By Shawqi Issa

As with the war in Lebanon and now with the war on Gaza, what will achieve goals is reason, not emotions and lack of reason. Only when we have a qualified leadership that knows what it is after and what the enemy is after at each stage can we take prudent steps and affect the enemy. But when leadership, (even the national struggling for our cause) is not qualified, then all it does is offer victims, and it continues with this offering and nothing else.

We the Palestinians are heroic in our continuous sacrifices and in never contemplating surrender. However, we do not know the dynamics of forming alliances and we are not quick-witted. Even more, we possess an arrogance which is the antithesis of the logic of political action. Most importantly, our various Palestinian leaderships suffer from a lack of strategic planning; since 1967 we have suffered from a lack of strategy along with a widespread confusion in all of our political and military actions, despite Yasser Arafat’s tactical skills and pragmatism.

In every revolution and for each state, there are experts and a leadership that can determine the specific strategies and tactics of the enemy at every stage, and based on this determination, methods of response to each one of the objectives of the enemy are formulated, along with specifying a time and place for the action, pre-emptive action, continuous subsequent actions, and reaction against the enemy.

The Zionist movement, its principal tool being Israel, aims to control, directly and indirectly, the Middle East region. It harnesses Israel to serve its objectives and those of the United States and the West by maintaining the region in a tense state for varying objectives. This goal necessitates maintaining a comprehensive control over all of Palestine and the prevention of the creation of a real Palestinian state, on the lands it occupied in 1967 or parts thereof. All of the talk by the United States - and some Israeli leaders at times- of a Palestinian state with provisional borders or on ever diminishing parts of the occupied West Bank and Gaza is nothing but a delaying and misleading tactic aimed at achieving other goals that have nothing to do with peace and stability. Some political groups within the Zionist movement still declare in no uncertain terms that the state of Israel should be extended to include Jordan. Other groups adopt the borders currently in place with some modifications that include parts of the occupied West Bank, allowing for a weak entity which guarantees for Israel an indirect control of what is left. The rest of the Zionist political trends reside somewhere between these two positions.

According to documents that were classified and are now public, the plans of the Zionist movement for Lebanon were set in the second half the 1950s, the plan for the occupation of the rest of the Palestinian lands was outlined in the beginning of the 60's and executed finally in 1967. In the second half of the 70's while in the midst of negotiating the so-called Peace Treaty with Egypt, the Zionist movement drew up detailed blueprints for settling the West Bank, the most important element being the prevention of the creation of any real state for the Palestinians. This was followed in the early 90's with a scheme to partition Palestinian lands and to separate and isolate the Gaza Strip, according to a strategy based on a study done by the Jaffee Center in 1989. This plan was carried out in two phases, the first through the Oslo Accord and the second during the unilateral redeployment from Gaza in 2005, a strategy whose goals- not concealed by a single Israeli official- were to continue the Judaization of the West Bank, its division and annexation, and the creation of a weak state-like entity on the remainder of the land or, in another scenario, pressuring Jordan and forcing it to annex that land. The final touches of isolating Gaza are being attempted in the current stage we are witnessing now.

For decades during all of this, Israel did not miss a chance to further its goals, taking advantage of

- The polarization of the world,

- The alignment of most Arab governments with the US axis supporting Israel, and not the other axis (before the fall of the Soviet Union), where Israel had some elements of support nevertheless.

- Some of the Arab governments that allied themselves with the axis opposing the US were more oppressive regimes than those on the US’s side, and their rulers were busy preserving their status, thus ridding the Zionist movement of any real opposition from Arab governments. Furthermore, the Zionist movement created and strengthened the differences between these Arab regimes.

This gave them time to focus on singling out and destroying the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) thus allowing the Zionist movement to rapidly implement its plans without the presence of any countermeasures.

On the other hand, the Arab and Palestinian sides have simply carried out work which did not and could have not accomplished any victory, nor did it stop or slow down (except minutely) the Zionist schemes.

