Tepid Rendering of Palestinian Exploitation

"At Arab Gathering on Development, the Talk Is All About Gaza"
A16, Thursday 1/22/09
By Michael Slackman

Slackman presents another sad and disheartening fact of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the regional exploitation of the Palestinians. But he doesn’t go far enough. He’s comfortable enough to make broad statements about the conflict “serving as a convenient distraction, a “tool” in the hands of self-promoters. Yet Slackman’s deficient analysis is demonstrated in his stating that “the Arab world has been in the same self-defeating fight for decades," and then failing to define that fight. Later, his incomplete and deceptive reference to “Arab states fighting for a Palestinian homeland" is the ambiguity that fills the void.

What homeland? In place of Israel or next to Israel? An all-or-nothing approach in supposedly seeking this homeland is the “self-defeating fight” to which Slackman should be referring. The destruction of Israel, not simply a “Palestinian homeland,” is the goal for which the Arab world, not just exploitative leaders, pine.

An important quote at the end is from Mohammad al-Rumaihi, editor of a Kuwaiti newspaper. “If Hezbollah loves the Palestinians so much they want to fight Israel, why can’t they fight to give the Palestinians human rights in Lebanon?” This is a good sign. That hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon are languishing in refugee camps, with no rights, is a matter that merits virtually no ink at the Times, which would rather preserve the space for Israel’s use of white phosphorous.

Al-Rumaihi, however, over-extends himself when he writes “the masses, their hearts are with the Palestinians.” If so, how does one explain Hezbollah’s euphoric popularity among…the masses? The pawning of the Palestinians isn’t restricted to Arab leaders.