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Foreign Affairs
Palestinians Divided
By KHalil Shikaki
Khalil Shikaki is Associate Professor of Political Science at Bir Zeit University and Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
Who Let the Dogs of War Out?
Has Yasir Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), orchestrated and led the second Palestinian intifada in order to gain popularity and legitimacy while weakening Israel and forcing it to accept extreme Palestinian demands? Or has the uprising been a spontaneous response by an enraged but disorganized Palestinian "street" to Likud Party leader (and later Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon's September 2000 visit to the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as al Haram al Sharif, and the failure of the Oslo peace process to produce an end to Israeli military occupation? Most Israelis take the first position, whereas most Palestinians take the second. Both are mistaken.
The truth is that the intifada that began in late September 2000 has been a response by a "young guard" in the Palestinian nationalist movement not only to Sharon's visit and the stalled peace process, but also to the failure of the "old guard" in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to deliver Palestinian independence and good governance. The young guard has turned to violence to get Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip unilaterally (as it withdrew from South Lebanon in May 2000) and simultaneously to weaken the Palestinian old guard and eventually displace it.
More than a year into the intifada, the young guard's commitment to both goals is unshakable, and with some reason. The Israelis have begun seriously to consider unilateral withdrawal, and the young guard has assumed de facto control over most PA civil institutions, penetrated PA security services, and forced Arafat to appease the newcomers for fear of losing his own legitimacy or bringing on a Palestinian civil war. In fact, at this point only the prospect of a truly viable peace process and a serious PA commitment to good governance can provide Israel and the old guard with an exit strategy for their current predicaments.
Trend Spotting
The intifada has crystallized two important trends within Palestinian politics and society. The first, a split between old and young within the nationalist movement, has greatly constrained the PA leadership's capacity to manage the current crisis and engage in substantive negotiations with Israel in the short term. The second, a broader decline in the power of the nationalists relative to the Islamists (such as Hamas), has created a long-term challenge to the nationalists' ability to lead the Palestinian people.
In October 1991, the Bush administration successfully used America's newfound regional dominance to convene the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, which — for the first time in history — launched direct peace negotiations between Israel and all its Arab neighbors. And in June 1992, sensing the change in the local environment, Israelis went to the polls and delivered a mandate to Yitzhak Rabin to pursue peace. Thus, when President Bill Clinton assumed office in January 1993, he inherited an ongoing peace process, one that held out the promise of agreements on all fronts in short order.
Nevertheless, the new Democratic administration had come to Washington eager to promote democracy abroad. So the officials responsible for the task — particularly Morton Halperin on the staff of the National Security . . . When the Oslo agreement was signed in September 1993, two-thirds of Palestinians immediately supported it.1 Their expectations were high: Oslo was supposed to usher in the end of occupation, the establishment of an open and democratic political system, and a quick improvement in economic and living conditions. But the golden era of the peace process did not last long. Palestinian popular approval of the Oslo process peaked at 80 percent in early 1996, and support for violence against Israeli targets bottomed out at 20 percent. Just before the Palestinian general elections in January of that year, support for Fatah, the mainstream . . .