Zuheir Kseibati
Dar Al-Hayat (Opinion)
February 11, 2010 - 1:00am
http://www.daralhayat.com/portalarticlendah/107818


The opinion polls do not reveal surprising facts in Israel, as they promise the Likud Party and its leader Benjamin Netenyahu with more publicity among the Israelis. These polls promise to reward their extremism with more seats in the Knesset. While the direct reason behind the increasing support for the party and its leader lies in the fact that the government has transcended the global economic crisis with the least damage possible and has managed to consolidate what it considers an exceptional tranquility for the Hebrew State, we cannot overlook the language that threatens to launch new wars against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Hamas. This language is used in addressing the Israeli street which has grown more violent and hostile since the war on Gaza. This fact is acknowledged by Jewish non-governmental organizations.

The project of the Hebrew State is considered the most effective weapon used by the Likud Party in the face of an indolent opposition, while the project of the Palestinian State is facing one retreat after the other, and is delayed by the division between Fatah and Hamas, which is close to becoming a chronic disease that entails incurable diseases.

It goes without saying that nothing new has occurred and justifies announcing the death of all the mediation efforts between the two brothers who were segregated by their infighting more than by Netanyahu or Barack or Olmert. The publicity of the Likud and its leader does not really matter, but the fact that the recent Israeli opinion polls coincided with the testimony of Palestinian youths in the West Bank – who were arrested and who acknowledged that they adopted Al-Qaeda’s ideology - is a sign of the magnitude of what the Palestinian – and any Arab person – is committing against his cause, for the sake of which he announces to have held the sword, while in fact, his brother becomes a victim of it.

According to the testimony of these youths, with them being American University students in Janin who stored explosives, Al-Qaeda is the alternative to the two non-believers; the Fatah and Hamas Movements. First, this is a sign of the “publicity” of both movements, under whose fierce wars the takfiri ideology thrives, and which will drag the Palestinians into more infighting. Most dangerous is that the sympathy expressed with Al-Qaeda and the wishes of some people - who have become depressed with the inter-Palestinian infighting and the conflict with Israel- to raise the flag of the organization, are enough to offer Netanyahu and the thefts of land and history in Palestine an easy opportunity to get rid of what has remained of the dream…

Is there a new chance to wait for the Palestinian reconciliation? Hamas is waiting for the amendment of the Egyptian platform to conform to its desires, or else…

Is there a new chance for the possibility of launching the negotiation track with Israel? The testing period to examine the intentions of Netanyahu in the indirect negotiations with authority might turn into a trap for Mahmoud Abbas, as the Likud manipulates every chance to defame his reputation and political credit. The same trap will revive the attempts by the Palestinians to hold each other as infidels. So the priority of the reconciliation was expected, at least in order for Fatah and Hamas to overcome the dilemma of questioning the legitimacy of President Abbas remaining in office after the end of his mandate.

Is the problem of publicity more pressing than the crisis of legitimacy? This did not exclude the press and journalists, where chaos and uncertainty spread between politics and media, and “low-grade” speeches were exchanged. But would the alternative be to announce the death of the Palestinian media as a martyr of the fierce war?

Are they low-grade speeches or deteriorating minds that pave the way for the takfiri cells that wake up on the clamor of the scandals of degradations?

It is the worst forms of the era of degradation, which does not distinguish between an Arab and another. In the 1960s, Beirut only needed a piece of news published by a Palestinian newspaper to mobilize the people in solidarity with those who face the enemy with bare hands. In some Palestinian newspapers today, the dreams are killed with the weapons of scolding, or with curses directed at the corrupted.

This takes place at a time when the Palestinians in Gaza, who are displaced in camps throughout the Gaza Strip, are very hopeless to even curse the darkness. They neither care about the reconciliation’s popularity anymore nor about the conscience of the Goldstone report…bare hands, many flags and tunnels: The attempt to preserve the dream might succeed.

Priority is attached to reconciliation, and publicity is for the lazy one…No one cares about the fate of Gaza and its great silence in the aftermath of the war’s storm. Netanyahu and Barack are gloating, Mishaal demands reconciliation from Moscow, and the leader of the “[Islamic] Jihad” Ramadan Shalah asks for confrontation from Tehran.

There is a long distance between Mahmud Ahmadinezhad’s palace and Ismail Haniyah’s house, the same distance that exists between the ill-fated Palestinians as a result of the deteriorating minds, and the loss of the dream.

In Palestine, there are fewer dreams and more tunnels, ones that are lost between the publicity of Netanyahu and the aspirations of Ahmadinezhad.




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