The Arab Summit and the Question of Palestine

It is clear that the fascist Tel Aviv government, due to the absolute immunity provided by successive US administrations and now by Trump's bullying, is not intending to stop the war, or what has become known as a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. That government, with full cover from the White House and its envoy Steve Wojcoff, has announced the suspension of the implementation of the agreement. Even if this is negotiating blackmail, it means that Netanyahu is proceeding with the plan of genocide, annexation and displacement, as he sees in the international transformations led by Trump to invalidate the rules of international law and the references of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, his golden opportunity to move towards liquidating the Palestinian cause.

There is no doubt that the essence of what is known as the second phase of the ceasefire agreement is primarily political, as it included the complete withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip, including from the Salah al-Din Corridor (Philadelphi), and from the Rafah crossing, and its re-operation in accordance with the 2005 crossings agreement, in addition to the commitment to implement the humanitarian protocol, in preparation for the reconstruction phase. Netanyahu is certainly standing on a fine line between his strategy to isolate the Gaza Strip from the national entity, and the return of Hamas to rule the Strip, in the event that the unity of the Palestinian position continues to falter. For him, that would mean the shameful defeat of the slogan of eliminating Hamas, which would completely expose him to his opponents in the Israeli political system.

Since December 2023, Hamas has presented Cairo with an approach that removes Netanyahu’s pretexts regarding the so-called day after, as it has adopted a firm position up until now, according to which it will give up control of Gaza, which is in fact a strategic step to end the division, in favor of Palestinian consensus on a transitional, non-factional unity government. This was formalized, including major national issues, in the Beijing Declaration with the consensus of all Palestinian factions within the framework of the PLO, and those not yet within it.

The murky waters represented by the Palestinian division, which unfortunately did not spare tens of thousands of victims to turn the page, are being fished in by Netanyahu to continue the war of comprehensive liquidation, as its scope is being expanded in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. In other words, the failure to submit to the will of unity, which has become an existential need, feeds into the mill of Netanyahu’s plans to achieve his racist and fascist goals, leading to large-scale ethnic cleansing, especially since all of Israel’s wars have failed and will fail to break the will of the Palestinian people to remain and stand firm on their homeland, at a time when the political system in Israel, instead of recognizing the truth of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination on their homeland, continues its aggression and even escalates its crimes.

The entire world, including the Arab countries, is preoccupied with the so-called “day after.” However, while it should be focused on the responsibility of the international community to address what the war has destroyed, Israel and its allies, especially Washington, consider it the day after Hamas, or even after Hamas has been eradicated. While they realize the impossibility of achieving this, it means the continuation of the war of liquidation under various pretexts, if the world, led by the Palestinians, does not stand united in the face of this bloody racism. We are the owners of the cause that Netanyahu wants to eliminate, in preparation for opening the door to comprehensive Israeli hegemony over the entire region.

In this context, the hollow talk continues about who will run Gaza? Who will undertake its reconstruction? And dealing with it as an orphan stripped of its comprehensive national entities. Here, we must say the bitter truth, which is that the division caused by Hamas in 2007 has harmed the national cause, but the failure of the influential leadership to contain it, in a way that enhances the legitimacy of national representation, and closes the deadly loopholes that Netanyahu seeks to exploit, has harmed the national cause in a deep and far-reaching way, especially since there is an equation that has enjoyed national and popular consensus alike, represented by the Beijing Declaration, which is intended to enhance Palestinian immunity. Unfortunately, the continuation of such a policy has not stopped at the fragility of the national situation, but rather, it is taking it to the most dangerous paths, one of the symptoms of which is certainly that some people come out to present credentials to gain confidence in the agency that Israel seeks to establish on those who go too far in appeasing it, in a way that strikes at any legitimacy of the comprehensive national entity. We need to restore all legitimacy, and there is no way to do that except through elections, but the wound and pain of Gaza cannot bear waiting, and Gaza, which has always been a lever for Palestinian nationalism, will not accept the exchange of its return to normal life on the corpse of the cause and the national destiny, especially since we have an agreement that achieves both matters: saving Gaza, and preserving the national destiny, and certainly not by submitting to the plans to engineer the Palestinian political system, according to the Israeli goals and vision.

Here our responsibilities are defined, and the need to continue to raise the legitimate question continues, which is why the stubbornness and disengagement from implementing the requirements of the Beijing Declaration and all the previous Palestinian ideas and Arab and non-Arab efforts to end the catastrophic tragedy of division continues. This question has become urgent to be directed to our Arab brothers, which is: Is the way to save Gaza by ignoring its representation?! Or, in light of the current circumstances, especially the clarity of the plans targeting Arab national security itself, we look forward to intensifying their efforts to strengthen this representation with a solid national unity, according to realistic foundations based on international law and UN resolutions, and to be the locomotive of Arab and international efforts to save and rebuild Gaza, and even save the national destiny as a whole. This is what we expect from our Arab brothers, and this is what we believe the Arab summit must address, in a way that protects Palestinian rights, national security, and Arab interests at this most dangerous historical juncture since the 1948 Nakba.

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Netanyahu is fishing in the murky waters represented by the Palestinian division, which unfortunately did not allow tens of thousands of victims to turn the page, to continue the war of comprehensive liquidation, as its scope is being expanded in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.