An extraordinary film called Occupied Palestine, directed by David Koff, was shown last week at this year's Palestine Film Festival in London. Made in 1980, it documents life for the Palestinians under Israel's occupation at the time, giving voice to ordinary people who describe their experiences with vividness and candour. Koff says he wanted to allow “the voiceless” to speak. The result is an invaluable archive of a vanished moment, of a lost idealism and struggle. The liberation of Palestine was on everyone's lips; the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) under Arafat, their undisputed leader, and the resistance to Israel's occupation that would culminate in the 1987 Intifada was already bursting out in huge demonstrations and angry protests. It was a nationalist struggle with a purity of message, redolent of liberation movements everywhere — a universalist fight for freedom understood from Algeria to South Africa to Latin America. Watching it, I was filled with nostalgia for the spirit and energy of those days. How different it is today as we approach the Nakba's 65th anniversary on 15 May. The language of liberation, if used at all, now applies to the West Bank or Gaza. The acme of aspiration for the descendants of those resistance fighters who sought Palestine's total liberation is now a state on the 1967 territories. Their daily struggle is for a livelihood, their resistance against Israel largely subdued, but for the poorly aimed rockets that come sporadically from Gaza. The old PLO has gone, its name reduced to a logo for the Palestinian Authority (PA). There is protest still, but it is either against economic hardship as in the huge West Bank riots last year or in anger at the PA's impotence and its self-serving ministers. In Koff's film, aside from the peasant women's loose white head covering, not a single woman was wearing the hijab, and no cries of Allahu Akbar were heard from demonstrators. Today, by contrast, the hijab is virtually ubiquitous and the struggle, which was always over land, not religion, is now patently Islamicised. How did this transformation happen? That the answer is obvious makes it no less tragic. Forty-six years of relentless Israeli colonisation, harsh punishment and domination with no end in sight have taken their toll. An uprising in a territory segmented by closures and checkpoints without the previous continuity and without Gaza cannot be envisaged. Near total dependence on international funding to offset the poverty created by Israel's occupation has diverted energy away from resistance and towards the fight for survival. Some 25 per cent of the West Bank population are below the poverty line, 39 per cent in Gaza, and 78 per cent in East Jerusalem. The political obstacles are even greater. The PA and its CIA-trained police force has become a second layer of domination after Israel, and a double fight would be needed to defeat this dual control. In such conditions, talk of a third Intifada is only wishful thinking. Where once only the PLO spoke for Palestinians, today it's a free-for-all. A Qatari-led delegation of Arab foreign ministers from Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the PA was in Washington recently to present a new peace plan. This was an amended version of the 2002 Arab plan offering Israel total normalisation of relations in return for its withdrawal from the 1967 territories. The amendment offers that Israel keeps its large West Bank settlement blocs but gives the Palestinians “equivalent” Israeli land in return, the first Arab legitimisation of Israel's illegal settlements and contrary to international law. Not content with this, the Arabs are offering Israel an added sweetener with a promise, also agreed by the PA, that the new State of Palestine would not accede to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as it is entitled to do, or attempt to sue Israel. This gesture of Arab goodwill is meant to encourage the resumption of peace talks. Unsurprisingly, Washington has approved the plan and will reportedly pressure Israel to accept it. The most significant aspect of these dangerous antics, however, is not that Israel will most likely ignore them as it has before, whatever pressure is applied, but that none of the delegation's participants is authorised to speak for the Palestinians. I am aware of no Palestinian community inside or outside Palestine that has delegated Qatar or any Arab state, or indeed the Palestinian foreign minister, to surrender Palestinian land to Israel or desist from joining the ICC to call Israel to account. Nor can the PA in the West Bank, even under a PLO guise, or Hamas in Gaza make such decisions or sign any agreement on behalf of Palestinians. Elections for the Palestinian president should have been held in 2009, and for the Palestinian Legislative Council (or parliament) in 2010. The whole of the current Palestinian leadership, whether in the West Bank or Gaza, is time-expired and has no mandate to rule. Any decision it makes is illegitimate, null and void. Yet this defunct leadership still enjoys international support. As Hillary Clinton told Mahmoud Abbas in 2009, when he threatened to resign, the US would not accept and wanted to see “the same faces” leading the Palestinians. She meant in the West Bank, since Hamas in Gaza had been designated by the West a terrorist organisation and so irrelevant to decision-making. It is in this context that the new Arab peace initiative should be seen, applying an accustomed norm when dealing with the Palestinian issue through self-appointed leaders and proxies, without consulting the people most affected by any decisions that emerge, and under the tutelage of the very state that supports their enemy to the hilt. If a third Intifada ever happened, it must be against this established order and the props it relies on. Palestinians should rise up to remove their present leaders and replace them with ones that truly represent them and fight for their rights. Such anti-PA movements already exist, but they need to grow. As we approach 15 May, and as things stand, there is little to remind one of that inspiring fire and resolve Koff's film shows. It doesn't have to be like that. But time is short and the big battle must soon begin. If that happens, it will be a 65th Nakba anniversary to remember.
The writer is author of Married to Another Man: Israel's dilemma in Palestine.
