Is it worth supporting Palestine?

When we starting asking, is it worth supporting the Palestinian course, we are very certain that most of you would be dumb for a moment and later on began asking on the motive of this question.

Some of you would definitely retaliate by saying that such initiatives are humanitarian and no one should question nor against it.  Some of you might also publicly condemn those who oppose or question the support for Palestine.

And even the majority of our Bumiputra youths today are obsessed with the Palestinian course which can be traced back during the era of former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad who believes Malaysia should express its views on the plight of the Palestinians “without fear or favour”. In fact, our government was very supportive of former Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat and his vision for a Palestinian state.

Little known to many of us, despite decades of financial support and other monetary allocations to the Palestinian humanitarian course, the condition of the tiny nation has yet to improve. The Palestinian people today are still suffering from poverty, lacking in education, high unemployment rate and increasing crimes. The question here is, has Palestine really gain from the continuous international aid? Were all those funds and allocation really being channelled to the Palestinian plight?

Asides, the Palestinian nation also continues to suffer from poor basic facilities, infrastructures, socio-economic breakdown and uncertain economy with lacking in prospect nor any positive growth in its investment outlook.

So, if we were to question the fact of the continuous poor state of Palestine, the immediate response from you might be “this is all because of Israel’s sanction, Zionist conspiracy” and whatever reasons or excuses that you could think of. It seems that whatever suffering currently endured by the Palestinians were simply because of Israel and nothing else.

To understand a little more about this tiny nation, let us take a look at the politics in the Palestinian state. After it gain the right to self-governance (autonomy), the two major political parties, the centre-left secularist Fatah and the radical Islamist Hamas each with its separate power base, own armed group and security forces had since being competing and fighting each other for political dominance over West Bank and Gaza Strip which saw an on and on open arm conflict between the two from 2006 to 2013 that split Gaza Strip (under Hamas-led government) from the central authority which is based in the West Bank.

The Hamas government in Gaza had also launched series of rocket attacks against Israel that triggered a terrible 50-day war in Gaza from July to August 2014 which claimed more than 2,000 lives from both sides.

In aftermath of the 50-day war, Hamas then agreed to reconcile with Fatah via the establishment of a unity government in both West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, the unity government has yet to see any real effectiveness to the Palestinian state as both side of the political divide are still waging a secret “war” against each other, each still wanting to expand their political dominance over the other.

Apart from that, democracy in the Palestinian state is also almost non-existent despite its constitution guarantees democratic practice such as legislative elections, freedom of speech and human rights.

It is known that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas who also leads Fatah rule with full decree iron fist and expect no opposition to his policies and governance. Public dissent and criticisms were quickly put out and silenced. Under Abbas, it is also widely known that Fatah officials and leaders took too many advantage while in power resulting to wide spread corruption and mismanagement within the government.

Hamas under Ismail Haniyeh, the former Gazan prime minister, although has agreed to reconcile under the spirit of unity government still maintain their wide influence over Gaza Strip and imposes strict Islamists policies over the population there.

So, while Fatah is only interested in maintaining its grip over the government, continue to swindle whatever they have, continue to put self-interest above nation’s, Hamas too continues with its radical Islamist agendas, continuing its ambitious plan to “destroy” Israel, does both Fatah and Hamas has anything in common to ease the suffering of the Palestinian people?

Until today, good governance, transparency and competency has not exist in the Palestinian Authority ever since its inception. As such, it has been doubtful if contributions, funding, or any other kinds of financial assistance has ever reach the Palestinian population.

The question here is, on what ground is the Malaysian government supporting the Palestinian plight? Is it because Palestine was occupied by Israel? Or because Palestine is an Arab state with Muslims as majority in population? Where has all the assistance being directed to? To Fatah or Hamas or both parties?

Furthermore, to the extent of the Malaysian government’s support to Palestine, does it make them stronger to overcome the Israeli occupation or to make them stronger to fight among themselves?

Therefore, is this support worth, while we saw those Palestinian leaders has yet to be matured nor prepared for a full statehood? We should rethink our stand on this.

(This article was supposed to be screened in TheAntDaily.com last week but it was put off at the last minute fearing repression and objection from the Putrajaya regime and the Palestinian embassy in Kuala Lumpur respectively)