Jefferson Corner

In Israeli Occupied Palestine, there is so much talk these days about “legitimacy” in Arabic this word means “ Share’ia” having replaced the word occupation as the most spoken word among all PA officials. No one talks of the Israeli Occupation!
Of course if one is to take a look at legitimacy, there are very few people and organizations that have any sense of legal and political legitimacy. Read the rest of this entry »

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Both Fatah and Hamas continue to talk of armed resistance and military solutions to the Israeli Occupation when both should know better. Hamas continue to believe that its small arms resistance can end the occupation of the West Bank and end the Israeli control over the air, sea, land and even oxygen over Gaza. It is a fools dream.
Fatah trying to cover up for Arafat failure in liberating Palestine is also in a dream of its own making except its armed resistance has nothing to do with liberation and protection of the people against Israel but has every thing to do with political balance of power with Hamas not to mention its needs to keep the spoils brought on by Oslo.
What is so surprising is that both Hamas and Fatah, organizations that should know better and should have read Oslo much better and understood its provision.
One of those provisions signed on by the not so brilliant Palestinian negotiating team in Oslo is that the PLO speaking for an on behalf of the Palestinian people give up any and all forms of resistance to the Israeli military occupation, peaceful and specially armed resistance. The not so smart and not so brilliant team in Oslo gave these options up in return for a lucrative security contract with Israel, while agreeing to Israel absolute right to shoot, kill, murder, destroy any thing and every thing and to pursue its criminal policy of settlements, land theft, ethnic cleansing and of course the ever present and expanding and humiliating check points for the poor and miserable millions of Palestinians who have to travel from one town to the other or who have to attend to their farms and fields. Yet these no so brilliant negotiators made sure they and their buddies in the future Soweto have VIP passes to zip through Israeli checkpoints while millions have to wait for hours and days and face daily humiliations simply to exist.
Arafat gave up the right of both armed and civil resistance long time when he and his brilliant team when they signed Oslo. Hamas should have understood this when it read Oslo, or did it act in the same brilliant way the Palestinian Oslo team when they signed a contract they did not read. Time to sue for the UN to come and take over and manage the place and time for Hamas, Fatah and the entire PLO team to retire and save the Palestinians from their disastrous leadership.
Under Oslo Arafat to ensure he deliver for Israel, Arafat with the help of the US and Israel and with funding coming from all over the world, Arafat set up many security organizations with one of the most infamous security organizations such as the likes of Preventive Security Organizations run and initially operated by two of Fatah and Arafat thugs such as Dahlan and Rajoub. More Palestinians died in jails run by the infamous Preventive Security Organization than those died in Israeli jails. That should tell us something about Arafat, Dahlan and Rajoub and Fatah and how they ran the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas when it signed on to run in elections must have understood the rules of the games and should have understood what was needed of it. However Hamas did not do such a good job as it took over the reign of government. What Hamas should have done is to first address the issue of recognition of Israel and I think its leadership was not up to it and it should have anticipated what the world should expect from it given the fact that the US and Israel labled Hamas as a terrorists organization.
Hamas wanted to have it both ways, it could not do that. Hamas must have addressed its labeling as a terrorist organization and should have addressed the issue of Israel recognition immediately without beating around the bush. The central theme for Hamas, should have been yes, we do recognize Israel but unlike Fatah and Arafat who recognized Israel without any limitations and without any conditions. In fact, Arafat in Oslo accepted Israel not only as an occupying power but also as sovereign power over the Occupied Territories, with rights over the land, water, and people including the decision of who can come in or who can reside within the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas should have learned from the Likud when it came to power based on disagreement and in opposition to Oslo. Hamas was the same place like Likud.
Perhaps it is time for the Palestinians to admit that the time of armed resistance is over and it is time to rethink the strategy. Since Oslo was nothing but a disaster, it is time for the Palestinians to seek help from the UN to come in and take over. The Palestinian people suffered over 40 years of Fatah leadership and it proved disaster, and the Palestinians could not afford another 40 years of a Hamas mess.

