The citizens of nowhere: Their agony and anxiety

While many refugees were critical of Arafat for abandoning them by signing the 1993 Oslo accord without a refugee return clause, but he was still seen as an icon by Palestinian exiles. They now see his possible successor as the man who may sell them out for good. By all indications, the favourite to take over as next Palestinian leader is Mahmoud Abbas -- the present Fatah chief and seen by many -- thanks to his acceptance by the US -- as the candidate capable of reviving the peace process, now all but written off following the past four years of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed. Most refugees would however prefer a less pliant candidate. They are afraid that Mahmoud Abbas is likely to trade off their rights, including that of their return. Although Abbas has not said anything to this effect, the Palestinians, aware of his mettle, are indeed anxious.

It they were permitted to participate in the election, the refugees would have chosen Marwan Barghouti, now in Israeli prison. Barghouti, the jailed leader of Palestinian uprisings once declared his candidature, but his later withdrawal from the arena saddened his advisers who saw a certain spark in him. It nevertheless illustrates where the people's preference lies, as well as their political mood. Obviously Barghouti is trusted more by the Palestinians to uphold their cause.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

So far as the disillusioned lot of Palestinians are concerned, they know that everything is settled up and in a stage managed election (even if from behind the certain) the winner also is already known: Mahmoud Abbas. The great people of Palestine just need a true leader who could appreciate the sacrifices made by their compatriots during their long struggle to regain their homeland.

Few understand the Palestinian refugees' plight. In exile, the country concerned is a reluctant host which constantly looks upon them with suspicion, sees the Muslim refugees as a threat to its frail religious and sectarian peace, and consequently denies them citizenship, property rights, and even work. For the refugees, the biggest nightmare would be to find themselves excluded from a Palestinian state created though negotiation by the biased peace brokers. Though bitter experience, they know to view the peace process as an instrument to sideline their rights and are as such scared of being forgotten or left behind.

"Excluding us from the election to be run in January next years will cause a drop in the whole profile of refugees," said Osama Hamdan, the Lebanon representative of militant group Hamas which has decided to boycott the vote. "This is what is the real danger, it is not just an illusion."

"Yasser Arafat was a great leader for the people, but Abbas was never a leader for the people. He is only interested in winning the presidency," he further said.

The Palestinian diaspora, particularly its military wings like the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is sore about an inconclusive Oslo process which they think denied the refugees their role in the forthcoming election, and those embittered people are of the view that no road map or further agreements could guarantee their rights with Mahmoud Abbas at the helm of the Fatah movement and a fledging Palestinian Authority (PA).

According to them, Arafat did commit mistakes, but not the one that could seal their fate. They also feel that the forthcoming election as set up by the US and Israel is stage one, and aimed at imposing their will not only on them, but on entire Arab world. Both the US and Israel are bent upon preventing the diaspora from the vote, putting in place their game-plan similar to the one the US adopted by installing the puppet Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and the equally servile Iyad Allawi in Iraq. Next is the turn of Mahmoud Abbas in Palestine. The millions of Palestinians spread all over the Middle East fear that their exclusion from the vote will jeopardise their chance of seeing leadership in the PA that reflects their wishes, not those of Washington.

Although the fire of the Iraq crises is yet to be doused, international attention has again shifted to other, older, and most imperishable of Middle East crises -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Britain's Tony Blair who recently arrived in Ramallah to talk to Palestinian leaders has, for example, urged President Bush to revitalise the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, calling it "the most pressing political challenge in our world today."

Yet, for the Arabs and Muslims, the remarkable thing is the way the West has repeated ignored the centrality of Palestine, with Iraq now dominating their psyche. But the more strategically and economically self serving this US-led "liberation" has turned out to be, the more it is seen as another quasi-colonial Western aggression in the region: another Palestine, in fact. Blair perhaps realised that it would have been a very good idea to persuade the Palestinians that some redress was at hand. There are problems, however, with the Bush administration's neo-conservatives who insisted that the path to peace in the holy lands went through Baghdad.

Moreover, if the Palestinians were to secure redress as the other colonised people have, there would either be no Israel or it would lose its exclusively Jewish character. It is not that the US presidents ever underestimated the importance of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. The trouble is that thanks to partisanship rooted in the Pentagon, they can never acknowledged the real nature of the problem, which is essentially that of decolonisation.

To make the decolonisation less painful for the colonialists, the Palestinians did not demand either the end of Israel or its exclusive Jewish character. They have committed themselves via Oslo to the loss of 78 per cent of their original homeland and it was done under the auspices of a lion hearted Arafat only to make the "peace of the brave" a reality. Yet the US called Arafat an obstacle to peace who had to be replaced by some "moderate" leader like Abbas who would persuade his people to yield even more. Is the election an exercise to prepare the ground for that fateful transaction -- may be at the cost of the citizens of nowhere?

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS