Through consensus including approval from the United States of America, this led to a series of international reactions expressed in three drafts of the roadmap, whose final form was announced on 20 December 2002. Its implementation was then delayed three times until 29 April 2003, the first time under pressure from Sharon to wait until after the early elections so as not to affect public opinion in Israel by expanding the peace camp that calls for political solutions similar to those outlined by international resolutions. The second time it was delayed until after Sharon's government formed its coalition and the third time until after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, at the behest of the American administration.
The roadmap is now laid out before us, and this would not have been possible without the Intifada and resistance resulting in a new attempt to internationalise the Palestinian cause and come closer to, if not actually implement, international resolutions. All of these developments would not have been possible without the Intifada, support for it and the breakdown that put all the issues of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle into a framework that goes beyond American-Israeli designs for solutions.
Yet despite all of the Intifada's accomplishments and the strength it brought to the Palestinian framework in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, unity in the face of settlement building and occupation has not yet been realised. We have not been able to consolidate our unity through restructuring the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to transform us from a singular people to a unified nation. This can only be accomplished through reviving the PLO's national programme and on the basis of a democratic coalition front. The PLO is the greatest gain the Palestinian people have made since Al-Nakba -- the catastrophe of 1948. A singular and unified PLO is the entity that brings together Palestinians at home and in the Diaspora, and is the sole legitimate authority of the Palestinian people and the leader of its struggle.
Yet since 1991, the influential right wing of the PLO has disregarded the positions of the Palestinian National Council -- the Palestinian parliament in exile. It went to Madrid under Shamir's conditions to negotiate self-determination. The PLO, including its organisations and political structure, was then marginalised, and it lost its role as a leader and unified entity. The text of the Oslo Accords then increased its marginalisation, and had as an unspoken goal the elimination of the PLO coalition. It left this particular aspiration hanging until the appropriate conditions matured to allow for its implementation, once the PLO had -- with its Oslo team and Arab, international and especially American support -- exhausted its cosmetic role in the peace process. Most unfortunately, the positions of some of the Palestinian nationalist and Islamic political forces contributed to this marginalisation, either through reserved silence or alternate stratagems. This implied a lack of awareness of the importance of the PLO and what it represents. It is dangerous to overstep the role of the PLO, hinder it, or disregard the rules for comprehensive democratic reform within the Palestinian Authority (PA) set in accordance with the conclusions of the Cairo Declaration of 17 March 2005.
We are striving for all this so as to complement the struggle of our people in the homeland and Diaspora for the right of return as provided for by UNGA Resolution 194, an independent sovereign Palestinian state on all of the territory occupied in 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital, the dismantling of settlements, the removal of all settlers and occupation soldiers, and an end to the Israeli occupation's control of our destiny and usurpation of our national rights. For all this we strive for a new birth for the PA's legislative and executive institutions and the coalition PLO, through new elections in accordance with proportional representation of the entire people in the homeland and Diaspora. This would serve as support to overcome the crisis of the Palestinian national movement in all of its currents, and would bring us closer to the hour of victory.
The spirit of the Cairo Declaration, which seeks to build a comprehensive and broad-based national coalition, requires for its implementation that the PA and Fatah review their autocratic policies, that Fatah end its monopoly on power, and that the Islamic currents (Hamas and Islamic Jihad) be included in the formation of a unified national programme. This process can only take place through a coalition that does not only restructure the PLO but also restructures, through inclusive dialogue, the form of internal Palestinian relations. It must do so by including all the forces that comprise the Palestinian people, including civil society, so that we may rise anew through the democratisation of unified PLO and PA institutions.
This process would cure us of the epidemic of isolated decision-making, narrow organisational dominance, unprincipled struggle and political and financial corruption, and bring us to a healthy state of institutionalisation based on a national coalition that encompasses the entire Palestinian people. Such a coalition would be based on national, professional and ethical standards and would be housed under the roof of a united national programme for comprehensive democratic reform. The national liberation movements have already made inroads on this, while other movements have only reached dead ends through their policies of isolated decision-making and monopolisation rather than national unity and programmes based on common goals.
