Ali Abunimah

My back and forth exchange with the Palestinian Authority-controlled "Palestine Network" continues. Ms. Fatima AbdelKarim, on behalf of the Palestine Network Secretariat in Israeli-occupied Ramallah, has answered a blog post I wrote yesterday entitled "Abbas-backed "Palestine Network" responds to my comments; here's my reaction and their unpublished 'concept paper.'"

In her latest response, Ms. AbdelKarim asserts that:

there are nearly 100 founders of the Palestine Network, who will all convene in Bethlehem less than 10 days from today! These founders are anonymous to you, but they are well known, respected, and well established in their professions and intellect and are living in over 20 countries. Those anonymous to you, have constructed the concept note of the Palestine Network that you posted again...

It is baffling why the Palestine Network continues to be so shy and embarrassed about its direct links with the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA) and the fact that is effectively conceived, controlled and financed by them. The Palestine Network's final draft concept paper which I published on this blog yesterday states, for example, "The Palestine Network is the idea of active Palestinians (locals and expatriates), friends of Palestine and members of the Palestinian leadership... ."

But earlier drafts reveal even more about the Palestinian Authority's direct control of this initiative. Draft 7 of the concept note (which I publish for the first time at the bottom of this blog post) reveals that -- in addition to close Abbas associates Rafiq al-Husseini, Ramzi Khoury and Issa Kassisieh -- Dr. Ghassan Khatib is one of the members of the "official committee to see the realization of this project." Khatib's current job is as head of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority's "Government Press Office" and he appears frequently in the media defending the PA.

Draft 7 also reveals that far from being a grassroots effort, the Palestine Network has been entirely controlled and organized by the "official committee" and its secretariat. The tasks they set themselves included:

Establishing a list of interested community leaders who want to build chapters of the network in their communities and who will be the founding members of the network.

Setting up MODEL CHAPTERS in several regions of the world that will play the role of founding members and help launch the network.

This completely belies the claim made by Ms. AbdelKarim in an earlier posting that the Palestine Network was organized "as a demand of many Palestinians abroad." It is also completely consistent with the reports I received from activists in several countries that they had never heard of the Palestine Network until they were contacted by PA surrogates. Draft 7 is also more revealing about the original purpose of the Palestine Network:

Yet, in this day and age of high technology and communications that turned the world into a global village, there lacks an effective communications system that allows Palestinians in the Diaspora the ability to voice their opinion to the leadership, listen to the leadership on current issues, work together at the level of their own communities, on the regional and international levels.

In other words it was very clear from the beginning that this initiative was a top-down effort to organize a loyal constituency for the "leadership" to use to legitimize itself and its unpopular policies. What the history of the Palestine Network demonstrates more than anything else is the hopelessly warped idea of "democracy" of the unelected "leadership" in Ramallah. They seem to imagine that a secretly-planned organization funded by foreign governments, where they hand pick the "founding" members and organize the chapters themselves is the same thing -- or can be passed off -- as something that is "Independent, representative and democratic, non-partisan, non-governmental and participatory."

If the Ramallah "leadership" were truly interested in reviving legitimate institutions of grassroots participation in decision-making, it would embrace instead of continuing to block real reform and revitalization of the completely dead body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) -- which it still insists is the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." Instead of monopolizing the moribund institutions and committees of the PLO, it would open them up. But because the PA can't and won't embrace actual democracy, it is trying to set up a front in the form of the "Palestine Network" that purports to be independent, democratic and grassroots but is nothing of the sort.

Here is "Draft 7" of the Palestine Network's concept paper:

The Abbas-backed "Palestine Network" has responded to my recent comments about it, via an open letter addressed to me and posted on a blog by a Ms. Fatima AbdelKarim who identifies herself as a volunteer in the "Secretariat of the Palestine Network" based in Ramallah.

The response attempts to portray the Palestine Network as a benign grassroots, democratic initiative to tie together Palestinians inside and outside the homeland in support of something called the "Palestinian National Project." Thus the response hopes to challenge the perception widely held among Palestinian activists that the Palestine Network is a centrally-planned project intended to co-opt, divide and control Palestinian activists. One of the main criticisms activists have made is that the Palestine Network is an effort to build legitimacy for a peace settlement that ignores and violates the right of return of Palestinian refugees. (In fact, I can reveal here that the "final concept paper" of the Palestine Network makes no mention whatsoever of Palestinian refugees or their right of return. I am publishing this concept paper in full below this blog post).

The fact remains that the Palestine Network is entirely conceived and directed out of the offices of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA). You can read Fatima AbdulKarim's response in full for yourself. I will comment on a few sections quoted below:

This project came along as a demand of many Palestinians abroad and was open to the contributions of many of those who got engaged in the development of the concept of the Palestine Network, which was subject to 13 rounds of edits, until it reached its final draft, those people contributed in order to engage in the Palestine Network project with practical and constructive manner. Upon their request, an unofficial taskforce was established, and it took it upon itself to facilitate the launch of this process.

