BY: SAMI JAMIL JADALLAH
There is something very wrong with people who claim to be smart, intelligent, educated, hard working, honest, nationalists, and decent to accept such a stupid, corrupt, incompetent, reckless, useless leadership and organization for the last 45 years that failed at everything it set out to do -turning the PLO to a manager and contractor of the Jewish Occupation with leadership that at best can be described as self serving, racketeering mafia that made financial fortunes for itself and members of their families fleecing national treasury, while claiming to represent and lead the Palestinian people toward liberation and independence. The Palestinians remain under Occupation till now.
There is something very wrong with people who never held the leadership accountable for its failing, for lack of accountability and transparency, for the numerous disasters that befell the Palestinians in exile and under Occupation, where tens of billions wasted, tens of billions remain unaccounted for, where tens of thousands perished and died in the cause of liberation and where hundreds of thousands were exiled (Kuwait) and lost everything because of the reckless and irresponsible behavior of the leadership.
There is something wrong with people where “intellectuals” who are supposed to be the conscious of the nation and guardians of the people’s interests and rights collude with Arafat, the PLO and Fatah leadership and remained silent while witnessing firsthand the abuse of power and authority by Arafat, lack of collective leadership, lack of financial accountability, lack of holding the leadership and officers responsible for the many repeated failures. There is something wrong with intellectuals who became self serving of a system that corrupted their body and soul. Rather than standing up for the people’s rights, became a tool and apologists for a failed leadership. They simply sat on their face all these years while knowing the PLO and its leadership are nothing more than a lie, a fraud, bunch of crooks and thieves, unfit to lead let alone liberate. The failures and the mess we see today did not take place overnight. They were there years ago, when Arafat became the sole dictator, dispensing financial favors for loyalty, making sure that all those around him are “eunuchs” with no voice bought and sold with money and privilege and subordinated powers accepting personal insults and humiliations by the “Old Man”.
There is something wrong with a business community and leadership failed to dedicate its money, access to power to building a viable economy with professional and skilled jobs for the people it chose collusion with a corrupt and failed leadership, benefiting from the corrupt leadership of Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority with rewards of monopolies and business opportunities that added billions to their wealth while the rest of the people could hardly have a decent job to live on. A business leadership that “cornered” wealth rather than “spreading” wealth, robbing average small entrepreneurs from business opportunities, becoming part of the mafia that is the Palestinian Authority.
There is something with leaders of so-called “civil societies” that rather than serving the general interest of the people and public became self serving of their own pockets accumulating substantial wealth from donations they get from foreign donors anxious to do some good for the miserable people of Palestine. So many leading names became corrupted by access to Arafat and the Palestinian Authority and the business opportunities created through such relations that they became silent and blind, failing to speak out on corruption, incompetence, ineptness, abuse of power and authority, civil rights abuse, never speaking out for accountability and transparency in government and public service, muzzled by the dollars they get. To them the Occupation is a business, a big business.
There is something wrong with people and their so called representative (PNC) who never demanded any sort of accountability and who never held the leadership responsible for it failures and mistakes in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Tunis, in Kuwait. There is something wrong with people who failed to demand accountability and public inquiry into the many massacres committed against the Palestinian people in Tal-Zaater, in Sabra and Shatilla, in Jenin, in Hebron. Who would believe that Israel’s of Begin form a public and independent commission to hold hearing into the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla but says nothing about Palestinian leadership’s failures to hold a similar hearing? Something very wrong with such people and such leadership.
Who would believe that the leadership never made public accounting of the billions at its disposal, people’s money, with no accounting of SAMED Industries, no accounting of tens of billions of investments in Africa, in Europe, North America and the Middle East with no one knowing what happened to these tens of billions? And more troublesome is the deafening silence as they see and witness financial corruption and thefts of public funds on a daily basis.
Who would believe that Israel charges its hero and prime minister, Rabin, with failing to adhere to its laws limiting bank accounts of officials outside Israel, forcing him to resign yet accept Yasser Arafat’s private and personal decision to transfer millions of dollars of the “people’s money” to the private accounts of his wife so she can enjoy the high standard of living in Paris. Israel dismisses its prime minister over few thousand dollars while the Palestinians worship a man who robbed them blind and failed them.
