The puppet controls the puppetmaster. Abu Mazen you sly fox!

Both U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and PA head honcho Mahmoud Abbas echoed each other’s sentiments: Iran should stop interfering in Palestinian affairs. This came after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for “resistance” against Israel.

I do not seem to recall Abu Mazen telling the United States or Israel to stay out of Palestinian affairs — perhaps because their interventions always benefited him and kept his ailing political project afloat, even as Israel postured as his enemy.

This is not to say that Palestine is a rightful Iranian issue or that it really seeks to defend Palestinian rights. Palestinians are more often used as a strategic token by the region’s powers, including the United States. To say Israel uses them as such is an understatement. The Palestinians are Israel’s existential pacemaker. Perpetual antagonism against the land’s natives — and the never-ending security crisis it entails — is the only thing keeping the country together.

Abbas would be braver to assert Palestinian independence against the actual oppressors, both Israel and the state he is trying to woo, the United States. That would be real leadership.

Then again, he has been a primary entrepreneur of the myth of independence. If we only had a state, he wishes, as the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz only dreamed of a brain. Non-interference in Palestinian affairs will be a fanciful illusion so long as statehood is the desired goal.

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3. A South African in Palestine
4. Palestine’s First English Daily
5. Student Protests in Iran