Palestine needs a new PLO

by Khalid Amayreh, Occupied East Jerusalem - Oct 26, 2007

It is no secret that the current PLO, headed by the American-backed Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is no longer capable of navigating the Palestinian cause toward the shore of safety. The hapless and infinitely corrupt organization is senile, unreformed and utterly undemocratic, and as such can no longer represent the vast bulk of the Palestinian masses at home and in the Diaspora.

Moreover, the current leadership of the PLO is more or less subservient to Israel if only because its very political and financial survival depends to a very large extent to Israel’s good will. After all, the PLO is under the Israeli occupation.

Indeed, one might ask in all honesty how could a leadership that is hostage to Israel’s whims and psychotic mood be entrusted with the national burden and with carrying out the task of liberating the Palestinian homeland form the Zionist entity’s parsimonious hands?

How could an outdated, castrated and obsequious PLO carry out the national tasks mandated by its raisons d'etre? Indeed, how could such an organization possibly continue to claim to represent 10 million Palestinians awaiting justice and liberty?

In truth, there are a hundred reasons explaining why it is imperative to part with this un-Palestinian PLO which had recognized Israel, free of charge, without any Israeli reciprocal Israeli recognition of a prospective Palestinian state?

Why did it give Israel a unilateral recognition for free? Why? Were they intoxicated? Were they drugged? Were they that stupid? Even retarded imbeciles wouldn’t have made this strategic blunder.

In fact, the current PLO, which is actually a more corrupted version of the erstwhile corrupt PLO, is now contemplating recognizing Israel as a country “of the Jews, for the Jews, and by the Jews,” all in order to demonstrate to Ehud Olmert and his cohorts “Palestinian” sincerity and good will.

Well, this is neither sincerity nor good will. This is treason and national apostasy. After all, who in the deepest layer of hell authorized these late-day America lovers to speak on behalf of one forth of Israel’s population, the estimated 1.5 million Arabs?

Don’t these imbeciles understand that recognizing Israel as a Jewish state implies consent to a possible future ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Palestinian citizens? Again, are they drunk? Don’t they understand the meaning of words?

More scandalously, the PLO is reportedly willing and ready to sacrifice, with a strike of a pen, the paramount right of return of millions of tormented Palestinian refugees who were forcefully coerced into leaving their homes and places of residence when Israel was created nearly sixty years ago.

Again who gave the leadership of this PLO the right to speak in our name? Let them get out of their air-conditioned offices in Ramallah and face the people eye to eye.

It is abundantly clear that the current PLO is more responsible and more answerable to Israel and to the United States than it is to the people it claims to represent.

A few weeks ago, the PA leadership ignored the vital national interests of the Palestinian people when it submissively heeded a warning from the werewolf of the White House to refrain from holding any contacts with Hamas, which could lead to Palestinian national reconciliation.

Oh, halleluiah! if Bush has already become the ultimate decision-maker in the PLO, then what personal and national dignity Palestinians will still have in giving loyalty to such a quisling organization.

The present PLO, thanks to its subservient alliance with America and Israel, has effectively lost every semblance of independence and free will, which makes it utterly unqualified to represent the Palestinian people and defend their vital national interests.

Today, any Palestinian man, woman and child will notice that the PLO, which is basking in Ramallah’s luxurious hotels unconcerned for the slow-motion genocide the Palestinian people are facing, especially in the Gaza Strip, and is behaving and acting as a mere sub-contractor for the Israeli occupiers.

They carry out raids, arrests, and acts of vandalism against their own people. They suppress, oppress and repress, all on behalf of the Israeli occupation. They close down charities and impose a police-state apparatus to impress Israel. And, yes, they kill and torture and imprison, also in the service of Israel. So, how can a PLO as such reflect the aspirations of our people for justice and liberty?

Yes, there may be one or two PLO leaders who don’t like what is going on. But even these are keeping their mouths shut because if they don’t they will lose their hefty salaries and running expenses and other perks meant to keep them silent.

In short, the present PLO is unfit and unqualified to navigate the national ship to safety. And for all these reasons, the living forces of the Palestinian people, including the true patriots within Fatah who wouldn’t be bought by American dollars and VIP cards, must immediately see to it that a new and authentic PLO be created to represent and lead the people to justice, liberty and peace, not to perpetual servitude to Zionism as the current leadership has been doing.

This is a message to the leaders of Palestinian factions who will meet in Damascus in a few weeks: You must remind Olmert and his American allies that Palestine is not a piece of real estate owned by Mahmoud Abbas, Salam Fayadh, or Ahmed Qrei. Speak up, and don’t be intimidated.