After the announcement of Algeria.. What is the first step to end the Palestinian division..?

Written by: Dr. Hani Akkad

Over the course of two days and more than five sessions of a comprehensive dialogue between the Palestinian factions in the Pine Palace in Algeria, under the auspices of the Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and the joints of the Algerian state, the Palestinian factions came out with a paper of principles, nothing more, to end the division, which included nine points so that it would not be recorded that it had failed and thwarted the Algerian state. However, it is clear that the factions as a whole failed to put their foot on the first step to end the black Palestinian division and did not want to leave Algeria without some agreement out of respect for Algeria and the great diplomatic and political work that lasted for more than ten months, and out of respect for Algeria's long history of love for the Palestinian national struggle and support for all Ways of liberation from the Zionist occupation and the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

What the factions came out with is not an agreement on steps, nor a road map, nor specific procedures that lead to ending the situation of the two Palestinian entities and merging them into one entity that works to solve and end the crises of the Palestinian citizen that have been reincarnated by this division. The Algerian announcement did not include measures based on previous understandings and agreements in Mecca. And Cairo, Damascus, Doha, and finally the Cairo paper, which was translated into a road map in the 2014 Shati understandings, so it is nothing more than a declaration of principles, and each item needs a number of dialogues, meetings, and mediations to take the first step to end the black division.

The Algeria Declaration paper focused in its entirety on ending the division, arranging the Palestinian house, achieving the principle of political partnership, adopting elections as the only way to achieve this partnership, leading to the restructuring of the PLO and the involvement of all Islamic national action factions under its roof as the sole and legitimate representative, thus activating the institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization The first of which is the Palestinian National Council, representing all Palestinians in the homeland and abroad with a system of proportional representation. The Algeria declaration paper also focused on holding legislative and presidential elections without specifying the authority supervising the elections whether it is a government of national unity or the current Palestinian government, which is considered by many to be the engine that drives train cars. Reconciliation, which he will push towards the homeland to prepare the space, conditions, and a popular and legal atmosphere for the integration of all national and police institutions in Gaza into the public institutions of the state, which are of course run by the Palestinian government, which was not agreed upon. The seventh principle in the Algiers Declaration was saturated with constructive expressions in order to unify national institutions and mobilize the energies and human and administrative resources available without having created for the Palestinians a head that manages these operations and supervises the work of institutions with management, structure, and unified goals in an effort to end functional, administrative and supervisory duplication.

The eighth item gives a supervisory and oversight role to the secretaries-general of the factions to follow up the steps to end the division without having in their hands a procedural schedule that defines the first step to start ending the division, but it set a time limit for that, which is one year without specifying the stages of the process of ending the division, and the ninth item is considered, in my view, the most important clause of the Algeria Declaration To specify a joint Algerian-Arab supervision and follow-up committee run by Algeria and in cooperation with the Palestinians to follow up the procedures and steps to end the division.

The factions in Algeria searched for their share in a torn homeland through their presence in the Palestine Liberation Organization without searching for the citizen himself or rushing to unite the institutions that provide him with various types of services, whether living, social, health or even political, even though they know that his condition has reached an unprecedented level. From the belief in the failure of these factions to lead the Palestinian society and lead it towards safety with full care for its national project. I do not believe, on the other hand, that the popular situation and the Palestinian public today has confidence in the ability of any of the factions, separately or collectively, to end the Zionist occupation and defeat it from our land in pursuit of national independence and the establishment of the state.

What has become clear is that the Palestinian people know that the Algerian declaration came to cover up their failure to reach a real mechanism to end the division. It begins with a first step that restores the citizens' confidence in their ability to do so. Today, the Palestinian citizen knows that the Algeria card is a true translation of the inability of the factions to deal with their crises, in which the division was a major cause. This card may not succeed in restoring hope for a better future for them and their children on the principle of justice and equality without further dialogues and interventions that I do not think any Arab capital will accept after. that.

The big question for the factions that ended their dialogue in Algeria without succeeding in standing up to the Palestinian citizen to say to him, what is their first and actual step to end the division...? What is the first step that would prompt the citizen to take to the streets to celebrate the success of the Algerian dialogues and to salute these factions that worked to end this division and close the way for the Zionist occupation to employ it in favor of prolonging the conflict and dismantling its issues one after the other so that it can accomplish its great Zionist project in Palestine . If the Palestinian factions had identified the first step to achieve Palestinian reconciliation in their dialogues, to be embodied on the ground under joint Algerian Arab-Palestinian supervision, the Palestinian public would have come out in support of them.

Today, the Palestinian public is certain that the factions need a new dialogue in order to agree on a road map that puts their feet on its beginning to implement the Algiers Declaration, which means that these factions will spend an additional life of division without achieving that because they did not basically agree on a procedural appendix to the Algiers Declaration that defines the first step. To end the division, and it was unable to adopt the Cairo Agreement of October 2017 as a basic reference, which stopped due to the absence of a joint Arab supervision and follow-up committee to stand on the implementation of every step of ending the division, especially since experiences taught us that the Palestinians are unable to work alone to return to their true national unity.