Thursday, February 16, 2012

Reality of Hamas-Fatah Unity



A VERY GOOD PIECE
By Ramzy Baroud
Palestine Chronicle

"While top officials representing rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, signed yet another unity agreement on February 6 in Doha, Qatar, Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan crossed the 50-day mark of his hunger strike. His health was rapidly deteriorating....

Khader’s case highlights the unparalleled chasm separating Palestinian leaders from the everyday issues and struggles of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. These include: military occupation, dwindling water resources, an almost entirely dependent economy, festering corruption and ongoing violence of the colonists. Despite this reality, the people who are supposed to represent Palestinians seem entirely consumed by strange priorities, futile ‘peace’ and power-sharing ‘unity’ agreements.

Palestinians have been trapped in this odd reality ever since Fatah and Palestinian Liberation Organisation leaders agreed to sign a ‘peace accord’ with Israel without consulting with the Palestinian people in 1993. By singing a unity agreement with Fatah, Hamas, which has long championed the ‘choice of resistance’, is now tacitly joining the political charade which pushed Palestinians to the brink and ignited the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000.....

Ultimately, Hamas-Fatah unity based on halving the spoils of whatever imagined power they may have over occupied and oppressed people will in no significant way alter the fate of hunger-striker Adnan. Neither will it reclaim one inch of the Occupied Territories, or revive the long-dormant Palestinian national project around new, truly unifying and all-encompassing priorities.

Frankly it is absurd to witness Palestinian factions lobbying among and seeking exclusive approval, funding and backing of countries near and far, while millions of Palestinians carry on facing the reality of sieges, walls, barbed wires and machine guns.

Truly, the chasm has never been so wide. "

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