BY AHMED NIMER
Ramallah, West Bank — At the time of writing, Israeli military forces continue their brutal assault on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli military has bombarded Palestinian towns with rockets on a nightly basis. Hundreds of Palestinian families have been displaced from their homes and a new refugee camp has been established near Bethlehem to house these displaced people.
Israeli forces have prevented medical personnel from reaching the wounded and transporting the sick — directly leading to the deaths of several Palestinians. Many towns face shortages of food and other goods due to the harsh closure placed on all Palestinian areas. Thousands of people have been arrested in midnight raids by Israeli soldiers and undercover units.
The widespread Palestinian demonstrations have been termed the Al Aqsa intifada, named after the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem which was the site of the first Israeli massacre of seven worshippers who were gunned down on Friday, September 29. The term intifada has been consciously chosen in imitation of the seven-year uprising against Israeli occupation which began in 1987 and only ended with the signing of the Oslo accords in September 1993. During the first intifada, unarmed youths confronted Israeli soldiers with stones in scenes which were to become symbolic of the Palestinian struggle across the world.
The first intifada
The first intifada is commemorated yearly on December 8, the date on which widespread uprisings erupted across the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1987. The reasons behind this uprising were simple enough on the surface — a brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip for over 20 years provided ample reason to
revolt.
The underlying reasons for why the first intifada began at the time it did are a little more complex and have been widely debated since 1987. A number of factors combined to produce the impetus for the uprising.
Substantial changes occurred within the Palestinian social structure during the first two decades of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The possibilities of work within Israel, combined with the Israeli policy of land expropriation, weakened the power of the Palestinian landowning class and proletarianised a large proportion of the previously peasant population. Instead of remaining under the political and social control of this landowning class, represented in Palestinian villages by the village leader, young people increasingly found themselves with an independent source of income and wider social contacts.
In addition, a network of Palestinian universities developed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at this time. These universities provided free or relatively cheap education (funded from outside of the country by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and sources in other Arab countries). The possibilities and circumstances of education increased the divide between ways of thinking associated with the old social structure and more progressive thought. The Palestinian left — represented mainly by the Palestinian Communist Party and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) — were dominant in many of the universities at this time.
The strength of the left played a critical role in the development of many of the popular committees which were to play a leading role in the intifada. Students, particularly from the Communist Party, were active in establishing voluntary work committees throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These committees brought students into wide contact with broader society through agricultural committees in which students assisted farmers in harvesting crops, particularly during olive harvesting season. A similar situation developed with the Medical Relief Committees which saw a network of Palestinian clinics develop to provide free assistance to many villages. These committees enabled students to make contact with broader layers of rural society and laid an organisational base for the first intifada.
Another critical feature of the first intifada was its semi-independence from the PLO leadership based in Tunis. The intifada was the initiative of local leaders and factions and caught the old-guard completely by surprise. It was a multi-faction effort, run by local clandestine committees and an underground body called the Unified National Leadership. Although these committees expressed support and took direction from the PLO, the reality of distance made local initiative the determining factor in much of the day-to-day running of the intifada. This is illustrated by numerous forms of struggle that arose during the intifada — ranging across mass mobilisations and armed actions to boycotts of the Israeli "civil" administration and campaigns for self-sufficiency.
Following the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, the first intifada was brought to an end with the return of Yasser Arafat and the PLO bureaucracy-in-exile from Tunis.
The 'peace process'
Over the seven years since then the Israeli occupation has changed form but not substance. The continued occupation took place under the fig-leaf of "peace", with direct control of the Palestinian population now the responsibility of the newly formed Palestinian Authority (PA). But the substance of the occupation — expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, political arrests, land confiscation, torture and restriction on the freedom of movement — remained the same on the ground.
This second intifada differs markedly from the first. The first intifada took place with Israeli forces physically occupying all Palestinian areas across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A simple trip to the corner shop would bring an encounter with Israeli soldiers occupying a rooftop or checkpoint on the road. In such a situation, the likelihood of clashes occurring was high. In opposition to this, the aims of the first intifada were clear — the removal of the Israeli military presence from Palestinian villages and towns.
The situation is different today. Although Israel retains overall control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, there is now no Israeli military presence in the majority of Palestinian towns — the exceptions being Hebron, where 300 Israeli settlers live in the centre of town and are protected by the Israeli military, and the cases of Nablus and Bethlehem where Israel retains control of the religious sites of Joseph's Tomb and Rachel's Tomb respectively.
Instead, the Oslo process was designed to place responsibility for Israeli security in the hands of the Palestinian Authority. The vast majority of Palestinians — over 90% — live in what is known as Area A, or areas under the "control" of the PA.
Through the Oslo process, Israel placed the PA between its occupation forces and the Palestinian people. The PA was expected to arrest opponents of the "peace process" — principally militants active in the Islamic forces of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the left-wing PFLP and DFLP. In the majority of cases the PA acquiesced to this demand with hundreds of political opponents arrested and placed under arbitrary detention.
At the same time, Israel retained control over all borders and entry points and reserved the ability to close Palestinian villages off from one another through the establishment of checkpoints on main roads between different areas. The current intifada illustrates perfectly the reality of Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. None of the one million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have been able to leave for over 40 days. The great illusion of Palestinian sovereignty — the Gaza International Airport — has been closed repeatedly by the Israeli government.
All of these points illustrate the strategic quandary of the Al Aqsa intifada. Unlike the first intifada, Israel is not faced with the problem of quelling the unrest of a population while physically occupying Palestinian towns. Instead, half-a-dozen military jeeps are able to control a crowd of several thousand stone-throwing youth at the outskirts of most Palestinian towns.
