“Betting on Ramallah against Gaza is the worst-case scenario”

As soon as Mahmoud Abbas had set up an emergency government after Hamas took control of the Gaza strip, the Americans, the Europeans and the Israelis announced the end of economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority and proclaimed they would support the Palestinian president to fight Hamas.

This surge of sympathy, just as the crocodile tears shed on the tragic divisions of the Palestinians, are definitely out of place from governments who bear an overpowering responsibility in the situation.

After having denied the Palestinian Authority its financial resources, and thus deprived it of its ability to exert its power ; after having driven the Palestinians to a disastrous economic and social regression ; after having undermined Mahmoud Abbas’s policy tending to co-opt Hamas’s pragmatic wing ; after the American and Israeli refusal to recognize the government of national unity, formed with the help of Saudi Arabia in March last. To sum up, after having created the conditions for economic chaos and for radical political confrontation, the arsonists parading as firefighters are adding fuel by reinforcing the divisions among Palestinians.

Obviously, direct aid to the Palestinian Authority must resume, but betting on Ramallah against Gaza is choosing the worst-case scenario. Consolidating a situation where the Gaza strip is excluded from international financial contributions, making it dependant on humanitarian aid is deepening the rift and increasing resentment. It is criminally naive to entrust Mahmoud Abbas with the task of silencing Hamas by force with the financial and military support of the U.S. and Israel. This would certainly lead the Palestinian president to share the fate of Hamid Karzaï in Afghanistan. It would create the conditions for political division and doom the West Bank to a fate similar to that of Gaza.

Even if Hamas’s ideology and model of society give rise to great concern, it remains that the movement is rooted in Palestinian society thanks to its social work. Bombs cannot destroy it.

The hard-line religious currents that coexist within this movement along with others that are more nationalistic and pragmatic, will of necessity be strengthened by the dead end in which Gaza is being trapped. Everyone knows that Al-Qaida supporters gain a following and prosper in a situation of despair and radicalization.

The only possibility of overcoming the division among Palestinians and of curtailing the influence of the radicals is to show that there is a real possibility of solving the conflict and putting an end to the occupation. The Israeli authorities say that Mahmoud Abbas is the partner for peace they were hoping for. And yet, they kept weakening his position, even before Hamas’s victory in the January elections. Are they then really prepared to become partners for peace ?

The present disaster is the bitter result of forty years of occupation and of the failure of a peace process that the Israeli government has helped to undermine by confiscating ever more land to goon building settlements in the West Bank, by suppressing in blood the people’s uprising in October 2000, by dismantling the Palestinian Authority, by the de facto annexation of the Arab part of Jerusalem so as to make it impossible, without even dissembling, for Jerusalem to become one day the Palestinian capital.

The road infrastructure and the security arrangements have created enclaves in the West Bank that are destroying the territorial foundations of the future state. We have seen this happening for many years and OCHA (the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) recently sounded the alarm. A crude approach to the present crisis may compromise Palestinian political unity lastingly.
There can be no viable Palestinian state without a consistent geographical area and political unity ! It is therefore essential that both be restored. To do this, the international community cannot dispense with a change in its diplomatic approach, which its soft attitude vis-à-vis the Israeli government has largely helped to make it more difficult every day to achieve peace.

The European leaders must draw away from the American approach to the problems of the Near East ; it has proved its failure. They must take novel initiatives to reinforce their influence in the region. More particularly, they must support the initiative of the Arab League, which proposed to recognize Israel in exchange of its complete withdrawal from the occupied territories.
Pressure brought on Israel can no longer be taboo. In the past, the Israeli government only softened its position under pressure and the threat of financial sanctions as was the case during the Madrid conference in 1991. Israeli society has nothing to gain from a situation of segregation where each citizen would have to stand guard in front of the jails where the Palestinians are imprisoned.

The only guarantee that one day Israel will be able to live in peace with its neighbors is a fair solution of the conflict, based on international law. We feel there can be no delay and so we urgently call on the Israeli, American, European and also Palestinian leaders to heed the deep desire of Palestinian society for unity, and to give this the highest priority in their initiatives. Thus, the return to direct aid must not be the tool of divisive policies but must rather restore the efficiency of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza strip so that aid may benefit the whole population.

We ask the European Union, and particularly French diplomatic policy to act with courage and vigor to obtain : the immediate end to the blockade of the Gaza strip that can only make the humanitarian crisis more serious and does not open any political prospects ; the immediate liberation of the democratically elected parliamentarians arrested by the Israeli army ; the immediate cessation of the construction of the wall and of the extension of the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, measures that are essential before the withdrawal from the occupied territories demanded by resolution 242 can take place ; the publication of the report on the colonization of East Jerusalem that was submitted to the European Commission, so as to draw all the diplomatic consequences it entails.
On behalf of liberty, justice and human dignity, we call on French civil society to speak up so as to transmit and amplify this appeal to put an end to chaos in the Middle East and to give peace a chance at last.

The following associations are all members of the French NGO Platform for Palestine.

– Jean-Pierre Dubois, president of the French Human Rights League
– Gustave Massiah, president of CRID
– Patrick Peugeot, president of Cimade
– Bernard Ravenel, president of the Association France Palestine solidarité
– Joël Thomas, president of the Comité catholique contre la faim et pour le développement (CCFD).