Articles
The Palestinian Factions and the Bollywood Soap Opera to End Division
- Details
- Last Updated on Thursday, 19 April 2012 10:56
- Hits: 2389
Fadi Abu Sada- It looks like everyone’s trying to escape their responsibilities as usual. As soon as the Palestinian youth announced their intentions to mobilize a stalled Palestine and end internal divisions, all the political groups tried to ride the wave. We’re ashamed to speak about it because it’s such a deep insult to the independent popular movement and repressed the youth who fought so fiercely to break their silence and hit the streets.
The Hamas protest in the Square of the Unknown Soldier in Gaza City was nothing more than an attempt to sabotage the youth movement and deceive us all, to make us believe that Hamas is interested in ending the division. We all know that’s untrue. In addition, leftist leaders’ attempts to gather early in al-Manara Square in Ramallah and tell youth organizers that they support them is another charade. Where were they for the past years?
We have lived through the years of division in a bad psychological state. A culture that we don’t belong to was embedded in us to kill, to some extent, our national spirit. A state of revolt ensued against anything to do with Palestinian factions, because all have taken part either directly or indirectly in the division, have fed it, have tried to keep the status quo. Now, when the youth decided to mobilize, they remembered everything they did to us and tried to escape their responsibility. They are trying to redeem themselves and make us forget what they did to us. This is preposterous.
I only want to remember the old days of the first intifada, when one paper used to be distributed every month as a press release from the PLO central command. This paper coordinated the resistance of the Palestinian people for the whole month with 100% commitment. The only concern then was our country, nothing but. Now we have many factions, some big and some small, some secular and some Islamist, and even the dissolved leftists—they don’t have any principles. They have no national feeling.
In this atmosphere, I don’t want the division to end. In this wretched culture, I don’t see a place for national unity because it will only be a charade to be sold to the people. Whether big or small, all the factions have their own agendas and none of them match our interests given the changes in the Arab world.
When I dream of my children and my future, I want them to be raised with the ethics of the first intifada—socially, politically, and culturally. I don’t want them to take the ethics of the factions, no matter what they are. I don’t want them to raise any flag but the Palestinian flag. I want them only to think how they can serve and build their society and country in any way they can and live in peace with all people regardless of race, color, or religion. Can I still do that? I don’t have the answer yet!
PNN Editor-in-Chief
