Holding True

=By= Ramzy Baroud

Ali Abumghasib knows little about the current intrigues of the Fatah Movement, or, perhaps, he is just not interested. Although he has dedicated most of his life fighting within its ranks, he never saw his membership in Fatah as his defining identity. For him, it was, and will always remain, about Palestine and nothing else.

Now living in an old, rusty and tiny caravan somewhere in Gaza, Ali has no money, no family, but also no regrets. We spoke at length about his life. He wanted to share his story, and I wanted to understand what went wrong in what was once Palestine’s leading movement.

Now that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who is also the Head of Fatah, is fighting an open and covert war to keep his party together, Fatah is facing yetanother crisis.

The current struggle to inherit one of the two largest political movement in Palestine (the second being Hamas) promises to be dirty, especially since the Old Guard is losing its grip, as a younger, more vibrant, generation is ready to step in and take over long-overdue power. A split in Fatah could mean the partial or total collapse of the PA, which is dominated by Fatah members. When rightwing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently ordered his government to prepare for the possible collapse of the PA, the Fatah leaders immediately took notice, dismissing Netanyahu’s claims and asserting that everything is still under control.

But this is not the same Fatah that Ali had fought for or, more precisely, fought within; because, for the 65-year-old man, with failing health and marks of torture that can be traced all over his body, Fatah was a mere platform that allowed him to fight Israel, with the promise that his struggle would take him, and a million other refugees, back to their villages and homes in Palestine. Since he joined Fatah’s military bases in Jordan, in 1968, refugees have not returned, as their numbers have now exceeded the five million mark. Concurrently, Fatah morphed to become the Palestinian Authority, whose very survival is dependent on Israeli political support and the West’s financial handouts.

Ali Abumghasib is a Palestinian Bedouin, from the nomadic tribes that lived in the Bir Al-Saba region in Palestine. In 1948, his family lost everything. His father became a squatter in the land of some Gaza feudalist, herding a few sheep in a pitiful attempt to survive. Ali, who was born in 1951, ran away from home just months after Israel occupied the Gaza Strip (and the rest of historic Palestine) in 1967, without even informing his parents of his decision. The parents died as poor refugees in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, without ever going back to Palestine, without ever seeing Ali again, and without their pride.

This may seem like a typical refugee story, but it is far from that. For Ali’s odyssey that followed was not only compelled by circumstances, but also choices that for the rest of us may seem extraordinary. From Gaza, he sneaked through the ‘death zone’ border area to Israel, then to the occupied West Bank, where he hid in the Hebron hills, before being smuggled with a tribe that escaped the war to Jordan. There, he joined Fatah and, only months later, enlisted in his first mission, code-named the ‘Green Belt’. The daring operation represented the rise of Fatah, following the collapse of the Arab armies in the 1967 war.

But the sudden collapse of pan-Arabism, following the ‘Naksa’ or ‘Setback’ of 1967, ushered in the rise of Palestinian nationalism, led by Arafat, George Habash and others, who took charge of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and began articulating a unique, unprecedented Palestinian discourse. The new struggle for Palestine had shifted from seeing Palestine primarily as an Arab priority, into one that was essentially Palestinian.

Although Arafat is often remembered for signing the Oslo peace accords with Israel, which led to the rupture of Palestinian unity and the breakdown of the entire national liberation project, Ali remembers him as the man who managed to restore Palestinian hope after the defeat of 67. To assert the rise of the new war of liberation, a guerrilla warfare, by the logic of that period, was a must, and Ali fought many battles so that Fatah and the PLO could make it clear to Israel that sealing the fate of Palestinian refugees was far from over. In the ‘Green Belt’, Ali and 39 other fighters selected from four factions, infiltrated Israel from the Jordanian border, killing several soldiers and capturing two in order to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners.

However, the real rise of Fatah was truly marked in the Al-Karameh battle in 1968, in which the Jordanian army, together with various PLO factions, took part. True, the Israelis destroyed most of the PLO camps at the Jordan border, but were driven out in what, unexpectedly, turned into an all-out war. Ali fought that war too, and remembers how the morale of the fighters, despite their heavy losses, changed overnight. Soon, however, the empowered PLO factions found themselves in another all-out war, this time against the Jordanian army. The outcome was devastating, not just because it saw the death of thousands and the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan, but the capture of Ali himself. Injured in the civil war, Ali was sentenced to death and was held in Al-Jafr desert prison before he escaped to Syria.

There was, indeed, a time when Fatah and the Hafiz Al-Assad regime got along just fine, but that was a short phase in what later became quite a tumultuous relationship between Fatah and the Assads throughout the years.

