Torrent Hanni El Khatib Head In The Dirt
Adiel Brumfield
Editor's Summary: The outbreak of a new Palestinian uprising (intifada) in September 2000 is analyzed by examining Palestinian perceptions and activities. This article discusses the causes of this development, analyzes Palestinian strategy, and talks of differing Palestinian and Israeli views on the course of the peace process. It also discusses the standpoints of leaders and of public opinion toward these events.
The outbreak of a new Palestinian uprising (intifada) at the end of September 2000, came as a seismic shock to most observers. Such widespread violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces seemed like ghosts from the past, wildly incongruent when 98 percent of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip (outside east Jerusalem) no longer lived under direct Israeli occupation. Accordingly, this implausible event made sense only if it had been, at least in some degree, deliberately planned and organized.
The question merits investigation, but analysis should not stop there. There are other questions that go beyond the issue of whether, and in what sense, the intifada was or was not deliberately provoked. Would something like this have happened, sooner or later, in any event? Could or should it have been anticipated? Whatever the role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in instigating the intifada, what stance has it followed since then? How much control does the PA leadership, or Yasir Arafat personally, actually exercise? Does the PA actually have a strategy or game plan?.
But perhaps most importantly, we should ask what the last year tells us about the chasm that separates Israelis and Palestinians. In the understandable push to conclude peace, have important basic differences in conceptions of the peace process been overlooked or understated? Since Palestinian attitudes are the key issue, we focus on Palestinian perspectives before and during the intifada, as conveyed in the Palestinian press, public opinion polls, and other available sources. Insofar as it deals with Palestinian media and other Palestinian sources, the views expressed include officially sanctioned views within the PA, different views within the leadership, and finally, grassroots perceptions and attitudes. Since the Palestinian press is essentially controlled by the PA, it expresses the message that the PA wishes to convey to its own public. It also includes, however, some messages to the PA from that public. Given this focus on Palestinian leadership attitudes, inevitably less attention is paid to Israeli perceptions (about which, in any event, there is less debate).
In its first and most comprehensive statement regarding the causes of the intifada, made to the Sharm El-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee (the Mitchell Committee) at the end of December, the government of Israel ascribed the violence of the previous three months "at its most basic" to "the failure, and indeed refusal, of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority to comply with their essential responsibilities, pursuant to the various agreements concluded with Israel, to take such measures as are necessary to forestall acts of violence and terror against Israel and Israelis." The intifada was thus "part of a calculated policy of the Palestinian leadership in respect of the conduct of its relations with Israel," and preparations for it were evidenced in such pre-intifada activities as an increase in hostile propaganda, the military training of Palestinian children in summer camps, the failure to confiscate illegal weapons, the release of known terrorists from detention, and the stockpiling of food and medical supplies.1 In the first three months of the intifada, according to this report, there were about 2700 live-fire attacks initiated by Palestinians against Israeli civilians, police, and soldiers.2.
Among Palestinians there were other indications of at least a general expectation or anticipation of renewed violence. In July the Fatah movement announced a general call-up of boys under the age of 16 for weapons training.3 A group monitoring Palestinian media reported in early August that Palestinian television was contributing to an "eve of war" atmosphere by repeated broadcasts of military parades and video clips of violence against Israeli soldiers.4 In late September Arafat reportedly met with leaders of Tanzim, a paramilitary group within Fatah, to warn that clashes might be imminent.5 At around the same time the PLO Executive Committee issued a call "to exercise the maximum degree of vigilance and to be prepared for all eventualities."6.
Throughout the intifada, the involvement of Palestinian security officers in the clashes has been reported and documented extensively. Israeli Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz testified to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Palestinian security officers were responsible for 40 percent of the Israelis killed in the intifada.7 Israeli security sources noted the presence of a top Palestinian security figure, Tawfiq Dirawi, on the Temple Mount on the fateful day of September 29, lending further credence to the view that "Arafat lit the fire, even if he is now having trouble controlling the intensity of the flames."8 The clearest claim of responsibility on the Palestinian side came from PA Communications Minister Imad Al-Faluji, who asserted that "this intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp David negotiations."9 Such later claims may overstate the case.10.
