Celebrating revolution by annihilating it is Abbas’s style

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas should have stayed silent on the 60th anniversary of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) launching its resistance against the Israeli occupation. Anniversaries, however, are too compelling for Abbas. Palestinians, therefore, were regaled with a speech that exploited the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, while the Palestinian Authority’s security services continued their raids in the occupied West Bank, detaining and killing Palestinians for doing precisely what Abbas was glorifying the PLO for.

Recalling a past that no longer serves the PA is a downward spiral of its own. While Abbas recalled the early days of the PLO’s anti-colonial resistance, he failed to bring to attention the times that he has ridiculed Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, particularly in Gaza. And at a time when Israeli ministers are calling for the occupied West Bank to face the same genocide as Gaza, Abbas is accelerating a possible implementation by using the PA security services to target resistance leaders.

Of course, Abbas has a more rudimentary premise in mind; he wants to eliminate all Palestinian opposition to his illegitimate rule (the term of office for which he was elected ended in 2009). But by doing so, Abbas is leaving Palestinians without any form of protection, because the security services exist to oppose Palestinian resistance by collaborating with Israel in order to promote the PA, no matter what the cost to the people of Palestine.

The ultimate result will be a swifter downfall for the PA at the hands of the Israeli colonisers.

Until then, however, Abbas is free to remind us about how, in the past, the PLO’s revolutionary leaders “were fully aware of the significance of the Palestinian people having the power to make their own decisions, viewing it as the sole path to liberation, return and the exercise of their right to self-determination freely on their homeland.”

Fatah’s prominence in the PLO, he added, “preserved the independent national Palestinian decision through a long and arduous struggle, marked by immense sacrifices made by the Palestinian people in pursuit of their national cause.”

This is glorified gibberish which, when untangled, only exposes the fact that Fatah, synonymous with the PA, offered the Palestinians up as cannon fodder for Israel in its pursuit of international impositions, donor funding and the two-state charade.

The time has come, Abbas said, for Palestinians to achieve independence. Of course, within the two-state framework which offers no independence at all, let alone an end to colonisation. But if that time has come, then why is Abbas still creating obstacles for Palestinians to achieve independence? How about Abbas making a simple statement that Palestine should have never been colonised, or would that interfere with the temporary benefits that Ramallah gleans in the process until possible annihilation through genocide?

On the 60th anniversary of the PLO’s commencement of revolution, a leader committed to decolonisation would have promised ultimate protection for the Palestinians in the front line of resistance activities. Such a leader would have pledged to struggle with the people, instead of setting himself apart from it and reclaiming only what suits an annual commemoration to glorify what he fears the most: the revolution which is now looking inwards to save Palestinians from treachery in their own backyard.

If Abbas truly supported Palestinian liberation, the PA would not be actively working towards Israel’s next phase of genocide. You cannot celebrate and commemorate revolution by annihilating it, but that’s Abbas’s style.

Celebrating revolution by annihilating it is Abbas’s style