From Challenge # 67  May-June 2001

Palestinians Debate the Nature of the Intifada

Will the People Participate?

Roni Ben Efrat

HALF A YEAR after the outbreak of the new intifada, Marwan Barghouti, head of the tanzim or "organization", announced a new strategy: from now on, he said, the struggle would emphasize mass popular actions. (al Hayat al Jadida, March 22.) Barghouti did not explicitly call an end to military tactics, but his whole stress went to the need to broaden civilian participation. Behind his words lay an awareness that the intifada's initial aspects had occasioned problems.

Barghouti's announcement raises questions: Who is behind it? Is this merely a tactical step, designed to ennoble the intifada in world public opinion, or does it really represent a new popular motivation? There is also the deeper question: Since Barghouti is identified with the "ruling party" of Yasser Arafat, how would this "turn to the people" – an essentially democratic move – jibe with the dictatorial nature of the Palestinian Authority?
I talked about Barghouti's announcement with several Palestinians from nationalist and leftist circles. 
 

Discontent with the intifada's militant aspect

During the six months of the present intifada, a popular consensus has developed against the heavy reliance on a military approach, mainly because of its heavy cost to the Palestinian side. Abed al-Jawad Saleh was the elected mayor of al-Bireh for six years during the seventies until the Israelis deported him. Today he is an independent member of the Palestinian parliament. "All my life," he told me, "I have urged the popular struggle against the Occupation. I have called for mass demonstrations and the inclusion of the broader public in acts of civil revolt. I consider this the surest form of struggle, because it makes it hard for the enemy to hit back." 

Hani Issawi has been part of the Palestinian fight from its beginnings, through all its crests and troughs. As a teenager he was active in a military cadre and received a ten-year prison sentence. During the first intifada he was among the foremost leaders, and the Israelis placed him in administrative detention, that is, prison without trial. As for the Oslo period, these were not the glory days of the Palestinian Left. Issawi too, as a member of the Democratic Front, underwent a period of inaction with loss of perspective. He spoke to me not as a representative of the Democratic Front, but in his capacity as a private person:

"The intifada should have had a popular character from the very beginning. One thing that made it hard for it to develop was the change that took place in the Territories after the Oslo Accords. In the first intifada, the Israeli soldiers were everywhere, in every little alley, and so the struggle too took place in every nook and cranny. But ever since the Territories were divided into A, B and C, a new pattern of struggle has arisen. The army is concentrated at the checkpoints (as provided in the Oslo accords – RBE), and the demonstrators confront it there. This gives the soldiers a pretext to open fire in a situation where they have every clear advantage. There is no question but that this state of things is very convenient for the Israelis. Side by side with these hopeless confrontations developed another bad pattern, namely the indiscriminate and ostentatious use that some Palestinians make of their weapons. The firing on Jewish localities like Gilo or Psag'ot provokes massive Israeli retaliation. The Palestinians are helpless in the face of it. They have now begun to criticize the perpetrators publicly in the harshest terms."

In Gaza too, says left-wing activist Fuad Abu Libda, there has been strong criticism of firing from densely-populated areas, such as the al-Tufakh neighborhood. The regime has not remained deaf to these cries.

Because of its military stamp, the new intifada has failed to mobilize international sympathy. The frustration in this area is expressed by Professor Edward Said. In one of several articles on the topic, he writes: "The simple fact of the matter is that the Palestinian Intifada is unprotected and ineffective so long as it does not appear to be a struggle for liberation in the West. … You don't have to be Aristotle to connect the propoganda framework turning Palestinians into ugly, fanatical terrorists with the ease with which Israel, performing horrendous crimes of war on a daily basis, manages to maintain itself as a plucky little state fighting off extermination… The irony is that truth and justice are on the Palestinian side, but until Palestinians themselves make that readily apparent – to the world in general, to themselves, to Israelis and Americans in particular – neither truth nor justice can prevail." (Al-Ahram Weekly, March 29 – April 4.)

While Edward Said describes the frustration in the field of PR, the political editor of the London-based al Hayat describes what the leading lights of the Arab world have apparently concluded: the attempt to "lebanonize" the Territories has failed. The editor (who chose to remain anonymous) tells the Palestinians, in effect: You tried to apply the Lebanon model and wear down Israel by means of arms. But this model doesn't work – and for two reasons. First, you left the field to all sorts of extremists who fired away at whim, quite out of control, while the vast majority of the people stayed out of it. Second, as far as Israel is concerned, the Territories aren't Lebanon. In other words, the editor tells the Palestinians that they are rocking the boat for nothing, while losing international support. The Arab establishment too – for which al Hayat serves as mouthpiece – is pressing the Palestinians to return to less threatening methods. 
 

