The Palestinian Diaspora is gearing up to get more involved in the handling of the cause, reports Marian Houk from Geneva "Our dispute is not personal", Farouk Kaddoumi told a group of Palestinians assembled at the Preparatory Conference of the Palestinian Diaspora, held at a hotel near the airport in Geneva, Switzerland, this past weekend. "The man who organised the Oslo Accords is governing now, and he believes the Intifada is the wrong way, and that military resistance is wrong. There is a big difference between our two political ideologies," he said. Kaddoumi, the new leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was referring to Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The rift in the Palestinian body politic is out on the table. In interview, when asked about reports that he is planning to go to Gaza, Kaddoumi replied, "It's early to say, but we should go back next year." One of his colleagues, standing beside him, added, "That's in a few weeks." Two of the most important Palestinian leaders, both of evident good will but who have two different approaches, neither man is among those whose names are most frequently mentioned in connection with corruption in an intensely frustrated Palestinian political atmosphere. Yet a random sampling of Palestinians questioned in casual conversations in the West Bank during the past year shows that not all of them are worried about aid money being wasted on patronage, or jobs given to the relatives of high-ranking officials. Engaging in unequal or unfair peace negotiations is as corrupt, to some. This weekend's meeting was the third time that representatives of communities and organisations of Palestinians living in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas (North and South) had come together in Geneva. They had previously met in August 2004 and in June 2005. This time, they hoped to forge a common "framework" within which they could speak to the PLO, to the PA, and to the world, on "the justice of the Palestinian issues," according to one of the meeting's documents. In the meeting this weekend, Kaddoumi recalled the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his appearance before the UN General Assembly in 1974, when he raised an olive branch in one hand and said he had a gun in the other hand, and implored the gathered diplomats: "Don't let the olive branch drop from my hand." Kaddoumi remembered that the Palestinian leader negotiated and resisted, both at the same time, and had always said he would die as a martyr -- "Shahiidan, Shahiidan, Shahiidan." Yet, one of the papers being presented at the Geneva meeting this weekend, by Khalid Barakat on behalf of a North American delegation, suggested that present problems go back to Palestinian decisions taken "since the early 1970s". One major shift of direction in that period was the Palestinian National Council's 1974 decision to establish an independent state on any inch of liberated Palestine. The split between Kaddoumi and Abbas went public when the latter resigned in frustration in September 2003 from his position as Palestinian prime minister. At that time, Abbas told the Palestinian Legislative Council that he had signed the Oslo Agreement because "Our foreign minister and the head of the PLO Political Department refused to go and refused to accept and did not recognise Oslo [saying] that the agreements do not match with his ideas." Abbas went on to describe at length the dilemma of having had two different foreign ministers; one from the PLO (Kaddoumi) and one from the PA (at that time, Nabil Shaath). Arafat was the one who achieved balance and kept things together. Resurrecting past struggles last weekend, Kaddoumi criticised the present peace process, without categorically rejecting it. He focused on honest implementation. Kaddoumi outlined what he believes is a changed world under the George W Bush presidencies, warning that Palestinians should not expect that Europe will offer more than it already has. Europe has said the Palestinians have the right to self- determination and to establish an independent Palestinian state, but that's all. Europe would not support sanctions against Israel, Kaddoumi told the meeting. Many of those present in Geneva were intellectuals, writers and teachers. All live "outside" the occupied Palestinian territories, in the "Diaspora". The word is unblushingly borrowed from the narrative of forced Jewish exile, precisely in order to create the parallel. Kaddoumi was one of those who did not return to Palestine under the conditions created by the 1993 Oslo Accords. At first, it was said to be politically expedient to have the PLO minister of foreign affairs based outside. In that way, he was free to communicate with Arab states and other countries that opposed the Oslo process. As time went on, however, with marble-clad ministries constructed in the occupied territories and donor demands progressively accommodated, Kaddoumi was increasingly sidelined. Much of the focus of the Geneva meetings is on how similarly displaced Palestinians can break back into the political arena, express their views, and have a hand in the determination of their future as Palestinians. Meanwhile, Kaddoumi, speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, explained his own presence in Geneva in broader terms: "It is necessary to unite all efforts of the Palestinians in this special situation or circumstances, because all international efforts are focused on the PA, which might harm the whole cause," he said. "The Palestinian cause is for the whole Palestinian people, and not just those in the West Bank and Gaza," Kaddoumi added in interview with the Weekly. In a quite different meeting on Saturday held in the Vatican, PA President Abbas agreed with Pope Benedict, the Roman Catholic Pontiff, that the peace process should involve "all components" of Palestinian society. "It is necessary that international public opinion realise," Kaddoumi stressed, "that the refugee problem is the most important question, and the core of the subject -- not only the situation in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. At the same time, we should pass on information about the so-called withdrawal from Gaza and put pressure on the United States and Israel to remove Israeli forces from the West Bank. We have accepted the peace process, but unfortunately they have distorted the whole [roadmap] plan." Some major political actors clearly wish that the Palestinians living "outside" would just accept their circumstances. "This is ancient history", American negotiators were quoted as saying, during and after the Camp David II talks in late July 2000, about United Nations Resolution 194 of 1948 -- colloquially known as the "right of return resolution". Israeli negotiators had said that Palestinians could return to the Palestinian state that is to be created in the West Bank and Gaza but adamantly ruled out any "large- scale" return of Palestinians to Israel. According to a document prepared for the Geneva conference, the gathered representatives of Palestinian communities and institutions committed "to study all the initiatives and negotiations which neglect the right of return of the Palestinian people." To whom the "right of return" refers is another question. In an enormously complicated legal patchwork, not all Palestinians living outside the occupied Palestinian territories are refugees. Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are also not refugees, though they may have originated in one and be living now in the other. There are also "Israeli Arabs" -- Palestinians who did not leave or who were not expelled in 1948 but rather surrounded the creation of the state of Israel -- displaced internally, evicted from homes and villages, but not considered refugees. Approximately half of all officially "registered" Palestinian refugees live in neighbouring Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. Those living in refugee camps, inside or outside the occupied Palestinian territories, face hard and discriminatory conditions. In some camps, there is still no sewage system, and wastewater runs in the streets. The Web site of UNRWA -- the UN agency mandated to ease conditions for the Palestinian refugees -- describes camps in Syria where poverty is so deep that practically no one from outside will marry the inhabitants. Nearly four generations of intermarriages has given rise to a high level of genetic disorders in newborns. Meanwhile, one camp in the West Bank has alleyways so narrow that corpses must be passed from house to house through windows before they can be taken out to a cemetery for burial.
