Strategic rethink offers new space for Palestinian left
As many commentators have noted, one feature which distinguishes the current Palestinian uprising from the earlier Intifada is the relative speed with which it has moved beyond mass demonstrations to a state of low-intensity warfare with the Israeli occupation.
Most of these commentators, however, have failed – whether wilfully, or through lack of understanding – to account for this differing development. Roland Rance reports.
The first Intifada, started in 1987, and which was finally brought to an end with the 1983 Oslo accords. It erupted when Palestinian anger at 20 years of Israeli military occupation, and at the failure of the Arab states to act effectively to bring this to an end, reached boiling point.
Thousands of Palestinian youth, many of them who had spent their entire lives under the occupation, took to the streets in mass demonstrations. Very quickly, popular committees were established across the country, and the Unified National Leadership was established.
The parties of the Palestinian left, particularly the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, played a crucial role in these developments.
Of particular importance was the experience gained from the prison struggles of the 1970s and 80s, where activists from different factions had learned to work together to force concessions from the Israeli authorities.
Graduates of the prison system – a majority of the young men in the occupied territories – had gone through a process of intensive politicisation; many of them had learned Hebrew, studied Marxism, and organised successful struggles while in prison. They formed the backbone of the community and political organisations in the occupied territories, and ultimately of the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada.
The slogan of this Intifada was not, as earlier protesters had chanted, "We support the PLO", but "We ARE the PLO". This represented not only an increased willingness to defy the Israeli authorities, but a challenge to the PLO leadership in exile.
A new leadership, with political experience and mass popular support, untainted by the whiff of corruption associated with the PLO in exile, was also a threat to the unpopular and reactionary regimes across the Arab world. A wave of popular revolts, from Jordan to Morocco, threatened the interests of imperialism’s client states, as well as those of both Israel and the PLO in exile.
With the return of the PLO to the Occupied Territories following the Oslo accords, a new element was introduced into this volatile situation.
Over the years of exile, the PLO had developed a largely military structure and practice. Following the expulsion from Jordan in "Black September" of 1970, the PLO had in effect renounced the strategy of revolutionary struggle across the Arab world, for one of alliance with Arab regimes for a confrontation with Israel.
While Palestinians living directly under Israeli military occupation had focussed on the daily struggle against the brutalities and indignities of Israeli rule, leading to involvement in mass struggles, the PLO in exile developed increasingly into a proto-state, with responsibility for thousands of refugees and a burgeoning security apparatus.
When Arafat returned from exile, he brought with him many thousands of trained soldiers, organised into several rival militias.
One of the few specific commitments in the Oslo accords was that the Palestine Authority would have a "strong police force". This was in line with Rabin’s understanding that the PLO, operating, as he put it, "Without the High Court and without civil rights groups", would be better able to police the Palestinian people on Israel’s behalf, than could be done through a continuation of the open military occupation.
Faithful to these expectations, Arafat has over the past seven years built a regime in the occupied territories characterised by corruption, arbitrariness, and contempt for civil rights. Socialist Outlook has frequently published articles about the harassment of trade unions, independent media and other democratic bodies, by the Arafat regime. Almost all of these groups were led by the cadre which developed during the first Intifada.
This repression was a necessary part – indeed, a precondition – of the ongoing negotiations between the PA and Israel. Israel was unwilling to make any substantive improvement to the miserable conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
While continuing with its policy of illegal land expropriation and settlement, Israel constantly demanded that the PA contain dissent, suppress hostile media, and act ruthlessly against suspected Islamic or leftist activists.
At the same time, the PA was unable to stand aside from the growing popular discontent caused by Israel’s ongoing military occupation.
When, as in 1987, this discontent flared into open revolt, the PA was faced with a dilemma. To allow the development of a genuine revolutionary struggle, as in the first Intifada, would reveal its own total irrelevance.
It would be totally incapable of leading such a struggle, having little conception of mass struggle, and even less public credibility as a revolutionary leadership. But it would have been equally impossible to ignore the uprising, allow Israel to suppress it, and carry on negotiating as though nothing untoward were happening.
Socialist Outlook has previously quoted the words of journalist Amira Hass: "During the first few weeks of the present Intifada, veterans of the first Intifada and members of NGOs, who (and this is no coincidence) belong to the Palestinian left, said that this Intifada should be an unarmed popular struggle, as was the case with the first Intifada.
"These individuals failed in this attempt … Members of the Fatah movement - the backbone of a regime that, in the course of seven years, has been unable to improve the living standards of the residents of the PA - tried to restore its past legitimisation as a national liberation movement.
"However, they preferred to do so by focusing on the "militarisation" of the Intifada - the opening up of safety valves and the use of firearms, which immediately erased the popular-civic character of this uprising" (Ha’Aretz 27 December 2000).
Socialist Outlook recognises the right of an oppressed people to struggle in any way necessary against their oppressor.
We specifically recognise the right of the Palestinian people to take up arms and engage in an armed struggle against the Israeli occupier. However, we do not necessarily believe that this is the correct response in any given situation.
In the present uprising in the occupied territories, the turn to a military struggle has had several unfortunate effects.
It has demobilised the mass of the Palestinian people, who cannot take an active part in such a struggle.
It has substituted a military command structure and secrecy for a mass, open and democratic struggle.
And it has allowed Israel to claim that Arab society is inherently violent (as former Israeli PM Netanyahu frequently remarked to American critics "We live in a violent neighbourhood").
Palestinians can never win their struggle alone, and they will not be able to shame the compromised Arab regimes into a renewed military confrontation with Israel.
Over recent weeks, it has become clear that many Palestinian activists are increasingly recognising the force of such arguments. Respected figures, such as Gaza psychiatrist and human rights activist Dr Eyad Sarraj, have called for a return to mass civil resistance.
The first signs of this have been seen in the mass marches in Ramallah and Bir Zeit, in which Palestinians (assisted by Israeli activists) filled in the trenches dug by the Israeli army to isolate Bir Zeit from the surrounding towns.
Although no weapons were carried in this march, Israeli troops opened fire, injuring Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a leading Palestinian academic and activist. Several articles in the Palestinian press confirm that a strategic rethink is taking place.
Such a development would open new opportunities for the Palestinian left, and for the cadres of the first Intifada, which have experience in conducting and leading such a struggle.
The development of popular committees, the rebuilding of a fighting and democratic leadership, and the involvement of the mass of the Palestinian people under occupation in the struggle against Israeli military rule, pose a greater threat to Israel, and its corrupt allies, than the continuation of a low-intensity military campaign.
Such a development would also pose new responsibilities for the solidarity movement in the west.
We must develop links with these committees and expressions of Palestinian civil society, and provide the political and material support which they will need to build a mass base for such a challenge to Israel’s continuing occupation.