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El-Bireh/ Ramallah/ Agadir:
I returned few days ago from my trip to my birthplace and my hometown of El-Bireh,
after 8 years of absence. I was there when Hamas decided to route Fatah warlords out of Gaza and I was there when Hamas militias went on the rampage doing every thing that is un-Islamic and behaving in the same way the thugs of Fatah behave for a long time. I was also there when the night of the Fatah routing, Fatah militias organized conveys of some 40 vehicles manned by armed masked men, guns at the ready roaming the streets of El-Bireh and Ramallah in a show of force under the protective eyes of the Palestinian Authority security forces. I was also there when Fatah gangs ransacked so many social services institutions and private homes causing millions of dollars of damages to private and public properties. Read the rest of this entry »

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These days and in a recent visit to Paris, Mahmoud Abbas head of the Palestinian Authority floated the idea of having an international security force in Gaza. Yaser Abed Rabbou, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the PLO, which has no legitimacy whatsoever, floated the same idea in an interview on Al-Jazeera. The problem is that the two floated different reasons and different objectives for the international force. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tony Blair, the man who followed George Bush in his war against Iraq for the wrong reasons and the one who was part of the lies and fraud of the Bush administration as it waged its public relation campaign to sell its lies in justifications of the invasion. All to please the Zionist-NeoCons in the US and to please the Tel-Aviv mafia in the US Congress and administration. This is the same Tony Blair who stood by silently and in fact supported and promoted Israel’s continued destructions of Lebanon with the use of more than one million cluster bombs gifts from George Bush and Condy Rice to the people of Lebanon. This is the same Tony Blair who could not have the courage and never did have the courage to stand up and once condemn Israel’s daily campaign of murder and destructions against the Palestinian people. This is the same Tony Blair who refuses to admit Britain central role in the tragedy of the Palestinians people. Now this man is the envoy of the Quartet to the Middle East. This must be a bad joke.
From what I understand from the media and what is written about his mission to the Middle East, Tony Blair will not have what it takes to tackle the real issues in the conflict, such as the Israeli military occupation that has lasted over 40 years, and he will not have the power to address the issues of the more than 525 military checkpoints that strangle the people before it strangle the economy, and of course he will not have the power to address the Israeli cancer in the form of settlements that left hardly any room or water for the Palestinians.
Tony Blair mission is to do capacity building of an incompetent and totally corrupt Palestinian Authority that has no sense of shame of having someone like Tony Blair comes to Ramallah and tell them how to organize traffic in Manara Square or help the Palestinian Authority to organize and manage its non-existing legal and justice system.
One only has to wonder what Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization were doing all these 40 years? One has to wonder what Mr. Abbas and Abu-Ala’a where doing all of these years in Beirut, and in Tunis if not preparing for the day they will come to Ramallah and manage a country? One has to wonder what the PLO leadership would have done if they really liberated Palestine and arrived from Tunis to run and manage a recently liberated country and not a country under occupation?
It is an insult for the Palestinian people to have such a leadership that is in need to have some outside expert like Tony Blair, help them organize their institutions and agencies, when the older generations of Palestinians was the first to help the Gulf countries do capacity buildings.
The Palestinian Authority been there for over 14 years and still does not know how to organize and run a traffic department, let alone organize and administer an independent efficient legal and justice system. Something wrong happened to the Palestinian people under the leadership of the PLO, it simply destroyed whatever good we have as people. The Palestinian Authority, under the control and undo and toxic influence of Fatah could have done better inviting thousand of Diaspora Palestinian professionals to help in capacity buildings. The Jews and Jews alone helped made Israel what it is now, and did not need someone like Tony Blair to help its capacity building. This reminds me of the time when the late Arafat on his first visit to Britain, full of excitement to the point of mental breakdown and retardation, when the only thing he could ask Britain to do for him was to train his “security forces” when he should have reminded Britain of its crimes against the Palestinians people and its Belfour Declaration and demanded hundreds of billions of dollars in compensation.
I wonder what kind of capacity building could someone like Tony Blair do, perhaps he can improve the efficiency and ability of the Palestinian Authority to fleece the people under occupation. No one can help Palestine in its capacity building but Palestinians. Fatah and the PLO have to admit they are simply unfit and unqualified to rule and manage a country. 40 years of Fatah leadership is more than enough.

