A reading of «The Politics of Change in Palestine: State-Building and Non-Violent Resistance»

A reading of the book “The Politics of Change in Palestine .. State Building and Non-violent Resistance”
The Palestinians have the right to say “there is no Israeli partner for peace with us”, and the West must reconsider its position on the Hamas movement

The Palestinians are the ones entitled to say “there is no Israeli partner for peace with us”. “The failure to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not due to the absence of a Palestinian partner, as successive Israeli governments claim, but is due to the fact that Israeli society as a whole, and its political elite in particular, has deliberately failed to notice the radical positive changes taking place in Palestinian society towards the peace process.” “The West must reconsider its position on the Hamas movement in particular and on political Islam in general, and work to accommodate and engage with it.”
These important conclusions were not issued by an Arab politician or a Palestinian politician; rather they are the summary of a book published this month by Pluto Press in Britain, by its author Dr Michael Bröning. In his book, made up of 250 small-format pages and consisting of five chapters, entitled “The politics of change in Palestine, state building and Non-violent resistance”
The politics of change in Palestine, state building and Non-violent resistance
Dr Michael Bröning observes the positive changes Palestinian society is witnessing at various levels: the Hamas movement, the Fatah movement, the Palestinian Authority and peaceful popular resistance, with regard to the conflict with Israel and the ways of ending the occupation. He sees these Palestinian changes and orientations as being met with a glaring contrast with what is called “a policy of stagnation and the growing shift to the right on the other side”. The book documents that the Hamas movement itself is witnessing a process of radical change and development towards peace in a way that does not differ greatly from what has happened and is happening inside the Fatah movement, the Palestinian Authority and the peaceful resistance movement of Palestinian society as a whole. The book also concludes by saying that the positive developments witnessed in the Palestinian position in its view and vision of resolving the conflict with Israel are matched on the Israeli side by developments in the opposite direction, characterised by more extremism and denial of the rights of others.
The importance of this book and the credibility of its conclusions lie in the fact that its author, Dr Michael Bröning, is a German holding a doctorate in political science and an activist in the Social Democratic Party, which gives him a high capacity to understand and analyse the role of political parties and how their performance develops. He has also worked for years as director of the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Palestine, an institution affiliated to the German Social Democratic Party which is very active in the field of dialogue and political reflection. This has allowed Mr Bröning close and precise familiarity with the Palestinian situation in its daily details of checkpoints, wall and siege; he also visits the Gaza Strip at varying and frequent intervals, and took part in the sessions of the sixth conference of the Fatah movement held in August 2009.
The Hamas movement
The change taking place on the Palestinian scene has not stopped at the political forces known for their support of the peace process, but has extended to include the Hamas movement as well. In the first chapter of the book the researcher deals with the radical changes taking place inside the Hamas movement since its entry into the arena of political work when it participated in the legislative elections in January 2006. These radical changes have reflected themselves not only in the statements of its leaders but through practical positions of the movement with regard to the conflict with Israel and its engagement with political propositions. The author documents dozens of statements by Hamas leaders, whether public ones or those made to Western mediators, which come down to the fact that the Hamas movement will accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders; likewise the movement's agreement to the truce and the halt to bombing operations, as well as the serious attempts by the Hamas movement and its government, which has ruled the Gaza Strip entirely since June 2007, to maintain a state of stability and relative calm despite the breaches that occur from time to time; and likewise in its serious attempts to combat the emergence of extremist forces in the Gaza Strip.
The author also documents these conclusions through many documented statements and positions of Hamas movement leaders, among them Mr Khaled Meshaal, head of the political bureau, and Mr Mahmoud al-Ramahi, secretary general of the Legislative Council, who both affirmed that the movement's charter should not be regarded as the intellectual frame of reference for the movement — relying on Mr Khaled Meshaal's remarks to the BBC network in 2010: “The world must read the Hamas movement through its positions and its conduct and not through a charter drawn up twenty years ago.” The author therefore marvels at the double-mindedness of Western thinking, which usually relies on modern practical and scientific evidence in building its research conclusions while not applying that to the case of the Hamas movement, saying: “At a time when the Hamas movement has stopped referring to its charter, drawn up in 1988, which stipulates the establishment of an Islamic state over all the Palestinian territories, the research centres and political kitchens in the West still insist on reading the Hamas movement through this charter, which has become a mere document on the shelf”. The author concludes by saying: the Hamas movement has not broken completely with the past; rather it is a movement passing through a stage of change and transformation from a movement into a political force. It is true that it has not yet completed this, for it still lives in a state of conflict and controversy between the legacy of the past and the requirements of the present and the future. But we will soon witness “Hamas version two”, as the author says.
