The Palestinian National Movement

Amal Jamal

Description

Examines elite structure and political struggles within the Palestinian national movement and their implications for the regime's future.

"A comprehensive, up-to-date account of the dynamics in the Palestinian political arena." —Ann M. Lesch, Villanova University

This innovative study examines the internal dynamics of the Palestinian political elite and their impact on the struggle to establish a Palestinian state. The PLO leadership has sought to prevent the rise of any alternative in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that can challenge its authority to represent Palestinian aspirations for self-determination. Drawing on Palestinian sources and interviews with Palestinian political leaders, Jamal argues that the Fatah leadership has attempted to mobilize new social forces—local secular-nationalist and Islamist movements—while undermining their ability to develop independent power structures. This policy has served to radicalize the younger local elites, contributing to the tensions that precipitated the first and second intifadas. Israel's policies have undermined the legitimacy of the national elite, while enhancing the Islamist opposition's ideological legitimacy. In this way, internal elite disunity and growing political differentiation have worked against development of a common Palestinian strategy of state-building.

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Structural and Historical Context
2. From Dissension to Coordination: The PLO Leadership and the National Elite in the Occupied Territories
3. Mobilization under Control: The Political Economy of Steadfastness
4. Engineering Compliance: New Modes of Political Entrepreneurship and the Co-optation of Contenders
5. Seizing Structural Opportunities: The Islamist Elite and the Framing of Authenticity Discourse
6. The Politics of Symbolic Capital and the Institutionalization of Neopatrimonial Power
7. The Second Intifada and Its Impact on Elite Structures
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Middle Eastern Studies
• International Relations
• Middle Est
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• History of the Middle East
• General officer
• Politics
• Middle East
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 08 juin 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253028389
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT
Indiana Series in Middle East Studies Mark Tessler, general editor
The Palestinian National Movement
________________
Politics of Contention, 1967–2005
AMAL JAMAL
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-97 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders      800-42-796 Fax orders      812-55-931 Orders by e-mail      [e-mail]
© 2005 by Amal Jamal
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition .
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1984.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jamal, Amal.    The Palestinian national movement : politics of contention, 1967–2005 / [Amal Jamal].           p. cm. — (Indiana series in Middle East studies)    Includes bibliographical references and index.    ISBN 0-253-34590-1 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21773-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)   1. Palestinian Arabs—Politics and government—20th century. 2. Munaòzòzamat al-Taòhråir al-Filasòtåinåiyah. I. Title. II. Series.    DS113.7J36 2005    320.95694’089’9274—dc22
2004027628
1 2 3 4 5 10 09 08 07 06 05
To Randa, Iyady, and Omri
Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history. But no fact that is a cause is for that very reason historical. It became historical post-humously, as it were, through events that maybe separated from it by thousands of years. A historian that takes this as his point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the time of the now which is shot through with chips of Messianic time.
—Walter Benjamin (1933)
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 
Introduction
1. The Structural and Historical Context
2. From Dissension to Coordination: The PLO Leadership and the National Elite in the Occupied Territories
3. Mobilization under Control: The Political Economy of Steadfastness
4. Engineering Compliance: New Modes of Political Entrepreneurship and the Co-optation of Contenders
5. Seizing Structural Opportunities: The Islamist Elite and the Framing of Authenticity Discourse
6. The Politics of Symbolic Capital and the Institutionalization of Neopatrimonial Power
7. The Second Intifada and Its Impact on Elite Structures
Conclusion
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
PREFACE
The election of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) on January 9, 2005, as the head of the Palestinian Authority by a majority of 62 percent marked a very important shift in the Palestinian national movement in general and in the PA in particular. The elections were the culmination of a process that started with the death in November 2004 of Yasir Arafat, who dominated Palestinian politics for more than forty years. The elections resulted in the smooth shift of power to Abu Mazen, who won legitimacy by vote of a majority of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They marked the institutionalization of Palestinian democracy, although the Palestinians were still not sovereign and continued to live under Israeli occupation. Moreover, the election of Abu Mazen was an important catalyst in shifting the political atmosphere in the region and in raising the chances that the peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis might be resumed in the near future.
