THE REQUIRED RADICAL REVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION V

Politics is dominated by intransigent ideologues who are only interested in forcing their ideology on the world with no concern as to whatever negative consequences might occur.
Such an idiotic state of affairs can be found almost anywhere in the world. Proper solutions to things are obscured by ideological fanaticism.
Early in this century an interesting example of this was given to us in the region of Palestine where the extreme rift between its two political parties, Fatah and Hamas, had caused enormous grief for the Palestinian people. Although the two parties expressed interest in finding common ground for the betterment of the people they were not able to do so. Predominantly guided by conflicting ideologies the two factions continually engaged in bitter and sometimes violent clashes in their struggle for power.
In the January 2006 Palestinian elections Hamas took control of the government winning 76 out of 132 seats in the Legislative Council that had been under the control of the Fatah party for decades. And the newly installed Hamas officials throughout Palestine continued the rift between the two parties by regarding all those associated with the Fatah party as persona non grata.
However, in one particular town in the West Bank it was an entirely different story.
In the town of Beita, newly elected Mayor, Al-Sharifa, of the Hamas party, did not proceed to install Hamas as the sole ruling party. He did not disenfranchise the ousted Fatah party as pariah. Rather, he sought to enlist their aid in revitalizing their town. His priority was the welfare of the town rather than pursuing an ideological or personal agenda. So, Al-Sharif formed a working coalition with the ex-mayor of the Fatah party, Wasif Mahala.
The town council consisted of six Hamas and five Fatah members. Despite seemingly insurmountable differences between the two sides they managed to form a working relationship based upon a common interest to improve Beita’s economy. And so they did. New businesses were started, infrastructure improved and the town became a model of prosperity by neutralizing ideologies and focusing on the common interest of making things better for the whole town.
The mayor also came to recognize Israel’s right to exist in opposition to the strident anti-Israeli position taken by the Hamas party.
Now, if the microcosm had been allowed to form the macrocosm Beita would have had the ability to infect other towns with its spirit of fulfilling socio-economic needs by putting people before politics. As it was, however, other municipalities remained adamant about conforming to the fanaticism of the ruling Hamas party and all those associated with the Fatah party were marginalized as social outcasts.
So, the tension between the two camps intensified and eventually erupted in civil war whereby Palestine was split into two separate territories with Hamas seizing control of Gaza and Fatah the West Bank.
I think it is plain to see that Beita had the right idea by rejecting ideological fanaticism and eliciting everyone’s participation in contributing to the town’s development. Had municipalities throughout Palestine been able to follow Betia’s example it would have certainly fared much better.
But such cannot happen if the macrocosm has a strangle hold on the microcosm and insists upon ideological conformity that prevents localities from developing as fully as they might. If it was the other way around, if the microcosm could have been able to form the macrocosm the idea of Beita could have freely spread throughout Palestine where practical pragmatic judgments about how to develop a workable society could have come to the fore from the microcosm.
A society that is structured to facilitate a process whereby freely networking localities would inform and instruct one another about how they might achieve optimum conditions for themselves would, from there, inform and instruct the society at large in like manner. So, Palestine would have become a state that was about people putting their differences aside and working together to create a society where everyone could make a life for themselves.