On the military front, Israel has been the superior power since its inception, in particular its Air Force. No Arab country has attempted to compete with Israel on that front even though they could have on certain occasions, since the intention was lacking and building a military to fight Zionism was not a priority for these regimes. Each regime instead was concerned primarily with maintaining its rule and fearing its own people. This military balance remained greatly skewed to Israel’s favor. Likewise on the Palestinian front, military organization was chaotic and without any examination of priorities.

As for settlements, when the enemy was focusing on settling the Palestinian lands, there was no Palestinian action blocking the settlements and intimidating the settlers to make them think twice before moving into a settlement, and the PLO did not use its easily available funds to prevent Palestinian workers from working in building settlements. This lack of strategy and lack of understanding of the enemy’s strategy resulted in the signing of the Oslo agreement without requiring the removal of settlements or even the cessation of their construction. This gave Israel a time advantage to accomplish what was most important to it - dividing the West Bank into three parts - A, B and C - while maintaining all the lands where settlements can be expanded under full Israeli control, an area that constitutes 2/3 of the occupied territory. Moreover, this division placed the populated areas under the full control of the Palestinian Authority, which paved the way for Israel to use its Air Force to keep this population under siege and to displace the largest possible number of people by terrorizing them and so eventually forcing them to leave. During this time, while Israel was fully aware that the negotiations would fail, it continued to provoke the Palestinian population, leading them toward reactionary actions of a militant nature, thus making possible what Israel achieved since the year 2000 until this moment.

Therefore, the net result and outcome of the Oslo Accord and the forming of the Palestinian Authority have achieved for Israel exactly what it needed and wanted: dividing Palestinian lands; the weakening of its only real enemy, the PLO; and the destruction or weakening of Palestinian people’s confidence in it, isolating it from its natural alliances with global liberation movements and instead placing it among those regimes allied with the United States. Meanwhile, Israel maintained peace negotiations, using them for purposes of deceit and to block any attempts to impede its plans. This is particularly so, since Israel knows that the Palestinian negotiator is like a blind man walking in unfamiliar terrain, unable to steer the negotiations in the direction he wants, rather, in each round of talks, he is forced into the domain in which Israel prefers to operate. Examples of such negotiations are ample, among them the obstruction of any use of International law - which always favors the cause of the Palestinians - to the extent that the PLO itself agreed to prevent the Geneva conventions member states from taking any measures against Israel under the pretext of not interrupting the course of negotiations with Israel, during an exceptional meeting of the High Signatory Parties in 1999. Moreover, the negotiations established the grounds for peace treaties with some Arab countries like Jordan, dragged others into long–term, endless negotiations such as with Syria, and also allowed for the establishment of normalized relations with Arab countries such as Qatar, all at no price to Israel. Most crucially, the negotiations also pushed Arabs and Palestinians to grant the United States unprecedented and exclusive rights to manage and control all these processes.

On the other hand, the emergence of new political trends such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, prompted the Palestinian leadership to try to contain those trends, but within the constraints set by the United States and Israel. This henceforth established the PLO as an opponent to these new movements, since it feared the loss of representation and singularity in decision-making. Israel worked intensively on strengthening these religious organizations and weakening the PLO. Moreover, since Hamas like all other groups lacks an understanding of the enemy’s schemes and does not have a clear strategy but is rather linked to other religious, non-national agendas, it was easy for Israel to drag it into a confrontation with the PLO, which weakened the Palestinians even more.

