Fragmenting Palestine: The alphabets of defeat

RAMZY BAROUD-

 MAY 5, 2015

Former American president Jimmy Carter cancelled a visit to the besieged Gaza Strip, which was scheduled for Thursday, April 30. Carter’s main objective was to help Hamas and its rival Fatah party achieve reconciliation.

While Carter’s efforts are most welcome, it is quite disquieting that Palestine’s main political parties have failed to unite at the most sensitive juncture of Palestinian history since the Nakba of 1948. The 67-year anniversary of that historical ‘catastrophe’ is approaching, yet Palestinian leaders seem to be in no hurry to sort out their supposedly insurmountable conflict, which split Palestinian society around geographic, ideological and political lines.

But it is the ongoing Nakba that represents Palestine’s greatest challenge: the refugees who were never allowed a home; the occupation that has never ceased; and the Israeli wars that continue to carry on unabated and unpunished.

And then, there is Yarmouk, which despite its unending agony, it has yet to inspire feuding Palestinians to bury the hatchet and unite to save the devastated and starved Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus.

Even before Palestinian refugees found themselves embroiled in Syria’s conflict, many of us appealed to all parties involved — including the Palestinian leaderships (alas, there are several) —in order to spare the refugees the burden of war, and in the hope that Palestinians would set their differences aside to avoid a repeat of Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq.

Nothing happened, as if recent history was of no consequence and offered no lessons. Hamas was stuck in Gaza, in a real and figurative sense — and its attempt at regional politicking was a failure.

Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and whatever branch of his Fatah party currently at the helm is stuck in his Area A — a supposedly self-governed region that constitutes about 3 per cent of the West Bank. While the Israeli army can still raid Area A that is made mostly of densely populated cities — arresting Palestinians at will — Abbas is entrusted in managing the affairs of the Palestinians there, which should have been an Israeli responsibility as an Occupying Power, under the Geneva Conventions.

Area B, which is under joint security control between Israel and the PNA, consumed about 23-25 per cent of the West Bank that is comprised mostly of nearly 400 Palestinian villages that are virtually under Israeli control. But a whopping 72 per cent of the West Bank is under Israeli control, that’s where the colonies are mostly located, and the Israeli military rules with an iron fist.

While Israel sees the entirety of Palestine as its geographic domain, and the whole Middle East region as its political and security domains, Abbas is merrily stuck in Area A — 3 per cent of the West Bank and less than one per cent of the total size of historic Palestine. Area A is his bread and butter, his reason for existence as a ‘President’ ruling over a population trapped by Israeli walls and checkpoints, Israel-PNA security coordination and the humiliating need for a paycheck at the end of each month.

No unifying vision

But while many of us were focused on discrediting Oslo and its defeatist culture, we too are stuck in Area A. We cannot break free from reducing Palestine and the Palestinian people and millions of Palestinian refugees to Area A. We didn’t do this out of malice, or because we don’t care of Yarmouk in Syria, Ein Al Hilweh in Lebanon or Baladiat in Iraq. As we laboured to discredit Oslo, we had no unifying vision outside the confines of Oslo, thus, were trapped in its disempowering language and impossible geography.

Yet the process of fragmenting Palestine is as old as the conflict, and has been dictated largely by Israel, as many of us, including Israel’s detractors followed suit, unknowing that they are contributing to the very process that was meant to marginalise numerous Palestinian communities.

When Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, we spoke of “Palestinian territories” not Palestine. Progressively, Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, were dropped from the Palestinian and Arab political discourse as if they ceased being Palestinian.

When Oslo was signed, we borrowed its deliberately despairing terminologies and confusing geography of Areas A, B and C.

We often learn about the existence of Palestinian villages that happened to fall in the way of the Israeli Separation — read: Apartheid — Wall, simply because they fell in the way of the Israeli bulldozers defacing Palestinians land.

We speak of Gaza when Israel bombs Gaza. In fact, Gaza became central to the Palestine discourse just after the Israeli siege in 2007. Prior to that it was an addendum in a political language centred mostly in the West Bank, primarily in Ramallah, the seat of the throne of Area A.

In other words, willingly or unwillingly, we are trapped in Israeli definitions, some united at times by their love for Israel, others by their loathing of Israel and its occupation, but all in agreement that Israel and only Israel dictates our actions and reactions.

Thus when Palestinians are starved, beheaded or blown to smithereens in Yarmouk, we stand puzzled. We offer sympathy, tears and little action. We cannot even articulate a coherent discourse, aside from pulling out UN Resolution 194 from some dusty archive to talk about the Right of Return, and how the suffering in Yarmouk is ultimately Israel’s responsibility. Proud by our efforts, we carry on with life as if we saved the refugees, all at once, with a single link to a UN website.

When Israel carried out its war on Gaza last summer, nearly 150,000 people protested in London in another massive show of solidarity, duplicated in many cities across the world. For Yarmouk, about 40 people showed up, an admirable effort, but expressive of the fact that the refugees no longer exist at the heart of the Palestine discourse.

In the constant attempt at exposing Israeli injustices against Palestinians, most of us were duped into an Israeli-PNA attempt at reducing Palestine into a tiny margin of its actual physical and political spaces that extend from Palestine —the entirety of Palestine — all across the Middle East, hovering above Yarmouk, as it has for many years, without us noticing.

We are trapped in Area A, making an occasional crossover to Areas B and C, only to get back to Area A, where it is relatively safe and easy to fathom and explain. We are stuck behind Israeli walls and checkpoints as we are failing to see the massive space that is Palestine, and the millions of refugees still holding on to tattered deeds and rusty keys, since we promised that their Right of Return is paramount.

Did we lie? Were we lied to? It is more like we were duped into a pseudo-reality that was crafted so proficiently by Israel, and we are finding it extremely difficult to break away from its confines.

But if our hate for the Israeli occupation, and our loathing of Israeli policies are greater than our love for the Palestinians, all of them, starting with the refugees dying in Yarmouk, then, perhaps, it is time to reconsider our understanding and relationship with the conflict altogether.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. He is currently completing his PhD studies at the University of Exeter. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).