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The Palestinians refugee camps where always the source of conflict and competition between the different Palestinians organizations and militias. At one time or another, the number of armed Palestinians organizations and militias almost equal that of the Lebanese sects and religious organizations. Of course all, and without exceptions, Palestinian organizations where on the pay roll of many of the Arab regimes doing the bidding of the regimes of Saddam, Assad, and Qaddafi and some of them where simply militias for hire assigned to kill and murder political opponent of the different Arab regimes and in some cases in cahoots with the Israeli Mossad.
With Arafat out and in exile in Tunis, the Palestinians camps remained a “security and political” problem for Lebanon. Thus the continued presence of armed militias within these camps and with an unwritten agreement with the Lebanese central government that the security and internal affairs of these camps are and remain internal issue for the Palestinians with direction for the Lebanese army and police not to enter the camps under any circumstantiate lest there will be a total breakdown of the “hush” truce between the Lebanese government and local Palestinian leadership.
This situation not only created competing sphere of influence between the different competing Palestinians organizations but also gave rise to lawlessness and rise to protection rackets and armed mafias beyond the reach of Lebanese justice system.
Of course while one does recognize that Lebanon opened its doors and hearts to Palestinian refugees, it also took actions that are not only shocking but unconscionable actions and acts by any and all standards.
The Lebanese government decreed that Palestinians in Lebanon are denied the rights to engage in some 50 different activities and are forbidden even to add a room or bring cement into the camps to fix a house or any additions thereto. No other country in the world, not even Israel denies its refugees such rights as those denied to the Palestinians in Lebanon.
Of course the biggest and most prominent issue in Lebanon, in addition to the sectarian politics which is killing the country and denying its citizens the right to be free from the control of war lords and sectarian bosses is the “tawteen”.
Tawteen in local Lebanese politics means the denial of the Palestinian refugees the rights of permanent residency or citizenship in Lebanon. On this issue all Lebanese politicians agree irrespective of their political or sectarian persuasion and this is one issue that all Palestinians organizations and groups agree with us.
The Lebanese politicians use “tawteen” as competing and local issues and they use that for their own political end instead of facing the truth about nature of the country as a sectarian state. Do not let social and stylish sophistications fool you.
No where did the Palestinians receive such a hospitality like that they received in Lebanon and no where did the Palestinians received and treated with hostility and mass murder than they got in Lebanon.
With Arafat reaching his security contract and agreement with Israel where the PLO and Fatah represented in the Palestinian Authority becoming security contractors for Israel, there is no need any more for the presence of weapons and arms within the Palestinian camps and there is no need for the presence of armed Palestinians militias within the camps. The question remain is whether under the present make up of Lebanese sectarian politics are the Palestinians secure within their camps? Keeping in mind that only in Lebanon does a professional class of killers and mass murders like the late Elie Hobeika become a minister with the support and cover provided by the late Assad and where a convicted killer and murder like Samir Geagea become political leaders. The battle of Nahr Albared refugee camps is but an example of the tenuous presence of Palestinians in Lebanon. Perhaps it is time to take the presence of Palestinians in Lebanon out of the local Lebanese equation and perhaps it is time to take the arms and weapons out of the camps. One wishes that some day Lebanon will live up to it name and become free of all forms of sectarian politics. It is time to end “taefyee” once and for all. It is also time to retire all the war lords and mass murderers and criminals from political leadership in Lebanon.

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