How should the Palestinian resistance movements respond to Israeli gains? By avoiding the dangers of burning into consciousness and finding a way towards its heightening, writes Mohsen Saleh* in Beirut An old story has it that a woman used to complain to her husband about living with her children in one room that was too small for them and their needs. As the husband lacked money and did not have the means to improve the situation of his family, he decided to teach his wife a lesson. One day, he brought some hens packed in a box and asked his wife to find a place for the box which his friend had left. The wife was very angry, but she had to surrender to her husband's persistence. The next day, he brought ducks and geese and insisted that his wife find a place to keep them too, and then he brought a dog on the third day and a donkey on the fourth. Despite her anger and complaints, the wife had to adapt to these faits accomplis, as she had no alternative. Amidst the smell and the noise made by the animals, the wife then started to dream about "liberating" her house and restoring what the animals had stolen from her. She decided to struggle by all peaceful means to achieve her demands. After a while, the husband returned the donkey to its owner, and the wife was overjoyed about getting rid of it, with its kicks, smell and braying. Later, the husband returned the ducks and the geese, and then the hens, causing the wife to celebrate what appeared to be her successive victories. Eventually, the happy woman thanked her husband for the spacious house he had provided for her, feeling triumphant about the restoration of her "legitimate rights." The moral of the story is that experiencing what is worse can help lead one to accept the bad, rather than the best. Throughout history, ideas along these lines have been used in different contexts to justify tyrannical policies, such as those dealing with the lower social classes or oppositional forces. Policies based on these ideas were also used by the colonial authorities in former colonies, and today they are being used by the Israelis against the Arab countries and the Palestinian people and resistance groups. The hegemonic power of the enemy -- its willingness to use collective punishments against civilians, including shedding blood and demolishing houses and turning the clock back centuries through policies of siege and humiliation and the destruction of sources of livelihood -- is the tool used by Israel in its attempts to psychologically defeat the Palestinians, making them feel impotent and encouraging them to surrender in the face of a fait accompli. Other tools used by Israel include preventing freedom of movement and frustrating health services, as well as launching detention and torture campaigns. "Burning into consciousness" might be the expression used to fit the above situation, first employed by former chief of staff of the Israeli army Lieutenant- General Moshe Yaalon. However, there is an important difference between "burning into consciousness" and heightening consciousness. The main difference between them consists of the fact that heightening consciousness means resisting the employment of such tools, interacting with the environment and changing circumstances in a different way, so long as this does not lead to deviation or retreat from primary goals. "Burning into consciousness", on the other hand, means forming new convictions and policies that deviate from the intended target and shrink it, eventually surrendering to the terms of the enemy. After the Zionists established the state of Israel on around 77 per cent of the land of Palestine, thus displacing about 60 per cent of its population, in the 1948 War, Palestinian and Arab concerns were mainly focussed on liberating Palestine and abolishing the Israeli entity. When the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was established in 1964, it was concerned with this aim as well. Following the disastrous 1967 war, the Arab region saw the spread of slogans such as "eliminating the consequences of the aggression" and retaking the West Bank and Gaza Strip, together with Sinai and the Golan Heights, while forgeting or dismissing the goal of liberating the whole of Palestine. This falling hostage to a state of "burning into consciousness" due to the experience of conflict or war led to feelings of disappointment at the gains made by the enemy and the imposition of its will. These feelings were in parallel to the actions of retreat and concession justified by decreased self-confidence, and they were reinforced by the absence of opposition movements, the weakness of self-criticism, the pursuit of the achievement of quick gains, all of which dwarfed real objectives. Later, the October 1973 War was presented to the population as an Arab victory. However, it was also the last Arab war and was followed by the spread of a conviction among the Arab regimes that it was impossible to defeat Israel, especially given the imbalance of power in the light of American and Western support for the country. Even as they celebrated victory in the October War, the Arab regimes were heading towards settlement and recognition of Israel, as Sadat did in the case of Egypt, rather than on building on this achievement as a way towards liberation. Should the Arabs have celebrated this "wonderful victory", or should they have lamented the deterioration of the liberation project? Was what was happening a heightening of consciousness or a setback? Those Arab regimes that decided to boycott Egypt after the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1978, accusing it of treason and collaboration, are the same regimes that later followed the Egyptian model and adopted peace as an aim. In turn, the Palestinian groups have faced pressures, wars and enormous challenges from friends and foes alike, and their experience has been a mixture of the heightening of consciousness and the burning into consciousness. At first, the Fatah movement, together with other revolutionary factions, believed that guerrilla operations across borders would force the Arab regimes to fight against Israel. This conviction collapsed after the 1967 War. When it tried to establish the rules of Palestinian guerrilla warfare in the ring of countries surrounding Israel, Fatah found itself in a quagmire of subjugation and attrition imposed by the Arab regimes, which refused any encroachment on their sovereignties. Fatah guerrilla action was thus frustrated from the outside because of the hostile environment more than it was exhausted by the Israelis themselves. At the beginning, this burning into consciousness of the Arab regimes was enhanced by the huge price they would have to pay if they allowed guerrilla action to take place on their territories. Moreover, the inability to work from outside the borders was burned into the consciousness of the Palestinian forces, due to the possibility of conflict in cases of engagement with the Arab regimes. The experience of the PLO and the pressures put on it forced it to accommodate itself to the status quo on the pretext of preserving past achievements and benefiting from available opportunities. However, this very realism made it liable to be diminished in its power and authority, encouraging its opponents to exercise yet more pressure. As a result, though the Palestinian National Charter proclaims that the only way to liberate