As’ad Abu Khalil gives a thumbnail sketch of Hizbullah’s new “Political Document” from a leftist perspective.
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As’ad Abu Khalil argues that the frequently heard charge that Arab regimes like to keep the Palestinian issue alive as a way to distract their populations from their own shortcomings is no longer true. Now, he argues, it is the Arab populations that insist on maintaining focus on the issue while the regimes would rather downplay it if they could since any discussion of the issue draws attention to, rather than away from, the Arab regimes’ weakness and duplicity.
It contains the oft-repeated cliche that Arab regimes use and misuse the Palestinian question. Let us dispel this cliche once and for all. This was true back in the 1960s and early 1970s but not anymore. It is no more true that Arab regimes use the Palestinian question to divert the attention of the population. It is now the reverse: the Arab people insist on keeping the flame of the Palestinian problem alive, and the Arab regimes all want the issue to go away because any reference to the issue exposes Arab regimes’ incompetence, defeats, weakness, and duplicities. Arab regimes now focus in their media on sleaze, sports, and Danish cartoons. In other words, anything except Palestine. Get that?
Thanks for putting the spotlight on this.