Deal of the Century: Why We Refuse! By Mazen, Palestine

Actually, I am not exactly sure why we are refusing it; however, when digging deeper into Palestinian media parties you will find a kind of Schizophrenia.

Let me tell you how!

We, as Palestinians, are divided into political, social, economic and religious groups, therefore we still do not know what we want or need, and regarding the so-called “Peace for Prosperity workshop” in Bahrain as a part of “Deal of the Century” you will conclude that it is not a Win-Win solution for the conflict.

ACCEPTANCE – Peace at it is recognized in holy books, status laws and the nature of human behaviour is a social grass root component and requirement, it has nothing to do with politics. As far as politicians go to take care of implementing social peace, it can be argued that it will never happen unless people on both sides of the conflict want to live together in Peace.

CORRUPTION – We believe as Palestinians, that peace will not be achieved this way or any other way due to the corruption in our system, and we all know that you cannot fight corruption in a corrupted system, from this point I can conclude that corruption will not allow the prosperity and transparency.

SOCIAL Schizophrenia – WE are divided into three groups, some people will accept, and others will refuse, while some will be indifferent, because the Palestinian official media did not provide adequate explanations for the so-called “Deal of Century”, people are still not aware of its meaning. “Is it good for us?” “Will this deal end our suffering?” “Will we live safely and freely?” And a lot of other mysterious queries are still in the mind of the average Palestinian citizen.

ECONOMIC situation – The majority of the Palestinian society is middle class, their lives are linked to the political situation, but in fact, the political situation is partially responsible for the worsening of the economic situation, Hundreds of billions have gone towards supporting the Palestinian economy and ended up supporting leaders fancy lifestyles, which is not fair. However, we cannot face them as they have the power and they control everything and if you are not apart of a specific political party, you will never become in charge of something or become a decision maker.

TRUST- We almost lost our trust in our leaders, Israeli leaders, American mediators and most Arab leaders. We blame our failure on others, and the corruption in our system has made us not trust any decision.

Therefore, the lack of confidence in our leaders makes many Palestinians doubt the Palestinian Authorities view on the deal of the century; however, what they are doing is just a media activity to convenience themselves and the people they are nationalistic.

What do we want – Every Palestinian citizen wants to live in peace, want a safe life for their children, wants a non-corrupted system, wants transparency, and most importantly want justice. So, who should we trust? This is the most common question.

Conclusion – I always ask myself that question: What can I do if I break the glass panel? It will never stay a panel, so I must buy a new one instead of trying to rebuild the broken one. The same goes for the Palestinian system, it should be changed with new motivated young leaders.

The truth is there was no explanation by our leaders for the deal of the century. We simply refuse it! But do we really know why we refuse?