Palestine:From Statelet to Protectorate

Often in these pages we have called for an alternative Palestinian leadership – not, to be sure, of the tractable kind that the US and Israel would like, but a leadership that would stand for the rights of the Palestinian people. A look back at the first Intifada provides a concrete example of how such a leadership once emerged.

The following article is based on a lecture delivered at a seminar of the ODA, held in Galilee from June 13 – 15, 2002. The seminar undertook a Marxist analysis of contemporary topics.

In re-examining the first Intifada, we are not indulging in nostalgia. It is necessary to do so in order to understand how badly botched the second has been. We can also draw useful conclusions about future political steps. The first Intifada was not free of mistakes and problems, but at its root it expressed a sound revolutionary approach. Although not ripe enough to fulfill its potential, it did not exhaust the strength of the Palestinians, as the second has done, or leave them without a sense of direction.

Only fifteen years have passed since the onset of the first Intifada, yet its lessons have largely been washed away by the murky waters of the subsequent Oslo agreement. I shall now attempt to reclaim them.

Members of the present ODA (Organization for Democratic Action) had the privilege of taking part in the revolutionary wave that swept the Occupied Territories. In the months preceding the first Intifada, our journalists were constant visitors in the refugee camps of Gaza and the West Bank. We talked with union activists, students, women's groups and prisoners' families. We followed the birth of the uprising, and once it began, we gave voice to its leaders.

We covered the events in our newspapers, Derech Hanitzotz (in Hebrew) and Tarik a-Sharara (in Arabic). Anyone who read them would not have been taken by surprise. The Israeli establishment did read them, indeed, but after the fact, closing them down and sentencing four of our major Jewish activists to prison for membership in the DFLP (The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine). We did have a close connection, indeed, to leaders of the Intifada. Such an ideological bond, crossing ethnic lines, is hard to imagine today.

In their book, The Intifada (Jerusalem, Schocken, 1990; citations are from the Hebrew edition), Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari entitle a chapter, "The Surprise". Neither the Shin Beth (General Security Services) nor the Civil Administration ever imagined that the Palestinian people could revolt, although they managed the Territories on an hourly basis and knew how to exploit the weak points of every family. Schiff and Ya'ari describe a colorful booklet issued by the Civil Administration a few months before the uprising. Marking twenty years since the 1967 war, it featured on its cover a golden wheat field. Inside were pictures of playgrounds and clinics. Enlightened Occupation indeed! The Israeli authorities fell for their own propaganda: when the protests started, they thought they would peter out in a matter of days.

The Intifada erupted on the evening of December 8, 1987, in the refugee camp of Jebalya in Gaza. At another time its immediate cause would have remained an isolated event: A reckless Israeli truck driver caused an accident in which four workers died. After twenty years of Occupation, this proved to be the spark. After the funerals, in the evening, crowds began attacking the army outpost in the camp. The regional commander told a questioner: "It's nothing. You don't know them. They'll go to bed and tomorrow report for work." (Schiff and Ya'ari, p. 13) Yitzhak Rabin was then Defense Minister in a national-unity government with the Likud. He had scheduled a two-week visit to the US, starting December 10. He didn't bother to cancel it, although by the time he left, the protests had spread throughout the Strip. He took the whole two weeks abroad.

The Intifada was a complete surprise, also, to the leadership of the PLO – which then sat in Tunis, following its expulsion from Lebanon in 1982. It had failed to grasp how hard life was in the Territories. Yet the facts were plain to anyone with a will to see. Our newspapers had stated all along that explosion was imminent. We reported on wholesale arrests and deportations, on the detention of political activists without charges or trial. We described the abuse of children from Balata camp in Nablus. We printed the talk of the ordinary people who later went into the streets. Israeli oppression aroused resistance, but the PLO wasn't interested in leading the people toward civil revolt.

There was another reason too for the PLO's lack of preparation. Since its expulsion to Tunis, the epicenter for the Palestinian struggle had passed to the Territories. Here, starting in the mid-eighties, a new leadership began to develop from the ranks of the people. The PLO in Tunis refused to accept this change. Instead of seeing a new potential for struggle, it watched with suspicion. It was preoccupied with factional warfare in the Lebanese refugee camps. Far away from any large concentration of Palestinians, the Tunis group sank into a life of luxury and inaction.