Who would believe the Palestinian accept a leader who agrees and accept hundreds of millions transferred into his personal and private account, money collected by Israel from taxes it collects on Palestinian imports, rather than having all the funds going to the people’s treasury? Who would accept but Palestinians their leaders to have public money deposited into private accounts of their leader’s entrusted to retired Mossad agents and crooked bankers in France and in Switzerland? Why Israel punishes its leaders for keeping several thousands of dollars in foreign accounts, yet the Palestinians do not demand to know where are the billions hidden and lost in the private accounts of Arafat.
Who would believe that there are so many traitors, informers and collaborators working for and on behalf of the occupying enemy making it very possible for Israel to target and assassinate key leadership such as Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Abdul-Aziz Rantisi, Engineer Abuy-Ayash and many many more resistance fighters gunned downed in cold blood based on information and intelligence provided by members with Hamas and Fatah? Who would believe there are tens of thousands of such collaborators and informers within the highest levels of government of Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian Authority to the drivers of the donkey carts in the streets of Gaza or Nablus?
Who would believe that Palestinians accept, say nothing and do nothing about having to wait for hours and days, by the hundreds of thousands if not millions at more than 650 security checkpoints while more than 3,000 VIPs of Fatah, PLO and Palestinian Authority speed through these Israeli security points? One has to wonder what kind of people the Palestinians are made of and what kind of a leadership that negotiate for itself such privilege while the people its suppose to represent languish for hours and days at these humiliating and degrading security checkpoints with so many women, sick and very young dying while waiting to go through. I am sure the leadership is very proud of its achievements for itself. It never cared about the people when in Beirut, Tunis and now Ramallah.
One has to wonder what kind of people that accept a leadership that promised liberation for 45 years, only to come back as manager and partner with the occupation. A leadership that continues to meet and negotiate while Israel continues to expropriate and steal more and more land for its settlements, while settlers are terrorizing village and destroying farms, with some 70,000 Palestinians under virtual 25 hours curfew in Hebron and does nothing to chase this leadership out of Ramallah? Abbas’s partner Olmert succeeded to build 2,500 housing units in settlements, 400 Km of the Apartheid Wall, while Abbas, Saeb, Quari and Abed-Rabou were having regular visits and drinks with Olmert, Livni and Barak. They even met with these killers and murderers after the war on Gaza. Who would believe that leaders from around the world make the efforts to visit Gaza to see the devastation caused by the Palestinian Authority negotiating partners yet not Abbas, not one single leaders of the Ramallah authority bothers to make the efforts to visit Gaza?
Who would believe that Palestinians accept the lies of both Hamas and Fatah as they talk of liberation when the only thing they are interested in is “who gets what of the financial pie” that is the Jewish Occupation? Who would believe the lies of Hamas that it is Israel that detonated a truck load of explosive during a “Resistance Ceremony” killing some 40 innocent people and lies about its reckless and irresponsible behavior and total disregards of the people’s safety and security as it parked the loaded truck next to the people?
Who would believe that a leadership like Hamas turns the absolute and honorable right to resist and fight the occupation including armed means, into an act of ‘terror” through the reckless, irresponsible and immoral use of “suicide bombings” that kills innocent people, yes innocent people in cafes, buses and restaurants and turned resistance into a self serving business, with families celebrating the death of a son in a suicide mission rather than celebrating his or her life and graduation from college, making families accept “blood money” from such killers and murderers like Saddam. It is one thing to carry a gun and shoot and kill an Israeli soldiers or an armed settler in the Occupied Territories, it is another thing to murder people on a bus in Tel-Aviv. Hamas leadership blurred the lines between what is right and what is wrong, and what is honorable and legitimate resistance and acts of terror. Hamas reckless behavior and leadership deprived the Palestinians from such a noble right to fight and resist the Occupation. Hamas failed to liberate and managed to pull the rugs and legitimacy from underneath legitimate armed resistance.
