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CounterPunch
September
3, 2002
Legitimacy Demands
Leadership
An Open Letter to Yasser Arafat
by Nabil Amro
President Arafat,
I have no idea whether this letter will
reach you, or, like many before it, will be pulled from the presses
due to the current political timing. Moreover, in directly addressing
Yasser Arafat there is a temptation and a risk. The temptation
is to know you are directly addressing the right address even
if your message involves stern criticism and disturbing frankness.
The risk and fear stem from the way some ignorant advisers may
interpret this letter, i.e. if it is not mere naive hypocrisy
then it is a declaration of a fierce war against you, a declaration
of disloyalty. Given that you thrive on being embroiled in every
minute detail of your work, I believe that objectively weighing
between the two approaches, he who takes the direct route and
tells you the facts, no matter how disturbing, will prevail in
affecting your actions.
Who glorifies your negative approach
to our institutions, whether on the political front, such as
FATAH and the PLO, or the Authority front, such as the Palestinian
Legislative Council or the government bodies? Let me assure you,
our institutions are living the darkest days of their history.
During the climax of the revolution the absence of coordination
between these institutions was never justified. Today, during
the era of the Authority and while on the blistering road to
statehood, this absence is even more unacceptable.
Mr. President, you accepted Oslo's Gaza-Jericho
first idea, not because it liberated two of our beloved cities,
but rather because it was a practical approach to an experiment
in statehood. It was a state that would begin with a limited
geographic area and an even more limited political space. As
we successfully addressed the harsh conditions that were applied
to us, this state would grow in geographical as well as political
space. Acceptance in approaching the building of our state in
this way involved an awareness that there were those Arab, Palestinian
and Israeli factions who intended for the entire experiment to
fail. Furthermore, you were fully aware that those wishing for
the failure of this project had strong arguments in their favor
and tools to disrupt and destroy the process.
From the outset of our internal political
dispute and under the pretext of the challenge to negotiate with
the Israelis, we intentionally ignored the development of one
of our strongest weapons: the creation of serious institutions
with the support of the international community and with the
ability to enlist the support of our own people in order to replace
the repressive institutions of the occupation.
What did we achieve in the Palestinian
Legislative Council? What did we achieve with regard to the rule
of law? What did we achieve in monetary issues? What did we achieve
in administrative affairs? Where are our achievements in the
sphere of statehood? I speak in the plural because I believe
that the responsibility for failure is a collective one, although
it is true that you hold the greater part of this responsibility
due to your position, your authority and the resources at your
disposal.
What did we do with the institutions
that comprise the PLO, the body that holds the international
legitimacy that made Oslo possible? What did we do with FATAH
- its conferences, its regional bodies, its committees and its
offices? I'm convinced that if we did anything substantial it
was not aimed at developing these institutions and keeping them
active, but rather toward stripping them of there role, undermining
their capacities, and wiping out their character and tradition.
Yes, we did all this. And if a research group studied the reasons
behind this self-criticism they would find one source: our inability
to understand the multi-faceted project of statehood. We have
been unable to realize this project, with its goal of removing
the threats against us and creating opportunities for real security!
Some attempt to excuse our actions throughout
the Oslo experience by saying that what we did is to be expected
from a revolutionary movement transforming itself into a proper
governing body. I do not believe this explanation grasps the
underlying practices of the Authority. We entered the conciliation
process fully knowing what we would accept and what responsibilities
were asked of us in return. Before we entered the Oslo experiment
we were not a group of armed militias roaming the mountains and
jungles, but rather activists in political parties and political
institutions. Weren't we boasting that we had more embassies
and representative offices in the world than even Israel? Weren't
we boasting that we had more democracy and pluralism than many
of our friends who have stable states and societies?
We have neglected the central responsibility
that attached to our sudden transformation from a revolutionary
movement's culture, awareness and institutions into this new
reality: the challenge to swim with the Palestinian masses, particularly
after spending so many years far from our home shores.
Before arriving in Palestine, the exiled
Palestinian leadership was everywhere, except in the homeland.
The leadership knew only that the homeland was a fountain of
unlimited blood and sacrifice. True insight about our own people
cannot be tapped from exile or remotely. Actually living amongst
the masses is the only way to really understand them.