Where Interests Coincide

The failure of the intifada has led to the call to change its nature. From an exclusive struggle that could include only those with arms or those who are ready to die for the cause (the stone-throwers at the checkpoints or the Hamas suicide-bombers), the intifada is now supposed to bring in wide circles of the population. When we take a look at the people making this call, however, we see a mix of special interests. Some do want, indeed, to turn the intifada into a war of liberation, while others seek to accomplish goals that are foreign to those of the people.
A Palestinian lecturer, Abed al-Satter Kassem, takes a sharply sceptical view toward the attempt to bring out the masses. Kassem was one of the signatories to the Manifesto of the Twenty (see the interview with him in Challenge # 63). The PA (Palestinian Authority) has arrested him twice. He questions the motives behind the turn to the people: 

"The present intifada was never popular or spontaneous. We have gone through only two intifadas, the one that began in 1936 and the one that began in 1987. The purpose of the present uprising was twofold: to get the negotiations moving and to dull internal criticism of the PA. Now they are trying to show the Israelis as child-killers and the Palestinians as victims. That won't work. The people is too suspicious to buy this story. The only path to success is to build up the military resistance, and this depends on what the Islamist currents do."

In contrast with Kassem, there is Ingrid Jaradat-Gassner, one of the founders of Badil, a Bethlehem-based organization that fights to realize the right of return. Jaradat-Gassner thinks that unless the intifada reaches out to the masses and mobilizes them, it will not be able to develop and continue. The rise of the right wing in Israel, she says, was a factor in the decision to make this turn. Those who have led the intifada till now (the political parties and Fatah, headed by Barghouti) understand that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon is interested only in long-term interim agreements. Therefore, the intifada itself will have to be long-term. 

"We must root out the notion," says Jaradat-Gassner, "that the fight is between two armies." This is a struggle for independence, she says, so it must involve the whole population. She does not believe that the call is merely a tactic on Fatah's part for cosmetic purposes. It is rather a strategy that fits the organization's aims. She distinguishes between Fatah and the PA. The latter, she says, never sincerely believed in the intifada. For it, the uprising was lip-service to the masses, as if to say, "You tried to fight against Israel, you see it doesn't work, so now we have to go back to negotiations." Yet Fatah, with Barghouti at its head, intends to wage a very long struggle, she believes, until it achieves the dissolution of the settlements and the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. 

Hani Issawi, however – whom I quoted above – thinks it false to draw a sharp distinction between the positions of Barghouti and Arafat. The latter, he holds, is using the new tactic in order to lower the tension and pave the way for negotiations. 

The six months of intifada have emptied the PA's coffers. An uprising that the West does not understand and that gets no financial support from Arab states cannot assist those who previously benefited from foreign contributions, including the PA and the NGO's (non-governmental organizations). This makes it easier to understand the logic behind the turn to the people. If the new direction is for real, however, then the question arises: Can the PA really afford to let broader circles of the people participate in decisions about the future political process? 
 

The test

As long as the Palestinian people has not achieved its freedom and sovereignty, it has the right to oppose the Occupation by all available means. In the debate over methods that is now underway, however, most political organizations, including the NGO's, ignore the main factor that keeps the masses from joining the struggle, namely, their mistrust of the PA itself. "The National Islamic Leadership of the intifada," so called, includes all Palestinian political parties, from the Popular Front through the Islamists to Fatah. All take the position that the Palestinian people stands today before one major enemy, Israel, and that it is necessary, therefore, to set aside differences with the PA. Jaradat-Gassner claims that "people exaggerate the power the PA has today" and that the latter, in fact, follows in the wake of the "street". Most of the intifada leadership believes it necessary to put aside the differences over the Oslo experiment and open a new chapter with the PA. But can the struggle be democratized, in tandem with a dictatorial regime? Fuad Abu Libda, who is close to the mood in the street, remarks: "People fear that the very people who work with us today (i.e.,the PA – RBE) will be our enemies tomorrow. The PA, for us, is like an unwanted child that you have to put up with."

Hani Issawi stresses that on the matter of the PA, his position is personal and does not represent his party (the Democratic Front). "It isn't an accident that most of the intifada has been concentrated in Area A (the area under full Palestinian control – RBE). The rest of the people ask themselves, Why should we make sacrifices? Why let those people (the PA – RBE) ride on our backs? Yet there are others who think that if we manage to get rid of the Occupation, the corruption will vanish from the PA, because it is precisely the Occupation that feeds this corruption.

"Unfortunately, our Opposition has no alternative program to that of the PA, and this is the problem. Until we have cleaned our house inside, it is hard to achieve anything. We have to carry out deep reforms to get rid of the rot."

Abed al-Jawad Saleh also voices this minority view: "By means of the popular struggle, we should break the PA's monopoly over the struggle. Only if we recapture the initiative and with it the trust of the people will we be able to influence political conditions. The idea of establishing a Palestinian national-unity government, put forth by NGO leader Mustafa Barghouti and others, is meaningless. They all sit together already in the various committees of the PLO, but the result has only been to give the PA a fig leaf. The intifada must combine a program directed against Israel with one directed against the PA. The struggle must occur simultaneously on two levels: against the Occupation and for reforms in Palestinian society.

The test of the turn to the people is underway. We should know the outcome soon. If it represents a tactic for courting America and the donor nations, the people will not stay with it. But if it brings forth a strong popular will to create a better future, then a line will have to be drawn dividing its just goals from the corrupt and narrow aims of the PA. 

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