Ghada Karmi: A historic anomaly ... The rift between Fatah and Hamas is far more damaging to Palestinians than to their enemies
[Ghada Karmi is the author of Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine.]
It's a pity that no one learns from history. This truism is nowhere better illustrated than in today's savage rift between Fatah and Hamas. What a nadir in Palestinian fortunes for one side in Ramallah to trumpet western support while the other starves in Gaza. This shocking spectacle is a sad echo of an earlier scenario, then as now, infinitely more damaging to the Palestinians than to their enemies. "The Arabs have been so misguided in the conduct of their case that I sometimes wonder whether Jewish agents are not at work inside the Arab camp," wrote a British Foreign Office official following the bungled Arab rebellion against Britain in 1936. For two years the Arabs fought valiantly, suffered enormously and were brutally punished by the British in ways reminiscent of the Israeli army's methods today. They ended up starving, their leaders killed or exiled, and the fruits of their struggle vitiated by internal splits.
These splits went back to rivalry between two Jerusalem families, the Husseinis and Nashashibis, during the 1930s. The latter wanted compromise and accommodation with the British mandate authorities, while the Husseinis refused to deal with a government so blatantly pro-Zionist. In today's terminology, we might call the former "moderates" and the latter "hardliners". Or, roughly speaking, the Nashashibis might stand for Fatah and the Husseinis for Hamas. The British appointed a Husseini as head of the supreme Muslim council, hoping he would gain them Muslim support. But they also appointed a Nashashibi rival mayor of Jerusalem. In a classic divide and rule strategy, the British played one family off against the other.
Having unified in 1935 through the Arab higher committee, set up to lead the uprising against British-Zionist manipulation, they soon fragmented. The committee split, each side intimidating, and even killing members of the other. The British punished the Arabs by arming the Jewish settlers, and scholars later speculated that without Arab mishandling of the 1936 rebellion, Zionism might still have foundered....
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It's a pity that no one learns from history. This truism is nowhere better illustrated than in today's savage rift between Fatah and Hamas. What a nadir in Palestinian fortunes for one side in Ramallah to trumpet western support while the other starves in Gaza. This shocking spectacle is a sad echo of an earlier scenario, then as now, infinitely more damaging to the Palestinians than to their enemies. "The Arabs have been so misguided in the conduct of their case that I sometimes wonder whether Jewish agents are not at work inside the Arab camp," wrote a British Foreign Office official following the bungled Arab rebellion against Britain in 1936. For two years the Arabs fought valiantly, suffered enormously and were brutally punished by the British in ways reminiscent of the Israeli army's methods today. They ended up starving, their leaders killed or exiled, and the fruits of their struggle vitiated by internal splits.
These splits went back to rivalry between two Jerusalem families, the Husseinis and Nashashibis, during the 1930s. The latter wanted compromise and accommodation with the British mandate authorities, while the Husseinis refused to deal with a government so blatantly pro-Zionist. In today's terminology, we might call the former "moderates" and the latter "hardliners". Or, roughly speaking, the Nashashibis might stand for Fatah and the Husseinis for Hamas. The British appointed a Husseini as head of the supreme Muslim council, hoping he would gain them Muslim support. But they also appointed a Nashashibi rival mayor of Jerusalem. In a classic divide and rule strategy, the British played one family off against the other.
Having unified in 1935 through the Arab higher committee, set up to lead the uprising against British-Zionist manipulation, they soon fragmented. The committee split, each side intimidating, and even killing members of the other. The British punished the Arabs by arming the Jewish settlers, and scholars later speculated that without Arab mishandling of the 1936 rebellion, Zionism might still have foundered....