In order to obtain a certificate of good conduct from Israel and her guardian-ally, the United States, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) is betraying the very people it claims to represent and its enduring national cause in ways unprecedented in living memory.

This scandalous betrayal assumes many forms, including brazen “security coordination” with the occupation army, arresting and torturing political opponents on Israel’s behalf and tacitly encouraging Israel to close down or seize Islamic-oriented orphanages and boarding schools in Hebron.

It is also widely believed that there is a deep collusion between Israel and the PA in maintaining and even tightening the year-long hermetic blockade Israel is imposing on Gaza, which has killed hundreds of people and pushed the estimated 1.5 million inhabitants of the coastal enclave to the brink of famine.

Former President Jimmy Carter and Rev. Desmond Tutu recently used strong words to describe the outrageous situation in Gaza.

The former Archbishop of Cape Town denounced the international community for its “silence and complicity,” saying the situation in Gaza “shames us all.” And President Carter called the nefarious blockade ” a horrible crime.”

It is really lamentable that not only the international community, including, disgracefully enough, key Arab states, is silent in the face of the Gaza outrage.

The PA, too, is actively conspiring to keep up the Nazi-like siege on Gaza while at the same time making strident public statements denouncing the blockade. This proves, if proof were needed, that PA hatred of Hamas exceeds by far whatever alleged concern the PA may have for the survival and welfare of the people of Gaza.

But, in any case, it is not important what the PA says; what is important is what it does, and what its does amounts to a national betrayal of Palestine and the Palestinians.

Indeed, while the thuggish Israeli army was unceasingly murdering droves of innocent Palestinians in Gaza and cutting off power and basic consumer products from its badly-starved and harshly-tormented inhabitants, the PA continued to have business as usual with Israel as if the relationship between the occupiers and their victims was supposed to be based on cordiality and altruistic love.

In fact, PA leaders continued to meet and exchange kisses with the leaders of the very state whose murderous army never stopped killing Palestinian children and women on daily basis. The last of such meetings took place at the time of writing this piece.

PA leaders may argue that “engaging” Israeli leaders is necessary to guarantee vital Palestinian interests. This is the very same argument that the heads of the Jewish councils under the Nazis (the Judenrate) made to justify their treachery and betrayal of their people.

But what Palestinian interests are being guaranteed? Doesn’t Israel continue to steal more Palestinian land in order to build thereon more Jewish settler units? And how about the recent Israeli decision to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes? Or the phenomenal expansion of Jewish-only settlements in Jerusalem? Besides, has PA pandering to the Olmert government succeeded in getting the Israeli army to remove even one roadblock in the West Bank? Or maybe the PA is trying to rescue Olmert from his latest corruption scandal by “not asking him for too much”?

To be sure, PA officials do make routine statements voicing displeasure with the theft of Palestinian land and building of settlements. However, Israel, and even the Palestinian officials themselves, seem to realize that these idle statements are only for media consumption.

Well, if the PA is truly opposed to Israeli crimes, including the unrelenting settlement expansion, why is it giving the impression that there is no crisis facing the ongoing talks with Israel?

And why did the PA invite Israeli officials, including former cabinet ministers, to the Bethlehem Investment Conference last week? And why do PA security agencies continue to arrest and harass critics of the Israeli occupation on Israel’s behalf?

Today, the real decision-maker in the PA is not really Mahmoud Abbas or his de-facto Prime Minister Salam Fayyadh. Unfortunately, the final say lies with an American General called Keith Dayton, the very man who last year sought unsuccessfully to ignite a Palestinian civil war in Gaza that could have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Interestingly, this Dayton reports directly to hardcore Zionist neocon called Elliot Abrams who on several occasions indicated that his ultimate goal was to morph the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into an inter-Palestinian civil war.

It is Dayton who calls the shots and issues the instructions and decides who receives a salary and who doesn’t. It is Dayton who decides who remains in his job and who is fired. It is Dayton who provides the PA with Israeli-supplied lists of Palestinians who ought to be arrested because they pose a threat to Israel’s security and therefore to the peace process. It is Dayton who routinely visits Palestinian cities to be briefed on the security clampdown on the Palestinian opposition.

Dayton is actually the real head of the Palestinian Authority.

We are not talking here merely about Hamas sympathizers. There are hundreds of non-Islamist activists, including many Fatah-affiliated young men who are being detained in PA jails on no ground other than meeting Israeli demands to that effect.

On Monday, 2 June, three of these detainees tried to commit suicide by drinking shampoo liquids, to protest their nightmare.

Of course, PA subservience to the whims of the Bush administration goes further beyond coordinating with the Israeli occupation army against the vital national interests of the Palestinian people.

Being at Washington’s beck and call, the PA is actually not free to restore Palestinian national unity by seeking a rapprochement with Hamas.

In recent weeks, many independent Palestinian figures made strenuous efforts to reconcile Fatah and Hamas. However, the Fatah leadership, especially Abbas, has adamantly rejected all efforts to that effect, insisting that Hamas first terminate its “coup” against “Palestinian legitimacy.” (In truth Hamas carried out a counter-coup to preempt a coup-in-the-making which was to be carried out by well-known CIA agents against the democratically-elected government led by Hamas).

Interestingly, it is clear that while the PA is meticulously working with the Israeli army to repress any active resistance to the occupation in the West Bank, the Fatah leadership is also trying desperately to thwart any prospective ceasefire in Gaza . This is done mainly by instructing the group’s supporters to fire home-made rockets onto Israeli settlements in order to demonstrate that Hamas can’t enforce a ceasefire.

The nearly daily rocket-firing by Fatah in Gaza is also aimed at giving Israel a pretext to invade and overrun Gaza and murder hundreds or thousands of Gazans, presumably including the leaders of Hamas, so that Gaza would be handed over anew to Abbas and Muhammed Dahlan on a silver platter.

Isn’t this really disgraceful?

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