, 2008
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