Excellent piece in the Economist from Balata Camp in Nablus states what anyone who visits the occupation knows, this can’t last. The political efforts to end the occupation have failed, the likelihood of violence is high. And, implicitly, the Palestinian Authority is a stooge government like the Bantustan governments the South Africans sought to install (a devastating theme of the great new film, Roadmap to Apartheid, which I saw last night in New York).
Economist:
Nablus’s commercial regeneration cannot cure a gnawing national malaise. “There is no political horizon,” say disgruntled Palestinians. They increasingly question the point of the PA. It has failed to usher in a Palestinian state, and appears powerless to prevent Israeli military incursions or the relentless expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. “All the windows are closed, and the political elite has no keys to open them,” says Raid Nairat, an academic. The West Bank’s 30,000 security forces seem unkeen on a recent quest for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas that would force them to share power. Their recent round-up of 150 Hamas men helped dampen hopes of a deal….
Few Palestinians call for a renewal of violence. But such talk is again in the air. In some West Bank towns Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extreme Islamist group, has been making headway. “A Muslim army should defend Muslims, not Jews,” says an angry Islamist, denouncing the PA’s security co-ordination with Jewish kuffar (unbelievers).
with liberation day approaching will the puppet palestine authority go the way of the puppet south korean regime 37 years ago?
The only thing the PA can do under the current system is pay its employees. There is no point to anything else it is allowed to do, which isn’t much anyway.
Fuck Israel . So many Palestinians believed in the 2 state solution. So many people built up institutions for the day they would have their state.
Edward Said was right.
good for the Palestinians – they should do people power in the streets first against their own leaders and then continue with non-violent actions that bring the world’s media to cover them
Edward Said was completely right and in 1992 I thought he was an unreasonable extremist. The PA is bought and paid for by the US and EU — they accept the money and doll it out to their militias. The militias then control the Palestinian people for Israel’s benefit. One would think that there must still be some national pride among those enforcers for the PA that can’t be compromised by a pay check? But I am not in their shoes, so maybe they honestly believe this is the best they can do.
“Few Palestinians call for a renewal of violence. But such talk is again in the air. ”
Let’s hope not. Violence is how the Israelis want to confront the Palestinians. It’s familiar terrain for Israel in which it has all the advantages, and it brings much needed political support internationally. It’s non-violent protest and resistance that Israel is incapable of addressing effectively.