Palestine is through armed struggle, in the 1974 Ten Point Programme this becomes only one way. It was now considered possible to establish a Palestinian entity on whatever part of Palestine that was liberated or evacuated by Israel, allowing the PLO's involvement in the peace process to be seen as a legitimate form of struggle. The PLO later faced further attempts at subjugation during the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in particular the invasion of 1982. The latter led to the expulsion of the guerrillas from Lebanon, ending Palestinian resistance operations towards occupied Palestine from the outside. The already existing pragmatic trend prevailing in the PLO was also enhanced by the organisation's inclination towards further realism, further burning into the consciousness of the PLO. As a result, it largely gave up attempts to defy reality and to change it, in favour of surrendering to it in order to benefit from available opportunities. The PLO submitted to the limits placed by its opponents and enemies. The PLO leadership did not treat the Intifada that broke out in the Palestinian territories in 1987 as an accomplishment that should be built upon in the liberation process, rather seeing it as an opportunity to get involved in the peace process. People were absorbed by the outbreak of the Intifada, and at the same time the PLO presented one of the major concessions in its history. During the 19th Session of the Palestine National Council in November 1988, the PLO accepted the partition of Palestine for the first time and agreed to recognise UN Security Council Resolution 242, which deals with the Palestinian refugees. It disguised these concessions by announcing the "rise of the Palestinian state", showing that it lacked seriousness. The pragmatic trend then in charge of the PLO ended up by declaring its belief in a peaceful settlement and denouncing violence and armed struggle. It also surrendered the principles established in the organisation's Charter, which was the original basis for establishing the PLO. In 1996, this pragmatic trend then announced the abolition of further articles in the Charter on which the PLO was based. Three ideas had burned into PLO consciousness: Israel should be dealt with as something that could not be changed, thus justifying the surrender of most of historic Palestine; what can be saved and what can be achieved should be adopted as PLO policy, as time was not on the side of the Palestinians and what was now presented on the peace settlement table was better than what would be presented in the future; armed resistance was futile and had no role to play in restoring the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people or changing the balance of power and forcing the Israelis to make concessions. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his team represent those who do not believe in armed resistance and consider armed uprising to be a policy that has led to only negative consequences. Abbas believes in the peace process as a strategic choice, and he thinks that there is no alternative to the peace process. Yet, this burning into the Palestinian consciousness has been countered by a counter-trend, heightening the Palestinian consciousness and enabling it to survive in the face of overwhelming Israeli hegemony. This heightening has been represented by a determination to hold onto land regardless of circumstances, to refuse to migrate or accept displacement and to insist on staying on the land even after killings and house demolitions have taken place. It has also been represented by the recognition among the Palestinians of the necessity to assume the responsibility for the struggle, rather than to wait for the Islamic or Arab regimes to liberate their land. Palestinians have realised the importance of the internal Palestinian role in the process of resistance, shifting the focus of resistance work from the outside to the inside after the closing of the borders of Palestine. Moreover, innovative means of resistance have been developed, as well as suicide operations, the improvement of weaponry, and developments in political, social, media and mobilisation work in favour of the resistance. Perhaps present resistance movements, particularly Hamas and Hizbullah, should have been more wary of the danger of falling hostage to aspects of burning into consciousness, the result of the overwhelming size of the forces the enemy employs and the destruction and killing it causes. Despite the failure of Israel's war on Lebanon in July 2006, and the resistance's achievements in repelling that aggression, Israel has achieved one of the goals of the war, which was the existence of a quiet northern front. While it was previously easy for the resistance to launch operations across the border before the 2006 war, it now has to think carefully before undertaking any such actions. The same need for care applies to Hamas, which has rejected a truce except temporarily and under certain conditions. When the six-month truce ended in December 2008, for example, Hamas responded by launching some 50-70 missiles per day from the Gaza Strip, demanding the lifting of the Israeli siege and its right to resist. Since the failure of the 2008/2009 Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip and the success of the resistance in forcing the Israelis to withdraw, Gaza has entered into a period of undefined truce with Israel, and Hamas is no longer able to use missiles as a tool for lifting the siege. Consequently, the Israelis have been able to achieve one of their goals -- calm on the Gaza front -- thus saving around a million of the state's citizens from the danger of missiles without having to lift its siege of Gaza. What actions can the Palestinian resistance movements take in order to avoid falling hostage to the burning into consciousness? They could be sure to adhere to their principles and goals without change or concession. They could allow self-criticism and accountability in cases of failure. They could also share in the suffering of the people and their aspirations. The resistance movements could also ensure that they are not deceived by quick gains of a superficial nature, such as establishing political relations and connections, or of securing financial support or backing that entail crucial concessions. The resistance movements should differentiate between the available opportunities and deadly traps, such as "luxury under occupation". They should beware of aligning themselves with the enemy or external powers in order to settle accounts with competing national forces. They should identify the weaknesses of the enemy and gaps in its political, military, economic and social structure in order to promote the resistance. They should act in the spirit of the Quranic verse, "if you are suffering hardships, they are suffering similar hardships" ( Al-Nisaa, 104), consequently maintaining hope in the possibility of change and liberation. Finally, the resistance should not fall hostage to psychological defeat. It should understand the meaning of dignity, pride, truth and justice. It should not allow the enemy to penetrate its ideological and intellectual structures, interfere with its principles or limit its hopes and aspirations. * The writer is a professor of modern Arab history and director of the Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations in Beirut.
