The resignation of the Palestinian prime minister, whose appointment was a surprise to everyone anyway, and the attempts of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to convince him to change his mind – all of these are signs of the depth of the political crisis that Palestine has been living through for at least six years. And this crisis is compound and complex, but what is clear is that those responsible for the crisis and its entrenchment are Hamas and Fatah, who have taken the cause and the people hostage to their destructive factional adventure. These two factions, which have anchored the division and nourished it with everything they possess for six years. Who pays the high price for this irresponsible policy is the people of Palestine, and the sole beneficiary of this factional war is the occupation and the opportunistic leaderships in both factions.
Two weeks after being tasked with forming a caretaker government until the date of the next parliamentary elections, planned for September of the coming year, it became clear to Mr. Hamdallah what had been clear to everyone from the first minutes of his appointment as prime minister: He realized that he was nothing but a simple puppet in the hands of the Fatah movement, which moves him north and south as it pleases and imposes on him everything that benefits the movement and its cadres, and the goal of these Fatah loyalists is nothing but harvesting the spoils and filling their pockets. One sees them acting in haste, as if the period of dividing the spoils will not last long. President Mahmoud Abbas's creation of two deputy prime ministers – one responsible for the economic portfolio and the other for the political portfolio – is a novelty unknown to democratic parliamentary practice. In the first clash between the prime minister and his deputies, it became clear to him that he is merely an image and a tool in the Hamas-Fatah debates, nothing more. In the government he leads, he is responsible only for collecting the garbage and distributing the mail! The sensitive matters are in the hands of men close to Fatah who enjoy the confidence of the movement and its leadership.
Those versed in the history of Palestinian politics realize that Fatah, since it seized control of the PLO, does not accept sharing – this term does not exist in Fatah's political dictionary; it considers Palestine in the first place a people, land and air that belongs to the movement and its cadres, and that they have the full right to dispose of it as they please. What kept the former prime minister Fayyad in his position all these years was only the donor countries' confidence in his abilities and the possibility of his pressure on President Abbas to hold on to him. The Fatah movement and its cadres have wished and worked from the first day of his term to bring him down and torpedo his mission. Yes, the disaster lies not in the personality of Hamdallah but in the organizational structure of the Fatah movement, which since the death of President Arafat, may God have mercy on him, has turned into adjacent shops with feuding leaderships, each working to win the lion's share for itself, its family and its followers. Whoever thinks this phenomenon exists only with Dahlan and his group is mistaken! Look at the companies in Palestine, look at the agencies, the investments, look at Abu Alaa and his family, Nabil Shaath and his children, Mahmoud Abbas and his clan, follow the companies of the construction contractors in the settlements and those who carry them out, look closely at the cement importer with whom the wall of racial separation is built, watch the brokerage in infrastructure projects ... It is time to pose the question publicly, to all officials of the authority: Where did you get this?
Yes, we are in a tragic, miserable situation! We are in a real catastrophe that no one should envy us. What exists in Ramallah we see and observe shortly before in Gaza ... Here Fatah, there Hamas ... two faces of the same coin, even if the color differs and the designs and the talk vary.
In the West Bank there is a Fatah state, in the Strip a Hamas emirate ... Whoever speaks of a state of Palestine is either blind or a hopeless optimist ... The spoils were divided between the leadership of Fatah and Hamas, and the people who struggled, endured and paid the dear price for Palestine came out empty-handed ... Their land was divided, their dignity trampled underfoot.
The talk about reconciliation, about the government, about national unity and parliamentary elections – all of it is smoke in the eyes. We must stand and think: where are we, and where do we want to go?
In this tragic situation in which the Palestinian people live, we have only one single way out ... Four years ago I wrote a study entitled “Out of the Labyrinth” (I attach it with this article), and today I see the truth of what I sketched, and my conviction grew that this is the only way out.