The Intifada of 1987: A People's Revolution

1. It smashed the apparatus of Israel's Occupation. This has never recovered. Even today, Israel is unwilling to take upon itself, once again, the full administration of the Territories.

2. Those who first rose up in revolt were the "people of no importance": workers, women and youth.

3. The Intifada bred a local leadership that was rooted in the people, unlike the historical model of the PLO.

4. The Intifada inaugurated a period of unrest that still continues, although now in the perverted form of revenge for its own sake (e.g., in suicide actions). Israel has never been able to stuff the genie back into the bottle.

In order to grasp the depth of the change that has taken place in Palestinian society since December 1987, let us recall how people described the situation then. Thus, for example, Schiff and Ya'ari:

"In the course of a single month Israel lost its control over the Palestinian population. The reins were snatched from the hands of the military administration…The tools of Occupation broke, and it isn't possible to put them together again by force. The habits of surrender, the obedient deference to the whims of the ruling power, melted away in the atmosphere of revolt. This was a sharp psychological turnabout for a public that had discovered what it could do – and how to exploit the enemy's weaknesses." (Op. cit., p. 102.)

"These were times when the poor of the cities rose up to impose their authority on wealthy neighborhoods. From the beginning, the Intifada took on the aspect of a social revolt, that is, resistance not only against Israeli rule, but also against the local establishment. In this climate of breaking the yoke, migrant workers in the local orchards lorded it, for an hour, over their employers. Pupils made their teachers go with them to the demonstrations. Wives left their baking ovens without asking leave of their husbands. Thus, to all appearances, traditional social conventions burst asunder; the old social stratification was violated. All at once, the masses of 'people of no account' became the dominant force, setting the tone." (Ibid., p. 108.)

How did the Intifada look to Palestinian eyes? After the government closed Derech Hanitzotz, we put out a number of one-time issues. One bore the title, "Palestinians Talk about the Intifada." We included an interview with a 17-year-old named Aya from the Shatti camp. I asked her, "How have people changed?" She answered:

"The worker, for example, only used to think about how to get to Israel and bring back money. He only thought about his family. Today he no longer goes to Israel to serve the Jews. He stays here with us to demonstrate.

"The woman no longer spends her whole day in the kitchen cooking. She too takes part in the demonstrations, treating the wounded. The pupils have stopped going every day to school. They are talking more, organizing meetings.

"All the differences between people have vanished. Once I could talk about a difference between a girl from the refugee camp and a girl from the city. The city girls were spoiled. They couldn't think of anything except themselves. Today all that is changed. There's no discrimination between man and woman, child and adult. Everyone has to stick together, to demonstrate and help one another. Even the police and the workers in the Civil Administration have quit in order to help us." (Palestinians Talk About the Uprising and Peace, A Special Publication of Hanitzotz Publishing House, April 1988, p. 12 [Hebrew])

The Leadership of the First Intifada

History has known many popular uprisings that did not grow to the point of revolution. To endure and develop, the first Intifada needed leaders. They appeared – and this is significant – one month after the start of the uprising. Since Tunis did not provide them, where did they come from?

The local leadership arose from PLO members within the popular movements in the Territories (student organizations, trade unions, and women's groups), as well as the prisons. Ninety percent of the local leaders went through the crucible of Israeli prisons during the eighties. Prison was their university. It educated cadres in self-sacrifice. It taught the inmates about revolutionary attempts elsewhere. The patterns of behavior established in prison – e.g., respect for other political currents – became crucial for the future leadership of the Intifada. (See Schiff and Ya'ari, p. 197.)

The leadership made its first appearance in the form of numbered manifestos, which became the motor of the Intifada. The early ones originated in local branches of the DFLP and Fatah (both belonged to the PLO).

A trade unionist from the DFLP named Muhammad Labadi wrote the first manifesto, entitled: "No Voice Will Silence the Voice of the Intifada." He called for a three-day general strike in mid-January 1988. Fatah, at this time, was on the verge of issuing a manifesto of its own. In the light of this, the leaders of both groups met, bringing in others from the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and the Communist Party. Together they established an underground leadership that came to be known as the UNC, United National Command.

Outside this small circle, no one knew who wrote the manifestos. The leaders took decisions by consensus, without favoring any organization. They saw their task as that of "guiding" the people. The anonymity of the leaders suited the spirit of the Intifada, which put the emphasis on the man in the street. This marked an end to the traditional leadership by the "notable" families: the Husseinis, Nashashibis, and others. When Israel finally "cracked" the UNC in April, it deported the leaders, but new ones sprang up at once. The manifestos continued to flow.