Who would believe that smart and intelligent people believe that the useless worthless Qassam rockets will liberate Gaza and that Hamas fighters will defend the people of Gaza when in fact such irresponsible resistance managed to kill not more than a dozen Israel soldiers while Israel managed to destroy some 30,000 homes made more than 500,000 homeless and killed some 1,800? Where is the smart intelligent resistance? Certainly it is not in Gaza. Why does Hamas leadership put the fate and lives of millions of people in the hands of reckless, irresponsible resistance fighters and fails to take charge and fails to take responsibility for its failed strategy?
One has to wonder what kind of people the Palestinians are for accepting the daily abuse and misuse of power and authority by the Palestinian Authority Security Forces with a mission to protect the soldiers and settlers of the Occupation, retreating to its barracks when the Israeli army decided to carry out a military operation or an assassination, leaving the Palestinians without any security or safety and open to Israeli fire?
Who would believe that people who suffered for so long under occupation with more than 700,000 spending time in Israel jails since 67, tens of thousands dead at the hands of the Jewish Occupation accept the abuse and criminal behavior of Arafat’s Preventive Security Forces in Gaza and the West Bank where more Palestinians died in its jails than those who died in Israel’s jails? Who would believe that Palestinians accept and remain silent while Arafat and his cronies turned the Preventive Security Forces into a mafia, racketeering and protection organizations for its leadership and officers accumulating millions in the process? Who would believe that the leadership and commanders of the Preventive Security Forces, during the shameful and criminal commands of Dahlan and Rajoub, of course with the blessings of Arafat, and who acted so tough and rough subjecting average Palestinians to torture, physical and verbal abuse are rewarded with promotions as they ran away scared, abandoning their posts before the advancing Israeli forces leaving behind their staff and political prisoners locked behind bars? Fulfilling the old saying “assadon alaya wa fel hurubi na’amatun” Loins when it comes to me but an ostrich when it comes to war and enemy.
It is difficult to believe how the PLO leadership of the last 45 years turned and transformed the Palestinian people from a nation and people dedicated to education, hard work with ambitions to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, industrialists and teachers and turned them into unskilled laborers for Israeli market killing their hopes and ambition to have a university degree. Young people now can look forward to joining gangs, joining “Sulta” and join the Palestinian Authority and becomes a security officer or a functionary, dedicated to protecting the Authority, the leadership and the Jewish Occupation?
It is even more difficult to accept the utter silence, bordering on cowardliness where people fails to rise up against such an Authority where more than 80% of the people are below poverty line while the elites; the “returning” leadership enjoys million dinars homes, luxurious cars with drivers for themselves, their wives and mistresses, spending thousand of dinars on dinner and drinks enough to feed several families for a month.
Never understood how brave individuals who faced Israeli tanks and guns with stones and rocks, could become a nations of cowards failing to take up the challenge of popular sustainable and persistent uprising against the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Fatah and against the Israeli Jewish Occupation that lasted some 42 years? Why are the people so brave before Israeli guns and tanks yet do not take the challenge and march on Ramallah and Gaza and chase the leadership out of office and out of the country?
It is also not so surprising that the Palestinian people accepted the role of refugees, living in miserable camps, with open sewers, waiting for the end of the month to collect their rations of dry milk, flour, and cooking oil from UNRWA rather than take the challenge taking over such services themselves. No wonder the Palestinian people and leadership became a nation of beggars, “shahadeen”with no self respect and dignity and a leadership of thieves. Too bad for the Palestinian people after being the model of well educated hard working intelligent people they became the laughing stock of the Arabs, and the world. Thanks to such a self serving corrupt incompetent inept leadership of thugs, thieves and collaborators. Never seen a case where a leadership not only failed to liberate but succeed in destroying a people and a dream. Thank you Yasser Arafat, thank you Mahmoud Abbas, thank you Ahmed Qurai, thank you Farouk Qadoumi, thank you Saeb Eurikat, thank you Yasser Abed-Rabou, thank you Mohamed Dahlan, thank you Jibril Rajoub, thank you Tayeb Abdul-Raheem, thank you Khalid Mishaal, thank you Hakam Balawi and thank you Azzam Al-Ahmed, thank you all for succeeding where Israel failed. For and on behalf of more than 7 million people for your successful dedicated leadership. We deserve you, as you deserve us.