Serious Developments Awaiting a Palestinian Response at Its Level

Author: هاني المصري

The U.S. administration announced its refusal to grant entry visas to President Mahmoud Abbas and his accompanying delegation to attend the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly, as a punishment for a series of Palestinian positions, the most important of which is the pursuit of unilateral recognition of the state of Palestine. This path is expected to gain significant momentum in this session after several major Western countries announced their intention to recognize the State of Palestine.

It is true that Washington took a similar step in 1988 after the declaration of the State of Palestine, but the fundamental difference is that this was before the Oslo Accords, which conferred rights from those who have to those who do not, and prior to the U.S. recognition of the PLO and the authority that adhered to burdensome constraints that it still adheres to, while Israeli governments have long since undermined their commitments and buried them under colonial and racist realities that make the Israeli project increasingly the only practically proposed solution, which is to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian response to this American step should not be limited to criticism and demands for its reversal, or contemplating various options for President Abbas. Rather, it should adopt a new political path based on betting on the Palestinian people and the active and supporting forces around the world that advocate for freedom, justice, resistance, and equality. He should strongly direct the message of President Abbas from New York to Geneva, as the late President Yasser Arafat did, as the danger of the American step coincides with an Israeli plan to complete the occupation of the Gaza Strip and re-establish settlements there, prevent the authority's return, and continue the crimes of genocide, annexation, and displacement.

The recent interview with Israeli Minister Avi Dichter on Al-Arabiya reflects this orientation, and it shows that the target is the entire Palestinian people without distinction between negotiators and resisters, and its existence as a whole and not just its resistance; he did not limit himself to repeating the three declared objectives of the war, but explicitly called for the displacement of one million seven hundred thousand Palestinians from Gaza, which is almost the number of refugees there. This statement was preceded by a U.S.-Israeli meeting at the White House attended by Jared Kushner, owner of the 'Riviera in Gaza' project, and Tony Blair, who remains loyal to U.S. policies and whose hands are stained with the blood of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. All of this is accompanied by paving the way for the annexation of the West Bank or large portions of it and undermining the Palestinian Authority to the point of fragmenting it into "separate" population “emirates” that occupy no more than 40% of the area of the West Bank.

The issue is no longer just fragmented measures but rather a systematic Israeli financial, economic, legal, military, and security policy to undermine the authority. The Palestinian cities that are supposedly under the security and administrative control of the authority have been treated as areas classified according to "Oslo" to be under security control of the city and the Israeli domain, to the extent of destroying camps in northern West Bank and displacing their inhabitants, erecting fixed military installations there, and delegating the civil administration affiliated with the Ministry of Defense with wide powers at the expense of the authority's institutions, which has made it stand on the edge of a cliff. The authority is no longer required only to collaborate on security and prevent resistance and distance itself from what is happening in Gaza, nor to demand that Hamas surrender its weapons and leave the ruling, but full surrender to the conditions of the U.S. and Israel and their plans and objectives is demanded.

Perhaps the most dangerous is that the visa denial represents a practical groundwork for withdrawing U.S. recognition of the organization and the authority, as this follows the closure of the PLO office in Washington, the transfer of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, the closure of the U.S. consulate there, and the cessation of financial support for the authority other than for security purposes during Trump's first presidency. The few meetings with Palestinian officials have been limited to financial, not political, issues. Furthermore, for over a decade, no political meetings have been held between the Palestinian leadership and the Israeli government, and U.S.-Palestinian meetings are also rare, after President Yasser Arafat and later President Mahmoud Abbas were, even for a short time, constant guests at the U.S. administration. The authority is no longer an "accomplished fact" that is not up for discussion; there are currents within Israel that see the need to tame it further or even change it. Others see that there is no longer a need for a single authority, but rather local administrative authorities populated with people and separated from each other, established on 40% of the occupied land. All of this occurs despite numerous Palestinian concessions that have reached the extent of continuing the burdensome commitment and not implementing the decisions of the National and Central Councils since 2015, which called for halting the obligations arising from "Oslo" and retracting the recognition of Israel.

Having a single authority representing Palestinian national identity, uniting the West Bank and Gaza Strip, internationally recognized, and seeking international recognition of the State of Palestine poses a strategic threat to the Zionist expansionist project, as Israel was not only established as a solution to the “Jewish question” as a haven but to play a functional role in serving Western colonial interests in the region and to keep its countries and peoples captive to dependency, underdevelopment, and fragmentation. And today, with Washington preoccupied with its "America First" priority and its escalating confrontation with China, the U.S. increasingly needs a reliable agent to ensure its hegemony in the region. Therefore, Israeli expansionist policies and schemes in Palestine and the region must be taken seriously, even if they are a large bite that Israel will not be able to digest for a long time, if it can achieve it. The response to attempts by the occupation to undermine or change the authority to be a client authority is a national collective effort to change the authority and its functions, commitments, and budget to serve the national project, and this will not stop the occupation’s efforts to undermine or alter the authority but will make its construction a confrontation with the occupation, which should not be allowed to control Palestinian lives, including their health, education, economy, and the public services that are supposed to be provided to them.

... The current Israeli government adopts a direct occupation and military control approach more than soft domination through economic, cultural, technological, military, and security relations. What is happening in Syria and Lebanon with attempts to establish "safe areas" is not merely a security necessity but an extension of an expansionist project. Netanyahu's talk about "Greater Israel" is not just an electoral slogan but a deeply-rooted political-religious doctrine.

It is true that Israel is too small to impose its existence from the Nile to the Euphrates, but it has managed to expand on many fronts: from the occupation of Palestine in 1948, to the occupation of the West Bank, Sinai, and the Golan Heights in 1967, to the invasion of Beirut in 1982, to the renewed expansion in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria today. Despite its repeated withdrawals from Sinai, Gaza, and Lebanon, the overall trend is toward expansion, which makes its current threats extremely serious.

... I write these lines from the American city of Detroit while participating in a conference entitled "Gaza the Compass," which was attended in person by more than four thousand people, with another ten thousand online, most of whom are young, who paid their participation costs themselves. The conference proved that the Palestinian people and their allies from all nationalities and races, especially those who raise banners of freedom, justice, and resistance to occupation and oppression, are deserving of life and victory. Polls in the United States show that more than half of Americans consider what is happening in Gaza genocide, and 60% of them demand an end to arms supplies to Israel. This is a shift that cannot be ignored.

The situation is difficult, and bad scenarios are at the forefront. However, there is hope, especially with the increasing crises of the Israeli government internally and externally, the rising global anger, and the growing isolation of Israel. The "black swan" scenario must be taken into account, which is an unexpected event that, if it occurs, will have significant consequences.

What is needed to crystallize a Palestinian national unity on the basis of democratic national struggle, if not available from the top down, attention should focus on working from the bottom up, at the same time working to create some kind of understanding and national integration on what can be agreed upon. If unity is currently difficult, ultimately, unity alone is capable of uniting the people, being the law of victory, and able to lead the global movement towards achieving its goals of freedom, return, self-determination, and independence.