Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000 Issue No.510

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A struggle on many fronts

By Hisham Sharabi *

The newest phase of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in which more than 200 Palestinians have been killed, requires new strategies for combating Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestinian land. Together, Palestinians -- both inside historical Palestine and in the Diaspora -- must work to sustain a healthy, democratic civil society in Palestine; to reconstitute the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO); and to support a new generation of grassroots activists.

DISPERSED AND COLONISED: Of the demoralised millions of ex-soldiers, war widows, orphans, homeless, and unemployed in post-World War II Japan, author John W Dower, in his book Embracing Defeat, writes: "[E]ven the individuals were relatively fortunate. At least they were in their own country."
The Palestinians have not been so fortunate. In the past 52 years, the Palestinians have become either refugees scattered in surrounding Arab countries and across the world, or members of a "native" population under Israeli occupation. They have been deprived of their basic national rights, including the right to self-determination and independence.
While the 20th century saw the end of colonialism and the liberation of former colonies, Palestine remains subject to harsh military occupation and active colonial settlement. Backed by the United States and in defiance of United Nations resolutions and world public opinion, Israel refuses to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip or to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. For these reasons, a decade of wrangling over a peace arrangement has ended in failure.

SUSTAINED STRUGGLE: The fate of colonised people historically has been decided in one of two ways: radically, by the physical destruction of the indigenous population (as actually happened to the original populations of America, Australia, and New Zealand), or by self-liberation. The Palestinians, despite expulsion, dispossession, and dispersal, and despite repeated defects of their liberation movement, have not been destroyed. Rather, at the beginning of the 21st century, they stand as the last group of people struggling to liberate themselves from the vestiges of colonialism.
Given the uniqueness of their circumstances, whatever form the Palestinian struggle may take, it must be a sustained struggle, carried out simultaneously with the effect to establish a workable democratic system in Palestine and the rest of the Arab world.

REBUILDING PALESTINIAN SOCIETY: In Israel and the occupied territories, where more than half of the Palestinians live -- over one million in Israel and about 2.5 million in the West Bank and Gaza -- the priority will be to rebuild Palestinian society and to restore it to a healthy and normal existence.
Palestinians in historical Palestine need sustained assistance to rebuild their economic infrastructure, schools, and training centres, and to provide health care and basic services. If Palestinian children can go to school, if families can have access to proper medical care, if graduates from colleges and vocational schools can get jobs, Palestinian society will grow and prosper, and Palestinians will be better positioned to meet the challenges posed by their own liberation struggle.

SUPPORT FROM THE DIASPORA: In any effort, whether to reform the PLO or to rebuild Palestinian society, the Palestinian communities in the Diaspora have a central role to play, especially those in the United States and Canada.
The PLO or a similar bureaucracy would be the logical means for channelling Diaspora efforts and resources. Can the PLO be reconstituted by a new and democratically elected national council? Despite the obvious difficulties -- discord among the various PLO factions and loss of trust in the institution itself, particularly among the camp refugees -- the idea remains sufficiently viable to be worth pursuing.
At the same time, the task of addressing the needs of the Palestinians inside the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel cannot wait. Some arrangement has to be made to provide assistance; this task must be taken up by the Palestinians on the outside. Organisations and groups in the Diaspora would create an "administrative" or "coordinating" agency to channel and organise their combined action. Such an effort will have an immediate, energising effect on the Diaspora communities; it will make the task of organising much easier.
Ideas about how best to coordinate these efforts have recently been explored by various groups. Earlier this year a conference was organised in Cyprus by nongovernmental organisations from the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian civil organisations from Israel, and representatives of Palestinian refugee organisations in Lebanon, with the purpose of "emphasising the unity of the Palestinian people, securing their national rights, and building their independent democratic state." The conference recommended the formation of "a permanent coordinating body," whose goal would be to reform the PLO, strengthen political participation of grassroots organisations, and coordinate the strategies of struggle.
Although the conference stopped short of addressing the difficult problem of how to institute practical administrative structures to achieve these goals, it clearly underscored the need to deal with practical organisational issues.

RECOMMENDATIONS: What should be done to bring Palestinian-American organisations and groups together to carry this project through? How can the Arab and Muslim American communities, who constitute a rapidly growing political force in the United States and Canada, be drawn into this effort? What are the organisational structures and mechanisms necessary to carry out the required tasks? These and similar questions recently have been raised by activists and organisers from Palestinian and Arab American communities at several conferences and panel discussions in the United States and Canada, as well as in Europe and the Arab world. In one of the largest conferences, held in Boston last April, a number of recommendations on organisational matters and strategies of mobilisation were made. The most important of these recommendations apply generally to the ongoing Palestinian struggle for liberation: to create a "general steering committee" composed of individuals, grassroots groups, and national organisations "to organise work by item and geographic location" on all the concerns of all parties inside Palestine and throughout the Diaspora communities; to set up administrative mechanisms for organisation, information, and mobilisation; to form a central e-mail list as a virtual meeting site for all activists, regardless of organisational affiliation; and to construct an international coalition to support the Palestinian refugees' rights to return and restitution, and to seek concrete ways to implement these rights.

A NEW GENERATION OF ACTIVISTS: The coming phase calls not only for renewed energy and determination, but also for new ways of thinking and organising. Above all, it requires making room for the younger generation of activists -- and their number is growing daily -- to assume positions of responsibility and leadership. In North America, only direct action by the new generation can truly mobilise the Arab and Muslim communities and fully realise their political potential to influence the course of events in the Arab and Muslim world.

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* The writer is chairman of the board of directors of the Jerusalem Fund and of the executive committee of the Centre for Policy Analysis on Palestine.

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See Intifada in focus 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000
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