On the Arab front, the US and Israel employed many means and methods, for example through a country like Qatar (who adopted the school of thought which begs the rescue and help of the USA at every point as the only course of action), to weaken the nationalist and popular movements and even weaken the Arab governments, which were already weak, in turn planting convictions among the angry masses that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only path to achieving their dreams and aspirations, through a chaotic armed resistance that Israel does not consider to be a threat to its strategies. Furthermore, to these religious movements, Jerusalem, Kandahar and Kabul represent equal targets in achieving the goals of these movements, and at times, these movements are even ready to ally themselves with the USA while pursuing their goals, similar to what happened in their work in liberating Afghanistan form the Communists. These movements, when they achieve power, become oppressive of their own people as witnessed in Afghanistan and Sudan, which became isolated countries unconcerned with international law and world opinion. These regimes and movements are easily targeted by building a broad, strong, global coalition against them, thus further supporting Israel and defending it and maintaining the Middle East at the mercy of the United States and Israel.

What is happening now in Gaza and what happened in 2006 in Lebanon is an integral part of Israel’s strategic plan to keep Lebanon weak and divided, Hamas isolated in Gaza, and the Palestinian leadership divided, pushing the PLO more and more to join the trenches of the US and its allies.

The decisive factor impeding the implementation of American and Israeli schemes is that the Arab people, including the Palestinians, are against American and Israeli hegemony and control, in their natural intellectual and emotional composition they are on the opposite side of the U.S. pro-Israel axis, even if they still do not know how to confront these plans, suffer from a lack of prudent leadership, and have proven themselves easy to drag into venting their anger in unconstructive activities that do not lead to victory.

Facing all this, what we can do?

1 - Establish the conviction that we can confront the plans of the enemy and that it is not too late to do so.

2- Gather the remaining Arab and Palestinian nationalist and popular forces with new, dynamic, visionary leaderships and establish a broad coalition of these forces along with the powerful religious currents, like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, not on the basis of subordination to them, as is the case now, but on a national basis, in order to confront the hegemony of Israel and U.S. dominance.

3 - Restore the PLO as an important player in this alliance and extract it from the trenches of dependence on and subordination to the United States. This will require strong action against Hamas’s arrogance, forcing it to join a national framework, based on the principles of a clear, strategic program for liberation.

4 – Coordinate with world powers which stand in the way of the United States to form a broad alliance of diverse ideologies and objectives.

5- Develop a broad popular program, especially in Arab and Islamic states and to be extended to Latin America and Asia, to exert economic pressure on the U.S. and Israel by boycotting all its products; a strategy particularly powerful in light of the global financial crisis.

6 – Press strongly for an end to the monopoly of the U.S. dollar in the currency market, and incite people everywhere to not use U.S. currency but to use any other currencies instead.

7 - Work on persuading Europe, especially in the Eastern countries, to take positions that are independent of U.S. influence.

At the local level, and during these days when the Palestinian people are subjected to the most heinous crimes,

- we must first work to stop the massacre in any way possible,

- and then we must fight against the plan to separate Gaza from the rest of the Occupied Territories,

- stop the peace negotiations and set new grounds and conditions for any future negotiations based on clear strategies that will prevent these negotiations from being used as a ploy by the enemy to achieve its ulterior objectives.

- We must cease all discourse which indicates that negotiations are the only option, instead keeping all options open and using each form of struggle based on calculation of its political advantages and disadvantages.

- We must also work to inflict financial and material losses on the enemy, by dismantling the Palestinian Authority,

- And we should instead work through the (more democratic and popular to be) PLO.

Because it will be a long battle,

- we must act decisively to force Israel to implement the Geneva Conventions – in particular the Fourth Geneva Convention – in the occupied West Bank including Jerusalem and Gaza. This is possible and we will gain much from achieving it.

- All Palestinian parties must focus and intensify their efforts to stop and dismantle the settlements in any way possible,

- and we must refuse to return to any further negotiations before the implementation of the International Court of Justice ruling against the Wall. Furthermore, any negotiations should be based on and refer to international law, without invalidating any form of resistance.

- Under no conditions should these negotiations take place under the auspices of the United States alone.

In the meantime, we should work to find any means for Palestinian maintained existence and presence in Palestine and for fighting all forms of immigration, while giving this goal the biggest priority and importance.

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