Ali fought since he was a teenager, and spent most of his life either in battle (as a member of Fatah) or in prison. In all the Arab jails where Ali was held prisoner, he was a guest in Syrian dungeons the longest, staying a total of 10 years. In his last prison stint he was held, along with 80 other people, in a four by four-meter prison cell. Following the Syrian-uprising which turned into war, he was deported to Lebanon.

That was the same Lebanon where Ali fought the Israelis, and also fought the Phalange Christians. After the PLO left Jordan, Lebanon became the new battlefield. But Lebanon’s protracted conflicts made it an unsuitable host for the PLO. In 1975, Fatah-led PLO factions were at the heart of Lebanon’s civil war, triggered partly by the Phalange massacre in Ein Al-Rumaneh, where nearly 50 Palestinian children were ambushed and murdered. The details of that dirty war are still as fresh in Ali’s memory as if it happened recently. His anger is still palpable, as is his defense of the PLO conduct there.

Ali, despite old age, failing health and the awful scars of bullets and torture marks, insists that if he were to have the chance again, he would fight the Israelis with the same enthusiasm as a young man. In fact, when the Lebanese deported him to Egypt in 2014, and the Egyptians deported him to Gaza a few days later, he tried to volunteer with the Gaza Resistance. The young men respectfully declined. Ali is handsome, but disheveled, with a bushy beard, missing teeth and many wrinkles. When he walks his left foot seems to drag behind him as if it is connected to his torso by mere skin.

Ali Abumghasib may seem like a relic of a bygone era. But the fact is, Ali has remained committed to Fatah’s early revolutionary principles, where the fight was, in fact, for a homeland and not international handouts; for freedom, not false prestige; for national liberation, not useless titles.

Those involved in the current power struggle within Fatah are possibly unaware of who Ali is and of the values which he stubbornly defends to this day. It is important, though, that they take notice, before all is lost

Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Contributing Editor Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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=By= Ramzy Baroud, PhD

M. Abbas

Although intended to inspire his Fatah Party followers, a televised speech by Mahmoud Abbas on the 51st Anniversary of the group’s launch highlighted, instead, the unprecedented crisis that continues to wreak havoc on the Palestinian people. Not only did Abbas sound defensive and lacking in any serious or new initiatives, but his ultimate intention appeared as if it was about his political survival, and nothing else.  

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net.

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The Big Lie

=By= Yves Engler

RThe big lie is a propaganda technique generally employed when telling the truth would be unfavorable to your side. It goes like this: never admit doing any wrong and instead always insist on a story that portrays your side as the good guys. What really happened is irrelevant. The key is repetition. Do it often enough and loudly enough until most people believe you.

While the big lie is most often associated with authoritarian governments, its use is actually quite widespread. For example, the Montreal Gazette recently published a front page article claiming Jewish students at Concordia University were “feeling like the target of a hate campaign.” The reason cited, as far as this writer can tell, was simply that many students were standing in solidarity with Palestinians.

At the end of November, the student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights organized BDS Week. Without citing a single incident of actual racism, the Gazette painted a picture of the discussion series as hateful. Reporter Karen Seidman simply quoted an individual decrying “a hostile environment on campus” and another who denounced “speakers slandering Israeli tactics and spewing hate.”

In her article, Seidman also labeled a referendum held last year in which undergraduates voted to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as “contentious” and downplayed its significance by saying only “a tiny fraction” of the overall student body participated.

So why is this a big lie?

First, the side favored is portrayed as a victim of “hate” with no evidence presented except criticism of the Israeli state causing hurt feelings. Second, and most important, the article blissfully ignores any historical background that would present Palestinian sympathizers in a positive light or even provide context for what they are doing.

It abjectly fails to even get any comment from any supporter of BDS. The reporter writes that she tried and failed to get a comment from the organizers, but it should surely not be beyond a reporter’s ability to get an alternative pro-BDS voice.

And while portraying a rather modest week of solidarity events as hateful, the reporter also ignores how a well-funded Concordia institute has engaged in an effort to erase Palestinians from historical memory.

In 2011, multibillionaire David Azrieli gave Concordia $5 million to set up the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies.

The institute established the first minor degree program in Israel studies at a Canadian university.

This wasn’t a disinterested, apolitical donation. Azrieli, an Israeli-Canadian real estate magnate who died last year, was a staunch defender of Israel. He did not hide his affiliation, happily asserting that “I am a Zionist and I love the country.”

