Palestinian
Diaspora: With
or Against Collaboration?
By Laith Marouf
15 September, 2007
The
Electronic Intifada
In
the past few months, Palestinians in the Diaspora have watched with
horror the latest developments in their homeland. There has been a flurry
of articles about what to do, but overall there is a feeling that they
are helpless to affect the situation on the ground. What has been missing
is an understanding that Palestinians in the Diaspora must undertake
a clear assessment of their own situation if they are to have any impact
at all.
The recent events have cast
light on dark deeds: the collaboration between Mahmoud Abbas and associates
like Mohammed Dahlan on the one hand, and Israel on the other; the transfer
of weapons and training by the US and other countries to certain Palestinian
militias whose mission was to overthrow the result of the January 2006
election. Palestinians see clearly that Abbas -- who embraces Israeli
leaders while refusing to talk to other Palestinian factions -- was
the author of the Oslo agreement that never even mentioned the word
"occupation," and is now discussing a new "agreement
of principles" that will cancel the right of return, legitimize
Israeli settlements and threaten other basic rights. In short, what
we have now is a clique of collaborators in control of Fatah and the
Palestinian Authority "presidency" and much of what is left
of the PLO.
In the Western Diaspora --
Canada, the United States and Europe -- in the past ten years, by contrast,
Palestinians have undergone something of a revival. There has been growth
in numbers, institutions and activities. For the most part this has
been dependent on young people. For example, students' networks like
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) in Canada and the Palestinian
Solidarity Committee (PSC) in the US along with Al-Awda are all overwhelmingly
composed of people under 35 years old. These networks came to existence
after the collapse of Palestinian institutions in the Diaspora following
the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. At that time PLO institutions
were sidelined by the Oslo leadership in exchange for the creation of
the Palestinian Authority (only to be resurrected recently as a rubber
stamp for Abbas' collaboration with Israel last month), effectively
leaving the Diaspora disenfranchised.
Many long-established local
Palestinian groups, particularly those associated with the dominant
factions, were not able to adapt to the new realities. They failed to
provide the basic services, assistance and representation any immigrant
community center must provide to its constituency. But they also let
the community down politically, failing to take strong public positions
challenging the flaws of Oslo, or engaging in effective organizing.
This led to a decline in membership in many community centers, dropping
from the thousands to mere dozens.
In the absence of alternative
structures for representation, and with the emergence of the Internet,
groups like SPHR and Al-Awda among others, and independent media like
The Electronic Intifada started popping up across North America in the
mid-1990s and early 2000s. After the second intifada broke out, they
became the most visible and vocal forces standing up to Israeli and
Zionist propaganda, providing a mechanism for young Palestinians in
the Diaspora to talk to each other and organize. Thus, they also provided
an invaluable service to the community: self-education and celebration.
Zionist institutions grudgingly credited these projects with challenging
the monopoly they had held on the western media narrative, making it
harder to pass pro-Israeli propaganda without a response from an increasing
number of articulate individuals.
Of course these successes
were not without hardships. There were the dark times after 2001 as
pro-Israel groups launched their weight against the most visible advocates
of Palestinian rights. In Canada, student activists were targeted with
expulsions and criminal charges and in the United States professors
who were deemed too outspoken were the focus of intense campaigns of
vilification and intimidation. At the same time, US authorities tried
to send a message with politically-motivated prosecutions against individuals
like Professor Sami al-Arian. Despite all these efforts, the community
as a whole has not been frightened.
The battle that has gotten
less attention has been the one within the community. The self-proclaimed
community leaders and associations of the old guard largely avoided
publicly supporting many of those on the front lines or even worked
clandestinely to undermine them. In some cases it was the innocent warnings
from frightened parents to their children, "don't join SPHR!"
