WEST BANK: Palestinians not allowed to show solidarity with Egyptians

For the mainstream Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and its archrival the Islamist Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since June 2007, the turmoil in Egypt is a source of concern.

In the West Bank, the pro-West Palestinian Authority refused to give permission for Palestinians wishing to hold protests in support of the Egyptian uprising.

In Gaza, Hamas authorities broke up with force a sit-in by few people attempting to show solidarity with Egyptians calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. The journalists who attempted to cover the sit-in were also beaten by armed Hamas forces.

Both regimes see in Mubarak and Egypt in general an important ally.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas relies heavily on support from Mubarak in his efforts to get a negotiated peace settlement with Israel. Mubarak’s good relations with Israel and the West, mainly the U.S., help Abbas withstand pressure to give in on important negotiating issues.

The Gaza Strip has borders only with Israel and Egypt. As Israel does not allow Hamas leaders and most of the 1.5 million residents of the coastal enclave to leave the strip through its borders or even to use Gaza airspace or the sea, Egypt remains their only way to reach the outside world.

So far, both Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders have not made any public comment on the situation in Egypt. Recalling how former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat appeared to side with Saddam Hussein in his invasion of Kuwait, thus losing support and sympathy from the Persian Gulf countries, the current leaders have preferred not to get involved.

Neither party can afford to lose Egyptian support and sympathy if they make the wrong statement or take the wrong position, particularly since it is not yet clear where the popular uprising going to lead.

Ghassan Shaka’a, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee, which is headed by Abbas, expressed in a cautiously written statement the Palestinian Authority’s “deep concern for the developments” in Egypt. He was more interested in the safety and preservation of Egypt’s historical heritage than the demands of millions of Egyptians for the removal of Mubarak from office.

The Palestinian public, on the other hand, had a totally different perspective on the situation.

Mahdi Abdul Hadi, president of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian think-tank PASSIA (the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs), said he was proud of the “true, passionate and national young Egyptians.”

He said that “the current people’s intifada [uprising] from Tunisia to Cairo is the second Arab awakening in the making.”

Hazem Qawasmi, a Palestinian activist, criticized the ban on demonstrations in the Palestinian territories, wondering “how long are the repression of freedoms and preventing the Palestinian people from exercising their right for peaceful assembly and freedom of expression going to continue?”

The General Union of Palestinian Writers saluted the Egyptian people, declaring support for their “legitimate demands.”

Though Fatah and Hamas have agreed on suppressing any public expression of support for the removal of Mubarak from office, both took this opportunity to call on their supporters to rise against the other’s rule.

Learning from the effect of the social networks in mobilizing the masses behind a national cause, Fatah, which lost the Gaza Strip to Hamas in a humiliating short battle, opened a Facebook account and used it to call for a popular upheaval in the Gaza Strip against Hamas rule. It declared Feb. 11 as the date for this proposed uprising.

“Come from everywhere, from every home and corner in our occupied homeland. Join the people and declare it an ongoing intifada” against the Hamas rule, said the Facebook site, which claimed that more than 2,800 people have immediately joined it.

Hamas also believes that an uprising against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is only a matter of time.

-- Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

Comments

[arenaofspeculation.org]

@Jake: You've warped my comment there. I never suggested that Hamas had been the architects of the illegal and inhumane Israeli-Egyptian siege on Gaza, or that they had intentionally brought it upon the Palestinians. I was simply suggesting that a situation has emerged that they may feel has a certain degree of stability for them, and that they are afraid of a sudden fundamental shift in the status quo.

I'd suggest that Fatah fear a rise of Hamas when they see Palestinians taking to the streets in support of Egyptian demonstrators. Hamas fear a rise of Fatah when they see the same protests. Needless to say, they are both wrong.

[Jake]

Finally, someone brave enough to point to the Palestinian leadership's oppression of its own people. The hackneyed "Blame Israel for everything" dogma is getting old. Unfortunately, all Arab nations are dictatorships with most of the population extremely poor. Israel does not occupy any of those nations, and thus apparently something else is going on in these countries.