Before our assimilation, the leader and
followers learned of Palestine by way of colorful pictures, each
choosing the images that fit their needs. The leader needed a
picture that plainly depicted a consensus around his leadership
and all that he stood for. The followers envisioned this remote
leadership to be an extraordinary, intelligent and principled
group of revolutionaries that fit the snapshot of other triumphant
national liberation movements. When these two actually met, the
naivety of both assumptions began to unravel. The leadership
turned out to be only human, comprising both those that sacrificed
and nobly struggled for independence as well as others, of questionable
character, who failed to meet the high expectations of Palestinians
in the homeland. The followers and the masses in general had
proved that they are an extraordinarily steadfast people, but
also people with normal every day needs, requirements and interests.
After returning home, we failed, Mr.
President, to manage the great historic process before us. We
failed to establish and enforce a rule of law that would organize
the relationship between the Palestinian Authority and our people
in order for our Authority to be legitimate and earn credibility
from the masses.
Mr. President, we dealt with the challenge
that we took upon ourselves with the mindset of distributing
the spoils rather than in the spirit of engaging all available
resources in order to overcome the difficult situation we faced.
We did not form a single committee to review the qualifications
of those we entrusted with senior or staff positions. We never
took into consideration in the formation of our government the
issue of professionalism or ethics. We reverted to a tribal mindset.
We even conveniently dropped the mature political considerations
that were present in many of the PLO institutions throughout
the long pre-Oslo years. Since the early days of the Authority,
many of us asked many questions about several ministers that
dealt with their ministries as if they were dealing with their
own private homes. We ignored that this Ministry was for Hebronites,
the other for those from Nablus, and yet another for Jerusalemites.
We did absolutely nothing when we learned that a senior employee
remained employed even after he left to Amman or that an old-time
colleague in struggle demanded to be appointed as a Minister
before returning home (for the sake of which he could have been
a martyr, as he said).
I don't need to remind you Mr. President
of the story of the recruitment lists that we all blindly accepted
as a basis for capacity building, which in reality turned our
entire people into managers, leaving not a single government
job holding its prestige and legitimacy.
As we proceeded this way year after year,
our friends, even before our enemies, registered and documented
our every move. Their interest was not necessarily motivated
by wanting to see a 21st century state be properly built in one
of the most dangerous places in the world (Middle East), but
rather to monitor where the millions that they pledged to this
project were being spent!
We were simple-minded not to expect that
one day a drought would come upon us and as days go by would
increase, not decrease, until we paid a price for all that we
did. We did not care Mr. President; we took comfort in your naive
slogans. We were blinded by your assurances that the world needed
us to sign on the dotted line and that aside from that we could
act as we wished, since who would dare constrain us when we held
the global and regional key to peace and stability!?
Yes, our powerful adversaries discovered
a way to wrest that magic key that was in our hands. This discovery
was simply, "Let's take it from them." Let's be frank,
there is more than a grand scale conspiracy that splits the world
in two, those that are against us and those that are unable to
assist us. Why are there those who can't assist us? Do a people
with a just and legitimate cause have the right to act as they
please, unrestrained by norms? Does the justice of our cause
justify this mess in our own house? You are the greatest critic
of this mess even though you are accused of also being its greatest
supporter!
Mr. President, we will continue to fall
backwards as long as we face all of the destruction, loss of
life and chaos that has been brought upon us with a leadership
that can only boast of having its steadfastness, catastrophe
after catastrophe, documented in history.
Didn't we dance to the failure of Camp
David? Didn't we deface pictures of President Bill Clinton who
courageously put on the table the proposal for a Palestinian
State with minor modifications? Aren't we doing just that, dancing
in the face of a grand failure? Yes. But were we honest in what
we did? No. We were not, because today, after two years of bloodshed,
we call for exactly what we refused, only after we became sure
it was impossible to achieve!
How many times did we accept, then reject,
then accept? And always we would refuse to calculate the consequences
of acceptance or the rejection. How many times was there something
required of us, something we had the ability to do, but we did
nothing? Then when solutions were no longer available we would
roam the globe in the hope of getting it presented again, only
to learn that between our rejection and acceptance the world
had distanced itself from us altogether or introduced additional
conditions that we could not consider fulfilling.
Mr. President,
What is to be done now?
Now, meaning that Israeli tanks are in
full control of the West Bank and surround Gaza as well.
Now, meaning that the opportunity to
open political files will only be in the context of receiving
some minor relief, while at the same time Ministers are only
able to travel by way of ambulances!
Now, meaning that we stand a huge step
back from the point we left with Bill Clinton at Camp David.
We are now asked to accept Gaza First as a security test, a test
that if passed, would end in lifting curfew in Bethlehem.
Now, meaning that every Palestinian militia
on the streets acts without any central command and controls
and defines the battle as they see fit.