There has been no transparency at all in this process. The only persons definitely known to be on this task force are Abbas chief of staff Rafiq al-Husseini and close Abbas advisers Issa Kassissieh and Ramzi Khoury (who according to the concept paper is the "Executive Director"). The Palestine Network itself has not published any lists of its leaders or participants. Although the Palestine Network's documents provide a website address (www.PalestineNetwork.com) it does not work. There is no way for any Palestinian interested in this "grassroots" and "democratic" organization to get in touch with it and say they wish to participate. It is inconceivable that any genuine grassroots drafting process would have resulted in a document that completely omits the right of return and other fundamental Palestinian rights.

Rather than Palestinians around the world reaching out to Abbas and asking him and his surrogates to take this initiative, it has been the other way around. I have heard directly from activists in several European countries and the United States that surrogates of the Ramallah PA contacted them to ask them to help establish the Palestine Network.

The taskforce will dismantle itself as of the start point of the Palestine Network Founding Conference (23rd -27th of February 2010) that is meant to launch the independent, democratic, and representative grassroots network run by its own members.

Based on their track record, it is impossible to imagine any project initiated and run by Abbas' unaccountable cronies being in any way democratic or grassroots. Indeed it would appear that the reason that the Ramallah PA decided to initiate the Palestine Network is precisely because there has been an upsurge of independent grassroots activism, and several initiatives specifically, that are not under the control of the PA. The Palestine Network is an attempt by the PA to reassert some influence and control over the Palestinian diaspora.

As for the finances, so far no monies were brought in from the PNA [Palestinian National Authority]; German and Belgian donors pledged unconditional funds for the launch of this project, in their belief that this project is constructive and is badly needed in this time.

The statement above is in response to my assertion that the Palestine Network is funded out of Abbas' office. Since the finances of the Palestinian Authority are completely opaque and unaccountable (although Abbas established innumerable commissions of inquiry into endemic corruption none of them ever produced any results) it is of course impossible for me to know exactly from which bank account the funds flow. But that is not the important point.

The Ramallah PA itself is a shell that would collapse without massive financing from the European Union and the United States. The funding for the Palestine Network comes from exactly the foreign governments that have used money as a means to try to coopt Palestinians politically and encourage them to surrender their basic rights, to keep them divided, to reward those who side with Abbas and his appointed "prime minister" Salam Fayyad, and to punish those who don't. If these German and Belgian donors are truly interested in supporting "grassroots" and "democratic" organizing, it is impossible to understand why they would fund the opaque, undemocratic, unelected and corrupt Palestinian Authority in Israeli-occupied Ramallah.

It was a demand of the majority of the participants of the Founding Conference that they visit the different Palestinian cities occupied in 1948 and 1967, since this will be the first visit to many of them to Palestine; they demanded that they see the realities on the ground themselves. And right before their guided tour in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Nazareth, and Jaffa, they will have guided tours in Jerusalem, in areas close to the Apartheid Wall, and will see the settlements near Bethlehem, where the conference is taking place. The visit to Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth and Tel Aviv is meant to allow participants to meet with their brothers and sisters’ living in what is now Israel, face to face to hear from them directly on the challenges they face and see their own realities on the ground.

This is very interesting; the anonymous participants in the Palestine Network "demanded" to see Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Nazareth, Haifa and Jerusalem. At at time when ordinary Palestinians are not free to move even around the West Bank let alone enter occupied Jerusalem (indeed they continue to be expelled); when Gazans are under suffocating siege; when Palestinian Americans and other diaspora Palestinians are being routinely denied entry at the Allenby Bridge and al-Lydd airport ("Ben-Gurion Airport"); when Israeli occupation forces are kidnapping international activists from the heart of occupied Ramallah, how is it that the participants of the "grassroots" Palestine Network will be able to travel freely in all parts of Palestine, even the 1948 areas? 

The answer is obvious: because the "Palestine Network" is organized by the Ramallah PA, and because the Ramallah PA coordinates all its activities with the Israeli occupation, the Palestine Network participants will be given the same special privileges that "VIPs" from the Ramallah PA receive -- as long as they cooperate with the occupation.

Finally, here is the Palestine Network concept paper in full - the one that went through 13 drafts:

Figures working for the Palestinian Authority (PA) have recently been approaching Palestinian activists in several countries to invite them to something called the "Palestine Network Founding Conference" in Israeli-occupied Bethlehem in late February. The conference has the aim of creating "Clubs" loyal to the Ramallah Palestinian Authority and its leaders. This initiative is organized and funded directly out of Mahmoud Abbas' office and is directed by Abbas adviser Ramzi Khouri and chief of staff Rafiq al-Husseini (who has recently been embroiled in a controversy over corruption and a scandalous video tape which allegedly shows him).

