Families and factions: Is the Hamula detaining the state?

In 1985, I published a short story entitled “The Carrier” in Al-Fajr Al-Adi magazine, which was edited by the late Ali Al-Khalili. The story talks about two pregnant women who had a severe dispute caused by a quarrel between two children. The dispute between the two pregnant women developed and intensified to the point that some of the pregnant women obtained weapons from the occupier. There were deaths, and the village was divided into two halves, each with a road. The road of one of the two trucks passes through the settlement and reaches the main street. This story was published and signed under my pseudonym at the time, “Fikri Khalifa,” and I wrote it as a result of a family dispute that I witnessed and which ended in a truly tragic ending.

The Hamoula, as are its forms, roles and influences in the overall modern Palestinian history at least, had a major impact on community cohesion and the preservation of cultural identity. The Hamoula also showed a remarkable ability to survive and withstand, and played important roles in processes of social and moral control, in the absence of large collective institutions. The Palestinian carrier filled the void, and at one point, and perhaps it is still continuing, turned into being the legislative, judicial, and executive authority at the same time. The Palestinian carrier is distinguished by its ability to restore, heal, communicate, repel shocks, endure them, adapt to them, and maintain a deep identity with multiple levels.

But all of this does not constitute the complete picture, as this carrier has played its roles and continues to do so, but it has a side with many negatives, especially in our Palestinian case. As soon as the Ottomans left our country and it fell under the clutches of a criminal occupier, the English occupier, the Palestinian carrier is Whoever clashed with him, and even when these factions formed parties, they remained factions. A Palestinian researcher mentioned this by saying that the sons of families faced the sons of empires. The faction basis of the struggle against the English occupier made it easy for them to completely play on the factions’ contradictions represented by glory and influence in an occupied homeland. When the Palestinian people revolted in 1936 in one of the most wonderful and pure revolutions, the criminal English occupier was able to put down that revolution through multiple methods, the most important of which were family divisions and contradictions. Unfortunately, these are disputes that have never stopped. Our country has witnessed many of these battles in which the clans were completely or partially deported and their homes, fields and crops were burned, in addition to the killing of men or the kidnapping of women. These clans had to flee the country, hiding under new names or " "Talti" fell under larger and stronger tribes, and thus the battles between the tribes that were exploited by different forces - including the occupier and non-occupiers - led to a decline in growth, progress and urbanization. It can be said that the victory of the Zionist project - among other reasons - is also due to the fact that Palestinian society did not It can crystallize a comprehensive and comprehensive representation of the goals and demands, which was reinforced by many parties to dismantle our people and consider them mere clans, sects or groups. The Zionist movement and later Israel exploited the clan conflicts to strengthen its political and security control over the joints of Palestinian society. This was in the areas of 1948 and the areas of 1967 later. From the first moment of the occupation in 1967, Israel searched for militia leaders to strengthen its presence and to be an alternative or opponent to the Palestinian factions. It is claimed here that the Palestinian national movement was able to defeat the occupier in this endeavor for a period of time, during which the national movement was strong and able to provide political and social answers, which is What we saw, also in the areas of 1948, when the traditional leaders were removed and replaced by a partisan political leadership, approximately in the early eighties, and with the erosion of the nationalist and patriotic discourse, the decline of ceilings, the collapse of ideas, the weakness of the faction, and the invasion of the occupier with his tools and methods, the bearers returned to the scene, and the groups defeated, swallowed, or dissolved. The factions are because - as they believe - they are the most capable of providing solutions, the quickest in imposing them, and also the most secure in their perpetuation.

What we see today in the areas of 1948 and the areas of 1967 as well, of the deepening and spreading of the inter-military dispute, is a reflection of the vertical division that has afflicted the Palestinian political system, the deep crisis that the Palestinian faction is going through, and the state of exhaustion and general weakness that the nation is going through, as the carrier returns, as it was before, the refuge and protector. In the absence of comprehensive political system institutions that protect, take rights and impose them, the dilemma here is that the faction formation is a departure from the form and content of the state, which tempts the long-time occupier to say that the Palestinian people have not yet matured to form or establish a state, and that the continuation and rooting of the factional dispute Its presence as an alternative to official representative institutions is sufficient to imprison the state and its concept. The Hamula, as a social organization, provides an alternative to political organization. Thus, instead of large affiliations, we return to small affiliations that are hostile, warring, and ready to commit suicide in order to obtain protection, that is, protection from any party.