The Intifada next time

Any objective assessment of the Intifada shows the losses outweigh the gains. Graham Usher in Ramallah looks back at what went wrong and what is required to put it right
In 1991 Yasser Arafat vowed Palestinians could only be in "the same trench" with Iraq against Israel and the US. It was perhaps his most fatal political choice. In the occupied territories it marked the final descent of the first Palestinian Intifada from a popular uprising to deadlock girded by a permanent Israeli siege, international isolation and intra-Palestinian violence. Diplomatically it paved the way to the debilitating compromises the PLO was forced to make first at Madrid, then with its mutant Oslo accords.
With the clouds of war again gathering, the Palestinian leader is not going to make the same mistake. He has expressed "readiness" to enlist in George Bush's global "crusade" against "international terrorism" and acted, if not yet to enforce a total cease-fire in the occupied territories, then at least to drum some order into the Palestinian resistance.
And he has done both to signal a "willingness to trade the Intifada for a new political process involving a greater US seriousness," believes Palestinian analyst Ghassan Khatib.
For Palestinians this may seem small fry for a revolt that has so far cost them 586 dead, 15,000 wounded and devastation to their social infrastructure, economy, environment and psyche. But in truth Arafat has been seeking an exit from the uprising ever since November and perhaps before-ever since he realised this gamble, too, was not going to come off.
One year after its eruption on the Al-Aqsa mosque plateau, it would be wrong to say the Intifada has realised none of its objectives. The Palestinian leadership never set it any objectives. It was characterised always by tactics that adapted as the crisis endured and the fighting grew fiercer.
In the first rush of blood (and this uprising was driven by Palestinian blood more than any other motor) Arafat spied a chance to "internationalise" the cause, fuelled by the very real impact it had in virtually every Arab capital. In October, the turmoil in the West Bank and Gaza had caused four Arab states to sever whatever ties they had with Israel and forced the first "united" Arab summit in a decade.
But the summit -- like its follow-up in March -- was a brake, not an accelerator: long on rhetoric, shorter on cash and non-existent on practical support. As for the idea that the Arabs would mount a diplomatic confrontation with Israel, Arafat never even made the request: he knew what the answer would be.
With the hope of Arab solidarity waning, he reversed to the Camp David track, dispatching negotiators to Taba in January for "intensive" talks to reach a settlement with Israel. By all accounts, progress was made, especially on the issues of land and Palestinian refugees.
But there was little evidence that Israel's then leader Ehud Barak fighting for his political life in Israel's prime ministerial elections saw Taba as anything other than a ploy to woo back constituencies lost to him, such as the Israeli left and Israel's Palestinian minority. In any event he ended the parley without a statement being signed. In February Likud's Ariel Sharon rode to victory on a landslide.
With Sharon enthroned -- and utterly sincere in the belief "nothing will come from him" -- Arafat placed all his bets on the fact-finding committee commissioned by the Sharm El-Sheikh summit in October under the stewardship of former US Senator George Mitchell.
Released finally in May, it boiled down to an exchange: end the uprising for a resumption of political negotiations and a freeze on Israel's settlement construction. Most Palestinian analysts saw this last point as the gold in a report packed largely with quartz. And this for two reasons;
The first was that settlement construction has long been the cutting edge of Israel's colonial goals in the occupied territories and was the fundamental cause of the uprising. The second was that settlements are perhaps the key issue on which a domestic Israeli and international coalition could be mobilised to isolate Sharon.
Arafat didn't see it that way. He focused instead on a demand that was explicitly rejected by Mitchell's report: that international observers be sent to the West Bank and Gaza to monitor the cease-fire and protect Palestinian civilians.
Some say the Palestinian leader fixed on international observers to avoid confronting an armed resistance so laissez-faire in its tactics by then that it may have flouted any cease-fire directive. Others say that he believed Sharon would eventually over-reach, commit a massacre in the occupied territories and that the world, finally, would intervene, Kosovo- style.
But Sharon didn't over-reach. He declared a "unilateral" (and spurious) cease-fire, and asked the Palestinians to reciprocate. Arafat refused, despite enormous American pressure. On 1 June a Hamas suicide bomber killed 20 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv discotheque. Then Arafat reciprocated, under pain of political excommunication from his US, European and UN "allies."
The cease-fire he was forced to accept was more Sharon than Mitchell: seven days of "quiet" in the occupied territories, followed by a six-week "cooling off" period and then -- and only then -- "confidence-building measures," including a settlement freeze.
Three months on, this largely is where things stand. The only difference now is the Americans may need Arafat almost as much as he needs them. But this has nothing to do with his "tactics" or even the Intifada.
It has everything to do with airliners ploughing into the World Trade Center and Washington's need to garner Arab and Muslim covenant for a coalition to avenge it. The trade-off may mean a little more pressure on Israel to implement the Mitchell plan as written rather than as revised by Sharon.
And whither the Intifada? For Islamists, certain of the PLO's secular opposition and large swathes of Fatah the answer is plain: ditch the diplomatic process and unite all forces behind an anti-colonial revolt against Israel's military occupation and continue the uprising "until independence."
The danger with this "total confrontation" -- in the view of Palestinian analyst Salah Abdel-Jawad -- is that it may be what Sharon wants. There is enough circumstantial evidence that the Israeli leader has steadily upped his offensive in the occupied territories precisely to incur wilder Palestinian responses and to then use them as cover to further Israel's ambitions in the West Bank and Gaza.
Put baldly, these ambitions are to roll back the geo-political realities created by the Oslo process, dismantle the Palestinian Authority piece by piece and insert new territorial realities in their place. The latest of these is a 20-mile "buffer" seam along the Green Line that separates the Palestinian lands and people within it from their West Bank hinterland -- an Israeli annexation, in other words.
The view of large chunks of the Palestinian leadership is to grasp the leverage provided by the attacks on America, call off the uprising and place all trust in US salvation and the "Mitchell process."
There is also a third way. And this is to use the respite offered by Mitchell's interim arrangements to repair Palestinian society and rebuild "new structures and a new leadership" in the occupied territories. This would link a disciplined and defensive guerrilla struggle against soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza to internal reform in the PA, with elections at the local level and new leaders at the national: an Intifada, in other words, within the Intifada.
Such a retreat is necessary if the uprising is to become other than ad hoc and increasingly desperate reaction to Israeli measures and put an end the enormous losses it has caused to Palestinian lives, society and culture. The alternative is more of the same, only worse.
"For the outbreak of the uprising it was Israel that determined the moment of confrontation," says Abdel-Jawad. "But our society cannot continue with this level of confrontation. We must first transform our political, military, cultural and economic fronts. We have to determine the moment of confrontation, not the Israelis."
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