Palestine has ‘jurisdiction’ over Gaza, West Bank: Abbas
Palestinian president to address UN General Assembly on Sept. 26
Awad Rjoub |22.09.2024 -
RAMALLAH, Palestine
Palestine has the “jurisdiction” over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday.
“Palestine has the jurisdiction over Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and will continue to carry out its responsibilities,” Abbas said during a meeting with head of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi, on the sidelines of the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Abbas renewed his call for ending Israeli attacks against Palestinians, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction and holding a political process “that ends the occupation and achieves security, stability and peace for all in the region.”
The meeting between the two sides took up developments in the Palestinian territories and the region as well as bilateral ties between the two sides, the state news agency Wafa reported.
Abbas is scheduled to deliver a speech before the UN General Assembly on Sept. 26.
Israel has continued a brutal offensive on Gaza following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.
More than 41,400 people, mostly women and children, have since been killed and more than 95,800 injured, according to local health authorities.
The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.
Israel faces accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala
Abbas ‘Postponed’ Democracy – So, Who Speaks on Behalf of the Palestinian People?
In April 2021, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree postponing parliamentary and presidential elections, which were scheduled to take place in May and July respectively.
The then-85-year-old Palestinian leader justified his unwarranted decision as a result of a ‘dispute’ with Israel over the vote of Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian city of East Jerusalem.
But that was just a pretense. Though contrary to international law, Israel considers Palestinian East Jerusalem as part of its “eternal and undivided capital’, the cancellation of the elections stemmed from a purely internal Palestinian matter: fears that the outcome of the elections could sideline Abbas and his unelected political apparatus.
Marwan Barghouti, though a member of Abbas’ Fatah party, had decided to throw his hat in the ring, entering the elections under a separate list, the Freedom List. Opinion polls showed that, if Barghouti entered the fray, he could have decisively beaten Abbas. Those numbers are, in fact, consistent with most Palestinian public opinion polls conducted in recent years.
However, Barghouti, the most popular Palestinian figure in the West Bank, is a prisoner in Israel. He has spent 22 years in Israeli prisons due to his leadership of the Second Palestinian Intifada, the uprising of 2000.
Neither Israel nor Abbas wanted Barghouti, known as the Mandela of Palestine, to acquire any more validation while in prison, thus putting pressure on Israel to release him.
One can only speculate regarding the possible outcomes of the canceled May and July 2021 elections should they have taken place as scheduled. A democratically elected government would have certainly addressed, to some extent, the question of legitimacy, or lack thereof, among all Palestinian factions.
It would have also allowed the incorporation of all major Palestinian groups into a new political structure that would be purely Palestinian – not a mere platform for the whims and interests of specific political groups, business classes or hand-picked ruling elites.
That is all moot now, but the question of legitimacy remains a primary one, as the Palestinian people, more than ever before, require a unified, truly representative leadership that is capable of steering the just cause of Palestine during these horrifically difficult and crucial times.
This new leadership could have also understood the changing global dynamics regarding Palestine and would be compelled, per the will of the Palestinian people, to refrain from utilizing growing international support and sympathies with Gaza for financial perks and limited factional interests.
True, elections under military occupation would never meet the requirements of true democracy. However, if a minimal degree of representation was acquired in the now-canceled elections, the outcome could have served as a starting point towards widening the circle of representation to include the PLO and all Palestinians, in occupied Palestine and in the shatat as well.
Palestinians in the shatat, the diaspora, have also confronted the question of legitimacy and representation. However well-intentioned, many of these attempts faced, and continue to face, many obstacles, including the impossible geography, increasing political restrictions and limited funding, among other problems.
As the vacuum of truly representative leadership in Palestine remains in place, Washington and its western allies are left to contend with the question themselves: who shall rule the Palestinians? Who shall govern Gaza after the war? Who are the ‘moderate’ Palestinians to be included in future US-led western schemes and the ‘extremists’ to be shunned and relegated?
The irony is that such thinking, of picking and choosing Palestinian representation, has led, in large part, to the current crisis in Palestine. Segmenting Palestinians according to ideological, geographic and political lines has proved disastrous, not just to the Palestinians themselves but to any entity that is interested in achieving a just peace in Palestine.
The question of representation should be resolved by the Palestinian people and no one else. And, until that task is achieved, we must invest in centering Palestinian voices in every political, legal and social platform that is relevant to Palestine, to the struggle of the Palestinians and to their legitimate aspirations.
Centering Palestinian voices does not mean that any Palestinian is a legitimate representative of the collective Palestinian experience. Indeed, not any Palestinian, regardless of his political views, class orientation, background, and so on can be a worthy ambassador for the Palestinian cause.
Even without organized general elections, we already know so much about what Palestinians want. They want an end to the Israeli occupation, the dismantlement of the illegal settlements, the honoring of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees, social equality, end to corruption and democratic representation, among other shared values.
These are not my own conclusions, but the views of the majority of Palestinians as indicated in various opinion public polls. Similar sentiments have been expressed and repeated year after year.
It follows that any true representative of the Palestinian cause should adhere to these ideals; otherwise, he or she either represents the narrow interests of a faction, a self-serving class or merely reflects his own personal views.
Only those who truly reflect the wider collective Palestinian experience and aspiration deserved to be centered, listened to or engaged with. Not doing so would help protect the Palestinian cause of the self-seeking few, who use the Palestinian struggle as an opportunity for personal or factional gains.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
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