A leaderless people
When the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) polled Palestinians in August, just prior to the current Intifada, only three percent approved of his leadership — compared with the still meager approval rating of 16 percent of his boss, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Even those who are often cast as alternative leaders — Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, and former Gaza-based Hamas Government Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh — were nowhere near popular, achieving 10.5 and 9.8 percent of the vote respectively.
It was as if Palestinians were telling us and their traditional leaderships, in particular, that they are fed up with the old rhetoric, the constant let-downs, the unabashed corruption and the very culture of defeat that has permeated the Palestinian political elite for an entire generation.
Abbas has operated his political office on the assumption that, so long as Palestinians received their monthly salaries and are content with his empty promises and occasional threats — of resigning, resisting against Israel, lobbing bombshell speeches at the UN, etc. — then no one is likely to challenge his reign in Areas A and B — tiny cantons within the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
Erekat has been the primary enabler of that PA charade, for he is the “chief negotiator,” whose protracted term in that precarious post has negotiated nothing of value for the Palestinians.
In 2002, I followed the Israeli invasion of the supposedly self-autonomous PA areas in the West Bank, when Erekat made an appeal on Al-Jazeera Arabic television to the Israeli government to exercise sanity and common sense. The entire display of the PA leadership was beyond tragic, proof that it had no real authority of its own and no control over the events on the ground as Palestinian fighters battled the re-invading Israeli army. He appealed to Israel as if he felt genuinely betrayed by its military onslaught.
When Al-Jazeera released thousands of secret documents in January 2011, revealing discussions behind closed doors between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, Erekat held the lion’s share of blame. With a clear mandate from his superiors, he appeared uninterested in many Palestinian political aspirations, including Palestinian sovereignty in occupied East Jerusalem. He offered Israel the “biggest Yerushalaim in Jewish history, symbolic number of refugees return, demilitarized state… what more can I give?” he was quoted in the Palestine Papers.
What is particularly interesting about Erekat, and equally applicable to most PA leaders and officials, is that, no matter how devastating their roles — which they continue to play out, whether through political incompetence or outright corruption — they do not seem to go away. They may change position, hover around the same circle of failed leadership, but they tend to resurface and repeatedly regurgitate the same old language, clichés, empty threats and promises.
After retreating for a few weeks as Intifada youth took to the streets to protest the Israeli occupation, PA spokespersons, including Erekat, are now back on the scene, speaking of squandered opportunities for peace, two states and the entire inept discourse, as if peace was ever, indeed, at hand, and if the so-called “two state solution” was ever a solution.
In a recent interview with Al-Jazeera’s “UpFront,” Erekat warned that the PA was on the verge of shutting down, as if the very existence of the PA was a virtue in itself. Why is Erekat warning of the PA collapse as if the sorry leadership in Ramallah is the center of everything that Palestinians have ever aspired for?
“Soon enough Netanyahu will find himself the only (one) responsible between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean because he is destroying the Palestinian Authority,” Erekat said. So what? According to the Geneva Conventions, which designate Israel as the occupying power, Netanyahu is, indeed, responsible for the welfare, security and well-being of the occupied Palestinians, until a just political solution is assured and enforced by the international community.
Using the same tactic which, along with Abbas and other PA officials, was utilized repeatedly in the past, he vowed that “soon, very soon, you’re going to hear some decisions” about disbanding the PA.
It matters little what Erekat and his Ramallah circle determine as the proper course of action. Not only has his language become obsolete and his references irrelevant, but the entire Oslo “peace process” travesty was dead a long time ago.
Palestinian Intifadas do not liberate land but liberate people who assume their role in the struggle for national liberation. For the current Intifada to achieve a degree of initial success, it must find a way to entirely dismiss those who took it upon themselves to negotiate Palestinian rights and to enrich themselves at the expense of the impoverished and oppressed Palestinian people.
If the Intifada is to be true to itself, it must seek to break not just the hegemony over the Palestinian political discourse, which is unfairly championed by Erekat and his peers, but to break political boundaries as well, uniting all Palestinians around a whole new political agenda.
There are many opportunists who are ready to pounce upon the current mobilization in Palestine, to use the people’s sacrifices as they see fit and, ultimately, return to the status quo as if no blood has been shed and no oppression still in place. After reiterating his support for the two-state solution, which is now but a fading mirage, Erekat told Al-Jazeera, “We are fully supporting our people and their cry for freedom.”
I think not. Twenty years is long enough to show that those who have taken part in their people’s oppression, cannot possibly be the advocates of their people’s freedom.
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