Here is a second Haaretz interview with Dr. Jawad. It only confirms my feelings that the Palestinians' chief problem for the last 30 years, even more than their dealings with Israel, is that their leaders are a) dictators, and b) idiots.
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The uprising loses solidarity
How did the arming of the Intifada arise, and why is there no free discussion among Palestinians about the revolt?
By Amira Hass
In July, 2000, Dr. Saleh Abdel Jawad wondered what was wrong with his previous forecasts. In February, 2000, he relates, he had already predicted that a blow-up was soon to come in Palestinian society. He just could not say exactly whether this was going to be a blow-up against Israel or a double outburst of rage - against Israel and against the Palestinian Authority (PA). But he did not anticipate that half a year would go by without "the pressure cooker exploding."
During the year prior to the Al-Aqsa Intifada, many Palestinians talked about a possible and impending explosion. The predictions did not derive from secret information on preparations and contingency plans that the PA supposedly had made. On the contrary, those who issued these warnings believed, as in the case of the first Intifada, that it would be spontaneous and that it would be impossible to guess in advance the timing and the proximate cause.
When it erupted, the entire public supported the Intifada. But the way it is being conducted and is developing has aroused a great many questions, and a great deal of frustration.
Thus a gap has emerged between the broad support in principle of the need for an uprising and the dissatisfaction over the forms the uprising has taken. Saleh Abdel Jawad is among the academics who have been trying to help narrow the gap, with limited success.
The predictions of Abdel Jawad and others of an eruption were, first of all, linked to the general frustration with the Oslo process. Most of the Palestinian public, said Abdel Jawad, a lecturer in political science at Bir-Zeit University, supported the process as a means to independence and the establishment of a state within the 1967 borders.
"In this respect, the Palestinian silent majority is in the peace camp." But the frustration came from what became clear during the implementation of the process, "when Israel, instead of gradually withdrawing and loosening its hold on the Palestinian people and the territories, just tightened its grasp."
Parallel to the lack of trust in Israel's intentions, anger also accumulated against the PA, for two reasons. First of all, it had failed to cope adequately on the political and diplomatic fronts with what looked to the Palestinians like intentional Israeli procrastination with regard to carrying out the withdrawal.
Second, there were all the shortcomings of the Palestinian internal government: the absence of the rule of law, the centrality and multiplicity of security organizations and the expanding wealth of the circles close to the government at a time when most of the population was suffering from prolonged economic distress. Therefore "the claims by Israeli intelligence that [PA Chairman Yasser] Arafat had planned the Intifada for months are both false and an expression of a misconception," says Abdel Jawad. On the contrary, in Palestinian society there is criticism of the PA for not knowing how to plan actions both during past years and during the Intifada, and for only responding to Israeli moves.
Widespread firearms
Indeed, at the time the outburst occurred the PA did not try to stop it, because within the PA, there was also anger at Israeli policy. However, in the PA they expected a short-lived outburst. In Abdel Jawad's estimation, Arafat hoped to improve the Palestinians' clout at the negotiating table through the pressure of the popular uprising.
The potential of the popular rage also being directed at the PA had always existed. But Israel, in the escalation tactic it pursued, very quickly "succeeded" in suppressing it and in effect strengthened the PA's position in the eyes of the Palestinian public. "The many casualties among the demonstrators during the first 10 days of the Intifada provided legitimization and public understanding of the need for the use of arms in the hands of the pillars of the PA - the Fatah people and some of the people from the various security organizations. In addition, Israel very quickly chose for its targets buildings of the PA. On the day of the lynching in Ramallah, October 12, Israel bombarded PA buildings in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Striking at the PA itself restored the public faith in it that it had lost several years earlier."
Nevertheless, he says, the public is still waiting for internal changes within the PA government. There are those, among them Abdel Jawad, who believe that internal reform is a pre-condition for a successful continuation of the struggle against the occupation.
The speed with which the Intifada developed from a popular uprising into a series of shooting incidents, armed clashes and terror attacks did not surprise Abdel Jawad. "Both nations, the Israeli and the Palestinians, have a similar rhetoric: They both believe that the other side understands only the language of force. People felt that the first Intifada, which was for the most part unarmed, did not yield enough political fruit. The successful struggle by the Hezbollah against Israel in Lebanon augmented this feeling. A second reason is the massive and dangerous presence of weapons among the Palestinian public. A great deal of weaponry has been purchased on an individual basis in recent years. Even before the Intifada internal struggles swiftly degenerated into armed conflicts, because of the widespread presence of firearms.
"A third reason for the militarization of the Intifada is the geographic shaping that happened under the Oslo agreements: The points of friction between soldiers and civilians have become fewer and have been concentrated at the exits from the cities and at the many roadblocks. This technical aspect of the situation has made the stone a more "symbolic" weapon and even less influential than it ever had been, and has cut off the direct contact between the majority of the public and the representatives of the occupation - the soldiers. This afforded the opening to weapons that can reach the soldiers."
