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An Intifada in search of a leadership
By Amira Hass
A late-night urgent phone call from a village in the Salfit region of the
Palestinian Authority: "My nephew has been arrested. It happened a week
ago. He is only 15. We do not even know where he is being held in custody.
To whom should we turn?"A phone call from the same caller, a few weeks
earlier, a little after midnight: "Jewish settlers, with the assistance of
the Israeli army, are in our orchards now and are uprooting trees. What can
we do? To whom should we turn?"
Yet another phone call from this caller, a week ago: "The road to our
village has been obstructed since the start of the Intifada. Twice we have
cleared away one obstruction, so that we could travel along this road
freely. We got into arguments with the Israeli soldiers. We said to them,
'We aren't a bunch of animals that you can put in a cage.' 'Yes, you are!'
they replied. Twice, the Israeli soldiers restored the obstruction. The
third time we removed the large concrete blocks, the mayor of the town was
with us. 'I'll argue it out with the soldiers,' he said. Whether or not he
argued with them, a week went by and the huge concrete blocks were not
brought in again. Thank God, now we can travel in our cars along this road."
These three telephone messages indicate a blatant side-effect of the second
Intifada: The absence of the Palestinian Authority as an agency capable of
offering support to the residents under its authority in the face of
measures undertaken by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) or as an agency
capable of initiating activities that could be defined as a civil uprising.
Palestinians whose loved ones have been arrested are continuing to turn to
non-government organizations (NGOs), Israeli and Palestinian alike, or to
seek the assistance of lawyers. No emergency organization has been set up
in the PA to coordinate the monitoring of the arrests and to offer legal
and financial aid to the families of arrested persons.
The PA has not initiated a thorough investigation of even some of the
shooting incidents or even some of the cases in which Palestinians were
killed by IDF personnel. Most of the updated and more precise information
can be obtained from NGOs, especially from the Palestinian Center for Human
Rights, which is based in Gaza.
The IDF set up hundreds of road obstructions throughout the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip. Except for a small number of cases, the PA's regime, which
is the official leadership of the Palestinians, made no practical attempt
to challenge the IDF by sending in bulldozers, by filling in ditches that
Israeli soldiers dug across roads to prevent vehicular traffic from using
those roadways, or by removing obstructions consisting of huge concrete
blocks or earth ramparts - even in places that were not continually
patroled by the IDF. Instead, the PA's regime focused on issuing press
releases and publicizing its grievances to world audiences.
Palestinian experts have sadly stated that only the Palestinian ministries
of education and health acted quickly in order to adapt their operations to
the state of emergency and in order to serve jointly as an agency offering
support to the residents of the PA. Local resident committees were set up
in some communities to provide mutual assistance and to provide help to
needy persons. The establishment of these communities was the initiative of
either local community figures or NGOs.
During the first few weeks of the present Intifada, veterans of the first
Intifada and members of NGOs, who (and this is no coincidence) belong to
the Palestinian left, said that this Intifada should be an unarmed popular
struggle, as was the case with the first Intifada. These individuals failed
in this attempt. There is a need to study the connection between this
failure and the different nature of the Israeli occupation today: Tight,
stifling rings of encirclement around Palestinian enclaves, instead of an
occupation army that confronts the populace at every corner, on every
street and in every government agency. There is a need for investigating to
what extent the failure was due to the effectiveness of the splitting up of
the PA into separate territories and to the effectiveness of the severing
of the natural ties between various parts of the PA (this situation did not
exist prior to the signing of the Oslo agreement).
The PA has been so fragmented that the regime cannot function as a
centralized, unified agency. That fact in itself, incidentally, can serve
as proof that the PA's leadership did not plan this uprising.
The new character of the Israeli occupation is not the only reason for the
absence of the PA as a supportive agency capable of initiating actions.
Another reason is the breakdown in interpersonal contact between the PA's
top leaders and the Palestinian public as a whole over the past seven
years. From the very start of the Oslo process, the Palestinian leadership
has exhibited a split personality. As the leadership of a public still
under the control of a foreign occupying power, it issued declarations left
and right in its capacity as the spearhead of a national liberation
movement. However, as a leadership capable of exerting only partial control
in accordance with permits issued by the occupying army operating under the
guidance of American, British and German espionage services, the PA's
regime functioned as a body that safeguarded the special privileges of its
own members. In the course of this very brief Intifada, the PA's regime did
not display sufficient insight - or sufficient capacity - for adapting
itself to the spirit of rebellion that took hold of the Palestinian public
at large.
Members of the Fatah movement - the backbone of a regime that, in the
course of seven years, has been unable to improve the living standards of
the residents of the PA - tried to restore its past legitimization as a
national liberation movement. However, they preferred to do so by focusing
on the "militarization" of the Intifada - the opening up of safety valves
and the use of firearms, which immediately erased the popular-civic
character of this uprising.
At this point in time, an official leadership, whose presence during its
nation's most difficult hour was simply not felt, must now act decisively:
Can it waive its claim to the right of return, and, if so, how can that
decision be implemented practically? Can it agree to the West Bank being
split down the middle by blocs of Jewish settlements, and, if so, how can
that decision be implemented practically? Can it agree to one street in
East Jerusalem being Palestinian, while the street running parallel to it
is Israeli, and if so, how can that decision be implemented practically
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