Palestinians need clarity, not charades

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Rami G. Khouri
Daily Star staff
Saturday, November 14, 2009


(snip)

... Palestinians face a crisis of political leadership. The unified Palestinian leadership that came into its own under Arafat in the late 1960s under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) succeeded in important ways. It asserted Palestinian independent action and minimized Arab interference, brought many different ideological groups under the single PLO umbrella, and it forged a realistic national program that sought to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

All three of those assets that Arafat and his colleagues like Abbas generated have frayed or been abandoned completely. The epic, tragic high note of Abbas’ incompetence and failure as a leader at both the personal and policy levels was his move last month to bow to American and Israeli pressure and delay the UN’s consideration of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war atrocities. He reversed course quickly, but only after revealing his monumental incompetence to engage with instruments of international law, legitimacy, and accountability, and his insensitivity to the plight of his own people who thirsted for precisely such an impartial call to end the savagery and impunity of Israeli arms.

A new Palestinian leadership needs to be elected in order to regain legitimacy that has been steadily squandered in recent years by Abbas and, before him, Arafat in his waning years. This highlights the third issue at stake, and the single most important national priority for the Palestinian people today: to reconstitute a credible national leadership whose first task always has been and remains to speak for all Palestinians in a single voice, in pursuit of realistic political goals.

read on...
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=108672

[LeftishBrit]

1. I agree about the need for new, and clearer/more united, leadership...

Is there any chance of it?

[Sezu]

2. Oh yeah, things were SO much better when

planes were being hijacked and old guys in wheelchairs were being thrown off boats.

Hopefully any new leadership will NOT emulate Arafat during his heyday.

[Kurska]

3. That is what some want, it makes some people feel like they are "doing something"

even if those types of acts are completely counterproductive and just lead to sympathy for Israel.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. It doesn't matter how counterproductive it is to the Palestinians...

...it NEVER leads to sympathy for Israel! Hamas could hurl "firecrackers" into Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, killing thousands, and there would be no sympathy for the Israelis (except those who already feel it). All we would see would be the crocodile tears of bigots, liars, hate-mongers, and those who are disappointed in the increased Israeli body count.

[Kurska]

5. I think you're so entrenched in debate between only the two most blind extremes you don't see.

That when a suicide bombing happens in israel the vast majority of the people in the world are disgusted by it, I know people who were virulently anti-israel having their entire passion for "Palestinian liberation" be drained from them after the vicious suicide bombings of the second infitada.

[Behind the Aegis]

6. I think you are so naive as to not see the writing on the wall.

"That when a suicide bombing happens in israel the vast majority of the people in the world are disgusted by it.."

Hyperbole and conjecture.

You have been blinded yourself, by wearing rose-colored glasses which allows you to think that people view Israel in a way you do; they do not.