14 - 20 December 2000
Issue No.512
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 14 - 20 December 2000 Issue No.512 |
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No turning back
As the Al-Aqsa Intifada enters its third month, Palestinians across the political spectrum are united in their opposition to a restoration of the status quo ante. Israel's efforts to resurrect this recent yet remote past, most notably through its resort to military force on a scale without precedent since the 1967 June War and the imposition of a comprehensive siege, have thus far only strengthened Palestinian resolve.The affront to national and religious sensibilities represented by Ariel Sharon's 28 September forced entry into the Haram Al-Sharif was certainly sufficient cause for mass protest; but, even in combination with the shooting to death of seven Palestinians at the same site the following day, it does not account for the intensity and duration of the uprising. In similar precedents, neither the 1990 Al-Aqsa massacre in which 14 were killed and more than a hundred wounded, nor the 1994 massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers at Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque by Baruch Goldstein during the month of Ramadan, nor the deliberately provocative opening of a tunnel alongside the Haram Al-Sharif and onto the Via Dolorosa by the Netanyahu government in September 1996 produced a comparable reaction.
That Sharon was perceived by the Palestinian leadership as acting at the behest of the Barak government, belligerently flaunting Israeli control over East Jerusalem during permanent status negotiations in a manner that demanded a response, does not add enough fuel to the fire to account for the ensuing explosion. While there is little doubt that, in the wake of the collapse of the July Camp David summit, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority had an interest in a controlled confrontation, and that each expected the other to initiate one and prepared for such an eventuality, neither wanted a sustained rebellion that could challenge the continuation of their relationship and perhaps their own political power. The unprecedented human, material, and economic cost borne by the Palestinian population during the uprising, under circumstances in which the security forces have yet (in contrast to the 1996 "tunnel Intifada") to participate as an organised force, further suggests that (however important the role of the PA) other factors are also clearly at work.
While the uprising's immediate context does much to explain its origins and initial development, an appreciation of its scope and objectives must take into account the framework for Israeli-Palestinian relations negotiated at Oslo in 1993, and particularly the manner in which its application during subsequent years impacted upon the lives and aspirations of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians, who in their majority did not initially oppose the agreement. In this context, the fact that military occupation, settler colonisation, and economic underdevelopment preceded Oslo is less significant than the reality that these have since 1993 been consolidated under conditions where most expected their amelioration and eventual removal. Indeed, it was the prospect of peace, security, and prosperity, rather than Israeli or Palestinian repression, which dealt the final blow to the 1987-1993 Intifada. And just as such hopes help explain the end of the previous uprising, their frustration is central to understanding the current one.
While Oslo saved the PLO leadership from impending oblivion, gave its crumbling bureaucracy a new lease of life, and rescued thousands of the organisation's combatants from the isolated existence to which they had been confined after the 1982 evacuation from Beirut, seven years of Israeli-Palestinian partnership under American auspices has produced precious little of value for the vast majority of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians. Aside from an Israeli withdrawal from approximately 70 per cent of the minuscule Gaza Strip and most West Bank cities -- in what is pointedly termed a redeployment encompassing less than one sixth of the total surface area of the occupied territories -- the transfer of responsibility for Palestinian civilian life from the Israeli military government to the PA is the only visible change. Yet even these developments are in the first instance Israeli achievements, fulfiling a longstanding objective of controlling the land and resources of the occupied territories without responsibility for the welfare of its people.
The marked improvements in personal security and infrastructure made possible by Palestinian autonomy were more than offset by the reinforced controls Israel exercised over Palestinians. For example, the movement of persons and goods into, out of, between, and even within the West Bank and Gaza Strip became more strictly regulated than ever before, requiring a succession of permits only Israel was authorised to dispense, and which it could deny or invalidate at will. So refined and restrictive did this permit system become that a separate agreement was eventually required to regulate "safe passage" between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The first of two agreed routes, which used existing rather than new roads, was opened only in 1999. Contrary to popular expectation, passes to use this road were dispensed selectively, transit procedures enforced by Israeli soldiers were cumbersome at best, and the second route was never opened.
These and similar restrictions, which perpetuated a total and absolute Palestinian dependence on Israel, had a direct and negative impact on the Palestinian economy. Relative to its already shattered state at the end of the Intifada, it shrunk by an additional third at a time when its rapid development was considered critical to the success and legitimation of Oslo. Although the PA did create tens of thousands of excess public sector and security jobs, this improvised unemployment programme kept a deteriorating situation from getting even worse rather than reversing the tide. Similarly, the benefits deriving from private and foreign investment were limited, slow to materialise, and largely concentrated within the new elites. Mismanagement and corruption, so widespread that the PA's own supervisory agencies felt compelled to produce detailed reports on the subject (which the leadership studiously ignored), only confirmed a growing belief that the PA's primary objective was to serve its own interests, and that these coincided more with those of Tel Aviv than of Jabalya.
