While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing everything possible to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is still doing everything possible to coordinate with Israel’s security agencies, suppressing every new resistance cell, most recently the one in Nablus.
If the PA can preserve the Arab nature and character of the West Bank by suppressing resistance and security coordination, then there is no reason for it to complain about Netanyahu’s annexation call. How can the PA complain about Israel to the world, while it helps Israel, facilitates its security measures and prevents its own citizens from resisting illegal settlements and the Judaization of their land? If the PA is resorting to the outside world and complaining about Israel, why doesn’t it let its people in the West Bank help it to thwart Israel’s plans?
The PA’s policy is strange, as Abbas is fighting Israel abroad in Western countries and international forums, but not at home; nor does he allow the Palestinian factions and citizens to exercise any kind of legitimate resistance to the Israeli occupation. Does he hope to liberate the West Bank of the Israeli settlements by complaining to Western countries? If that was even remotely possible, why couldn’t he prevent Israel from annexing Jerusalem or stop the US from moving its embassy to Jerusalem, even though the entire world, including Britain and France, do not recognize Israel’s annexation of the Holy City?
The correct response to the Jerusalem issue is to activate national resistance, while the appropriate response to Netanyahu’s call to annex parts of the West Bank is to activate the resistance and withdraw from security coordination. There is no other solution that can preserve the Arab nature of the West Bank and prevent illegal settlement expansion.
Abbas cannot walk down the right path — which must surely be the path of his own people — while taking the crooked path, travelling between Western and Eastern capitals and begging them to put pressure on Israel. He has forgotten that countries with specific ideologies and which believe Zionism’s Biblical myths are not influenced at all by external pressure.
Israel and its supporters have the power to exert pressure and influence over others in, for example, the US, where support for the occupation state is strong, as well as among the governing classes in France, Germany and Britain. Ideology must be tackled with ideology; myths must be disproved by established historical facts; and resistance must be used to prevent settlement expansion and Israel’s annexation of the West Bank.
Source : Middle East Monitor
Author : Dr. Youssef Rizqa [first published in Arabic in Felesteen, Sept. 2, 2019]
Edited for IMEMC : Ali Salam