Compounding this strategic difficulty is the role of the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian Authority
Over the last seven years there have been significant changes in the class structure of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories. The landowning class, whose power had been weakened in the first intifada, was rehabilitated and became one of the key social supports of the PA. More than half of the PA's cabinet ministers in the lead up to the 1996 elections came from this class.
In addition, a Palestinian bourgeoisie whose profits stemmed from their relationship with Israeli capital grew enormously in wealth and political influence. This bourgeoisie fused with sections of the PA bureaucracy and leadership and forms the second social pillar of Arafat's political base. Exclusive import rights on Israeli goods and monopoly control over distribution of goods were granted to those loyal to Arafat.
The third component of Arafat's power base is the political movement Fatah. Fatah does not represent a political party in the normal sense of the word. It has a vaguely defined program and is organised more through loyalty to different political leaders in different areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arafat is the head of Fatah, chairperson of the PLO, as well as president of the Palestinian Authority.
With the establishment of the PA, Arafat granted positions of power to local leaders of Fatah. At the same time, the Tanzeem, the Fatah militia, absorbed many of the rank-and-file Fatah members active in the intifada. The Tanzeem are loyal to leaders in their own particular areas and are permitted to bear arms by Arafat. They are not however an official part of the PA.
The fourth component of Arafat's power base is the myriad of security forces. There are 13 different PA security bodies in the West Bank and Gaza with no clear system of responsibilities or lines of command between them.
The fifth component of Arafat's power base is the high proportion of the Palestinian population that is reliant upon the PA for its livelihood. The public sector employs around 20% of the 700,000-strong labour force in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Appointments to public sector jobs are based completely on political loyalty to Fatah and the PA.
The Palestinian working class
A large number of these public sector jobs — around 30,000 people — are employed in one of the security forces of the PA. This is an enormous proportion for a population of only 2.6 million people.
In addition to those directly employed by the PA, there is a large pool of people who receive a salary from the PA but do not work for the government. Salaries are not paid automatically each month, but rather are dependent on the decision of Arafat and those close to him. This situation means that the PA retains strong economic leverage over the population, particularly in the absence of a political alternative.
Another 20% of the labour force work inside Israel or in Israeli settlements — mostly construction. This section of the work force is completely reliant upon Israeli government policy. In the current period, with the Israeli-imposed closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, virtually none of these workers can find their way to work.
The rest of the labour force is divided between the trade, transport and agricultural sectors. The Palestinian territories lack any real large industry due to the 30-year Israeli policy of de-development. As a consequence most workers are employed by small businesses and are unorganised.
Thus, while the working class constitutes a big section of the Palestinian population, there is no organised sector with the social weight to place a class-based strategy at the centre of the Palestinian national liberation movement. This contrasts, for example, with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, in which the organised sector of the working class — particularly mine workers — were able to play a critical role in the movement.
Paralleling the political weakness of the Palestinian working class is the parasitic nature of the Palestinian bourgeoisie. Because there is no large industry in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, the Palestinian bourgeoisie draws its profits from its role as an intermediary between the Palestinian masses and Israeli capital.
The Palestinian economy is completely integrated into and dependent upon the Israeli economy. Approximately 85% of all imports to the West Bank and Gaza Strip originate in Israel while at the same time 95% of all exports are destined for Israel. Israel's complete control over all external borders makes it impossible for the Palestinian economy to develop relations with a third country. The total occupied territories' trade deficit is 45-50% of their GDP, and most of that latter is financed by foreign aid.
Israeli imperialism and the 'peace process'
The significance of the occupation to the Zionist state at this juncture is not based on the gains realised through Israel's economic exploitation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although Israel does exploit cheap Palestinian labour, during the last seven years the Israeli state has gradually replaced its reliance upon this labour with other foreign labour, imported from Asia and the former Soviet Union. Additionally, labour in other Arab countries such as Jordan and Egypt is significantly cheaper than Palestinian labour.
Herein lies the crux of the Israeli ruling class's problem. Israel's primary aim in the "peace process" is to "normalise" its relations with the neighbouring Arab countries so as to gain access to their markets and cheap labour, and thus to consolidate the transition it began in 1967 from a colonial-settler state to the resident imperialist power in the Middle East. Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — the spring-board for this transformation — has become the main obstacle to achieving this "normalisation".
The current intifada represents a powerful expression of the rejection by the Palestinian and Arab masses of the normalisation project implicit in Oslo and subsequent agreements between the PA and the Israeli government. It is this rejection which presents the most powerful threat to Israeli capital, which has championed the Oslo "peace process" since its inception.
This mass movement also threatens the corrupt Arab regimes — in particular Jordan and Egypt — which have been rewarded handsomely by US imperialism for their moves towards normalisation of relations with Israel. It is for this reason that the recent Arab summit in Cairo and the meeting of Islamic nations in Qatar, did not back up their verbal condemnation of the Israeli repression of the new intifada with any practical measures.
Despite the enormous popular movement that is driven by an anti-Oslo sentiment, the Palestinian leadership has framed the goals of the intifada as a return to "the Oslo framework and the negotiating table". It has posed the current conflict as simply resulting from Israel's "failure" to "implement" its side of the Oslo agreement.
The first intifada was an uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was partially successful in that it generated enormous sympathy for the Palestinian cause on an international level and led to the withdrawal of the Israeli military presence from most Palestinian towns. However, it did not succeed in ending Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, only forcing a change in its form. As long as this occupation continues there will be intifadas.