12 - 18 April 2001
Issue No.529
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 12 - 18 April 2001 Issue No.529 |
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Reflections
Can't have it both ways
The Palestinians and their Arab allies are offering an end to the Intifada. Not in return for a just "final status" agreement, which arguably was the reason behind the Intifada in the first place -- that is, when that reason (self-determination) is reflected through the distorting prism of peace process terminology. No; this is merely being proposed in exchange for a return, of some sort, to conditions as they existed before the eruption of the uprising. Israel's terms of reference have been accepted.
We no longer have a struggle for liberation on one hand and brutal colonial repression on the other, but "a cycle of violence" that needs to be broken. Resistance and repression are one and the same thing: "violence." The battle is no longer aimed at liberation, a fairer structure for peace negotiations or even better terms for negotiations within the self-same, inherently rigged, Oslo structure. Rather, the struggle is now to be aimed at nullifying itself. The Palestinian people are being called upon to fight in order to make null and void the very fact of their having fought.
And the Intifada is to be doubly regretted, albeit implicitly since no one dares to do so openly for now. It is to be regretted because, with nearly 400 dead, thousands injured (many of whom will have to live with permanent disabilities), massive destruction, economic strangulation and immense hardship, we would like to act as if it never happened. And while the "leadership" has for many years demonstrated a rather insouciant attitude towards the wasted sacrifices of its people, the Intifada is to be regretted because we now come to realise that there can be no "return." The Intifada is transmuted into a setback; its effects are not to be built upon but, hopefully, erased.
The pattern is horribly familiar: The people demonstrate yet again their indomitable will to resist, and instead of seizing this as an opportunity to elaborate a strategy for liberation, the "leadership" vulgarises and manipulates it as just another card to be "played" (or rather squandered) in a rigged game that may offer some (increasingly narrow) space for the leadership's "special" interests, but none whatsoever for the people's desire for genuine emancipation. The leadership's bluff, as ever, is called, to devastating effect.
The alternative is out there, starkly obvious for anyone who is willing to look towards memory (very short-term memory in this case) as experience rather than something to be glossed over, buried and repudiated.
Stop playing. Get out of that gaming room. Don't act out the struggle -- take responsibility for it; act to develop it. There is a world of difference between the two, for when the struggle is a card to be played, anything goes, no matter how wasteful, futile and ultimately self-defeating. A Hamas or Jihad human bomb (as long as you are sufficiently far away) in a Tel Aviv suburb is as good as a popular demonstration in Ramallah. What you're looking for is not what one form of struggle or the other will lead to tomorrow, but to strike a deal today.
There is no deal. Now, at the very, very bitter end of the Oslo process there is only struggle, or the most humiliating surrender. No longer can the roles of Quisling and national liberation leader be juggled and alternated; it's one or the other.
What is at stake is not a bargain with Sharon over stopping the "violence," but the effort to develop forms of struggle that will increasingly neutralise the butcher's insatiable thirst for blood. The experience of the six-month-old Intifada is there to be learned from, refined and elaborated. The struggle should be developed, not negated.
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