27 Dec. 2001 - 2 Jan. 2002
Issue No.566
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Dec. 2001 - 2 Jan. 2002 Issue No.566 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Learning from fragments
After 11 September, those who called the Intifada a sacred undertaking, not to be stopped until a Palestinian state had been established with Jerusalem as its capital, seemed to experience a change of heart. When a political leader fails to implement his programme, that leader usually resigns; yet the Palestinian leader who dared acknowledge failure, passing the responsibility of liberating Palestine on to future generations, also has the audacity to stay in power. The Intifada must stop, he announced, to appease Washington; Palestine can wait.
If anything, the Intifada revealed how badly the Palestinians needed a united national front, collective leadership and a long-term strategy. We need to implement effective decisions without making concessions to the whims and weaknesses of an individual ruler, and without restricting the scope of our work to a single ideology. Yet Hamas and Jihad have neither united nor stopped calling on potential allies to abandon their ideologies. These allies, in turn, are too concerned with survival to risk allying with the dominant Islamists. Arafat hopes to prevent the emergence of a united front that would end his monopoly on power.
Fifteen months have passed since the flare-up of the Intifada, and a united front has yet to come into being. Effective tactics, let alone an integrated strategy, are therefore far from apparent. And rather than putting up an effective resistance to Zionism, the Intifada continues to suffer from internal conflicts. In the end, it must be said, the Intifada remains a mere episode in the saga of the Palestinian struggle; and the most important thing is to assimilate the lessons it has taught us.
This week's Soapbox speaker is a Cairo- based Palestinian political activist.
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