Thursday, December 13, 2001

Palestinian Intifada - the key

PV Vivekanand

SOMETIME in September 1987, as the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee held another of its routine meetings in Tunisia, and, as usual, demanded international action to help the Palestinians regain their land and rights, a veteran political observer commented: "They (the Palestinian leadership) could shout and scream at the top of their voice, but any real change in the Middle East equation could come only when the people who live under the bitter reality of Israeli occupation rise up and resist the occupier and make the occupied land impossible to be ruled."
It was as if he was claivorant. Less than three months later, the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rose up and launched the Intifada, catching by surprise even the PLO leadership. What had started as scattered stone-throwing at Israeli soldiers, and indeed at every sign of Israeli occupation, turned out to be one of the most bitter resistance struggle ever waged without weapons.
The PLO leadership struggled to get the revolt organised, but was not until several months later that Khalil Al Wazir, who headed the military wing of the PLO, was able to assert with any conviction that the organisation had gained partial control of the uprising. By then it had to reckon with the emergence of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and other groups such as Islamic Jihad which refused to line up under the PLO umbrella and waged their own revolt with little co-ordination with the PLO groups.
The Intifada led to Jordan renouncing its pre-1967 territorial claims to the West Bank in July 1988, and this cleared the way for the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the then parliament-in-exile of the Palestinian people, to meet in Algiers and adopt the declaration of independence on Nov. 15, 1988. In a way, that declaration was also an effort by the PLO leadership to let the world know that it was in control of the Palestinians.
Quite clearly, throughout the years the Israelis saw Arafat as the "moderate" among the Palestinian leaders.
Between the declaration of independence and January 1991, Israel systematically "eliminated" several PLO leaders — including Khalil Al Wazir (Abu Jihad) and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) — who were seen as tougher than Arafat in the Israeli eyes. Perhaps that was its way of ensuring that Arafat could be singled out and pressured into accepting an Israeli deal as and when the time was right; and that is what happened in September 1993 with the signing of the Olso agreements.
But it was the Palestinian children who kept up their "revolution of stones" who pressured Israel into considering for the first time making even the Olso deal with the Palestinians. The Intifada let the Israelis know for the first time how it was like to be confronted by an unarmed people fighting for their rights with conviction and determination.
"Break their bones" — ordered the then Israeli army chief, Yitzhak Rabin in his allout effort to quell the Intifada.
Israeli soldiers killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, broke thousands of bones, and threw thousands in prison. But the Intifada continued.
The Israelis were alarmed. And the new element of non-violence was introduced into the Intifada by Palestinian American Mubarak Al Awad, who took a leaf from the Gandhian approach and called on the Palestinians to boycott Israeli goods and not to pay taxes. That approach was more terrifying to the Israelis; the captive Palestinian market represented nearly $2 billion in annual business for Israeli manufacturers (They could not wait to get rid of Awad on technical grounds, but it took them some time to do it).
As the Intifada hit its peak, forcing the the US administration of Geoge Bush Senior to search frantically for some way to contain the situation. Then came the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, throwing disarray into the Arab ranks.
By the time a US-led coalition evicted Iraq from Kuwait in February 1991, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's support for Iraq in the crisis had dealt a major setback to himself and, by extension, to the Palestinians although the Bush administration had promised the Arab World that the US would take the lead in trying to resolve the Palestinian problem once the problem in the Gulf was over.
The elimination of Iraq as a potential Arab military power capable of challenging Israel set all the elements right for an effort for Arab-Israeli negotiatons, where Israel was only interested in finding an end to the Palestinian Intifada by engaging the Arabs in talks and gain legitimacy in the region while giving little in return.
The right-wing regime that ruled Israel went to the Middle East peace conference and a ceremonial launch of peace talksheld in Madrid in September under pressure from Washington.
But the talks got nowhere, but the intensity of the Intifada declined, as hopes remained high among the Palestinians for peace.
It was not until the Likud was ousted from power by Rabin's Labour that some movement was made on a realistic ground. Obviously, Rabin had learnt from his army days that without offering something substantial to the Palestinians, the Intifdada would not stop. Sure enough, the Intifada was suspended in September 1993, when the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo agreements, which were negotiated in secret by senior PLO and Labour Party officials.
But Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and several component factions of the PLO remained opposed to the Oslo agreements and vowed to wreck it since they saw the accords as a sell-out of the Palestinian cause.
Undaunted, Arafat made a triumphant entry to Gaza in July 1994 and set up the interim Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and went about consolidaring his authority while continuing negotiations on the "final status" of the Palestinian territories Israel occupied in the 1967 war.
Rabin was assassinated in 1995, when it appeared to Israeli righ-wingers that he was ready to give "too much" to the Palestinians, and the peace process went into disarray.
Arafat dealt with three Israeli prime ministers after Rabin — Shimon Peres of Labour and Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) and Ehud Barak (Labour) — before ending up with his long-time foe Ariel Sharon in the saddle of power in Israel.
By then the damage to the peace process was already done by Israel's steady refusal to implement signed interim agreements and insistence that Arafat control Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups which opposed the Oslo process.
The five-year interim period for negotiations and a final peace accord expired in 1998, but the Palestinians held back, hoping for a breakthrough.
But all their hopes were shattered in the summer of 2000 when it became clear that Israel had no intention to respect the Palestinian rights to Arab East Jerusalem and the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees. Adding insult to injury was the truncated shape of the land that Barak, the then prime minister, was offering to return to them.
Sharon's defiant visit to Islam's third holiest shrine, Al Aqsa Mosque in Arab East Jerusalem, and his declaration that Israel would never give up the Holy City broke the proverbial last straw for the Palestinians; and the Intifada was relaunched.
Today, we see Israel unleashing its firepower against the Palestinians at will, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad staging suicide attacks. Arafat is caught in the middle.
Throughout the five decades since Arafat entered Palestinian resistance operations (he became chairman of the PLO in 1968), he has survived by sheer wits.
Indeed, the Al Khithyar (old man), as Arafat is called by many close to him, is the symbol of the Palestinian struggle. But he finds himself between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand is his conviction that a peace accord could be worked out with the Israelis with international backing. On the other is the rejectionist camp led by groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as some of the PLO component factions.
Obviously, Israel had hoped that it could use Arafat and the PNA to crack down on Palestinians who reject the Israeli version of peace and then pressure the Palestinian leadership into accepting its terms.
Now that it is abundantly clear that Israel could not hope to use Arafat as its policeman, Sharon is considering alternatives.
Arafat had been trying to strike a balance between the two, but has alienated his own people in the bargain. While he remains the symbol of the Palestinian struggle, his ability to muster the Palestinian ranks behind him has been put to question, if only by Israeli actions that have systematically eroded the Palestinian belief that he could strike a hard but successful bargain with Israel in favour of the Palestinian territorial and political rights.
But Israel will be risking a bloodbath in Palestine if it tries to "take out" Arafat with the hope that it would be easier to strike a deal with his successor.
But Arafat is finding the situation the biggest challenge in his life.
Wednesday's suicide blast, which killed at least eight Israelis, has shot tension to its heighest-ever peak in Palestine. The Israeli options are clear: Sharon could not be expected to see the situation with logic and reason and comprehend that the first step in containing such actions is a clear-cut declaration that he is willing to accept the Palestinian rights as the basis for peace. For him, accepting that would not only be politically unpardonable but also a "humiliating" compromise in his "tough posture" and rejection of "negotiations under fire."
But it only means one thing: Sharon is politically immatured to see realities as realities and lacks the pragmatism to accept the "peace of the brave."