It is said that Che Guevara wrote in his memoirs, “If you want to liberate land, put ten bullets in your pistol - nine for traitors, and one for the enemy. If it were not for the traitors at home, the enemy abroad would not have dared take a step against you.”

This saying applies to Palestine. Their cause has generated dozens of claimers, the leaders of the fighting factions who never agree on a position, and thus made it an issue of lost opportunities.

In this regard, there is an anecdote that was circulating among the Palestinians in the 1980s. A donkey was crossing the border between Lebanon and Palestine when a mine exploded. The next day, 18 factions claimed responsibility for a suicide operation on the border.

Today, with the increase in the number of factions to 21 organizations and fronts, particularly after the entry of Hamas and Jihad, the fragmentation of the decision has widened.

Each one of them began to act on its own. In return, the number of traitors increased, and accusations of treason against Arab countries also increased, making the issue a profitable investment for the regimes.

In this manner, the late Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser came on the back of the coup tank to declare his hostility to what he called at the time “reactionary regimes.”

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invested in the Fatah Revolutionary Council to assassinate anyone who was hostile to them, even if they disagreed with them on a point of view.

The late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi took his share of those organizations and began using them to settle his own scores. So did Algeria and Syria.

Later, Iran entered the line and invested in Hezbollah, Jihad, and Hamas. Turkey did the same with the Muslim Brotherhood Group.

All of these tried to monopolize the Palestinian pain and the blood that was flowing. At every turn, these countries worked to benefit from it through Palestinian agencies. This is why the people of the earth have never agreed on a single principle, and the Arabs also disagreed.

Also, since 1936 when the Great Arab Revolt was announced, Haj Amin Al-Husseini allied with Hitler instead of devoting themself to fighting the enemy and winning the British mandate over Palestine.

Since then, the issue began to take a different turn, and the decision crystallized after the elimination of Nazi Germany, as the victors then wrote the fate of Israel.

In 1947, the Arabs were divided between those who supported the implementation of the partition decision and those who rejected it. This is why Israel defeated them in the 1948 war, which was followed by the “Nakba” (catastrophe), because they were helpless in the face of gangs numbering in hundreds each.

Today, the situation has not changed much except with modern technologies and social media. In Lebanon, for example, the decision on war and peace is in the hands of the Iranian agents. Likewise, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and others, instead of directing their weapons at the enemy, directed them at their own compatriots.

In fact, it is crazy and foolish that Saddam Hussein tried to capitalize on his invasion of Kuwait by saying, “The road to Jerusalem passes through Kuwait.”

Indeed, this same phrase was also said by Abu Iyad, but instead of Kuwait, he chose Jounieh, the Lebanese coastal city about tens of kilometers away from Palestine.

Each of these people were accusing the other. Sometimes he was a Zionist, and sometimes he was reactionary, or American intelligence. That is, the Arabs and Palestinians were agreeing to betray their brothers, but none of them raised their weapons against the Israeli natural enemy. All Arabs lament their luck that the leaders of the Western world are making a pilgrimage to Tel Aviv.

For all of this, we say, “If by their fruit ye shall know them”. If the people of the cause are dispersed at the hands of Sheba, what do they expect from others?

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times