As noted above, Hamas itself is cynically using violence against Israel to force the latter to impose a siege, thereby making millions $ thru the tunnel economy. Their leaders are as corrupt as those of Egypt, Tunisia and most other Arab countries. It's so much easier for them to keep their people angry and poor and miserable while they are getting rich. Westerners are simply not used to seeing things this way. But this is the way of life in the Arab world.

[arenaofspeculation.org]

I think it would be hard to describe Mubarak as an 'ally' of Hamas, when his Egyptian regime has stood pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel in maintaining the siege on Gaza. Equally, Hamas are allied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has long been the most organised political opposition group in Egypt (and officially outlawed by Mubarak).

The response of Hamas to the solidarity protests in Gaza demands a more nuanced explanation than that of the Fatah in the West Bank, which is under intense pressure following publication of the Palestine Papers.

It would probably be true to say that Hamas has reached a state of stability under the siege. It is pretty much unrivalled politically, and is able maintain its finances through control and taxation of the informal economy of the tunnels in Rafah. I guess this could go some way to explain its fear of political change in Egypt, which would almost certainly lead to an abrupt ending of the siege, a collapse of the tunnel economy, and an end to the 'state of emergency' in Gaza within which it has cemented its hegemonic position at the political fore.

This argument is based mostly on supposition. The idea that Hamas doesn't want the siege to end seems counter-intuitive and, if true, would certainly undermine their relevance as a political force in the long run. What seems clear is that the crackdowns on protests in the West Bank and Gaza demonstrate that both Fatah and Hamas are now increasingly disconnected from the political aspirations of the Palestinian people.

[Ome-Coatl]

Proof positive that Israel is not a Democracy. It is a European Colony that is intolerant of free speech and racistly deprives the Palestinians of their equal rights.

[Elizabeth]

Your paper is very biased and poliotically slanted to not print comments which are in opposition to Israel.

[Walid Maaytah]

What the Arabic world is going through these days calls for serious analysis and understanding of the intricacies of the world of politics in the Middle East. Arab people are coming out of their political coma, albeit slowly - but steadily. They have discovered that they too have the right to seek political changes and to have a say in how things are run in their countries and that they, to their surprise, can affect changes if they really were willing to take few risks and muster courage which they forgot they ever had.
Arabic people have discovered that When people choose life with dignity and honor over life with indignation, dishonor and injustice, which is how they were living for so long, and become ready to put their lives on the line for that, some thing magical happens: the undoable becomes doable and the impossible becomes possible - and destiny then takes notice, listens and obliges. They discovered that history is only made by those who are willing and ready to take risks if they wish to make history. And now, history is being rewritten, finally, in countries that have been longing for so long to be free and democratic.

[johnazevedo2@gmail.com]

Send blessings to oppressed people all over the world, including Palestine, Gaza, Egypt, Israel, and the United States. This article clarifies that the problem is the power and greed hungry people that exist in many cultures. The young people of Egypt have shown the way. We just want equal opportunity and freedom for all.

[Elizabeth]

Israel: What about meeee? What's in it for meeee?

Israel's stance is elitist, callous and disgusting when people are starving and living in poverty under oppression. It is elitist for any group to believe they are better because they believe they are "chosen". It's time that the U.S. started taking care of their own instead of giving billions of dollars to a country that has fired rockets into Lebanon that have killed innocent civilians and continues wall off Palestinians in a ghetto that would make their former oppreesors proud. Sadly, history repeats itself.

[trajan]

Yea right! I dont think that anyone really believes that the Palestinians are not in solidarity with the popular uprising in Egypt. Mubarak's fluttering support means nothing to the Palestinians as much as a democratic Egypt would mean for their cause. A democratic Egypt and cleansing out of the tyrants in the Arab world will focus more powerful attention to the Palestinians and their decades long struggle for a state of their own.

[Robert]

"As Israel does not allow Hamas leaders and most of the 1.5 million residents of the coastal enclave to leave the strip through its borders or even to use Gaza airspace or the sea, Egypt remains their only way to reach the outside world."

Gaza, the world's largers open-air prison.

[Michelle]

Isn't it amazing! Of course people always blame Israel for oppressing the Palestinians. Seems to me that their leadership is doing a great job of it themselves, and not only that, but taking this opportunity to call for an uprising against each other's regimes. This is quite funny actually...