PALESTINIAN prisoners in Israel struck on 10th September over the death of prisoner Ra’id al-Ja’bari which Fatah describes as an Israeli, ‘ugly crime’.
‘Isa Qaraqi, chairman of the Commission for Prisoners and Liberated Prisoners, said this evening that the prisoners in the Israeli occupation prisons launched a comprehensive strike to mourn for martyr Ra’id al-Ja’bari.
Qaraqi said that the prisoners have sent a message to the director of the Israel Prison Service holding him responsible for Al-Ja’bari’s martyrdom.
Attorney General Abd al-Ghani al-Uwaywi has issued an order appointing Sabir al-Alul, head of the forensics institute, to participate in the autopsy of Al-Ja’bari’s body and do whatever is required.’
Fatah eulogised the struggler Ra’id al-Ja’bari who was martyred today in Soroka Hospital. The Fatah Media and Culture Commission stated that this ‘ugly crime comes in addition to a long series of crimes that the occupation has committed against our people and its prisoners. This crime will not frighten our people who have given hundreds of thousands, from the best of their boys, for the path of freedom and independence.’
Meanwhile a high-ranking Palestinian official believes Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas is exerting efforts and taking action to resume negotiations with ‘Israel’.
The official, said Abbas had told his close aides that the door to resuming negotiations with ‘Israel’ is open.
He said Abbas’ latest statements over the issue of paying government employee salaries in Gaza, was made especially with regard to rejecting the partnership with Hamas in order to curry favour with Israel and to return to negotiations.
The official said that Abbas knows that the negotiations are the only way and his threat to resort to international measures and head to the International Criminal Court are just a stick that he waves to put pressure on Israel to reopen the channel of negotiations.
In Gaza, Dr Salah al-Bardawil, a leader in the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has described the national consensus government as being ‘clinically dead’ in the Gaza Strip as a result of a political decision by President Mahmud Abbas.
Al-Bardawil said: ‘There is nothing tangible in the government for the Strip as a result of Abbas’s decision, which has tied its hands and made it completely paralysed as if it is only a West Bank government.’
The recent statements by Abbas and Fatah leadership clearly neglect what has been agreed upon.
Al-Bardawil denounced the promotion of the language of division, casting doubts, and accusations by Fatah against his movement after ‘we recently made strides in achieving unity with blood in the war against Gaza, and the joint negotiating delegation in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.’
He said: ‘Abbas deliberately forgot or pretended to forget that before the war, we started to implement steps towards ending the division.’
The accusation that Hamas is obstructing the existence of one authority contradicts the actions of the Hamas movement that started with agreeing to the accord and signing the agreements on forming the government and paving the way for it to work in complete comfort.
He noted that if the states of emergency that took place in Gaza happened in a similar way in any other part of the world, even the adversaries would rise above any differences, but ‘stirring the feuds once again is letting down the Palestinian people and a strange thing.’
‘Some’, Al-Bardawil explained ‘might excuse Abbas for his statements if he had hope of a certain political promise from the United States, or Israel’, and that this is possible ‘in the cheap world of politics’.
‘Regrettably however, we have not seen anything from the United States towards him except complete intransigence and rejection of his initiative, and threats from the occupation against him.’
He said: ‘We do not understand what is tempting Abbas to disavow the partnership with us, especially since there is not any kind of a real interest for him.’
Al-Bardawil called on Abbas to publicly tell the truth to the Palestinian people if he wants to break up and disavow the unity. He said according to Shabak reports and statements in the occupation state, Abbas’ statements are a prelude to breaking up the partnership with Hamas.
Al-Bardawil said his movement will not disengage from unity and that it views unity as a strategic matter that is not tied to Abbas or ‘his political trifles,’ and that he must build on and not undermine the reconciliation steps.
Al-Bardawil added that his movement does not obstruct the work of the interim government, as Abbas claims, and affirmed that this accusation is ‘political one-upmanship’ that harms even the one who claims it.
He affirmed that Hamas opens the door for the interim government to perform all its tasks. Al-Bardawil also criticised ‘Fatah’s truncation of unity and reconciliation and its evasion of paying any salaries’, adding that ‘this is a crooked logic, and this is not how things are managed’.
He noted that ‘Abbas has not even seriously considered reforming the PLO, and he also wants the consensus government not to be responsible for a mere whiff from Hamas, and uses the excuse that the international community does not want to pay money.’
Al-Bardawil denied there were any clear solutions to the crisis of the salaries of employees of the Strip. He hopes that this issue will be resolved and that the ‘employee will be rewarded instead of being deprived of his salary after serving the homeland and citizens during the darkest and harshest circumstances for eight years.’
Regarding Fatah’s delegation formed to hold a dialogue with his movement, Al-Bardawil said there is no information about its arrival in the Strip.
Hamas welcomed this step and welcomes any dialogue away from the wrangling and also welcomes discussion of matters at the table.
He said that the talk about the Presidential Guard taking control of the Rafah Crossing and the borders with Egypt was circulated in the media and that his movement has no knowledge of that issue. He said that, at the same time, his movement is willing to discuss any such proposition and reach agreement on it with Fatah.
Mahmud Abbas has been criticised for blocking the path of national reconciliation, which should have closed the chapter of division the moment the consensus government was formed last June.
The latest statements by Mahmud Abbas, accusing Hamas of believing in democracy only for once to get to power, suggest that ‘he is seeking to evade the obligations of reconciliation, based on reactivating the PLO, holding presidential, legislative, and National Council elections, and carrying out community reconciliation.’
Abbas still believes in the option of a settlement with the occupation despite the failure of the peace project that has been sponsored by the US Administration for 20 years.’
It seems that this attitude, which runs against the general popular mood that is supportive of the resistance and that enhances its steadfastness on the ground, will threaten Abbas’s political future, especially since the latter has maintained the iron grip of the security services over the people of the West Bank.
The rising popular anger at Abbas in the occupied West Bank is also the same in Gaza because Abbas has not abided by the conditions of reconciliation, particularly those related to job security. He deprived the Gaza civil servants, who are over 40,000, of salaries.’
Mahmud al-Zahhar, a prominent leader in Hamas, stated that ‘Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas is making a big mistake, which might reach the degree of a major sin, when he chooses to negotiate with the occupation while preventing Palestinian resistance because resistance is what makes and supports politics.’
Al-Zahhar added that ‘the presence of Abbas is linked to preventing resistance and the continuation of security coordination with the Zionist enemy.’
‘Observers believe Abbas is maintaining the division and continuing with the settlement project to prolong his political life and keep his future. But even being faithful to the Israeli occupation will not give him a chance to make a real achievement, especially considering the threats urging the need to disarm and control Gaza so that they will accept resuming the peace talks.’
Abbas is said to be leading the Palestinian people in a ‘weak’ manner and ‘his career has no political achievements. Besides, all his positions take us back to square one.’ Abu-Mazin (Abbas) has become an outcast in the eyes of the Palestinian people.
Minutes of the meeting between Abbas and Mish’al in Doha, show Abbas continues to disavow the Palestinian factions and to cancel others by announcing always that he represents ‘legitimacy’ and that he would only accept one government, one authority, and one weapon and that no weapon is legitimate except the one in the hands of the PNA, which is essentially aimed at the resistance in the West Bank only’.
Abbas has also opened up more than one front inside Fatah itself making it weak and unable to influence Palestinian political life. All of this frustrated the Palestinians, who started remembering Yasser Arafat.