Now, and after all of this has come to
pass, what is to be done?
Surely, the delegations you are sending
to Washington are not in a position to affect an American-Israeli
alliance that is stronger than ever, or an America that is readying
the world for a strike against Iraq, this at a time when Rumsfield
is speaking about the occupied West Bank and Gaza in a language
that not even Sharon has dared to use. Surely, Solana's calls
and Mourtinos' visits are no longer a help and the efforts of
the EU to open channels with our freedom fighters to attempt
a cease fire no longer matter!
What will help first is to face and accept
that what has occurred is a failure on a grand scale. Admission
of this failure, embarrassing as it is, will not mean the end
of the world or the burying of our cause. Just the opposite.
It would be a bold step in the process of regrouping and learning
from our mistakes and building upon the resources of our earlier
success.
Mr. President, what stops us from leading
a serious and frank discussion with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and
all of the Palestinian political factions? What stops us from
asking for an open-ended cooling off period to allow for the
mending of our internal Palestinian wounds and for a collective
restructuring of our cracked Palestinian house and our rusted
political alliances? Aren't the brave Palestinian people deserving
of a period of rest and time to take a breath to see where all
of this is leading us? Even if Sharon provokes us, isn't it in
our benefit to corner him with quiet? Don't we need to rebuild
confidence with the third party that we lost due to our continued
miscalculations?
Then, after this dialogue, which offers
so many opportunities for success, what stops us from enacting
the internal reforms program proposed by the Palestinian Legislative
Council? By the way, this program is the most realistic yet to
move us one step closer to serious statehood and thus deserves
our consideration, despite the conditions that we face.
Then,
What stops us from opening an urgent
workshop to discuss reforms in our legal system, especially since
we passed legislation making the judiciary branch of government
independent on one day and violated the legislation on the very
next!?
Then,
What stops us from ending the administrative
chaos in the government, especially since the army of government
employees now exceeds 130,000, three-quarters of whom have no
idea of their job!
Sharon's tanks do not prohibit us from
organizing our internal affairs, because you still, Mr. President,
issue orders, enjoy legitimacy and have power to grant it, even
without a comprehensive plan of action.
We have yet to do what is required of
us in our current condition. We take comfort, Mr. President,
in designing excuses for inaction. Do we think it will be easier
if we allow Sharon's tanks to cover all our hidden sins with
their sins?
Mr. President,
We committed serious mistakes against
our people, our Authority, and our dream of statehood. To make
up for these mistakes, we must confess to our failure first,
and then take immediate action. Our people are noble and deserve
from us the commitment to think with them and for their benefit.
We cannot let our people's destiny be set free to chance, a chance
that, under a new world order, may take yet another eternal struggle
without opening a door of hope.
Nabil Amro
is the former Palestinian National Authority's Minister of Parliamentarian
Affairs and resigned from the Palestinian cabinet in April 2002.
He remains an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Today's Features
Nabil Amro
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September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
& Legitimacy:
An Open Letter to Arafat
Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
Holocaust:
The British in Palestine
Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
Flashback:
US War Crimes During the Gulf War
Lou Cohan
Confessions
of a Downloader
Philip Farruggio
Labor
Day Antidote to Apathy
William Blum
Cuban Political
Prisoners
in the US
September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
No Surrender:
Springsteen's The Rising
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
August 28,
2002
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
August 26,
2002
Sami Al-Arian
Fighting
for the Right of
Dissent and Due Process
Ruebner /
Turaani
What
is Israel Hiding?
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
and the IMF:
Democracy and Emerging Market Liberalism
Robert Fisk
War Crimes:
Reporters Aren't Prosecutors
Douglas Valentine
Phoenix,
CIA and Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor: From Vietnam
to Homeland Security
August 24
/ 25, 2002
Susan Davis
Proverbial
Wisdom:
Of Clogs and Enron
Falk / Krieger
No War
Against Iraq
Ceylon Mooney
Fasting
for Iraq
Jonathon
Wright
Police
Brutality in Atlanta
Ralph Nader
Congress's
Pay Raise Scam
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Chainsaw
George
Alexander
Cockburn
Alterman
Cheapens Holocaust
August 23,
2002
Dave Marsh
Selling
Out?
Anthony Gancarski
Super-Duper:
Oil, al-Qaeda and a West African Adventure
William Hughes
Lieberman's
Conflict
of Interest?
Kurt Nimmo
The Lapdog
Conversion of CNN:
They Didn't Want to "Criticize" a Popular War
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
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