“A Palestinian contra with American financing”“This American step can only be a strife plan and can only aim to pour oil on the flames of the civil war or its coal that is still burning beneath the ashes of the latest truce agreement that is struggling to continue. No one can convince us… that the US wants to finance and arm the presidential forces and the Palestinian national security to confront the Israeli forces and its ongoing infiltrations in the occupied Palestinian territories… Also, no one can argue with us by saying that the Israeli government would allow the entry of these arms to the forces via Egypt and Jordan, had it had the slightest doubt that these arms were going to be used against it, against its troops and settlers.
“Unfortunately and sorrowfully, we now say that we are facing a new Palestinian contra that is backed by the US to liquidate the Palestinian resistance and its actions and all those who even think about opposing the imposed American solutions, which are basically Israeli solutions. Just like the contra squads confronted the resistance men in South America and drained the national regimes in it, these Palestinian forces will do the same thing and maybe more… We must point out that Negroponte, who was appointed a month ago as Ms. Rice’s deputy, is the legitimate father of this contra idea.
“The disaster is that the new Palestinian contra is volunteering to conduct such a filthy bloody act without there being any solution on the table that is based on the decisions of the international legitimacy and that meets the minimum level of the Palestinian demands in terms of the right to decide [their] fate, the right of return and the independent state.
“The paradox is that this American announcement coincided with Ehud Olmert’s government issuing a decision to change the course of the current separation wall, so that it includes two new settlements in the West Bank, and its ratification of another decision to establish a settlement in the Jordan Valley to host the settlers that were evacuated from the Gaza Strip during the summer before last, and [to] build a Jewish synagogue in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
“We don’t know what is the point behind forming a Palestinian presidential guard of over 10,000 troops while we are still under occupation and while the Palestinian president can’t leave his palace without the permission of an Israeli policeman and while the elected Palestinian PM can’t hold a meeting with his ministers in the [west] Bank except over the phone and while the Israelis are tapping the conversation?... For the leader of a fictive state which does not exceed a few tens of thousands of kilometers and that are under occupation to form a presidential guard is something that wouldn’t occur to anyone. However, everything is possible in these happy Abbasi days.
“There is a secret project being slowly concocted behind the back of the Palestinian people, and the financing and the armament of these forces by the US with an Israeli blessing are its backbone. It is a civil war project which predicts inter-Palestinian blood baths by targeting the Palestinian resistance. Hence, all that was said about dialogues to form a national unity government and reach concord between the two heads of the authority, is just a maneuver to gain time and complete the preparations for the major bloody dual which has become imminent.
“Dr. Saeb Erekat, the political advisor of President Abbas, said in press statements to justify these steps that the American funds will finance the purchase of equipment and surveillance devices for the checkpoints. If the American administration is really concerned by these checkpoints, why doesn’t it open them first and especially the Rafah crossing which has been closed for six months except on rare occasions… The Palestinian people are starving to death. Epidemics are spreading and there are no basic medicines in the hospitals due to the American financial blockade.
“Tens of thousands of employees, most of whom are from the president’s party, can’t provide for their children. Yet, the American administration spared the presidential forces from its blockade and is sending tens of millions of dollars to provide them with the arms and ammunition that they will use in the next few months to liquidate a Palestinian movement that is upholding the principles which the Fatah-led Palestinian revolution was launched to achieve… The intentions are now inclined in the direction of disbanding the Palestinian security forces or screen[ing] them, as a result of the contacts made by American experts with the commanders of the Palestinian security bodies.
“The screening means the ousting or the suspension of every element which is still holding on to the right of return and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, or sympathizes with the resistance… The Palestinian people are now facing two massacres. The first is a human one as the result of a liquidation war which is expected to be carried out by the new contra, while the second is a political one that will be directly entailed by the first massacre and the major headline of which will be the imposition of a shameful and [deficient] compromise on the Palestinian people, in accordance with the American and Israeli standards.
“The American administration wants to clean the Arab region from two main resistance movements: Hamas and Hezbollah, before embarking upon the major war against Iran with an Arab cover from the moderate states and a full Israeli participation. It wasn’t a coincidence that Ms. Condoleezza Rice talked about a temporary Palestinian state before her second meeting with the ministers of the Arab moderate states in Kuwait.
“What is temporary will become permanent and will remain dependent upon the extent of the succumbing to the American and Israeli dictations... It would’ve been more honorable for Mr. Abbas to be accused of being a weak president, than to enter history as a president who triggered the Palestinian civil war and placed his cards in the American basket in exchange for partial and meager solutions, that is if he gets this reward.” - Al-Quds al-Arabi, United Kingdom