During the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, he was an officer in a largely Anglo-Saxon brigade of the Haganah, a Zionist military force. Led by Major Ben Dunkelman, a Canadian veteran of the Second World War, the Seventh Brigade played a leading role in the infamous Operation Hiram.

Dozens of villages in the north of Palestine were depopulated and destroyed during that offensive. The operation, initiated in October 1948, included several massacres of Palestinian villagers.

As many as 94 Palestinians were killed in the village of Saliha alone. A Jewish National Fund official, Yosef Nahmani, noted in his diary that between 50 and 60 peasants in Safsaf were killed and buried in a pit after the village’s inhabitants “had raised a white flag.”

In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe notes that few brigade names appear in the oral testimonies that have been gathered about the Nakba: “However, Brigade Seven is mentioned again and again, together with such adjectives as ‘terrorists’ and ‘barbarous.’”

Since opening at Concordia, the Azrieli Institute has proven a potent advocate for Israel on campus. In June, the institute hosted the Association for Israel Studies’ annual conference.

After attending the conference, the right-wing Israeli academic Gerald Steinberg described Azrieli’s $5 million donation as part of a “counterattack” against pro-Palestinian activism at Concordia.

The institute is largely designed to erase Palestinians from their historical connection to their homeland. Its website fails to even mention the word Palestine.

In a December 2014 letter to the Montreal Gazette, Nakina Stratos noted: “Browsing through the website of the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies, I was not able to find the words ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian people.’ How can an institute that teaches about the history of Israel not mention Palestine on its website? This, to me, intersects with the far-right Israeli narrative, which is a total confiscation of Palestinian history, and an attempt to erase the concept of Palestine from the dictionary of the Middle East.”

But rather than investigate how Palestinian students feel about a richly endowed university institute that erases their existence, the Gazette’s education reporter chose to focus on assertions of persecution by those who would do the erasing.

The perpetrators of oppression and their supporters instead become victims. Those who stand up for the oppressed are portrayed as bullies.

That is the big lie at work.

Yves Engler is the author of The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy. His Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation will be published in September and he will be speaking across the country in the lead up to the election. For information on speaking engagements go to Yvesengler.com.

Source
Article: Dissident Voice
Lead Graphic: Boy in Rafah rubble by Zoriah.net.

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=By= Ramzy Baroud

Lifting the siege for 48 provided a brief a respite, and helped to break the sense of collective captivity felt by entrapped Palestinians.

When Egypt decided to open the Rafah border crossing which separates it from Gaza for two days, December 3 and 4, a sense of guarded relief was felt in the impoverished Strip. True, 48 hours were hardly enough for the tens of thousands of patients, students and other travelers to leave or return to Gaza, but the idea that a respite was on its way helped to break, albeit slightly, the sense of collective captivity felt by entrapped Palestinians.

Of course, the Rafah border crisis will hardly be resolved by a single transitory decision, mainly because Gaza is blockaded for political reasons, and only a sensible political strategy can end the suffering there or, at least, lessen its horrendous impact.

Palestinians speak angrily of an Israel siege on Gaza, a reality that cannot be countered by all the official Israeli hasbara and media distortions. In fact, not only is it far worse than a blockade as an economic restriction but it is a constant violent process aimed at brutalizing, and punishing a community of 1.9 million people. However, the Egyptian closure of the Rafah border crossing, which has contributed to the ‘success’ of the Israeli siege is rarely discussed within the same context: as a political decision first and foremost.

Securing the Border?

In a border-related agreement that was reportedly signed mid-November between Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas and Egypt’s Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, both sides seemed genial and unperturbed about the tragedy bubbling up north of the Egyptian border.

The ‘activities’ near Rafah were intended to “secure the border,” Sisi told Abbas, according to a statement issued by the Egyptian President’s office. These activities “could never be meant to harm the Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip.”

The term ‘activities’ here is, of course, a reference to the demolishing of thousands of homes alongside the 12-kilometer border between Rafah in Gaza and Egypt, in addition to the destruction and flooding of hundreds of tunnels, which have served as Gaza’s main lifeline that sustained the Strip throughout the Israeli siege during most of the last decade.

Abbas, of course, has no qualms about the Egyptian action, the result of which has been the closure of the Rafah crossing for 300 days in 2015 alone, according to a new study originating in Gaza.

Graft and the Authority

Last year, in an interview with Egypt’s ‘Al-Akbar’ newspaper, Abbas said that the destruction of the tunnels was the best solution to prevent Gazans from using the smuggling business for their own benefits. He then spoke about 1,800 Gazans becoming millionaires as a result of the tunnel trade, although no corroboration for this specific number was ever divulged.

