This week many of the blogs by Palestinians, and those focused on Palestinian issues, have kept their attention on the ongoing events in Gaza. Desert Peace, in Jerusalem, has found a Hebrew word to sum up the situation: Wherever you go in Israel today you hear the word ‘balagan‘ over and over. It simply means mess…. usually one made by young children. But that is not the one talked about these days… it refers to the mess in the Occupied Land of Palestine. No one on this side of the ‘fence’ really knows what is going on… but one thing is for sure, it's a ‘balagan‘. In his ploy for power, Mahmoud Abbas forgot to take one thing into account… that being… WHAT DO THE PALESTINIANS WANT? He expands on this in another post: First it was referred to as street fighting. It then was called a Civil War. Now that the boundaries seem to be established by the rival factions, it is now referred by some in the West as post-revolutionary times. It is becoming more and more apparent as the days go by that this whole mess started, not as a result of disagreements between Fatah and Hamas, but because of the fact that both Israel and Washington refused to recognise the results of the election held in the Palestinian Territories last year. Now with Olmert and Bush ‘mapping out’ the future of the Palestinian people, it is even more apparent that the Occupation will continue and Abbas will head the new ‘Puppet Regime’ in the West Bank, while the population of Gaza will continue to be cut off from the world until their leaders ‘give in’ to Israeli blackmail. We are seeing the establishment of a new government based on money and power…. nothing at all to do with what the people want. However, Nadeem at the Arab-American blog KABOBfest believes that Palestinians have to accept some responsibility for the situation: The absurd rivalry between Fatah and Hamas over a sham government that has never maintained any real or substantial authority has left Palestinians – in both Palestine and Diaspora – confused, fearful, hurt, and utterly dismayed. While supporters on both sides point the blame at one another, the dream of Palestinian self-determination continues to slip away faster and further than it has ever done before. Without a single unified front, the Palestinian Nation, as a whole, is left susceptible to increased exploitation, oppression, violence – and recently, starvation – at the hands of foreign governments and transnational actors hoping to advance their interests at the expense of our basic human rights. As the international community looks on in ironic bewilderment, America and Israel have already taken concrete steps towards solidifying this preposterous chasm within our socio-political structure. But are they to blame? My answer is no – at least not solely. While they rallied international support for the external (and internal) pressures that eventually made the environment ripe for such chaos to ensue, democratically-elected representatives of the Palestinian community let their constituents down by taking their bait. Nabulsi believes the appointment of a new prime minister contravened the law: Abbas's appointing a new prime minister was itself entirely illegal. The new ‘emergency government’ is illegal, too. According to the Basic Law of Palestine (as amended in 2003), which serves as the constitution of the PA, Abbas can do neither of these things. Nor can the new ‘emergency government’ claim any democratic mandate. This means that Abbas and the Fayyad government are ruling by decree, outside the framework of the Basic Law. So on what basis is that government supposed to govern — and on what basis are foreign governments supposed to deal with it? While Ramzi Khoury at Arabisto has some advice for Mahmoud Abbas: In this day and age communications can turn the devil into angel and beat the angel to a pulp. Under the hammer of a heavy propaganda machine supported by international networks even “legitimacy” becomes so elastic that it is no longer visible! As lame as that would be, Abbas would do some good if he was to explain the basics of the Palestinian constitution. Under the constitution, and whereas the Palestinian Authority is a presidential system, he is the elected leader of the Palestinian people. He is the one who appointed the first Hamas government and the second unity government and has the constitutional right to sack “his” governments as he sees fit. […] Abbas needs to explain that according to the legitimate law of the authority, its security establishments are under the leadership of the presidency. When “his” supposed government demanded to take control of the security apparatuses, it was an attempt to take over the presidency.