My dear Abbas ... and Hamas
Other Voices
IBy Ahmad alsarraf
knew Palestine and its cause for the first time while I was at the Al-Sabah Elementary School, where our Palestinian teachers did not fail to explain the issue and talk about it although suspicious that our small minds understood a lot about what they were saying, but for some reason a lot of what they said remained deep-rooted in my subconscious mind.
This was in the early 1950s and after less than 8 years of the catastrophe in which a homeland was lost due to betrayal, inaction, backwardness and weakness of a team in contrast to the other side, and the situation remains the same after seventy years, not as it is, but much worse in our side and much stronger on their side.
The deal of the century, or the slap of the century, according to the description of some of its opponents, was not met with any concern from any party that is concerned with the issue, as things were a matter of business as usual, and they will remain the same in the foreseeable future and beyond.
Hamas opposes Abbas and Abbas fights Hamas, and this party throws fighters of the second party from above the buildings, and the other side responds with the assassination of men of the other side ... and so on! I am sure that the two sides are ready to kill each other even before thinking of killing their historical enemy, and the reason is that Israel does not contest either of them for the chair, but they pose a threat to each other’s chairs, and therefore any talk of resistance, steadfastness and opposition with this Palestinian fragmentation does not make sense.
Israel is strong and is becoming stronger every day. Its prime minister is held accountable and imprisoned for a simplest crime. (Ehud) Olmert was imprisoned and (Yitzhak) Rabin lost the premiership because he violated the financial laws, and Netanyahu faces the risk of being put behind bars. The most evident evidence of Israel’s strength is that a number of its writers and politicians have been standing with the Palestinians, without any fear.
Some believe that any peace means the end of the splendor they live in and the more the situation continues, the more advantages and gifts will continue to pour in.
We are facing each other and defeated when facing our enemies and before we start declaring war on any party.
We are not satisfied with not welcoming each other, but abhorring each other strongly, closing the borders in each other’s face and opening them to others. Rather, the situation has reached such an extent that citizens of all Arab and Islamic countries are prevented from entering them, and at the same time they welcome those we call our enemies.
Our industries, if any, are in the gutter; our schools, without exception, are in the lower level, and the same can be said on buildings, teachers, curricula and outputs; we, without exception, are backward in our positions on human rights; our parliaments do not exist, and if any, they are just a formality; our newspapers are ‘government-controlled’, and if they are not, they face more restrictions than the freedoms they enjoy; 90% of our universities are backward and unrecognized, and the world knows nothing about them but knows more about our prisons and our research laboratories do not exist, and what is spent on research goes to intelligence.
The passports of most of our countries are not welcome in developed countries, and yet a majority insists on obtaining them, in order to help them infiltrate into a European country and request political asylum.
Our prisons are full of criminals, innocent people, and prisoners of opinion, opponents and bloggers. We have the largest number of them, and yet we are more corrupt and involved in thefts more than the others.
And the gap that separates us from the developed world is not only in the area of economy, science, military and financial superiority, but the developed world is morally superior to us. For thousands of years, we have linked ethics between legs, which are more complex and important than that.
I am not asking to surrender, but before we throw away the proposal do we have the ability to think and bargain or do we have an alternative - Palestinian, Arab or Islamic?