A decade ago, and with the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinian nationalist ideology turned a corner, writes Salim Tamari*. But to where? It sometimes seems that, since 1948, the Palestinian national movement has passed through periods of historical re-thinking every decade or so. Almost all of the episodes have focused on tensions inherent in the dynamics governing the relationship between those sections of Palestinian society that remained on the land (in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) and those dispersed in other countries, primarily Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Today, though, the challenge comes also from an ideological source -- an Islamic vision of salvation that is not tied to the territorial principle. There were three critical moments in the growth of secular Palestinian nationalism in the pre-Oslo period: the adsorption of the Palestinian movement into mainstream Arab nationalism during the late fifties and sixties (the Ba'th party, the Greater Syria Movement, and Nasserism); the rise of armed struggle after the 1967, inspired by Maoism and Guevarism; and the decline of the doctrine of liberation through guerrilla warfare after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (1982) and the dispersal of the PLO and its militias. Throughout this period the Islamic movement (mainly the Muslim Brothers) was busy distancing itself from effective politics. The lessons to be drawn from these periods were epitomised by the PNC meeting in Algiers (November 1988) when Yasser Arafat announced the declaration of independence. The gist of that declaration was that Palestinian nationalism was now reconciled to two states in historic Palestine (Israel and Palestine) on the basis of the 1947 partition plan. The border of the two states would follow the June 1967 borders in line with the international legitimacy and consensus embodied in Security Council resolution 242. The November 1988 declaration emerged after 18 years of debate, polemics, and occasionally armed conflict between the various factions of the PLO. It started hesitantly, with the launching in early 1970 of the notion of an independent Palestinian territory "that can be liberated from the enemy" -- again a Guevarist formulation -- by the Democratic Front. The adoption, by majority vote, of the same idea by the tenth PNC in Amman (1974) constituted the first step towards independent statehood (as opposed to the total liberation of Palestine). The result was that the PLO split into two currents, with pro-state trends, the majority of Fatah, the DFLP and the communists on one side and the rejectionists, led by the Popular Front, the opposition tendency within Fatah and the pro-Syrian Palestinian Ba'thists on the other. The great turning point in this reformulation of nationalist ideology was the return in 1994 of the PLO to Palestine after the signing of the Oslo Accords in Sept 1993. One consequence of this return was that the historic separation between a localised political culture that paid symbolic allegiance to its leadership in Tunis (and before that in Beirut and Amman), and that of the PLO, came to an end. The returning leaders of diasporean nationalism now forged a new institutional edifice (the PA) with local urban elites and the internal wings of Fatah effectively marginalising the PLO and sidelining the role of Palestinian Diaspora communities in affecting the course of Palestinian politics. It was this process of a state-in-the- making, with its various components, that became the instrument of new transformations -- an enhanced presidency, parliament, security apparatus and bureaucracy. While the elections of 1996 legitimised the new regime in the eyes of the world and of local constituencies, it was the public sector bureaucracy which allowed Arafat and the returning leadership to underwrite an effective (though inefficient) system of clientism and patronage. It was also the lynchpin in creating a new political apparatus uniting returnees (the external leadership) with local elites and movements. The main weakness of this process was an endemic inability of the new/old leadership to create effective and accountable institutions of governance. This symbiotic process, and the inevitable decline of the Diaspora, was reversed by the collapse of the Camp David talks. The inability of the state- in-the making to effect any territorial consolidation of its population base -- ie sovereignty -- and the rise of the Israeli right, which was keen on preventing the emergence of anything beyond a quisling, segmented regime without contiguity dealt an effective blow to the whole idea of a two-state solution. Palestinian nationalism is being re- defined today as a result of these twin developments: the failure of the project for independence (the two-state solution) due mainly to intransigent Israeli settlement policies, and the rise of Islamist movements positing themselves as an alternative paradigm of national deliverance. Of the former it must be said that Palestinian civil society failed to present any effective challenge to the system of patronage inherited from the PLO's years in exile. But the main blow was dealt by an Israeli system that seems unable to tolerate another state between the river and the sea. (Israel today assumes a mirror image of the stands adopted by Palestinian and Arab leaders during the fifties and sixties.) The rise of Islamic movements was predicated on this weakness. Hamas and their allies present themselves, paradoxically, as representing a system that can claim both worldly and otherworldly adherence. Worldly, through a seemingly accountable network of social services for the poor -- something the patronage based institutions of the PA are unable to deliver. But the Islamists also hold out the promise of otherworldly salvation through the cult of martyrdom. It is a combination with built- in limits, certainly as regards its positioning as an alternative to the PLO. It feeds on the inability of secular Palestinian nationalism to create a state rather than on the Islamist's ability to create a workable system of governance. That this major blow to the project of self-determination in Palestine has not led to a revitalisation of extra- territorial Palestinian nationalism, as in the sixties and seventies, is partly responsible for the impasse that currently prevails. The most likely outcome, in the short term at least, of this impasse is the fullfilment of the version of apartheid rule and cantonisation Israel is currently promoting. Never before have the Palestinians been in such urgent need of coherent political leadership as now, when the old formulas -- Arab nationalism, steadfastness, and people's war -- ring hollow. * The writer is professor of sociology at The Institute of Jerusalem Studies.
