Yasser Al-Zaatrah* marks the anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Intifada with a plea for resistance to be given the chance it has earned When Hizbullah promised the Lebanese victory against the Israeli occupation, when they told Arabs they would drive Israel out of south Lebanon, there were those in our midst who dismissed the ravings of these "reactionary fundamentalists" who were so ignorant of the conflict and its ramifications. Then Hizbullah made good on its promise and these men of reason swallowed their pride, at least for a time. But then they returned, to try the same tack with the Palestinian resistance, with the Al-Aqsa Intifada, born from the ashes of the failure of the Oslo accords and from its resounding defeat at Camp David in July 2000. There is an irony in the timing, for the Intifada broke out barely five months after the Israeli army had fled south Lebanon. There is a big difference, we were told, between the way the Hebrew entity views south Lebanon and the way it views the West Bank and Gaza. Those doing the telling hoped, perhaps, that we had forgotten that they had promised to restore both the West Bank and Gaza through negotiations and a peaceful Intifada, an Intifada that daily featured the televised death of our children in front of Israeli tanks. But what they had forgotten is that we were dealing with occupation, and not a charity situation. These Arab and Palestinian men of reason have not had much to say about Sharon's decision to pull out of Gaza. Sharon is a man obsessed with Greater Israel, a man in love with settlements and settlers. Why is he pulling out? The men of reason would rather skirt around this question and discuss Sharon's desire to circumvent the roadmap, or his attempts to get something back for the withdrawal, perhaps some legitimacy for West Bank settlements or part of them. They discuss Sharon's wishes as if these were our fate. Israel's political and press discourse, even the way ordinary Israelis see things, tells a different story. Israel admits the withdrawal from Gaza is a result of Sharon's failure to "smoke out terror". Sharon is fleeing, as was the case in south Lebanon. In an article discussing the background to the decision to withdraw from Gaza, Israeli analyst Yoel Markus wrote in Haaretz : "Here one has to talk of a solution, not of victory. Let them say what they want about Sharon's motives. It is clear that the pull out from Gaza came about because Israel could not liquidate terror with force. Withdrawal is withdrawal. We're doing it for ourselves. There is no more strike and win. Only strike and get out." Let us go back to the matter of negotiations -- or the peaceful Intifada -- favoured by defeated elites across the region. Much has been said to justify a peaceful Intifada, just as much has been said about the course of the resistance and its ability to get things done. We have all heard the references to the uneven balance of power. And we have noticed that the ones making such references are those with defeatism on their mind. What became of the uneven balance of power in south Lebanon, I wonder. Talk of victory should not be confined to the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, as some people like to suggest. Such a restriction is intended simply to make things harder for the resistance. There is such a thing as partial victory. There is such a thing as ending the occupation of lands seized in 1967. And what has happened is a victory, and one in which we do not have to recognise that we are ceding the rest of Palestine, the other 78 per cent of Palestine. It is a victory that could not be achieved through peaceful negotiations, through begging or through the so-called peaceful Intifada. Think of the seven arid years between the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993 and the Camp David summit of July 2000. What did these years bring, apart from one pathetic offer? That offer was to allow us a fragmented entity, without sovereignty, shorn of East Jerusalem and minus the right of return. One of the most vociferous proponents of negotiations and peaceful struggle, Mahmoud Abbas, described that very offer as a "trap we managed to avert". Some claim that four years of armed conflict have brought us nothing tangible. These are the same people who only two years ago were screaming to high heaven that we had been defeated. Let the events of the past two years serve as an answer, two years in which it is Sharon, not the resistance, who has been defeated. It was Sharon who decided to flee from the Gaza Strip. And yet the same people say the same things over and over again. Even now they talk of defeat. Over the past four years the Intifada has exerted so much effort that victory could have been secured had the official Arab and Palestinian position been one of resolve, had they shown any determination to fight to the end. Arab and Palestinian officialdom let down the resistance. It pulled the carpet from beneath its feet. What would the Palestinian -- indeed the Arab -- scene be like had the Intifada not broken out four years ago? Imagine 9/11 and the occupation of Iraq happening while we were still caught up in the Oslo limbo. The US could have then imposed the settlement it wanted on the Palestinians and the Arabs. And it would have been impossible to speak of an Iraqi resistance that challenges US-Israeli hegemony on the region. The Iraqi resistance, after all, is inspired by the culture of resistance which the Al-Aqsa Intifada has planted in the conscience of our nation. Let us examine how the Intifada has developed over the past four years. In early August 2004 -- several key operations have occurred since then -- an Israeli intelligence chief announced that the number of Israelis killed or wounded during the Intifada was two and a half times more than those killed since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.The latter figure was 4,319, whereas the former stood, in early August, at 11,365. Senior Israeli analyst Ben Kaspit wrote in Maariv that the number of Israelis killed or injured over the past four years is higher than the number of "those killed or wounded over the past 52 years, since the state was created". He added that "Palestinian suicide bombers" have "succeeded in doing more than seven Arab armies with aerial weapons and artillery did in five wars". The result, according to Kaspit, is that the "Palestinian suicide bomber has turned into a strategic weapon, and resisting the suicide bomber has become an existential struggle". Yet some people still wonder why the Hebrew state is mobilising world Jewry and its friends in a battle to assail the martyrdom bombers, their thinking and programme. The simple fact is that the resistance has yet to move into full swing. The Oslo-based Palestinian Authority has provided Sharon with what one Israeli writer described as a "deluxe occupation", an occupation that absolves the occupier of all political, economic, and even security consequences. Imagine what would have happened had the Palestinian leadership abandoned its delusions of authority and declared total resistance until the occupation was defeated -- until Israel had withdrawn to the 4 June, 1967 borders? But the resistance was never given that chance: the Palestinian Authority wavered, and in its wavering it mimics Arab officialdom far more than it embraces revolution. Before Bush made his promises to Sharon the failures that occurred between the signing of Oslo and the Camp David summit might just have been ignored, as those intent on negotiation asked for yet another experiment, something along the lines of the roadmap, perhaps. But this no longer makes any sense now that Bush has promised Sharon that the ceiling of Palestinian ambitions will be well below even that offered at Camp David. Kerry, the Democratic candidate, seems to agree with Bush on this point; indeed, he even went further than Bush in the position paper he presented to Jewish organisations in the US. We are often told that international public opinion recoils from martyrdom operations and armed violence. This is evidently more of an official view than a popular one -- an EU poll revealed that 59 per cent of Europeans consider Israel to be the main threat to world peace. The reason for this perception is the Al-Aqsa Intifada, with its armed resistance and martyrdom bombers, not the stone throwers and not the peaceful marches. No balance of power is eternal. Look at how the balance of power is tipping against the US in Iraq. It is resistance, not peaceful struggle, that has turned Iraq into a quagmire for the Americans. No occupation ends before it becomes too costly for the occupiers to maintain. The costs, in the Palestinian case, could not be exacted through peaceful acts. Such acts brought no tangible results during the first Intifada of 1987. The struggle of the occupied against those who occupy is not to be measured in quotidian terms. It requires patience, steadfastness, and that the resolve continue whatever the cost. The Palestinians have shown they possess that resolve. So let us not worry too much about those in our midst who proclaim defeat; let us not give weight to their twisted views and motives. * The writer is a Palestinian political analyst based in Amman.
