mercoledì 30 gennaio 2008

Finally, a popular uprising in Gaza

Amira Hass, Haaretz, 30.1.08. The chance of using the achievement of having breached the wall as a way of moving forward and developing the tactics of a popular struggle is hampered by two primary obstacles. One is what's called the "armed struggle" - such as rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli towns, or a suicide bombing in Israel. The Palestinian mantra that an occupied nation has the right "to fight using all means" rings hollow, since what's at stake is not a right, but the effectiveness of the struggle. The second obstacle is the Ramallah government's entrenched refusal to speak with Hamas. Mahmoud Abbas met with Ehud Olmert without preconditions during the same weekend when Israel imposed the cruelest siege yet on Gaza, but Abbas can't speak to Ismail Haniyeh without the Hamas leader accepting his preconditions?

It has been proven that through popular disobedience, the Palestinians manage to break the Israeli rules of the game and bring their concerns back to the center of global attention - as well as intensifying criticism of Israel. The "armed struggle," especially when it is aimed at civilians, achieves the opposite: It presents the Palestinians as the aggressor, not as the occupied party under attack, thereby weakening their global standing.

If the Gaza government does not want to lose the momentum of the wall's fall, it must not make do with just having its own militants desist from firing Qassams: it must make it clear to other organizations that they are hindering a successful move of resistance.

The second obstacle is the Ramallah government's entrenched refusal to speak with Hamas. These are, after all, two quasi governments whose legality is questionable from the perspective of the Palestinian Authority's basic law. But both represent the same occupied people and the same tract of land subject to an accelerated process of colonization - and that overcomes all legal quibbling. Mahmoud Abbas met with Ehud Olmert without preconditions during the same weekend when Israel imposed the cruelest siege yet on Gaza, but Abbas can't speak to Ismail Haniyeh without the Hamas leader accepting his preconditions?

This boycott contributes to the severance that Israel works so diligently to intensify. The longer the delay in direct talks between the two leaderships over practical ways of lifting the siege of Gaza, the greater the concern that indeed, as Hamas officials argue, the Ramallah government listens to the United States and to Israel - but not to the will of its own people.

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