9.11.07

Good Arabs!

"Good Arabs", a phrase that runs in the Israeli streets a lot, and is soaked with racism. It implies that Arabs by default are bad, and the good ones are those they signal out.
My point here relates to what are the good Arabs that Israel wants. Today, The Palestinian Authority security forces arrested Mutaz Al-Kurdi, president of Al-Amal TV in Hebron for reporting on Hamas activities. This arrest is undoubtedly against the essence of freedom of press and democracy, as the authorities have no right to arrest journalists for their work.
Since June, the PA tried to install a ban on publishing reports covering Hamas activities. The three national dailies adhered to the ban, Filisteen Daily, a relatively new Hamas Backed paper was prohibited from distribution in the West Bank. Maan Network, a private network that brings together many of the private TV and radio stations and other media outlets in Palestine, continued to publish news from both sides of the political divide, disregarding the ban.
For Israel, the perceived role of the PA (or any future Palestinian state) will be to maintain a strong hold on the society preventing the rise of a force whose interests will not coincide with those of Israel. Therefore, Israel, and the international community in general, will turn a blind eye to all the breaches of human, political and civil rights on the part of the PA, in order to strengthen it. Just as the US turns a blind eye to such breaches in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as they are interested in maintaining the 'friendly' with those regimes, they will do the same here. We as Palestinians should tell all sides that we don't want this. We don't want Hamas and its Islamic state. We don't want a despotic Fatah led PA. We don't want a government that, to please the Israelis, will strip us of our rights.
The problem I see is that as long as we think of creating two states, this situation is likely to arise.

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