The document posted here is the program for the conference; it includes meetings with Abbas, US-backed appointed prime minister Salam Fayyad, the Ramallah "Council of Ministers" and other PA officials. The program also includes a guided tour of Tel Aviv and a "gala dinner" at the luxury Interncontinental Hotel in occupied Bethlehem.

The US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), an independent community-based network in the United States, last November asserted that the Palestine Network is "part and parcel of the Fayyad –Dayton “state-building” initiative, run directly out of the highest offices of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." It warned that the PA's effort to establish the Palestine Network was intended to "co-opt our communities in exile and undermine the Palestinian national movement for self-determination, return and liberation" and called on Palestinians not to participate in it.

SEE ALSO: "Abbas-backed "Palestine Network" responds to my comments; here's my reaction and their unpublished "concept paper"

OUR DREAMS & NIGHTMARES - Palestinian Photography Exhibition

 For anybody in the London area:

 Friday February 12th, River Room, Strand Campus, Kings College London.

 OUR DREAMS & NIGHTMARES - A Photography Exhibition by the New Generations of Lajee Center (www.lajee.org) with Rich Wiles. 12-8pm. Including a talk by Rich Wiles and spoken word artists from 6-8pm.

 Kings College Action Palestine group are hosting this event for one day only featuring this powerful exhibition through which young Palestinian refugees reveal the dreams and nightmares that full their thoughts and minds. This exhibition was kindly supported by BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (www.badil.org).

 Rich Wiles - www.richwiles.com

Controversial New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner spoke at Brandeis University last week. According to a report in the student newspaper, The Justice, he said some pretty shocking stuff. If there was any doubt about his lack of objectivity that should now be set aside.

Apparently, he blames Palestinians in Gaza for their own deaths:

Once allowed to enter Gaza, he [Bronner] said he gained the impression that Israel had had a mistaken assumption that once it instructed residents to leave their houses, only Palestinian fighters would remain. He stated that it turned out that many Gazans did not want to leave and did not expect the Israelis to be very violent, since many had lived with Israelis or worked in Israel, a miscalculation he suggested led to destruction of property and inadvertent injuries and deaths among civilians.

At Brandeis, here is how Bronner reportedly described the history of Palestine/Israel:

"You have [the Jewish people] ... nearly decimated by the worst genocide in human history; they emerge from the ashes of it and going back to this land that they say they're from. ... They go and build this incredibly successful society in a very short time. That's what we call a good story," he stated. "Then in the process of building their very successful society, it gets a little harsh," he went on to say. "And there's an occupation, ... and the people who all those years were seen as victims are now victimizing others. That's what we call a good story."

So for Bronner the Nakba -- the wholesale ethnic cleansing and near destruction of the existing Palestinian society is not worth a mention. It is, at best a footnote a little "harshness" in what is primarily an Israeli "success" story.

And then, showing just how lacking in credibility this man's judgment and how serious his unacknowledged conflict of interest are, he denies being "emotionally involved" in the conflict despite the fact that his son has just volunteered for the Israeli army and he himself identifies with many of Israel's ideological and political claims. (For more on this see Mondoweiss's analysis of Bronner's recent appearance at Vassar). Here's what he said on the subject at Brandeis:

Debby Frisch '10 asked how Bronner felt he could cover the Middle East objectively with his son having joined the Israeli military. "I'm not very emotionally involved in this conflict. "I feel that people who are natural advocates shouldn't go into doing what I do," he said. His son's independent choice, he added, "doesn't affect my sense of what I do." In a Feb. 6 column by Clark Hoyt in The New York Times, Hoyt advocates Bronner's removal from reporting on the conflict, while New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is quoted as saying that Bronner's son's decision should not affect his father's position at the newspaper.

Since The Electronic Intifada revealed the Israeli army service of Bronner's son on 25 January, a storm has been growing around Bronner. Citing The Electronic Intifada's scoop, The Public Editor of the New York Times confirmed that Bronner's continued role as Jerusalem bureau chief while his son serves in the Israeli army creates an untenable conflict of interest and recommended he be reassigned, advice that the newspaper's Executive Editor Bill Keller publicly rejected.

Today, "Angry Arab" based on a tip revealed that when reporting in Gaza soon after last winter's Israeli attack, Bronner was "utterly indifferent to accounts of the hardships endured by the people of Gaza during the war" and literally "turned his back" on Palestinians who tried to speak to him.

Yesterday, I also commented further on this matter at Mondoweiss.

Please note this posting was updated since first published.