AN IMPORTANT POST
By Ali Abunimah
"The Abbas-backed "Palestine Network" has responded to my recent comments about it, via an open letter addressed to me and posted on a blog by a Ms. Fatima AbdelKarim who identifies herself as a volunteer in the "Secretariat of the Palestine Network" based in Ramallah.
The response attempts to portray the Palestine Network as a benign grassroots, democratic initiative to tie together Palestinians inside and outside the homeland in support of something called the "Palestinian National Project." Thus the response hopes to challenge the perception widely held among Palestinian activists that the Palestine Network is a centrally-planned project intended to co-opt, divide and control Palestinian activists. One of the main criticisms activists have made is that the Palestine Network is an effort to build legitimacy for a peace settlement that ignores and violates the right of return of Palestinian refugees. (In fact, I can reveal here that the "final concept paper" of the Palestine Network makes no mention whatsoever of Palestinian refugees or their right of return. I am publishing this concept paper in full below this blog post).
The fact remains that the Palestine Network is entirely conceived and directed out of the offices of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA). You can read Fatima AbdulKarim's response in full for yourself. I will comment on a few sections quoted below.......
(Left: Husseini)
By Ali Abunimah
"The Abbas-backed "Palestine Network" has responded to my recent comments about it, via an open letter addressed to me and posted on a blog by a Ms. Fatima AbdelKarim who identifies herself as a volunteer in the "Secretariat of the Palestine Network" based in Ramallah.
The response attempts to portray the Palestine Network as a benign grassroots, democratic initiative to tie together Palestinians inside and outside the homeland in support of something called the "Palestinian National Project." Thus the response hopes to challenge the perception widely held among Palestinian activists that the Palestine Network is a centrally-planned project intended to co-opt, divide and control Palestinian activists. One of the main criticisms activists have made is that the Palestine Network is an effort to build legitimacy for a peace settlement that ignores and violates the right of return of Palestinian refugees. (In fact, I can reveal here that the "final concept paper" of the Palestine Network makes no mention whatsoever of Palestinian refugees or their right of return. I am publishing this concept paper in full below this blog post).
The fact remains that the Palestine Network is entirely conceived and directed out of the offices of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA). You can read Fatima AbdulKarim's response in full for yourself. I will comment on a few sections quoted below.......
(Left: Husseini)
There has been no transparency at all in this process. The only persons definitely known to be on this task force are Abbas chief of staff Rafiq al-Husseini and close Abbas advisers Issa Kassissieh and Ramzi Khoury (who according to the concept paper is the "Executive Director"). The Palestine Network itself has not published any lists of its leaders or participants......
Rather than Palestinians around the world reaching out to Abbas and asking him and his surrogates to take this initiative, it has been the other way around. I have heard directly from activists in several European countries and the United States that surrogates of the Ramallah PA contacted them to ask them to help establish the Palestine Network........
This is very interesting; the anonymous participants in the Palestine Network "demanded" to see Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Nazareth, Haifa and Jerusalem. At at time when ordinary Palestinians are not free to move even around the West Bank let alone enter occupied Jerusalem (indeed they continue to be expelled); when Gazans are under suffocating siege; when Palestinian Americans and other diaspora Palestinians are being routinely denied entry at the Allenby Bridge and al-Lydd airport ("Ben-Gurion Airport"); when Israeli occupation forces are kidnapping international activists from the heart of occupied Ramallah, how is it that the participants of the "grassroots" Palestine Network will be able to travel freely in all parts of Palestine, even the 1948 areas?
The answer is obvious: because the "Palestine Network" is organized by the Ramallah PA, and because the Ramallah PA coordinates all its activities with the Israeli occupation, the Palestine Network participants will be given the same special privileges that "VIPs" from the Ramallah PA receive -- as long as they cooperate with the occupation.
Finally, here is the Palestine Network concept paper in full - the one that went through 13 drafts......"
Rather than Palestinians around the world reaching out to Abbas and asking him and his surrogates to take this initiative, it has been the other way around. I have heard directly from activists in several European countries and the United States that surrogates of the Ramallah PA contacted them to ask them to help establish the Palestine Network........
This is very interesting; the anonymous participants in the Palestine Network "demanded" to see Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Nazareth, Haifa and Jerusalem. At at time when ordinary Palestinians are not free to move even around the West Bank let alone enter occupied Jerusalem (indeed they continue to be expelled); when Gazans are under suffocating siege; when Palestinian Americans and other diaspora Palestinians are being routinely denied entry at the Allenby Bridge and al-Lydd airport ("Ben-Gurion Airport"); when Israeli occupation forces are kidnapping international activists from the heart of occupied Ramallah, how is it that the participants of the "grassroots" Palestine Network will be able to travel freely in all parts of Palestine, even the 1948 areas?
The answer is obvious: because the "Palestine Network" is organized by the Ramallah PA, and because the Ramallah PA coordinates all its activities with the Israeli occupation, the Palestine Network participants will be given the same special privileges that "VIPs" from the Ramallah PA receive -- as long as they cooperate with the occupation.
Finally, here is the Palestine Network concept paper in full - the one that went through 13 drafts......"
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