I want to single out another important characteristic of this leadership. In the most democratic fashion, it expressed the positions of the PLO factions while keeping touch with the mood of the street. The leaders took care, for example, not to burden the people with too many general strikes. They devoted much attention to new methods of civil resistance. They corrected manifestos that were not realistic. For example, in the beginning they forbade the purchase of all Israeli products. It soon became clear, however, that the public was simply unable to abide by the decree. The leaders then limited the boycott to products not found in the Territories.

There was dialogue with academics from the Palestinian universities; many of their suggestions were accepted. Great weight was given to the prisoners' movement and to solidarity with their families. Beside the underground leadership, there were also leaders in the field, organized in "people's committees". The latter implemented the demands of the manifestos. They mobilized the villages and camps into "action committees". Next to these were the "shock committees", whose task was to challenge the Israeli armed forces.

Here, however, I must stress another aspect: the leadership understood that in order to involve the people, it would have to refrain from armed struggle. At first the PLO opposed such restraint, but the issue was decided in the field. One famous story concerned a mass demonstration in one of the refugee camps. An Israeli weapon fell into the hands of the protesters. Instead of taking it, one of them called to the hapless soldier, stepped forward and gave it back to him, as though to say: See? We're stronger than you! The other demonstrators cheered.

The first Intifada, then, like every profound revolution in history, brought forth a unique apparatus to lead it. This phenomenon reminds us that there are no ready-made prescriptions. Every revolution worthy of the name must breed its own structure.

In the light of later developments, we should mention the stance of the Islamic organizations. Although they did not set the tone, the first Intifada marked their entry into the national political arena. Until then they were non-national. Their goal was a return of the Islamic empire. Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, did not want to be involved at all in the first Intifada, preferring the way of prayer and charity. According to Schiff and Ya'ari, he was forced to change direction by pressure from the lower ranks. Hamas then published its own manifestos. It did not take part in the United National Command.

The Goals of the First Intifada

The makers of the first Intifada did not delude themselves. They did not say, "Oh, we shall bring independence by such-and-such a date." They avoided unrealistic goals. They aimed, as a first step, at making the Occupation untenable, that is, at creating a situation where Israel's Civil Administration could no longer manage the Territories. Yet they also took into account the fact that the Intifada would have ups and downs. The economic question was central. Even George Habash, leader of the Popular Front, put the question: "What will happen if a hundred thousand Palestinian workers cease to work in Israel? Then it'll be up to the PLO to supply them with at least $10 million per month." (Schiff and Ya'ari, p. 270.)

As a solution to the conflict, the leaders of the Intifada envisioned the establishment of a Palestinian state within the lands Israel had conquered in 1967. On this basis they tried to win allies throughout the world. For example, in contrast with the manifestos of Hamas, those of the UNC abstained from any hint of anti-Semitism. They called instead for alliance with the leftist forces in Israel. They gave a lot of weight to the Soviet Union in the diplomatic arena. As the revolt grew, they reasoned, they would have to persuade the international community to accept Palestinian claims.

The editors of Derech Hanitzotz also saw the developments in an optimistic light. For example, on February 28, 1988, Yacov Ben Efrat wrote: "The uprising is entering its third month, and the means of struggle will continue to develop until Israeli domination becomes impossible. Then political solutions will be broached that will better suit Palestinian demands. These will raise the discussion to the proper path, leading to a true solution – one based on recognition of the PLO and the right of the Palestinian people to establish its own independent state."

The PLO in Tunis did not remain passive. Schiff and Ya'ari attempt to describe its fear of the "internal" leadership – and how it attempted to trip it up. There is no doubt a measure of truth in this allegation, although the two Israeli researchers have imposed a theory on a more complex reality:

The conservative currents in the PLO, especially Fatah, were concerned indeed about the unconventional patterns of behavior and leadership developing in the Territories. The Tunis people saw these patterns as alien to those of the Arab world – and in particular to their own view of a future Palestinian state. Long ago they had ceased to think in revolutionary terms. The Intifada threatened the Arab regimes to which they had ties. On the other hand, however, this was a war for survival, into which they were thrust. On April 4, 1988, in Tunis, Israeli commandos murdered the PLO's Number Two man, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad). The message was "Bye, bye, PLO!" In response, the Tunis group attempted to use the Intifada in order to regain central stage in the international arena.

