THE "NATIONAL UNITY" INDUSTRY

By Tony Sayegh

From the Usraeli viewpoint, the "peace process" industry has been a great success. For over a dozen years, the Palestinian resistance, the PLO and Arafat and his successor were domesticated. A whole nation was reduced to a nation of beggars living off the charity of strangers such as the EU and the US. National liberation was pretty much forgotten. A quisling "government" was set up to control the beggars, ensure Israel's safety, polish Israel's image by presenting it as if it were not an occupying power, facilitate normalization between Israel and the Arab world, allow Israel's penetration and ultimately control of Arab economies, relieve Israel from the burdens and the costs of direct occupation, garner more political, diplomatic and financial support for Israel to complete the colonization and annexation of what is left of Palestine and much more.

Thus encouraged by such success, a new industry has now been invented and developed which I call the national unity industry. The whole purpose of this industry is to keep the Palestinians endlessly busy alternating between controlled and limited inter-Palestinian violence and talks and negotiations for national unity. Thus the PA which is hopelessly divided against itself (by design) will be exploited to maximum effect. Every authority of a normal government is purposefully split between Abbas (the president) and Haniyah (the PM). All the important levers of power such as finance, armed men and "security" services, foreign relations and "negotiations" are kept under the trusted puppet Abbas. As a result, the PM can't effectively do anything. Haniyah recently made a promise to pay the government employees' salary for the current month of Ramadan; but the money is under the control of Abbas who said, "no way!" Thus Haniyah was made to look like a fool (on purpose). When Abbas visits foreign capitals (including Arab capitals) or the UN he never includes a single minister from his own government! The government says Dr. Zahhar is the foreign minister, but Abbas and the PLO say no way! The old Qaddoumi from Fatah is the one and only true foreign minister.

What a fiasco and a disgrace! As if the PA, even when it was united and totally controlled by Fatah could accomplish anything beside the theft and embezzlement of most of the funds given by the EU and other charitable benefactors.

The real objective of the national unity industry is to buy even more time for Israel to accelerate the colonization of the West Bank and the "transfer" of the Palestinians. Therefore, the demand of the peace process industry is that the "peace process" can't "get back on track" until the Palestinians get their act together and accept the conditions of the "Quartet." And for that to happen the national unity industry has to keep grinding and producing more meetings, documents, declarations, negotiations, re-negotiations, threats, counter-threats, and on and on.

I wonder what comes after the national unity industry. But perhaps nothing more will be needed, since between both industries (national unity and peace) enough time will be consumed to ensure that the Palestinian issue becomes moot.