| The Hamas-Fatah unity deal exposes the hypocrisy of the West By Hana Zuhair |
| When Hamas and Fatah decided to bury the hatchet last month, after a secret meeting mediated by Egypt’s interim government, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu responded promptly and briefly. He appeared on TV and gave Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas what sounded like an ultimatum — either choose peace with Israel or peace with Hamas.The political move by the two opposing factions, which had been caught up in a bitter fight over power since 2006, is certainly a surprising game-changer. The brothers fell out following the 2006 Gaza elections where Hamas won a majority. The Hamas win led to tough economic sanctions, imposed mercilessly by many countries and entities including the European Union, the US and Israel. Internal instability within the Palestinian territories followed. Differences between Hamas and Fatah surfaced quickly and the face-off between Hamas and Fatah ended in a showdown that saw the former taking over Gaza, ruling it with an iron fist and stripping Abbas and his party of any legitimacy in the strip. Until May 2011, several attempts to reconcile both parties (in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Egypt) had failed miserably. Meanwhile, Gazans, blockaded by an almost total border closure imposed by Israel and Egypt, suffered the consequences of infighting as the world watched. So to see Hamas and Fatah coming together is certainly good news. What is not, however, is the political fiasco that followed this historic event. Don’t get me wrong. It was amusing, in part, to see how the world reacted. Then again, as a Palestinian-American who has been living in Egypt for a while now, I must admit, that I enjoyed seeing how America and Israel’s hypocritical policies are now as clear as day. For starters, the US Congress immediately backed Netenyahu, as it never fails to do, with congressmen calling upon US President Barak Obama to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority. “I don’t think there is any will on the part of the administration or the Congress to provide funds to a government that is dominated by a dedicated terrorist organization,” said Gary L. Ackerman, Representative Democrat of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, in an April 27 article in The New York Times. This statement is funny, at best, in light of previous statements made by the US administration. According to Reuters, in February 2009, George Mitchell, the Obama administration’s special envoy to the region, assured us in the Middle East that Washington aspired to witness the formation of a Hamas-Fatah unity government. This paradox is what we in the Middle East have to deal with all the time, beginning with contradictory statements and biased policies in the region and ending with constant threats of cutting off the mighty US aid to any country that dares to act independently. The Palestinian people have been protesting against the divide between Hamas and Fatah in May due to the setbacks this strife has produced in a country still unrecognized internationally. So clearly, the people were desperate for this peace deal. Isn’t democracy about the power of the people and what they want? Not, apparently, when the unity deal “will be paid for with lives of the innocent Israelis,” as Ackerman continued in defense of his rather relentless pro-Israeli stance. In other comments to the media, Tommy Vietor, the US National Security Council’s spokesman, described Hamas as a “terrorist organization which targets civilians,” as if that explained everything. All these statements came even though further details of the unity deal hasn’t been disclosed yet — they are just knee-jerk reactions to Hamas as a political player. Dare I ask, what about the Israeli state-sponsored terrorism of killing innocent Palestinians? What about Israel’s use of illegal white phosphorus munitions, which rained on the besieged Gaza for weeks during the 2008 invasion, dissolving children’s body parts? If the majority of Western media has failed to report the full story and only reported the killing of Israelis, I have eyewitness accounts to share from family and friends living in the Palestinian territories. I have family members and friends who have died in political prisons and during military raids. I still hear horror stories from those who survived, in addition to anecdotes of the condescending and often violent way that Israeli soldiers deal with Palestinians at checkpoints. Here’s one: An Israeli soldier stabbed my cousin in the arm with a knife. My cousin, an 18-year-old Palestinian-American, was on his first visit to the Middle East and had never left America before. The cut ran deep in his arm, his ‘punishment’ because he initially refused to respond when the soldier asked him in a rather aggressive manner where he was going. I also find it troubling that the US would make a statement so misaligned with the UN’s identification of Israel as an occupying state. Although, personally, I’m against both Fatah and Hamas, since I view them as dictators, this reconciliation — if it’s sustained — should bring a breeze of stability to Palestine, the country whose people have been living 63 years of Nakba. But it seems that democracy in this region, as well as the manifestation of the power of the people, isn’t in America and Israel’s best interests. Democracy in the region means that the people will refuse the West’s extreme interference in any country’s domestic affairs. America will fight unremittingly to keep its control for the sake of its sister Israel. Hence, the term “Progressive Except for Palestine”, often attributed to Harvard Law Professor and Assistant Attorney to the Justice Department David Barron, represents how the US and Israel wants the world to relate to Palestine. Progress is expected and indeed encouraged for everyone — except for Palestinians. |
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