If the emerging apartheid reality of a Palestinian population confined to impoverished ethnic reservations controlled by a native elite demonstrated that the Oslo framework complicated the problem instead of offering a solution, the accelerated pace of settler colonisation after 1993, combined with the fate of Palestinian prisoners arrested before that date, drove home the message that at the end of the day Israel was simply too powerful, and the Palestinians too weak, to achieve a durable peace.
As regards colonisation, during Oslo's interim phase Israel has steadfastly refused to dismantle or even reduce in size a single Jewish settlement, including those established within or immediately adjacent to Palestinian populations, and which are a constant source of friction and violence. On the contrary: each of Israel's post-Oslo governments has dramatically increased the rate of settlement expansion (and the associated construction of by-pass roads) relative to its predecessor. Given the huge investments involved, and their strategic location in terms of both geography and timing, they have made a mockery of the view that Oslo would ultimately produce a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state.
On the prisoner front, particularly concerning those detained before September 1993, Israel's treatment of this highly emotive issue has been so belligerent as to have produced a series of "mini-Intifadas," most recently last May. When the Oslo agreement was signed, Palestinians expected that all prisoners -- whose organisational leaders had after all become Israel's political partners -- would be released unconditionally. To their dismay, Israel refused to release prisoners who had been involved in the planning or execution of attacks that claimed lives, or those belonging to factions that rejected Oslo, or even regular Fatah detainees who refused to sign written oaths that they supported the agreement and would desist from any further resistance activity.
When it finally dawned on the PA that it needed specifically to negotiate the release of its prisoners, various quotas were agreed that, on the face of it, appeared to initiate a resolution of the issue. Yet when the moment of truth arrived, Israel began to release unaffiliated petty criminals instead of political prisoners, which to say the least reflected badly on both Israel and the PA. Seven years after Oslo, even the corpses of Palestinian guerrilla infiltrators killed in the 1970s continue to be held by Israel. Against this background, Palestinians were deeply impressed by the immediate and unconditional release of each and every detainee in South Lebanon's Khiam prison during Israel's May withdrawal, within moments of Hizbullah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah's televised warning that the organisation held Israel fully accountable for their well being.
If few Palestinians were taken in by Arafat's boast that the Gaza Strip would become the Singapore of the Middle East, fewer still expected it to be transformed into Soweto on the Mediterranean. The consistent Palestinian refrain that Israel is refusing to implement and otherwise violating signed agreements has therefore come home to roost; an agreement systematically and successfully violated with impunity is, as far as Palestinians are concerned, first and foremost a bad one, and urgently needs to be replaced. Because the Palestinian factions and general population have made fundamental changes to the process a key demand of the uprising, even Arafat is no longer calling for "the accurate and honest implementation of what has been agreed upon."
Thus far, the Intifada has only reinforced Palestinian determination to change course. The manner in which Israel has exploited its gains under Oslo to crush the rebellion helps explain why: the comprehensive siege, involving the fragmentation of the occupied territories into numerous isolated enclaves surrounded by Israeli-controlled roads and territory; the sealing of boundaries between the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israel; the revocation of tens of thousands of work permits and elimination of the abovementioned "safe passage" route; the closure of external borders with Jordan and Egypt and of Gaza International Airport; and the systematic interdiction of supplies to self-rule areas did not require the abrogation of a single Israeli-Palestinian agreement, let alone the reoccupation of even one square millimetre of PA territory. Equally, locations such as Ramallah's City Inn junction and the Martyrs'/Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip where most of the demonstrations have taken place and the highest proportion of Palestinian casualties sustained, are not within Area A, even though they are often located within Palestinian city limits. Disengagement under such circumstances would be a meaningless exercise, as Israeli forces would either remain in place because they are already within recognised military fortifications, or move at most several hundred metres to the nearest Jewish settlement. If Oslo did indeed make the current confrontation inevitable, it also placed the Palestinians at a severe disadvantage from its very outset.
Whether the problem with Oslo is intrinsic to the framework itself or the result of the method of its application has become an entirely irrelevant issue as far as Palestinian society is concerned. The fact of the matter is that the occupation remains, and whether this is despite or because of Oslo, the more important conclusion that Palestinians from Yasser Arafat on down have drawn is that Camp David revealed the ultimate and unacceptable limits of the process.
The determination of the current uprising's leaders and activists to continue with their struggle until a viable Palestinian state with real independence is not only agreed but achieved appears genuine, and is reinforced by the pointed failure to achieve national objectives after the termination of the 1987-1993 Intifada. Whether the transformations in Palestinian society, leadership, and politics since 1993 can withstand the continuously escalating political pressure and military repression, or whether the new realities created by the uprising will lead to the gradual reorganisation of Palestinian society and politics necessary for a sustained rebellion, is very much an open question.
*The writer is a Palestinian activist and scholar based in Ramallah.
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