In
the past few months, Palestinians in the Diaspora have watched with horror
the latest developments in their homeland. There has been a flurry of
articles about what to do, but overall there is a feeling that they are
helpless to affect the situation on the ground. What has been missing
is an understanding that Palestinians in the Diaspora must undertake a
clear assessment of their own situation if they are to have any impact
at all.
The recent events have cast light on dark deeds: the collaboration between
Mahmoud Abbas and associates like Mohammed Dahlan on the one hand, and
Israel on the other; the transfer of weapons and training by the US and
other countries to certain Palestinian militias, whose mission was to
overthrow the result of the January 2006 election. Palestinians see clearly
that Abbas - who embraces Israeli leaders while refusing to talk to other
Palestinian factions - was the author of the Oslo agreement that never
even mentioned the word "occupation," and is now discussing
a new "agreement of principles" that will cancel the right of
return, legitimize Israeli settlements and threaten other basic rights.
In short, what we have now is a clique of collaborators in control of
Fatah and the Palestinian Authority "presidency" and much of
what is left of the PLO.
In the Western Diaspora - Canada, the United States and Europe - in the
past ten years, by contrast, Palestinians have undergone something of
a revival. There has been growth in numbers, institutions and activities.
For the most part, this has been dependent on young people. For example,
students' networks like Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR)
in Canada and the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) in the US, along
with Al-Awda, are all overwhelmingly composed of people under 35 years
old. These networks came into existence after the collapse of Palestinian
institutions in the Diaspora, following the signing of the Oslo Accords
in 1993. At that time, PLO institutions were sidelined by the Oslo leadership
in exchange for the creation of the Palestinian Authority (only to be
resurrected recently as a rubber stamp for Abbas' collaboration with Israel
last month), effectively leaving the Diaspora disenfranchised.
Many long-established local Palestinian groups, particularly those associated
with the dominant factions, were not able to adapt to the new realities.
They failed to provide the basic services, assistance and representation
any immigrant community center must provide to its constituency. But they
also let the community down politically, failing to take strong public
positions challenging the flaws of Oslo, or engaging in effective organizing.
This led to a decline in membership in many community centers, dropping
from the thousands to mere dozens.
In the absence of alternative structures for representation, and with
the emergence of the Internet, groups like SPHR and Al-Awda, among others,
and independent media like The Electronic Intifada started popping up
across North America in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. After the second
intifada broke out, they became the most visible and vocal forces standing
up to Israeli and Zionist propaganda, providing a mechanism for young
Palestinians in the Diaspora to talk to each other and organize. Thus,
they also provided an invaluable service to the community: self-education
and celebration. Zionist institutions grudgingly credited these projects
with challenging the monopoly they had held on the western media narrative,
making it harder to pass pro-Israeli propaganda without a response from
an increasing number of articulate individuals.
Of course these successes were not without hardships. There were the dark
times after 2001, as pro-Israel groups launched their weight against the
most visible advocates of Palestinian rights. In Canada, student activists
were targeted with expulsions and criminal charges and in the United States,
professors who were deemed too outspoken were the focus of intense campaigns
of vilification and intimidation. At the same time, US authorities tried
to send a message with politically-motivated prosecutions against individuals
like Professor
Sami al-Arian. Despite all these efforts, the community, as a whole,
has not been frightened.
The battle that has gotten less attention has been the one within the
community. The self-proclaimed community leaders and associations of the
old guard largely avoided publicly supporting many of those on the front
lines or even worked clandestinely to undermine them. In some cases, it
was the innocent warnings from frightened parents to their children, "don't
join SPHR!" In others, it was the attempts to hold "dialogue"
groups, presenting the "civilized" Arab as an alternative. For
instance, right after the "Concordia Uprising" in 2002, when
Benjamin Netanyahu was denied his right to spread hate speech, the Concordia
Administration held a panel discussion with a few Zionist and Arab individuals.
One of the tokens said "We can be civilized; see, we can agree to
disagree!"
Yet these obstacles were never more than minor distractions to the Palestinian
movement in the west, until the movement really started to take off. The
lightning rods targeted by Zionist organizations survived. This only encouraged
more people to be involved, and emboldened them. Along with all the remarkable
achievements of the movement within the student and labor unions and the
anti-war movement, this created an unprecedented amount of maneuvering
space for Palestinians. And here is where the problems started. Suddenly,
all those "liberal" and "civilized" individuals understood
that the train was leaving without them. Having failed to stop the movement,
some are desperately trying to regain legitimacy in order to take control
of this new space.
In the US and Canada, there have been calls for national meetings to formulate
umbrella organizations that would speak on behalf of all Palestinians
living there. But why now, and who is involved? Two things need to be
pointed out before we answer these questions. First, for the most part,
the front line organizations like SPHR and Al-Awda are defined as "solidarity
groups," although they are founded and led by Palestinians and even
the majority of their membership is Palestinian. Second, these groups
are not affiliated with any of the "old country" feuds or factions
because their membership is mostly young and never belonged to these factions.
This is relevant because some actors have insisted that these incipient
national organizations be centered on these old and largely irrelevant
factional identities. Others are insisting that only Palestinians be allowed
to participate, which opened the discussion of who is a Palestinian. These
issues are being purposefully exaggerated in order to exclude solidarity
groups and/or give more voting power to failed "community groups."
The constant talk of blood quantum ("only your mother is Palestinian!")
is also designed as psychological pressure against the young students
to make it uncomfortable to be in those meetings.
Why is all this happening now? When the day comes for Abbas to sign on
the line - giving up Palestinian rights - he needs a Diaspora leadership
that is in line with his decisions. In Canada, almost all Palestinian
advocacy and community groups have been involved in these efforts, but
our tried, tested and failed "elite" are trying very hard to
take the helm once again - if not by democracy, then by any means necessary.
Since these discussions started last year, some of the steadfast individuals
have received physical threats and even death threats. And things have
not gotten serious yet.
In the past two years in Europe, Palestinians were able to form an umbrella
group that actually challenged the Abbas line, and tried to challenge
the ban on the elected Hamas government. It may be no coincidence that
now the old "elite" in Canada are receiving backing from Abbas
and his entourage. Since last year, there has been a rash of Fatah visits
to Canada and the US where the primary goal is meeting with prospective
allies here, to prepare them for seats in a revived (but Abbas controlled)
PLO. Fatah sent senior representatives to rally the support of Palestinians
in Canada late last year and this summer, following the events in Gaza
and promised rewards to potential allies.
Palestinians in the Diaspora need to learn the lesson from Gaza and Lebanon.
Although all Palestinians desire unity, it is impossible, because of those
who are actively collaborating with the Israeli agenda and seeking to
undermine the Palestinian movement for liberation. We cannot allow those
who hijacked Palestinian institutions in Palestine in order to serve Israel
to do the same in the Diaspora.
Many have argued that we need to revive and democratize the PLO, but the
question is how to do that. It is clear that those who still control the
PLO structures will never willingly allow this to happen. There must be
grassroots pressure to bring that about. If the PLO is not open to democratization,
we should call for national and international conferences for all Palestinian
communities to form a new democratic organization that represents all
sections of our society. It will be an enormous challenge, but it is one
we have to meet to make clear there is no mandate and no possibility for
Abbas, or any other would-be collaborator, to sign away Palestinian rights.
Judging from the emerging agenda of the US-planned "peace conference"
in November, it may be now or never for us to act.
[This commentary originally
appeared in The Electronic Intifada.]
Laith Marouf is the Chapter Coordinator of SPHR, the largest network
of students working on Palestinian human rights in North America. He can
be reached at [email protected]
or visit www.sphr.org for more information.
|