The elections also caused some changes in the internal Palestinian political scene. First, a majority of Palestinians now seemed to believe that negotiations were a better strategy for achieving national goals after a long period of time in which a great majority considered the use of violence against Israeli civilians as a good and legitimate strategy of struggle. Second, the majority support that placed Abu Mazen at the head of the PA put new limits on the maneuvering space of the national and Islamist opposition in the PA. Following the elections, oppositionary factions in the PA, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad, began to change their political tone and expressed their willingness to respect a cease-fire agreement (Hudna) between the PA and Israel, if the latter abandoned its violent policies in the occupied territories. Third, the Palestinian elections institutionalized the domination of the national political elite that crystallized after the return of the Fatah/PLO leadership to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994 and the establishment of coalitions between external and internal leaders in a new matrix of power under the auspices of Yasir Arafat.
These changes in the Palestinian political scene followed a long period of bloody intifada, in which the channels of constructive dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis that were established after the start of the Oslo process in 1992 were eliminated. The outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 ended several years of political negotiations, in which Palestinians and Israelis sought a mutually accepted solution to the Palestinian problem. During the second intifada, the Israeli government under the prime ministership of Ariel Sharon adopted ironfisted policies that targeted leaders, institutions, infrastructures, and resources in a strategy that has been termed “politicide” by the well-known Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling. It aimed at weakening not only the PA and its Islamic opposition, but the whole Palestinian national movement. Sharon’s strategy has been to reduce the ability of the Palestinian people to oppose Israeli dictates regarding a peaceful settlement that fulfills most if not all Israeli demands with full Palestinian consent. This policy line was initiated by Sharon himself during the Lebanon war in 1982, when he besieged Arafat and tried to impose a political deal that would eliminate the role of the PLO in any political agreement aimed at resolving the Palestinian problem politically.
In early 2005, implementing Sharon’s dictatorial policies, Israel continued to build its separation wall, which enabled Israel to confiscate thousands of acres of Palestinian land and imprison thousands of families in small ghettos, and continued to take unilateral measures to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. The Sharon government sought to pave a way to unilaterally disconnect from Gaza without having to pay the price of a peaceful settlement, most often invoking the slogan “no partner on the other side.” Pursuing this strategy, Sharon had imprisoned Arafat in his presidential complex for almost three years, until his death in November 2004, and had assassinated the top leaders of the Hamas movement, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abed al-Aziz rantissi.
Sharon’s policies brought about the near paralysis of Palestinian politics. The national elite, which initiated and led the peace process with Israel in the early 1990s and embarked on the building of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was marginalized by its partner in peace negotiations, Israel. Its power base—the institutions of the Palestinian Authority (PA) established after 1994—was subject to systematic destruction by the Israeli army. The Palestinian Legislative Council, which was elected in early 1996, was unable to convene on a regular basis in order to enact laws and confirm governmental policies. The government that was put in place in mid-2003 as a result of an imposed Israeli-American plan to reform the PA proved to be ineffective. The opposition movements, mainly Hamas and Islamic Jihad, were targeted daily by Israel, which sought to physically eliminate their leadership. The Israeli army continued to infiltrate Palestinian cities and towns, targeting leaders of all ranks from all political factions. Israeli policies thus put all political factions on the defensive.
This strategy was dealt a deadly blow by the death of Yasir Arafat and the election of Abu Mazen as the head of the PA in January 2005. Israel could no longer claim that there was no partner on the other side after a long period in which the Israeli government personalized Palestinian politics and blamed Arafat for every action taken by any Palestinian, on the one hand, and praised Abu Mazen for his political moderation, on the other. The measures taken by Abu Mazen to stop the shelling of Israeli towns by al-Qassam rockets demonstrated his determination to stop Palestinian violence and undercut the Israeli government’s ability to use Palestinian suicide attacks and the shelling of Israeli cities by Palestinian guerillas as a justification for its politicidal policies. The international reactions to Abu Mazens measures and the American pressure on Sharon’s government not to take steps that could shatter Abu Mazen’s efforts to achie