Palestinian voices are throttled by the promotion of foreign agendas

Almost all political rhetoric about Israel’s genocide in Gaza completely misses the point. That includes the Palestinian Authority’s purported concern about Palestinians in Gaza, which does not extend to any concern about Israel’s ultimate colonial vision of creating “Greater Israel”.

As the PA’s official news agency Wafa reported, the Fatah Central Committee “called on Hamas to stop toying with the fate of the Palestinian people according to its foreign agendas, cooperate with the efforts of President Abbas to stop the Palestinian bloodshed, and refrain from giving the occupation pretexts to continue its bloody war and aggression, which has cost thousands of our people, including martyrs, wounded and prisoners.”

There are ambiguities and inconsistencies in this message, although PA leader Mahmoud Abbas can never disguise his desire to bring Gaza under Ramallah’s control, no matter what. Hence the plea for Hamas to cooperate with the PA, in which case Gaza will be subjected to the same level of collaborated colonial violence that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank experience, but which the West does not like talking about.

After all, the PA is also acting according to foreign agendas which support a settler-colonial, genocidal state.

Of course, Abbas also condemned Israel’s genocide and called upon the US Security Council to “assume its responsibilities and compel the occupying state to halt its war of extermination in the Gaza strip,” as well as in the occupied West Bank. What Abbas left out was the complicity of the PA’s security services in presenting Palestinians as fodder for Israel’s guns or prison system. And what funds the PA’s security services? Foreign money from foreign agendas that have an interest in the PA’s existence as long as it serves Israel and the settler-colonial state’s security.

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No one is calling for democratic elections and representation for Palestine, because the colonial lens does not allow space for foreign agendas to see Palestinians as participants in a democratic process. What about as collateral damage in a genocide designed to expand Israel’s colonial enterprise? Of course, that fits the foreign agendas.

So once again, although genocide and Hamas are the most visible parts of Palestine today, the prevailing aspect is what foreign agendas are determining what the world makes of Israel’s settler-colonial enterprise. Foreign agendas, acting on Israel’s fake security narrative, have shoved the false image of democratic Israel in our faces for far too long, with the hopes that fewer of us can see the genocide. This is not working any longer, though, and neither is the constant pointing of fingers at Hamas.

If Hamas did not exist, Israel would still colonise Palestine and kill Palestinians.

If the PA took over Gaza, as it dreams of doing, Palestinians in Gaza would still not be safe. Colonialism does not create safety. The international community does not create safety, therefore foreign agendas do not create safety. The PA itself knows that it is neither a safe entity nor does it create safety, as many Palestinians can testify. Pointing fingers at what Israel loves to hate does not change the politics on the ground.

So, instead of hyping the Israeli and international narratives on Gaza, can the PA address the mutating colonial violence that is now at the level of genocide, as a result of the foreign agendas that the “authority” itself loves to align itself with?

Their voices are throttled by the promotion of foreign agendas, so why not let the Palestinian people speak for themselves?

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.