Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Mecca’s Reconciliation or Gaza’s Scandal | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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During a week of bloodshed, Hamas and Fatah have killed more Palestinians than the Israeli enemy, with 60 deaths between fellow brethren, as opposed to two killed by the occupier.

In its interpretation of the situation in the occupied territories, Israeli Intelligence stated that the Palestinian forces were on the verge of a civil war that could last for 10 years to come.

Perhaps those are Israel’s wishes, but we fear that it may be the imminent nightmare like Baghdad and Beirut. Palestinian political action has reached its worst state ever – all this in the name of rising to power and for personal gains. Are we at a crossroads that we didn’t anticipate before? Infighting inside the vast Israeli prison?

In Mecca, the antagonistic brothers meet before millions of eyes worldwide who watch to see how this tragedy might end and how such a scandal may be contained and resolved.

In reality, there is no Palestinian cause, only a farce in which Palestinians were placed in charge of the country and when they failed to work together, they resorted to the laws of the jungle instead of civil arbitration. Moreover, there is no need to invent a solution because the work regulations are already in place between the two parties. Both the president and the prime minister were elected by a majority vote of the people, and it is these same people that they may resort to once again if the two parties truly wanted to escape the predicament of the existing equation, or to be able to tolerate each others’ presence within their country until the next elections.

What is difficult to achieve in Mecca is cleansing the souls of what is entrenched in them of destructive intent and the will to spread exclusion and external incitement. This is precisely why the Saudis chose Mecca, since failure there is bigger than any scandal – it would be a crime in the eyes of Palestinians and other Arabs and therefore leaves no room for failure or the rejection of peace.

The Hamas and Fatah leaderships should look beyond their conflict over seats within the government and into the indignity and abuse that will befall the resisting Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli prisons, and the bereaved mothers who have lost their children to the cause, and others who sit in the refugee camps awaiting the promised return with arms. All the aforementioned feel alarm and disbelief of what’s unfolding of fighting for personal gains, along with millions of people who cannot believe that scores have lost their children, homes and lives for many decades so that their plight may end in a shameful and frustrating chapter.

I do not know how belligerents view what they have done to their own people everywhere. In Baghdad, 40,000 Palestinians live under a bitter siege by Iraqi militias who believe that no one will care or demand the protection of the Palestinian community whose leadership is consumed in the struggle over the seat. And thus, rights are unjustly settled and souls are desolate while the Israeli security leaders are heralding the news to their citizens that Palestinians will become entangled for another 10 years in another Arab war.

As such, if the Palestinians fail in their dialogue in Mecca, neither

will they succeed with their bullets in Gaza.”