Of course, Abbas has rarely been concerned about the rising fortunes of the alleged ‘millionaires’, because his Authority, which subsists on international handouts, is rife with them. His grievance is with Hamas, which has been regulating tunnel trade and taxing merchants for the goods they import into the Strip. Not only were the tunnels a lifeline for Gaza’s economy, the underground business helped fill a void in Hamas’ own budget, a fact that has irked Abbas for years.

Following Hamas’ election victory in January 2006 and the bloody clash between the new Government and Abbas’s Fatah faction, Hamas has experienced immense pressure: Israel launched three massive and deadly wars, while maintaining a strict siege; Egypt ensured the near permanent closure of its border; and Abbas continued to pay the salaries for tens of thousands of his supporters in Gaza, on the condition that they did not join the Hamas Government.

Moreover, the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, the turmoil in Egypt and the war in Syria, in particular, lessened Hamas’ chances of escaping the financial stranglehold that made governing Gaza, broken by war and fatigued by the siege, nearly unviable.

While Israel, from the outset, explained that its siege was based on security requirements, Egypt eventually did the same, alleging that destroying the tunnels, demolishing homes and enlarging the buffer zone were necessary steps to stave off the flow of weapons from Gaza to Sinai’s militants who are responsible for deadly attacks on the Egyptian army.

Oddly, the Egyptian logic is the exact opposite of the Israeli logic, upon which the siege was justified in the first place. Israel claims that Gaza’s factions use the tunnels to smuggle weapons and explosives from Sinai, not the other way around.

Indeed, allegedly smuggling weapons from Gaza to Sinai has little to do with the closure of Rafah or even the destruction of the tunnels.

With American expertise and aid, Egypt began erecting a steel wall along the Gaza border as early as December 2009. This preceded the Egyptian revolution and the political chasm in that society which was followed by the militant chaos. Indeed, there was little violence in Sinai then, at least, not one blamed partly on Palestinians. The construction of the wall took place during the rule of Hosni Mubarak in order to accommodate Israeli-American pressure to contain Hamas and other fighting groups. Abbas, eager to see the demise of his rivals, was in agreement, as he remains until today, ever ready to entertain any ideas that would once more give rise to his Fatah party in the Strip.

The militant violence in Sinai did not usher in the siege on Gaza, but only hastened the demolishing of homes, destruction of tunnels and provided further justification for the permanent closure of the border.

Life in Gaza became impossible, to the extent that the UN Conference on Trade and Development released a report last September warning that Gaza could become ‘uninhabitable’ in less than five years, if current economic trends continue.

But these economic trends are the result of intentional policies, mostly centered at achieving political ends. Moreover, none of these ends have been achieved after nearly a decade of experimentation. True, many have died as they waited to receive proper medical care and thousands perished in war; many of the maimed cannot even acquire wheelchairs, let alone prosthetics, but neither has Israel managed to stop the Resistance, Egypt quell the rebellion in Sinai nor has Abbas regained his lost factional stronghold.

Yet, things are getting much worse for Gaza. The World Bank issued a report earlier this year stating that 43% of Gaza’s population are unemployed, and that unemployment among the youth has reached 60%. According to the report, these unemployment figures are the highest in the world.

Since the establishment of the border between Palestine and Egypt following an agreement in 1906 between the Ottoman Empire – which controlled Palestine then – and Britain, which controlled Egypt, never was the border subject to such deadly political calculations. In fact, between 1948 and 1967, when Gaza was under Egyptian control, the border was virtually non-existent as the Strip was administered as if a part of Egypt.

Although Gazans are still being referred to as ‘brothers’, there is nothing brotherly in the way they are being treated. 25,000 humanitarian cases are languishing in Gaza, waiting to be allowed access to treatment in Egypt or in other Arab and European countries. These ill Palestinians should not be used as political fodder in a turf war which is not of their making.

Moreover, while countries have the right to protect their sovereignty and security, they are obligated by international law not to collectively punish other nations, no matter the logic or the political context.

An agreement must be reached between the Government in Gaza and Egypt, with the help of regional powers and under the monitoring of the United Nations, to end Gaza’s perpetual suffering and open the border, once and for all.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include ‘Searching Jenin’, ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada’ and his latest ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. His website is: www.ramzybaroud.net

Graphic Credit: LEAD- Rafah border crossing. Gloucester2Gaza (CC BY-SA 2.0)
BODY – Steel wall between Rafah and Egypt by Tanks No Thanks (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 IT)

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