In others it was the attempts to hold "dialogue" groups, presenting
the "civilized" Arab as an alternative. For instance right
after the "Concordia Uprising" in 2002 when Benjamin Netanyahu
was denied his right to spread hate speech, the Concordia Administration
held a panel discussion with a few Zionist and Arab individuals. One
of the tokens said "We can be civilized; see, we can agree to disagree!"
Yet these obstacles were
never more than minor distractions to the Palestinian movement in the
west, until the movement really started to take off. The lightning rods
targeted by Zionist organizations survived. This only encouraged more
people to be involved, and emboldened them. Along with all the remarkable
achievements of the movement within the student and labor unions and
the anti-war movement, this created an unprecedented amount of maneuvering
space for Palestinians. And here is where the problems started. Suddenly,
all those "liberal" and "civilized" individuals
understood that the train was leaving without them. Having failed to
stop the movement, some are desperately trying to regain legitimacy
in order to take control of this new space.
In the US and Canada there
have been calls for national meetings to formulate umbrella organizations
that would speak on behalf of all Palestinians living there. But why
now, and who is involved? Two things need to be pointed out before we
answer these questions. First, for the most part the front line organizations
like SPHR and Al-Awda are defined as "solidarity groups" although
they are founded and led by Palestinians and even the majority of their
membership is Palestinian. Second, these groups are not affiliated with
any of the "old country" feuds or factions because their membership
is mostly young and never belonged to these factions. This is relevant
because some actors have insisted that these incipient national organizations
be centered on these old and largely irrelevant factional identities.
Others are insisting that only Palestinians be allowed to participate,
which opened the discussion of who is a Palestinian. These issues are
being purposefully exaggerated in order to exclude solidarity groups
and/or give more voting power for failed "community groups."
The constant talk of blood quantum ("only your mother is Palestinian!")
is also designed as psychological pressure against the young students
to make it uncomfortable to be in those meetings.
Why is all this happening
now? When the day comes for Abbas to sign on the line -- giving up Palestinian
rights -- he needs a Diaspora leadership that is in line with his decisions.
In Canada, almost all Palestinian advocacy and community groups have
been involved in these efforts, but our tried, tested and failed "elite"
are trying very hard to take the helm once again -- if not by democracy
then by any means necessary. Since these discussions started last year,
some of the steadfast individuals have received physical threats and
even death threats. And things have not got serious yet.
In the past two years in
Europe, Palestinians were able to form an umbrella group that actually
challenged the Abbas line, and tried to challenge the ban on the elected
Hamas government. It may be no coincidence that now the old "elite"
in Canada are receiving backing from Abbas and his entourage. Since
last year there has been a rash of Fatah visits to Canada and the US
where the primary goal is meeting with prospective allies here to prepare
them for seats in a revived (but Abbas controlled) PLO. In recent months,
Fatah has sent senior representatives to rally the support of Palestinians
in Canada late last year and this summer following the events in Gaza
and promised rewards to potential allies.
Palestinians in the Diaspora
need to learn the lesson from Gaza and Lebanon. Although all Palestinians
desire unity, it is impossible with those who are actively collaborating
with the Israeli agenda and seeking to undermine the Palestinian movement
for liberation. We cannot allow those who hijacked Palestinian institutions
in Palestine in order to serve Israel to do the same in the Diaspora.
Many have argued that we
need to revive and democratize the PLO, but the question is how. It
is clear that those who still control the PLO structures will never
willingly allow this to happen. There must be grassroots pressure to
bring that about. If the PLO is not open to democratization, we should
call for national and international conferences for all Palestinian
communities to form a new democratic organization that represents all
sections of our society. It will be an enormous challenge, but it is
one we have to meet to make clear there is no mandate and no possibility
for Abbas, or any other would-be collaborator, to sign away Palestinian
rights. Judging from the emerging agenda of the US-planned "peace
conference" in November, it may be now or never for us to act.
Laith Marouf
is the Chapter Coordinator of SPHR, the largest network of students
working on Palestinian human rights in North America. He can be reached
at [email protected]
or visit www.sphr.org
for more information.
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