Summer Rains and the Document
Abdullah Iskandar Al-Hayat - 03/07/06//
For Israel, whether Khaled Mashaal is in Damascus or any other capital city is irrelevant because it wants to turn its rejection of the peace process on the Palestinian track into a US-supported campaign on Syria and other States. Fighting 'terrorism' has become a traditional pretext for the Hebrew state to justify its non-commitment toward the Palestinians. Israel's pretext for hunting down a whole nation and bringing it to justice is that a faction leader exiled from his homeland still lives abroad after an attempt to assassinate him in another Arab capital!
Before 'Operation Summer Rains', the Palestinians, who suffered from a schism between the presidency and the government to the extent of armed clashes, were close to signing an exceptionally important document, the first political platform of its kind to define the goals of a peaceful solution. For the first time, it gained the support of factions that are in ideological disagreement. This would have ended the pretexts for the internal Palestinian conflict and restored the ties between the Fatah presidency and the Hamas government on the basis of a national platform. The agreement would also have given the latest legislative election its profound significance: Hamas would have run the day-to-day affairs of the Palestinians on condition that the presidency and the government were committed to the joint task of establishing a Palestinian State.
The 'Prisoners' Document' would have shaken the foundations of Israel's unilateral politics and thrown the Hebrew State into a dilemma. The reason is that it could put an end to the claim: no partner exists, or the partner is weak, so negotiations are useless. The document offers PA President Abbas and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) the support of the most radical parties against Israel. This does not only mean the Palestinian partner exists: it is powerful and able to negotiate on behalf of all the Palestinians.
The Israeli government does not want to listen to peace-talk and its obligations. It realizes how dangerous the document is to its unilateral plans in the West Bank. These plans are the only way out from an Israeli commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian State. After Israel justified the declaration of its unilateral plan with the claim that it cannot wait forever until Abbas tidies up the Palestinians' internal affairs, the Palestinian consensus on the document voiced readiness for negotiation. It became imperative for Olmert to find a new reason to reject peace. He prevented the document from turning into a general Palestinian platform, and tried to shift the dilemma of the unilateral plan abroad, where Mashaal exists. On the military level, he ordered war planes over the Presidential Palace in Al-Ladhiqiyah. On the diplomatic level, the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, did the honors. The document is the target.
Abbas, the PA president and Fatah's representative; and Ismail Haniya, PM and Hamas' representative, were supposed to sign the document in order to call off the referendum, that would have been useless, and to bring life back to normal in the Palestinian areas. At that time, Israeli artillery and aircraft attacks began, accompanied by wide-scale detentions in the West Bank of Hamas' elected leaders. The purpose was to preoccupy the Palestinians with a new crisis and take their minds off signing the document.
Israel's pretext is the kidnapping of a soldier, which has allowed the Hebrew State to reverse issues. It has also driven the Palestinian situation to the point where exceptional efforts are needed to take the clock back to when the agreement was announced. This raises questions about the Palestinian political leadership, especially with regard to the fact that some military leaders, regardless of their intentions, rushed into certain practices that paved half the way for Israeli pretexts. Some of these military leaders, though their names and origins may differ, behave like street thugs, not as military wings of political organizations in a most complicated confrontation. Their conduct highlights the importance of the 'document' that assumes to keep militants off the streets. Perhaps this is why 'Summer Rains' targeted, above all, the document: Israel wants to bury it in the rubble of the Gaza Strip infrastructure.
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