President Abu Mazen and those around him and the future of the Palestinian cause

We wrote and talked at length about the Zionist project and the terror of the entity state with its government and settlers, the latest of which was the crime in the Jenin camp, which represents a link in the plan to liquidate the national presence in the West Bank. We also wrote and talked about the Hamas movement and its alternative project to the Liberation Organization and the national project. But where is the only legitimate representative of the people in all that is going on? Where is the leadership and President Abu Mazen?

If the official position continues as it is, the organization and leadership will be bypassed not only by the opposition parties, but will also lose its popular presence.

Despite the harsh vocabulary of the article and the interpretations we expect from some of the president’s entourage, who set themselves up as the custodians of the president’s temple and the protectors of the homeland and patriotism, they hunt for every word that contains criticism, even if it is constructive, to distort it and convey it to the president in order to delude him that they are the only ones who love him and defend his father-in-law and the fatherland’s fever, the entourage that imposes a cordon on President so that the world and its people can only be seen through them.

Despite that, I will tell the president what I think and see in his policies, approaches, and actions in recent years. I may be wrong in what I think, but I will reveal what goes through my mind, reflecting on the president's patience, the president of all people with their minds and their ignorance, who they like and who they don't like, who they agree with and who they agree with. They disagree with him, the president of Fatah, Hamas, Jihad, the Popular Movement, etc. He is the president of everyone, not just the president (of the president's group).

And to single out the president for my article because everything related to the strategy of confronting the occupation and the future of the issue is within his competence. The mobilization of the Liberation Organization and the gathering of its political components requires a presidential decision, and the mobilization of the Fatah movement is linked to a presidential decision. Where is the president from all that is going on?

Since the martyrdom of President Abu Ammar in 2004, the national issue has deteriorated from bad to worse, as the internal division continues, and the enemy scores points in its favor with regard to the expansion of its settlement projects, and what is happening in Al-Aqsa Mosque also in the field of normalization with Arab countries, despite the steadfastness of the people and their continuous resistance, and therefore it is natural that President Abu Mazen is subject to criticism because he took over the presidency and responsibility after Yasser Arafat and because he is the title of a political system in crisis, but it would be unfair to hold the president alone responsible for the outcome of the issue in its strategic dimension, given the multiplicity of political actors in the Palestinian cause and the multiplicity of the external agenda, as well as the decision-making centers within national authority.

If President Abu Ammar, with all his history of struggle, his charismatic personality, and his broad international relations, and under national, Arab, and regional circumstances better than what exists today, was unable to achieve the goals of the Palestinian people for freedom and independence, then how can we blame President Abu Mazen for not achieving that while we are witnessing all the collapses? Around us, the disintegration of the camp of friends and allies, and the so-called Arab Spring spreading chaos, devastation, civil war, and dismantling independent states? And if the armed and unarmed opposition forces, with their capabilities, sources of support and funding, and a network of Arab and regional alliances, were unable to achieve more than what President Abu Mazen achieved, then why blame the latter and direct various accusations against him?

This is not a defense of Abu Mazen or the reality of the authority and the reality of the political class that must be radically changed. Rather, it is to rationalize any exercise of the right to criticism so that it is objective and rational and to avoid the enemy's attempt to employ irrational and non-patriotic criticism of the president to plunge the Palestinian situation into chaos from which only the enemies will benefit. .

We also record for President Abu Mazen that he sidelined the Palestinian people during the years of chaos of the so-called (Arab Spring), which began in the areas of the Authority, a civil war despite the Hamas coup against the authority and the organization, and we also record his continuous presence in international forums and his insistence on adhering to the Palestinian narrative and avoiding being drawn. For the conflicting Arab axes, and had it not been for these positions, the case would have been worse.

However, what is recorded on the president and what we take upon him while he is at this stage of life are several issues:

1- No one knows how the president thinks and what his next steps will be at all levels, especially after his speech at the General Assembly, appealing to the world to protect the Palestinian people, as if the Palestinian issue is a humanitarian issue and not a national political issue for a people struggling for freedom and independence?!

2- The weakness and confusion of the leadership institution, so that we no longer know what is meant by leadership, is it only the president? Or the Executive Committee of the Liberation Organization, which is absent from the scene and whose members are unknown to the people? Or is it the government? Or is it the lining wrapped around it? Or all of those? If you ask an official in the organization and the Fatah movement about any controversial decision or law, he says that it is the president’s decision alone and that the president is the only one to take the decision, and we advised him and he did not take our opinion...!! This claim may be true or an attempt to hold the president responsible for everything and turn him into a scapegoat. stage.

3- The absence of a vision or strategy for the future, as the president suffices with emphasizing the Palestinian narrative and adhering to the approach to peace and international legitimacy, but what next and what is the action strategy to confront the Israeli government and international changes? Even if the president reaches the conviction that it is not possible under the current circumstances to achieve any victory, neither political nor military, and that what must be done is to consolidate the presence of the people on their land, this goal also requires a vision, strategy and national unity.

4- There is no vision to deal with the internal division. Rather, there are indications of surrendering to the reality of division and tacit consensus on its management, and even on the establishment of a (statelet) in Gaza that leaves the matter of its rule to Hamas and the factions of the Gaza Strip.

5- The state of weakness and lack of harmony within the PLO and the Fatah movement, the absence of any indications of their mobilization, and the president contenting himself with filling vacancies with appointments from himself or his inner circle.

6- His responsibility for the stalemate in the political system by suspending the elections under the pretext of Israel's refusal to hold them in Jerusalem! We do not know if the president is thinking logically: Let the flood come after me!!

7- The continued ambiguity of the future of the political system after him, and his failure to appoint a deputy.

8- His closure and limitation of his relations with a small number of those with external interests and connections, he does not see his people and the world except through them, and his lack of openness to the people and political elites, even the sons of the Fatah movement and the PLO, intellectuals and thinkers, and his exclusion of everyone who disagrees with his opinion.

9- With his advancing age, his charisma and rhetorical ability faded, and thus his ability to persuade.

10- The president’s continuation at the head of the presidencies and his sole decision-making, as those close to him claim, blocks any popular demands to renew the political elite, the majority of which are from the president’s generation, as they will cling to their positions under the pretext that the president is older than them and still able to work, and the president is their role model.

Finally, we repeat what we have called for more than once, which is also the demand of the majority of the Palestinian people. We hope that President Abu Mazen will urgently call for general elections: the National Council, legislative elections, presidential elections, local elections, especially since the return of Netanyahu and the extreme right and the continuation of American politics Hostility to the Palestinians and Israel's incursion into the Arab world with official normalization and undeclared relations, some of which are more dangerous than official normalization, all of this left no opportunity for a just political settlement as the president was betting, and we hope that the president will put his trust in the people and leave them the freedom to choose who governs them, and the people should He chooses and takes responsibility for his choice, and we do not believe that our people are less civilized and aware than many peoples in the third world who went through the democratic experiment - and we do not want to make a comparison with Israel - just as we do not believe that those elected by the people will be worse than the current political class, and our people have become aware and learned lessons from what It took place in the January 2006 elections.