ONE can now see why the Zionists and the US government were so keen to get rid of Yasser Arafat.
He not only refused to accept the end of the right of the Palestinian refugees to return, he insisted that East Jerusalem had to be the capital of Palestine and that all of the Zionist settlements had to be demolished.
Not only that, he fought all his life for the unity of the Palestinian people which he jealously guarded.
Many of his supporters say that he was poisoned by the Zionists, and there is every ground for giving serious consideration to the allegation, since the Zionists have a liking for such ways of solving intractable political problems.
As soon as Arafat was in his grave, the Fatah right wing ran riot in a stampede to enrich themselves and in a drive for a political settlement with Israel and the US at any cost.
The end result was an unexpected wipeout at the hands of the Hamas Islamic movement in the general election. Hamas was raised up on the shoulders of the masses to be the government.
This outcome was not accepted by the Fatah leadership which began to seek Hamas’ early removal, by forcing the formation of a government of national unity to begin with.
The US and the UK were even more furious. They embarked on a policy of starving the Gaza Strip stronghold of the Hamas movement and punishing the Palestinian masses for the way that they had voted.
This has led to starvation and suffering in Gaza and the split between Hamas and Fatah, with the Fatah leaders being forced out of Gaza, and the PNA seeking to repress Hamas and its supporters on the West Bank.
With the Palestinian masses split the imperialist powers are now pushing for a political settlement that will give Israel everything that it wants, namely that Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel and that there will be a land swap so that Israel annexes all of its settlements on the West Bank, while the PNA gets in return a chunk of the Negev desert.
As well, the Palestinian right to return is to be reduced to the right to compensation for decades of exile.
With the ‘peace’ talks pending and with the Abbas leadership having no alternative to making a deal with Bush and Olmert, the PNA leadership is now straining to make itself even more acceptable to the imperialists and Israel.
This it is doing by taking action against the right of the Palestinian people to fight the occupation and by damning the heroic Second Intifada as a source of all of the problems that the Palestinians have today.
There is now an attempt being made to arrest and disarm Palestinian fighters.
Abd-al-Razzaq Yahya, the Interior Minister in Fayyad’s Palestinian National Authority government has ordered the disbanding of the Palestinian resistance’s military wings in the West Bank, including the Al-Aqsa Brigades, affiliated with his own ruling Fatah party.
For good measure Al-Yahya added that the last seven years of the armed Intifada, or uprising, have been ‘disastrous’ for the Palestinian situation.
The military wing of the PLO’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, announced on Sunday that it would react ‘fiercely if Palestinian security forces arrest any of its activists ahead of the peace conference in the United States this month.’
The moment of truth has arrived.
The right to fight the occupiers is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people.
The masses of the Fatah movement must now act to remove the Abbas leadership, to prevent a sell out of their historic demands. The Palestinian masses must be reunited for the struggle to establish their state with Jerusalem as its capital, with the settlements demolished, and with the refugees having the right to return.
