Some Palestinians, especially those in Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's
camp, are still struggling with their sense of priorities.
The BBC's Jeremy Bowen wrote on 11 June: "The humiliation of June 2007
[when Hamas took over Gaza] will not easily be forgotten by Fatah's
people. For the last 12 months the suggestion that they should try to
end their argument with Hamas has been guaranteed to get a testy
response from senior figures close to Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas... One of his senior ministers exploded with such fury
whenever I asked him about it that his voice sent the dials on the
BBC's recording equipment hurtling into the red."
Reading the above I wondered if the minister would respond with such
intensity if Bowen sought his views on the murder of Hadeel or on the
fact that the minister's own people are caged, not only in Gaza, but
large parts of the West Bank, behind Israeli military barricades,
electric fences and security walls?
If the minister fails to appreciate the misery of Hadeel's generation,
maybe he should take a few minutes away from his busy schedule to
browse some of the grim data on the daily victimisation of Palestinian
children. Sigrid Kaag, UNICEF's regional director for the Middle East
and North Africa, visited the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern
Gaza Strip on 9 June. The poorest of Gaza's slums, it is where the
uprising of 1987, unsurprisingly, broke out. "To witness the impact of
the current blockade on the children of Gaza firsthand was a daunting
experience," Kaag said. "This situation must end."
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, "as of 26 May, 64 children had been killed in the conflict
since the beginning of the year — more than the total child death toll
for all of 2007. Fifty-nine of the deaths were in Gaza and another four
victims were Israeli children."
Bowen wrote: "The fighter who emptied his Kalashnikov into the desk of
Mohamed Dahlan, until that day the Fatah strongman in Gaza, yelled
'this is the fate of traitors like the scumbag Dahlan' as he pulled the
trigger, and it was recorded and put on television for all to see." The
minister finds it difficult to forgive such an action by Hamas,
conveniently forgetting reports in the US media — Vanity Fair to be
more precise — that Dahlan headed a US-Israeli plot to carry out a
military onslaught against the democratically elected government in
Gaza. The plan was botched because of Hamas's pre- emptive take-over of
the Strip.
Consider this: UNICEF reports that, "across the West Bank some 600
obstacles to movement — and the barrier separating the West Bank from
Israel — make it difficult for children to attend schools, patients to
go to health centres and families to see each other... the closure
regime is tightening even for UN humanitarian operations".
Yet the minister, and many like him, find Hamas's violence in June 2007 the pinnacle of humiliation. Puzzling, indeed.
What is more humiliating, I wonder: the sight of Dahlan's office chair
filled with bullet holes, or Palestinian mothers, elders and children
lining up before an abusive group of trigger-happy Israeli soldiers,
jeering in broken Arabic every racist word they can conjure.
Meanwhile, recent news reports spoke of assurances made by Abbas to the
anxious Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his offer of dialogue
with Hamas would be conditional. Why condition talks among brethren
while allowing Israel endless benefit of the doubt in stretching out a
meaningless "peace process" while allowing its army to kill children
like Hadeel at will?
Perhaps Abbas, and the angry minister in the BBC report, are confused
about the Palestinian state Israel tirelessly promises. "The future
Palestinian state must be established according to Israel's security
needs, including supervision of border crossings and the disarming of
militants," reported Haaretz, referring to comments made by Israeli
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. So much for sovereignty.
The Israeli paper went on to report: "Israel says it intends to keep
major settlement blocs in the West Bank under any future peace deal
with the Palestinians and that its network of roadblocks and
checkpoints in the West Bank helps to prevent attacks on Israelis."
Even if the Israeli promise of statehood ever actualises it has apartheid written all over it.
Palestinians need not pay much attention to Livni's futile visions.
They should focus their energies on unifying their ranks for nothing
compels more fury than their disunity, and nothing is as humiliating as
their reliance on Israeli and US arms and money to keep their own
brethren in Gaza starved and browbeaten.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers
and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian
Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
Writings 
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