Fatah was limited, however, by the presence of two left-wing organizations, the DFLP and the PFLP. The more popular these became in the Territories, the less loved they were in Tunis.

There were factors, however, that weakened the Palestinian left. For one thing, Israel deported or arrested its leaders by the hundred. For another, the economic situation in the Territories was in sharp decline, and Fatah-Tunis was able to nurture the financial dependence of the left-wing cadres in the territories.

A decisive moment featured the DFLP's Number Two Man, Yasser Abed Rabbo (today the PA's Minister of Culture and a prominent aide to Yasser Arafat). The DFLP, as mentioned, had been the avant-garde of the Intifada. Arafat managed to induce Abed Rabbo to form a separate group, called Fida. Abed Rabbo took with him most of the organization's experienced cadres within the Territories. Fida later became part of the PA, its members receiving posts in the new regime.

It is true, then, that the PLO used the Intifada to strengthen its political hand, but it is also true that the "inside" people were too weak or inexperienced to "go it alone". (Faisal Husseini, a leader of independent stature, remained an exception.) The purse-strings were in the hands of PLO-Tunis, a fact that proved decisive. As the year 1989 approached, there began to be signs of erosion in the Intifada.

The diplomatic arena did not remain frozen either. The US, through Secretary of State George Schultz, attempted to advance a program whereby the PLO, Syria and the Soviet Union would remain outside the framework of a solution. The plan encountered such strong opposition that King Hussein, on July 31, 1988, renounced all Jordanian claims to the Territories, thus creating a formal vacuum that the Palestinians could fill.

Israel had already failed in the first of these. It had attempted the second before and during the Intifada, as well as during the Madrid Conference of 1991-92 – but to no avail. It tried, therefore, the third alternative. The formula Israel finally adopted, namely, the Oslo agreement, has brought it to the chaos in which it finds itself today. It initiated talks with the PLO solely in order to neutralize it, transforming it into a dictatorial mutation known as the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Thus the Intifada, a unique revolution in the annals of the Middle East, came to a bad end. This fact does not nullify, though, its signal accomplishments:

1. As a revolution, the Intifada became part of the collective memory of the Palestinian people.

2. Jordan's renunciation of its claims to the Occupied Territories put an end to attempts to bypass the PLO.

3. Israel understood that it could not continue to rule the Territories as it had for twenty years.

4. The moral force of the Intifada inspired enormous sympathy for the Palestinian cause throughout the world. For the first time the Palestinians managed to erase their twofold image as "victims" and "terrorists".

5. The Intifada won unprecedented support for the Palestinian people within Israel itself. Ratz (now part of Meretz), for example, changed its party platform. It had previously supported a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation. Now it recognized the PLO and came out for an independent Palestinian state.

The Intifada of September 2000: Anti-revolution

The violence that broke out in September 2000 – and that still goes on – has had little in common with the Intifada of thirteen years ago. In retrospect, we can see that it never possessed the necessary conditions for developing into a true Intifada.

This second Intifada broke out against the gloomy background of seven years under joint Israeli-Palestinian rule. When the PA entered the Territories in 1994, euphoria was quickly replaced by shock. It soon became clear that the new arrival was not the liberating PLO, but rather a Doppelgaenger of the surrounding Arab regimes. The Territories weren't prepared for such a regime. The former leadership of the first Intifada contorted itself to fit into the new apparatus: the lower ranks went to the security forces, the higher to positions in the regime. There remained, outside, an embittered group of grass-roots activists who later came under the baton of Marwan Barghouti.

Leading up to the second Intifada there were long years of political exhaustion in sterile negotiations with Israel. The standard of living plunged. The legal system proved nonexistent. Arafat carried out a reign of political terror. There was one lone attempt on the secular plane at organized public protest: the Manifesto of the Twenty, published on November 27, 1999. This criticized the PA's corruption and its collaboration with Israel. It did not receive significant public support and was quickly put down.

The first Intifada had taken Israel by surprise, but the second found it ready. In a television interview on May 31, 2002, General Yitzhak Eitan (in charge of the central sector) emphasized this point. He referred to the protests of September 1996. (The Palestinians had protested Israel's tunnel by the Western Wall; in the clashes at the checkpoints, PA personnel for the first time shot at Israeli soldiers.) Ever since then, he said, the IDF had been preparing itself for all possible scenarios.

