At a Pal-Think conference in Gaza City: a genuine opportunity exists to end the division and restore national unity

Politicians, representatives of the political, societal and academic forces, media people and intellectuals affirmed the necessity of restoring national unity between the two halves of the homeland and of ending the state of division and political tugging, during the conference “Strengthening society's role in restoring national unity” organised by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies in Gaza City. They stressed the importance of making use of this genuine opportunity offered by the Arab Republic of Egypt to end the state of division and restore national unity on 25 October.
Omar Shaban, head of Pal-Think, spoke about the Palestinian effort that is burning itself up in an internal conflict that has brought and will bring us nothing but more catastrophes; and the conflict taking place among the political forces and the competition to reach the seat of power has turned from a struggle with the occupation into an internal struggle in the Palestinian house, which has given the occupation what it could not have dreamed of throughout the previous thirty years — here is the occupation racing against time with settlement campaigns, completing the wall and building housing units in Jerusalem and elsewhere, exploiting our absence and our preoccupation with our internal disputes. This division and infighting that has afflicted our just cause has squandered the fruits of years of struggle in confronting the occupation and of the suffering of the families and of the prisoners in the jails.
Shaban affirmed Pal-Think's role in trying to close the gap with regard to the literature of reconciliation and to look into the thorny issues that stand in the way of a sustainable reconciliation.
He concluded his remarks: We all hope that 25 October will be the day of setting out towards reconciliation and the restoration of national unity.
For his part, Jean-Daniel Ruch, Switzerland's special representative in the Middle East, who showed great interest in attending the conference in Gaza, addressed the Swiss government's role in mending the rift on the Palestinian scene in an honest and neutral manner in all directions, and spoke of how the Palestinians have squandered many opportunities for national reconciliation in the past, but that now the opportunity is very close and genuine to restore national unity — I hope it will not be squandered.
Muhib al-Masri, head of the body of independents in the national reconciliation sessions, spoke at the conference during his visit to Gaza City coming from Nablus, expressing the hope that the coming dialogue in Cairo would end with the resolution of all the problems and the conflict taking place among the Palestinian factions, and that it would be a genuine national reconciliation for the sake of restoring Palestinian national unity. He stated that during his meetings with President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and with the prime minister of the dismissed government Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, the atmosphere was positive for a genuine reconciliation.
As for Dr Mahdi Abdel Hadi, director of the PASSIA institution in Jerusalem, he spoke via videoconference, being unable to enter the Strip, about the Palestinian situation lost among the factions and political parties that have long had a great role over time in standing against the Judaisation of Jerusalem and the settlement and in thwarting what the occupation tries to push through to destroy the Palestinians; but now the Palestinians are drowning in sleep in internal infighting and we have forgotten the greater Palestinian homeland, we have forgotten Jerusalem and the return. What is happening now is a loss of Palestinian identity in a studied and systematic manner with international cover, and the pretext is the Palestinian division and that there is no genuine Palestinian partner.
On another level, the journalist and media figure Hani Habib called, during the paper he presented on “The role of the media in national reconciliation”, for the necessity of using and harnessing all the means of mass communication — print, audio and visual — towards a culture of dialogue and national reconciliation, strengthening the culture of dialogue and acceptance of the other, rejecting the mistaken partisan mobilisation that destroys the homeland and the culture of bigotry, and strengthening the role of the national media.
As for Imad al-Ifranji, head of the Palestinian Media Forum, he pointed to the necessity of a supreme council for the media to monitor the Palestinian media and to point out those who err and incite in the media, because all the existing media consists of individual judgements that put the homeland forward according to their own arbiter.
In another working paper prepared by the researchers Alaa Abu Taha and Muhammad Abu Matar on the role of civil-society institutions in achieving reconciliation, it was affirmed how far the Palestinian civil-society institutions have contributed to achieving reconciliation through the initiatives presented to Palestinian society, but that accomplishing reconciliation exceeds the capacities and capabilities of the civil-society institutions.
On the role of resistance and negotiation, which the development researcher Taysir Muhaisen spoke about, he said that negotiation has become futile and resistance has been emptied of its aims, and the Palestinian division is causing the failure of all parties, both resisting and negotiating, calling for restoring the standing of the homeland's genuine issues in a way that serves the project of national liberation.
During the conference's second session, the economic expert Mazen al-Ajla reviewed the grievous losses caused by the Israeli aggression in lives, property and public facilities, whose estimates varied from one body to another, and it was noted that these reports were prepared in haste. On the developments after the war, al-Ajla spoke of the many initiatives that have appeared in both the West Bank and Gaza, the most important of them the emergency cash support programme, the programme for reconstructing private housing, in addition to the programme for rebuilding private-sector facilities and the programme for rebuilding the facilities of the agricultural, livestock and fishing sectors. The national plan for early recovery and the reconstruction of Gaza was also prepared, as well as the near-final estimates of the economic losses.
In his comment on the paper “Visions for managing the Gaza Strip crossings”, Dr Ghazi Hamad, head of the crossings authority in the Gaza Strip, spoke of how the closure of the crossings is a serious problem that must be brought to an end immediately and urgently, and that the crossings are for the movement of citizens and travellers, expressing the hope that the crossings crisis would be solved during the coming national reconciliation agreement.
In the end, the political adviser Ahmed Yousef expressed the hope that the last round of reconciliation in Cairo would be the fine conclusion and the end of the rounds of dialogue in Cairo, arriving at a genuine national agreement, and stressed the necessity of binding the two sides with decisive decisions that settle the dispute and the conflict and make it possible to restore national unity.