The ball is in Fatah’s court

Comment by Khalid Amayreh

"The democratically-elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniya and the rest of the Hamas leadership are making every conceivable effort to end the crisis with the Fatah organization despite the latter’s conspiratorial working relations with Israel, the US and certain puppet regimes in the region.

The real aim of these efforts, it should be stressed, is not to have an amicable relationship with American-backed Fatah leaders, but rather to preserve the paramount interests of the Palestinian people, which Israel, in league with the US and certain treacherous regional players are trying to liquidate under the disguise of the so-called “peace process.”

Indeed, despite Fatah’s obvious connivance with Israel and its guardian-ally, the United States, against Hamas, the legitimate Palestinian Prime Minister, Haniya, has once again expressed his readiness to meet with and reach out to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Makka in a fresh effort to rebuild Palestinian unity.......

Our people are neither stupid nor naïve, and they certainly know who is sincere and who is not, who is truly serving the interests of the people and who is carrying out foreign agendas, and who is clean and who is corrupt.

Yes, there are many sincere people within Fatah who know what is going on within their organization whose current leadership has been steadily trying to morph the Palestinian issue from a national struggle against a Nazi-like Israeli occupation to a showdown between Hamas and Fatah. To the chagrin of many, however, these sincere people within Fatah are powerless to correct the suicidal course chosen by such people as Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Amr and Muhammed Dahlan, the very people the Bush administration had sought to impose on the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Reforming Fatah, by excluding those elements that are at Israel’s beck and call, and reasserting commitment to the long-held national constants, should be a key goal toward the restoration of Palestinian national unity. After all, it would be difficult to conduct a sincere dialogue with people who lack sincerity and good will.

Reforming Fatah is Fatah’s business, not Hamas’s. But it is Hamas’s and every Palestinian’s business to see to it that Fatah remain committed to the national constants and not morph into another “village league” under the false rubric of fighting “the coup makers” (well, who has carried out a coup against whom?).......

The ball is in Fatah’s court, not in Hamas’s. Fatah has to choose one of two choices, either to serve the national interests of the Palestinian people or please and appease Israel and the US. It can’t choose both. "