Israel has closely followed Arafat's difficulties in controlling the opposition. It has tested him, not Hamas, on a daily basis. Israel's major preoccupation, ever since the first Intifada, has been with the question: Who can control the Territories for us?

The rage of the Palestinian people has mounted against both the PA and Israel. Yet no leadership, legitimized by the people, has arisen to struggle against the Oslo partners for a different alternative.

The leadership of the second Intifada had three heads, and as many goals, yet none of these were tuned to the needs of the people.

1. The PA, one head, was dragged into the Intifada willy-nilly. It tried to look to the people like a liberation movement, while seeking to satisfy the demands of the US and Israel in accordance with Oslo. The PA encouraged the people to clash with the army but kept its forces out of the fray. Thus it played a double game, as though it could be, at once, a national liberation movement and a responsible "state".

2. The Tanzim ("organization"), which kept a very low profile during the Oslo years, took central stage in the second Intifada. In contrast with the PA, which simply wanted to survive, the Tanzim members sought to use the Intifada to gain top posts in any future arrangement. Bitter at their past exclusion, they exploited the people's anger against the PA and the Occupation in order to advance their own narrow interests. They did not, of course, reveal these goals. Rather, they spoke of ultimate ends, of "a struggle to oust the last soldier from the Territories." Yet the people had little faith in them. Because of this, and in the absence of revolutionary thinking, they were not able to launch a people's Intifada. They focused, instead, on winning popularity by waging armed struggle.

In their quest for prestige and position, the Tanzim leaders were pulled into competition with Hamas. They adopted its weapon of suicide. Their goal was to gain popularity. This stands in stark contrast to the first Intifada, when there was no need to win favor among the people, because the Intifada was the people.

3. The Islamic groups came to this Intifada after years in which their influence on Palestinian society had soared. They provided the ideological tone. Hence, the name: "al-Aksa Intifada". This has been an uprising against the Jews, not against the Occupation. The goal has been to sow terror and fear in the hearts of the Jews until they somehow fade away. To this end all means have been considered legitimate. The Islamists have inflated the concept of suicide into a delusory strategy of liberation.

Yet they have offered no political alternative. They have left the people without the tools for coping with Israel's might. They did not take account of a world that has undergone the trauma of September 11, 2001. They were unprepared for the sharp turn that the Arab and Muslim states have been making (e.g., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) in the light of the new situation.

As for the Palestinian left, avant-garde of the first Intifada: small and ineffectual, it was dragged along behind both Fatah and the Islamists.

The people trusts none of the three heads. Although it sometimes appears that its rage is directed against the Occupation, we won't be surprised if spontaneous protests erupt against the PA. (Such a protest is now underway in Gaza.) They will not be effective, however, without program or leadership.

The second Intifada succeeded, in one respect, more than the first: it disrupted Israel's economy (although helped by other global conditions). Yet it hasn't improved the people's bargaining chips. On the contrary. The Palestinian issue, which gained when Jordan took its hands off in 1988, is now in other Arab hands, this time those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The PA has been eradicated as a governing apparatus. It still exists in name – but merely because no other entity has arisen to fill the vacuum. The Palestinian people is emerging from the second Intifada poorer, more desolate, and without hope.

The spirit of the first Intifada was revolutionary; it will go down in history as a heroic, moral struggle. The second will go down as a fiasco in which various political forces exploited the blood of Palestinian youth in order to advance narrow interests.

Yet the task that has stood before the Palestinian people during the second Intifada remains in effect: to shake off its corrupt leadership and to begin to build a realistic, revolutionary infrastructure for solving its national problem.

Even if new and healthy forces do arise from within the people, they will not be able to pick up where the first Intifada left off. The Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, major supporters of third-world peoples, have since disappeared. The world has undergone basic change. National questions alone can no longer find solutions apart from the global economic problems that burden the world.

What, then, will be the methods and goals of the third Intifada? This much is clear: the Palestinian people will never forfeit its right to independence, nor its right to live a meaningful life on its land.

analysis

Revolution and Tragedy: The Two Intifadas Compared

Roni Ben Efrat

The Intifada of 1987: A People's Revolution

The Leadership of the First Intifada

The Goals of the First Intifada

The Intifada of September 2000: Anti-revolution