Here, Abdel Jawad notes the reciprocal relations between the armed activists and the Israel Defense Forces. During the first weeks of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Palestinian shooting was "into the air," or "at the moon," shooting that cannot, or is not intended, to hit anyone: shooting that from the Palestinian perspective is not effective. The IDF, says Abdel Jawad, knew full well the significance of this ceremonial and declarative shooting of firearms, but chose to respond as if it were shooting between equal forces. "The exaggeration of the significance of this initial type of shooting created the illusion that there was a real armed conflict going on, and thus, despite the public anger at the shooting from residential neighborhoods, the shooters' halo as fighters grew brighter. That is, the people who were firing from residential neighborhoods helped the IDF escalate its actions, but in its responses the IDF strengthened the line of thought that the remaining solution was the augmentation of the use of firearms and causing the Israelis more losses."
This kind of struggle of necessity neutralizes most of the population and becomes the province of small groups. In this context, and in the context of the closure and the blockage of roads and the encirclement that affects the entire population, says Abdel Jawad, it is possible to explain the widespread support among the Palestinians for suicide attacks inside Israel. However, Abdel Jawad, who in the past also wrote and made statements against terror attacks inside Israel, believes that this support does not have deep roots in Palestinian society and can change quickly.
`They accuse us of not suffering'
Nevertheless, if more rapid and more conscious changes are desired, there is a need for public discussion, which to Abdel Jawad's regret hardly exists in Palestinian society. Here and there articles have been published in the Palestinian press that are critical of the conduct of the Intifada - articles against the militarization, against the shooting from residential neighborhoods, a small number of articles that have deplored the brutality of the lynching and the murder of Jews who happen into Palestinian cities. Similar things have been heard at several public meetings. But they have not stimulated discussion and apparently they have not even reached their direct targets: senior PA officials, Fatah activists and the armed activists.
The absence of public debate on the way the Intifada is being conducted, and about the moral and practical aspects of it, frustrates Abdel Jawad. Yet he can enumerate a number of reasons for this: The Palestinians have known years of censorship of the media, conducted by military or authoritarian regimes - from the time of the British Mandate, the period of Jordanian rule and the Israeli occupation, to the PA regime. This and the pressures of a society that is clan-based at root have prevented the creation of a tradition of free debate. Anyone who has dared to speak out has suffered.
Another reason is the lack of internal solidarity in this Intifada, in contrast to the first Intifada, perhaps because for seven years there had been the expectation that the Palestinian Authority would take the place of the local, spontaneous initiatives of the past. Perhaps because during the past seven years the economic and mental gaps have grown between the various segments of the population, and a new alienating element has been added: the extent of the closeness of each segment to the PA. Perhaps because the active resistance to the occupation now is not a mass and popular experience, though "Israel is punishing through its means of oppression the entire Palestinian population." In any case, Abdel Jawad says of himself and others like him that they now have no contact with the inhabitants of the refugee camps, for example, from which many of the armed activists come. "There haven't been real initiatives to bring about meetings between the people from the camps and academics to discuss questions that concern everyone, such as how to improve the struggle against the occupation."
Abdel Jawad senses an attitude of suspicion and alienation toward the academics who are trying to stimulate debate: "They accuse us of not suffering like the others but allowing ourselves to criticize what is going on. But social criticism has value and significance in its own right, which isn't conditional on the individual experience of the critic. And furthermore, it is true that relatively, materially speaking, we have been less affected. But the method of the Israeli oppression cannot but cause suffering to everyone. We are also under siege, we are also subject to the shellings and the bombardments, we are also afraid for our children."
He sees a connection between the absence of a culture of public debate and the fact that "on both sides, the Israeli and the Palestinian, there are no leaders who can say `no' outright to their public." Only Feisal Husseini, says Abdel Jawad with longing, was such a leader. He recalls two joint Israeli-Palestinian events - in 1988 and 1989 - at which it was agreed that neither an Israeli nor a Palestinian flag would be displayed. At both events there was a group of young Palestinians who raised the Palestinian flag, contrary to what had been agreed. It was Husseini who went up to them and sternly demanded that they take down the flag.
During the Oslo period, regrets Abdel Jawad, the leadership did not say outright to the people that this was not a victory agreement but rather an agreement that sprang from weakness and defeats. It almost secretly kept its various commitments to Israel, but concealed the weaknesses of the agreement. This tradition of concealment also interferes with the culture of public criticism, the essence of which is discussion of weaknesses and defeats without this being depicted as a lack of patriotism. And the result: Among themselves many people are talking about faults and shortcominngs, but their voices have not yet become a prominent social presence that could lead to positive change.
This is the second of a series of articles. |
