Million-dollar question: who is the next Palestinian President
Of course the million dollars will be paid from the aid given to the Palestinian people, for accepting Oslo and normalizing with life under occupation, and of course having an eternal temporarily transitional authority that only death can part from us. It is a guaranteed bet for the bidder, because no million or a single dollar will be paid.
Recently, we are witnessing some strange movement from Abu Mazen. Many rumors on his attempted, desired, aspired resignation is taking place. Lots of secrecy around a rumored national council that is about to take place, before the Fateh council assumed gathering in November (it was supposed to be in November last year, and march, and august). Another strange behavior that is happening is the sudden political assassination of his close men.
Last month was the disturbance in what was called the Fayyad-Abed Rabbo-Dahlan also assumed coup against the president. We have been inside this becoming historical fight between Abbas and Dahlan, to have people joining it has just added spices to our mess.
First Fayyad institution was seized and put under the corruption court or whatever, and a couple of weeks later Abed Rabbo was nullified from his position as the secretary general of the PLO to be replaced by Saeb Erikat by a decision from the president.
Yesterday, Abed Rabbo’s chaired organization for the Geneva initiative was closed by a presidential decree and its assets were moved to the ministry of media (that doesn’t have a minister).
Of course living under such circumstances gives people no friends or close people. We say in Arabic (a mixture of dog meat in mulukhiya), which means it’s all disgustingly filthy in one mixture. People are becoming apathetic towards what’s happening. It is like another badass down to the people.
But while it may be, and probably true that what we are witnessing is the downfall of those who have been continually abusing this cause and the people, not necessarily with one person or another, but by all this structure. All those people who have been benefitting directly under the name of the Palestinian cause through the PA structure for decades now. But yet, this is not the way the end should be. The way the president is behaving seems outrageously out of control. Last year when he ordered the detention of the Parliament secretary general (something like this), and when the Union Association was stopped for illegality and lacking a decree. And each time and then we witness this humiliating end of those who were just a moment earlier men from the first row of the Palestinian political lines.
When the president becomes the one who makes the law and puts the order. When the country’s affair become a personal issue. We cannot but define the situation as a dictatorship.
While the Palestinian are left to think of an upcoming president, since abu Mazen’s time has long been overdue, first after more than ten years in office half of them unelected and continually promising with an upcoming election that only seems like a mirage in a very dry desert. Of course, his age as well is an important issue. The man is around 80 years old, and sarcastically he is doing the organization of the new Palestinian political leadership under the notion of removing the elderly ones, who really, like him is becoming ancient.
To be honest, I feel disappointed from the man. It is not that I have ever built any expectations on him. But I actually saw him as pragmatic, and somehow, believed that the man was a pacifist, a man who wanted peace, but is surrounded with bad consultancy services that convinced him that peace is about Israel not Palestine. But as the years are rolling, and he is still in and just getting more and more in the outfit of a dictator, my disappointment confirms my naivety even when it comes to a president.
Ever since he became president, he seemed like someone who was uninterested, and always made us feel like a woman who keeps threatening for a divorce and really doesn’t want one.
And now after a decade in office, he is still making us feel that he is the only one that can be there to keep the normalized situation of security. What has been happening in the last year, made a gasp gap in the absolute loss of Palestinian security and filled in the blanked assumption that the PA only serves as a the Israeli security arm. Every day a Palestinian falls to death under the Israeli army forces. Demolition of houses is becoming just another day under living occupation in any area. Settler’s attacks to farmers and lands are like a game of thrones. Inside the PA corruption is flooding from every and each institution. Education is in deterioration, services are poor, the middle class disappeared, salaries are barely paid, and yet, every six months (almost) a new government is formed.
And I am putting my naïve question on, what is he trying to do? Is he trying to organize the phase after for his own security? Is he worried that the next president will abuse him, the way he is abusing his own men? Is he trying to safeguard the results that his own family remains safe and with all the benefits they live in?
But how smart is that? How loyal does he think his men are? The men he is crucifying now are the closest to his circle in the near past? His negligence towards the real boiling of an eruptive state on the ground will burn him and his people before he even knows. And for someone who seems to be so caring for what will happen after him, the state of anger inside the Palestinian regular mindset of events is only getting worse. People are living in continuous state of frustration and they watch in their own eyes, and witness corruption of the powerful people of the president and his party.
Palestine to them has become Fateh, and the rest of population is not even there to be considered. We are all watching this race of power between them and among them, like watching the Spartans war but without a Trojan horse. There is no hero in the race. No horizon of a change towards any future.
And yet,
The president is organizing the office for the day after … his death? Resignation? Or coup?
And we the people , are watching from the audience fields , with no one to cheer for but waiting for a winner in this boring humiliating deadly race , to applaud for until the next race.
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