Our survey of Palestinian sources over this period, however, reveals a more complex picture, showing the extent to which the two sides were living in different realities, with Palestinians openly expressing a sense of deep dissatisfaction that threatened to erupt at any time. In retrospect, there were numerous signs of a potential explosion that might be set off by any random event. In the Palestinian submission to the Mitchell Commission, only about one page, or 5 percent of the entire document, is devoted to the actual triggering event of the intifada (entitled, "Why Did Barak Instigate the Crisis?"). The emphasis is on "the roots of the current uprising" and condemnation of Israeli counter-measures taken after it began.
Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was not the cause of the intifada; on this particular point Palestinian and Israeli observers are in agreement. In a typical Palestinian formulation, the intifada "was not just a reaction to a provocative incident.... It is a declared, unequivocal position by the Palestinian people on the bankruptcy of the negotiating option and the full rejection of the overall Israeli conduct."11.
Hasan Khadir, a Palestinian author familiar with Israel, claims that to Palestinians it seemed that Israel was using the Oslo process not in pursuit of a "two-state" solution to the conflict, but as a means of getting rid of densely-populated Palestinian areas while maintaining "an improved occupation."12 The fragmentation of the West Bank and Gaza into separated enclaves"Bantustans" in Palestinian parlancewas a major source of grievance and frustration. Bypass roads, many of them reserved for Jewish settlers, and checkpoints around PA-controlled areas meant that Palestinians had even less freedom of movement than they had had before the Oslo agreements. So while Israelis felt that occupation was all but over, since nearly all West Bank and Gaza Palestinians were now under PA civil authority, the perception on the other side was quite the opposite.
The most explosive issue, however, was the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the territories. Though no new settlements were being established, the "natural growth" of existing settlements evoked a furious response among Palestinians that reached a crescendo in early September. Al-Quds claimed on September 13 that according to official figures from the Israel Ministry of Housing, there had been a 96 percent increase in construction starts in settlements during the first half of 2000 compared to the first half of 1999.13 Throughout the month headlines in the Palestinian press focused attention unremittingly on all new settlement activities.14 When the intifada began settlements were singled out as targets of choice; the director-general of the PA Information Ministry wrote that "the settlements' fields and factories are a target for the rage of the Palestinian people.... We must continue to see them as targets for burning and destruction; this is our legitimate right..."15 The anger against the settlers is typified by a columnist in the PA official newspaper: "The settlers are a dirty stain on our land.... It is time to begin expelling them by besieging them, cutting off their electricity, and contaminating their water.... They will become groups of rats gathering in their sewers before they are driven away into Israel."16.
Behind this was a pronounced sense of frustration over the deadlock in final settlement talks and the lack of prospects for any breakthrough in the foreseeable future. Even though they had rejected an Israeli offer that would have addressed most if not all of the above grievancesby eliminating all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and most of those on the West BankPalestinian negotiators returned from the Camp David summit in July with a strong sense of a yawning chasm separating the two sides. Muhammad Dahlan, head of Preventive Security in Gaza, labeled the Israeli position on Jerusalem as "no more than a kind of lunacy."17.
On the refugee issue, the stark differences laid bare at Camp David only hardened in the following weeks. Palestinian refugees mobilized to block any agreement short of an absolute right of return. A conference to develop a "unified Arab strategic vision" on the issue was held in Amman in early September.18 The PLO Central Committee, on September 13, reaffirmed in the most unqualified terms the claim of a right of all refugees to return to their original homes in Israel, and it was becoming clear that this position was not simply an opening gambit.19 At about the same time, the PA Minister of Finance, Muhammad Zuhdi al-Nashashibi, explained that for Palestinians the concept of compensation was not as a substitute for return but in addition to it, as payment for damage sustained by the refugees and their property during their absence.20.
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