One Day In The Life Of A Palestinian NGO

Daniel Mabsout

The Palestinian struggle has been neutralized and while the situation in the West Bank and Gaza is worsening drastically the means used to confront the situation have become very limited . In the West Bank- for example- the Resistance has taken a new turn. It is called now Popular Resistance and has forsaken the armed struggle hoping to get from Israel what armed struggle could not get, and labeling this struggle as useless, unwanted and even erroneous . This popular Resistance – as they call it- carried on in the West Bank –lacks the solid ground and the solid platform that every Resistance needs which is a moral platform whereby one struggles for a righteous cause. According to this righteousness the usurping state of Israel cannot acquire any legitimacy, and any legitimacy conceded to Israel jeopardizes any legitimate claims of the Palestinians to their land turning them into self deniers , self haters and self defeaters.

The article published by the NY Times describes what is happening in the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank . This village has lost its water spring from which the villagers drew fresh water to the new coming hoards of Israeli settlers whose numbers have greatly increased . All these functions carried on in the village of Nabi Saleh accompanied by foreign and Israeli activists and escorted by reporters and journalists and probably financed by NGOS – or eligible to be financed – do not question in any way the right of Israel to exist . Not only they do not address the matter of the legitimacy of the occupation but they deal with Israel as an existent reality that should be acknowledged and accepted since it could not be defeated .Their limited goal is to retrieve the spring of water that was taken from them .

It is as if the whole of Palestine has become a disputed land over which Palestinians and Israeli settlers have both equal rights . Of course Palestinians seem to be totally deluded in thinking that “Popular Resistance” could achieve what armed Resistance could not- provided there was ever real armed Resistance in the West bank. The thing that the article does not mention is that this kind of barren activism has become a way of life and a source of income for Palestinians of the West Bank in general that has supplanted armed struggle after it proved materially rewarding . Let us not forget that it is the PLO that had set the model for material expectations after using oil money and turning the cause into a big profit Organization .

Trying to reach the water spring that was taken by the settlers has been the ultimate goal of the Nabi Saleh activists and their foreigner and Israeli friends . They succeeded once in reaching it and staying few minutes before the Israeli army intervened . In comparison with other daring actions and endeavors and military operations undertaken by Palestinian freedom fighters, the Nabi Saleh achievements seem meager .It is not that the activists don’t get caught or imprisoned but the whole thing seem to be programmed and previously calculated with some accidents that are part of the rules of the activists’ game. As for the settlers, they see in all this nothing but a useless show triggered by foreign international anarchists and carried on by Palestinians to no avail. The water spring that was usurped and rearranged by the settlers few years ago and which remained inaccessible to Nabi Saleh’s Popular Resistance , will have to wait for the Palestinian armed struggle to be fully retrieved

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/magazine/is-this-where-the-third-intifada-will-start.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
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