The Fatah movement
The author reviews the course of the life of the Fatah movement since its founding in Kuwait in 1958 at a secret session bringing together three of its now deceased leaders — Yasser Arafat, Khalil al-Wazir and Salah Khalaf — up to the present day, passing through the fedayeen operations led by the late founder Yasser Arafat in 1967 from inside Palestine; its move to work in Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia; and then its return inside in 1994 once again with the signing of the “Oslo” peace agreement, which came after years of the first Intifada, led by the young men of the Fatah movement in the field in Gaza, Ramallah, Jenin and Nablus …. The book reviews the historical stages the Fatah movement has passed through since its founding, in which it raised and practised “armed struggle” until its signing of the peace agreement with Israel in 1993 at Oslo, turning from a revolution that fights into a political party leading an authority. This created a state of identity conflict inside the Fatah movement: is it a movement, an authority, or a party administering the authority? — as well as a conflict between the movement's youth who led the Intifada inside and the men of the old guard who founded the Fatah movement and directed the armed struggle from abroad. The author also observes the forms of conflict that have never ceased for a day inside the movement since its founding. One of the historic milestones of the Fatah movement was the movement's sixth conference, held in August 2009 in the city of Bethlehem after a delay of 16 years. It was the first conference of the movement held in the absence of the founder Yasser Arafat, with the attendance of more than 2,300 members and a heavy presence from the international community. The conference's importance lies not only in those reasons but in the number and quality of the issues that were put forward for discussion. The book observes the states of euphoria and victory the movement has passed through and the states of regression and retreat as well, which made some think that the movement was in a state of decline and clinical death. The author concludes that the sixth conference of the Fatah movement constituted a new birth for the movement, which he has called “the reinvention of Fatah”.
The Palestinian Authority
The author asks: “Can a state be built under occupation?” and answers that question by saying that the idea of founding the Palestinian Authority indicates a strategic change in the priorities of Palestinian struggle work, which used to focus on “liberation before building”, to building the institutions of the state and achieving development while the struggle continues to complete liberation. The author observes the serious attempts made by the Palestinian Authority in the field of building the institutions of the state, combating corruption, strengthening transparency and drafting the set of necessary laws and systems. The author reviews in detail the state-building programme adopted by President Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister Salam Fayyad within the plan of building the institutions of the state in two years, which ends next September, in the fields of reforming the security apparatuses, combating corruption, strengthening the principles of transparency and accountability, developing infrastructure, strengthening the rule of law and justice, and reforming social-support programmes. This is done with very great support from the international community, which sees in Salam Fayyad a new model in Palestinian politics and administration and a model that must be backed and supported. The author also addresses the many problems facing Dr Salam Fayyad, whether from Palestinian society, the Fatah movement or most of the Palestinian political forces, asking on the Palestinians' behalf: is Salam Fayyad the awaited messiah of the Palestinians, or is he a leader who has betrayed the principles of the Palestinian revolution and struggle!!
Popular resistance.
The author devotes a special chapter to peaceful resistance, affirming that it is not new to Palestinian society but has always been practised throughout its long history of struggle against the occupation. Peaceful, non-violent resistance has developed to include, in addition to its resistance to the occupation, new fields such as resistance to the wall and the boycott of settlement products, stressing three basic facts in this field:
First: that peaceful resistance finds backing and support from the official Palestinian system and its political forces, including the Fatah and Hamas movements.
Second: that the Israeli occupation confronts peaceful resistance with repressive military methods despite its peacefulness.
Third: that peaceful resistance represents a legal and military problem for the occupier and causes severe embarrassment for Israel before Israeli society itself and before the international community.
Assessment of the study:
Moving towards peace must come from both sides for it to be achieved, and not from one side, as the book affirms… And as the British and the French did in building the Channel tunnel connecting Europe with the British Isles, where each side began digging from its own side until they met in the middle of the way, the Israelis must realise that they have to cover half the way if not more. We may differ with the author and the conclusions he has reached, and the author may have adopted the Western position on Salam Fayyad's policies, since he did not clearly refer to some documented international reports that played down the importance and degree of sustainability of the economic renaissance taking place in the West Bank, since it is proceeding without Gaza, without Jerusalem and without the Jordan Valley region and is clearly concentrated in the Ramallah area and largely in the field of real estate. Likewise the writer did not refer to the performance of Fayyad's government, which is characterised by individualism, since the rest of his government does not work to the same standard of performance; nor did he refer to the presence of ministers in his government against whom there are suspicions of corruption and whose immunity is supposed to be lifted so that investigation with them may begin. The book also did not refer to the failure of the Palestinian negotiator and Palestinian foreign policy to clarify the Palestinian position in international forums. Likewise with regard to the Fatah movement, which still suffers severely from the legacy of the past and has not yet been able to acquire the tools to influence the performance of the Authority and the government, or to exert sufficient pressure to achieve reconciliation with the Hamas movement; and likewise the failure of the Authority's and the government's institutions to support the movement's members in the Gaza Strip to any great degree. And the Hamas movement, whose positions still oscillate between the legacy of the past and the requirements of the present and the future. Despite that, the book remains worth reading … not only by researchers and those interested in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, but by Israeli society itself, so that it may become deeply acquainted with the fundamental change taking place in Palestinian society in concepts, methods and political discourse; likewise by the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian negotiator, so as to acquire the ability to confront the Israeli discourse that always places the blame on the Palestinian side; and likewise by the international mediators, especially the Americans, who back the Israeli position relentlessly. The book is rich in information and deep analyses, as the author relies on dozens of references, political statements and personal interviews, which gives the book a high degree of credibility. The book can be summed up in a beautiful saying of the famous German writer and journalist Kurt Tucholsky which the author quotes in his book: “We have grown used to saying 'no', whether out of love or hatred or sympathy or superiority … the time has come for us to say 'yes'.” So will the Israelis say it?