The Slippery Slope

IT IS, of course, all the fault of Judge Richard Goldstone. He is to blame for it, as he is to blame for all the other ills that are befalling us now.

He is to blame for the trouble we are having at the UN, both in New York and in Geneva. For the conspiracy to bring our political and military leaders to trial in The Hague. For the ongoing crisis between us and Turkey. For the many initiatives throughout the world to organize a boycott of Israel.

Now he is to blame also for the existential danger facing Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).

WHEN THE Goldstone report was submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, our government decided to do all it could to prevent even a debate about it.

The debate was, of course, demanded by the Palestinians. When the report was published, the Palestinian representative in Geneva did the obvious: he demanded that the report be debated with a view to submitting it to the Security Council, which in turn would submit it to the international court in The Hague.

What came next could have been foreseen. The Israeli government exerted heavy pressure on the US. The US exerted heavy pressure on Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas gave in and instructed his representative in Geneva to withdraw his request for a debate.

In any other matter, this would have passed quietly. But since the subject was the Gaza War, Palestinian public opinion exploded. Throughout the war, every Palestinian in the West Bank saw on Aljazeera and the other Arab networks every day, every hour, the atrocities of the war, the mangled bodies of women and children, the destroyed schools and mosques, the white phosphorus bombs.

For the Hamas leaders, Abbas’ order to withdraw the request was a gift from Allah. They fell over Abbas with unabated fury. “Traitor”, “Collaborator”, “Subcontractor of the Zionist murderers” were the more moderate epithets. They found an echo with many Palestinians who are not necessarily Hamas supporters.

Abbas’ legal standing is shaky. According to one version, his term of office expired long ago. According to another, it will expire in a few months. Whatever the case may be, he will be compelled to hold elections soon. In this situation, he cannot remain indifferent to an upsurge of public opinion against him. So he drew the logical conclusion: he instructed his Geneva representative to renew his request for a debate on the Goldstone report. This ended yesterday with a resolution to refer the report to the UN General Assembly.

Our frustrated government reacted angrily. The orchestrated media declared Abbas an “ungrateful” person, even a hypocrite. After all, didn’t he urge the Israelis during the Gaza War to intensify their attacks on the Gaza population, in order to topple Hamas? This accusation poured oil on the flames. For Palestinians, it meant that Abbas was not satisfied with the atrocities perpetrated by the Israelis and demanded more. It is hard to imagine a more damaging allegation.

As if this was not enough, the Israeli media reported that Jerusalem had delivered an “ultimatum” to the Palestinian Authority: if the request for a debate were not withdrawn, Israel would not authorize the frequency allocation for a second Palestinian cellular telephone company, “al-Wataniya”, whose partners, it was gleefully reported, include Abbas’ sons. Such a frequency allocation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Even in such a matter, the Palestinians are totally dependent on the Israeli occupation authorities.

THE WHOLE affair starkly illuminates the impossible situation in which the Palestinian Authority finds itself. They are between hammer and anvil – indeed, between several hammers and an anvil.

One hammer is Israeli. The Palestinian Authority is completely dependent on the occupation masters. As the telephone affair illustrates, nothing can move in the West Bank without Israeli approval.

Binyamin Netanyahu speaks about “economic peace” as a substitute for political peace. Economic benefits instead of national independence. This, by the way, shows how far removed he is from the teachings of his idol, Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky, who 85 years ago made fun of the Zionist leaders for entertaining the illusion that the Palestinian people could be bought off. No people, he said, sells itself for economic advantages.

The Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister, Salam Fayad, has fallen into this trap. He points to the economic progress that has been made, according to him, in the West Bank. Several road blocks were removed. An imposing shopping mall was opened in Nablus. Within two years, he said, the Palestinians will be able to establish a Palestinian state. He is ignoring the fact that the Israeli army, the de facto sovereign in the occupied territories, can put an end to all these efforts at a moment’s notice. The road blocks can be put back and doubled, the towns put under curfew, the mall demolished. Indeed, every new mall in the West Bank increases the dependency on the goodwill of occupation authorities.

Another hammer is American. The Palestinian Authority subsists on money donated by the US and its European sidekicks. The security forces of the Palestinian Authority are being trained by the American general, Keith Dayton. Washington treats Mahmoud Abbas as it treats the Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. He is “our son of a bitch”. He exists as long as we want him to, he disappears if we let go.

In a clash between Washington and Jerusalem, Ramallah would benefit. But as the Goldstone episode shows, the US and Israel are, for the time being, fully coordinated. Abbas has no choice but to dance to the tune of the Israeli flute.

The anvil is Palestinian. At the moment, the Palestinian public is passive. It is tired, worn down, frustrated, in despair. But the Goldstone affair shows that below the surface, a volcano is brewing.

Hamas spokesmen liken Abbas to Marshal Petain, the French hero of World War I, who was the idol of the people and the army. In World War II, when the German army destroyed the French military in a Blitzkrieg that stunned the world, the political establishment in Paris disintegrated. In its hour of misery, the people called on the aged marshal, who capitulated to the Germans in order to save what could be saved. He was, without doubt, a French patriot.

Hitler respected the marshal, and initially treated him well. For a year or so, he even considered taking him on as an ally, in preference to Mussolini. A large part of France remained “unoccupied”, as a kind of German protectorate, and there the Vichy regime (after the name of its capital) was installed. But soon matters deteriorated and Petain became a full-fledged collaborator with the Nazis, even taking part in the annihilation of the Jews. “Vichy” became a synonym for treason, and after the war Petain was condemned to death. In consideration of his glorious past, his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

I don’t think that this is a fair comparison. Ramallah is not Vichy. Khaled Mashaal in Damascus is not de Gaulle in London. But Vichy serves as a warning, and the Palestinian Authority is on a slippery slope. A regime under occupation is always in danger of becoming a collaborator. The verbal attacks of Hamas only increase the misery of Abbas and his allies.