A full six months following the Cairo Declaration, the road to implementing its directives remains bumpy. Some of the signatories to the declaration have been narrowly selective in dealing with -- and benefiting from -- its rulings. Some have sufficed with its call for a calming of relations, while others have understood the restructuring of the PLO and PA institutions as a re-distribution of the cake through individual deals forced upon the rest. In practice this has inflamed the internal struggle between the PA currents, within Fatah, between Fatah and the PA, and between the PA and Hamas. Armed clashes broke out between 14 and 21 July 2005 in the streets and alleys of the Gaza Strip until the Popular Resistance Committee (Fatah, DFLP, PFLP, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others) put an end to the fighting in accordance with the Cairo Declaration. It did soon the basis of the Cairo Declaration serving as a unifying authority in the Gaza Strip after private deals, isolated decision-making and monopolisation had destroyed any other source of authority.
An exit from the current crisis plaguing the Palestinian national movement, in its three nationalist, democratic and Islamic branches, can only be found through the provision of certain conditions. The first is that the people remain united, and this can be accomplished only through a unified national programme based on common denominators to head off Sharon's attempts to cut the ties of the Palestinian national cause, fragment our national rights and divide the people in the homeland from that in the Diaspora. The people can only be united by unifying the PLO as a tool of resistance on the basis of a pluralistic democratic coalition; allowing all to participate on the basis of a shared national programme and proportional representation, the only guarantee of real political participation from all forces in a restructured PLO.
The second condition is that the relationship between the PLO and the PA be redefined, for the PLO provides the political and national authority for the PA. The overlapping of PLO and PA institutions must be reversed. Intervention must be limited to that required by their complementary roles and the representation of PA institutions within the PLO. The policy of replacing PLO institutions with those of the PA must be stopped. The PA simply cannot play the unifying and representative role for our people in the homeland and Diaspora that the PLO does.
And finally, everyone must realise that we are still in the stage of national liberation and that we must bow to the rules and conditions of this stage. We cannot talk about the "dualism of authority and opposition". We must realise that concepts like unified authority only take place in liberated countries. Due to the lack of an authority that is independent and sovereign, and due to the occupying power's failure to recognise the right of return, no Palestinian Authority will be able to expand its power except through broadening its political and social base and adopting national interests. And thus we continue to strive for the establishment of a unified national government in which all can participate and apply the principle of "partners in blood, partners in decision-making". We strive for this so that we can end the years of monopolised authority that have created a breeding ground for political, financial and moral corruption that has threatened our future and national cause.
Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan seeks to transform the Gaza Strip into a huge prison and create a blackout for the international community. The withdrawal from Gaza is meant to serve as a curtain to cover his expansionist plans in the West Bank and Jerusalem and cement the facts of settlements, annexation, and the Apartheid Wall. It seeks to steal more than 58 per cent of the West Bank and besiege its population within three separate cantons, thus preventing the establishment of a viable, geographically contiguous and free Palestinian entity. As such, it is necessary to confront Sharon's plan immediately through implementation of the Cairo Declaration as a whole. Without possessing the condition of Palestinian unity, we cannot work on restructuring the political and negotiating process on the basis of international law and halt implementation of Sharon's plans so as to regain full rights to return, self- determination, and an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on all lands occupied in 1967 with Jerusalem as its capital.
It is the responsibility of us all. Let's overcome organisational struggles and unify against the Zionist enemy that is occupying Palestinian and Arab land. Let's rise up to the level of national responsibility, and surpass the zealous partisanship of organisational programmes to arrive at national commonalty, as mapped by the Cairo Declaration. Sharon is now announcing a plan to intensify the Judaisation of Jerusalem and settlement expansion in the West Bank following withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Let's arrive at a programme for a single and united people; for our cause, our rights, our land, and our Jerusalem are threatened as 2006 draws near.
*The writer is the secretary-general of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
Source: Al-Ahram Weekly, 13 - 19 October 2005, Issue No. 764.
