Your People, Your Capital: A Reflection on Hamas and Fatah

I just watched footage of Hamas security forces beating protestors who were objecting to the high cost of living in Gaza. In addition, there are many examples of human rights abuses carried out by PA forces in PA prisons as well as frequent beatings of protestors like what happened in Hebron a while back.

There is something fundamentally wrong in two authorities, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank, operating under occupation, undemocratically representing an occupied people, undeniably doing a horrible job at delivering services and hope to a people whose dignity has been trampled on for more than seven decades, and yet have the audacity to beat their people thinking that they have the right to? Shame on you for laying a hand on the very people you should place on your heads. Who do you think you are?

The Palestinian people need alternatives and need them urgently. We need alternatives to the political parties that have dominated our internal politics for as far as memory goes. We’re stuck between a political party in the West Bank which is decaying and has no intention of rejuvenating itself and a political party in Gaza that is more concerned with its own well-being and grandiose ideas beyond the state than the well-being of the people it governs. Both political parties have become part of the problem and not part of the solution.

We think we’re a state? Our president has to apply for a permit to leave Ramallah. We think we’re a state? Our economy is in shackles and our clearance revenues in Israeli banks. We think we’re a state? Just travel the West Bank and count the many settlements growing on the hilltops of our olive groves. We think we’re a state? Our two main political parties have been divided for more than 12 years across an already divided territory. When in the history of mankind was a people occupied and divided at the same time? Only us, Palestinians. How shameful! And to beat your people as well? Your capital is your people you short-sighted, self-inflated authorities. Shame on you for living above your people and not among them. Shame on you for perpetuating our miserable reality and enjoying the riches of this fake power that you think you hold. Time for a change.