New Angle to Middle East Politics

[LowerCaseRepublican]

I was reading an article published by Edward Said before his death and it had a really interesting part about the NPI in Palestine. I thought it looked promising because it's not into accessorizing with dynamite and is garnering more and more electoral support as a more moderate movement of co-existance rather than Fatah and Hamas...

 

Here's a snip about the NPI:

Even though they are mostly unorganised and in some cases lead miserable lives of exile and statelessness, diaspora Palestinians are still energetically engaged by the problems of their collective destiny, and everyone that I know is always trying somehow to advance the cause. Only a miniscule fraction of this energy has ever found its way into the Palestinian Authority, which except for the highly ambivalent figure of Arafat has remained strangely marginal to the common fate. According to recent polls, Fatah and Hamas between them have the support of roughly 45 per cent of the Palestinian electorate, with the remaining 55 per cent evolving quite different, much more hopeful-looking political formations.

 

One in particular has struck me as significant (and I have attached myself to it) inasmuch as it now provides the only genuine grassroots formation that steers clear both of the religious parties and their fundamentally sectarian politics, and of the traditional nationalism offered up by Arafat's old (rather than young) Fatah activists. It's been called the National Political Initiative (NPI) and its main figure is Mustafa Barghouti, a Moscow- trained physician, whose main work has been as director of the impressive Village Medical Relief Committee, which has brought health care to more than 100,000 rural Palestinians. A former Communist Party stalwart, Barghouti is a quiet- spoken organiser and leader who has overcome the hundreds of physical obstacles impeding Palestinian movement or travel abroad to rally nearly every independent individual and organisation of note behind a political programme that promises social reform as well as liberation across doctrinal lines. Singularly free of conventional rhetoric, Barghouti has worked with Israelis, Europeans, Americans, Africans, Asians, Arabs to build an enviably well-run solidarity movement that practices the pluralism and co-existence it preaches. NPI does not throw up its hands at the directionless militarisation of the Intifada. It offers training programmes for the unemployed and social services for the destitute on the grounds that this answers to present circumstances and Israeli pressure. Above all, NPI which is about to become a recognised political party, seeks to mobilise Palestinian society at home and in exile for free elections -- authentic elections which will represent Palestinian, rather than Israeli or US, interests. This sense of authenticity is what seems so lacking in the path cut out for Abu Mazen.

 

The vision here isn't a manufactured provisional state on 40 per cent of the land, with the refugees abandoned and Jerusalem kept by Israel, but a sovereign territory liberated from military occupation by mass action involving Arabs and Jews wherever possible.

[southsider2k5]

Yeah a group like this is great in theory, but in reality it never happens. When people die, people tend to get more extreme than they usually would. Hatred brews and that is where you get groups like Hamas and Likund. Moderation prevails during calm, not war.