Special Report

 

A Simplified Palestinian Strategy for the Next Phase Of the Struggle

 

By Dr. Hisham Sharabi

Aside from being a revolt against the enemy, the current intifada has been a revolt against the existing Palestinian reality. Proclaiming the Palestinian people’s rejection of agreements signed in their name without their consent, it insists as well on their right to participate in determining their own destiny.

Furthermore, the intifada has brought the Arab peoples back into the struggle against Zionism and colonialism, and erased the existing equations in Palestine and the Arab world as a whole.

The al-Aqsa intifada, in short, has pushed the Arab-Israeli conflict to a new phase.

What are the characteristics of this coming phase and what are its consequences?

An Israeli reading of what can be expected to happen in the coming years was offered in the Feb. 15 edition of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz by Meron Benvenisti, one of Israel’s most important, moderate and humane analysts: “The ugliest scenario of all is about to take place: The retaliatory strikes that will be undertaken by Israel against the Palestinians will lead to bloody reactions, which will in turn lead to more brutal collective retaliation that would result in doing away with what is left of the Palestinian Authority’s powers. All attempts to reach a solution of the crisis will fail because of internal differences. The winner in Israel will be the elements that feed on hatred and bitterness—the elements that derive their strength from bloodshed.”

Benvenisti then recalled what he had predicted 20 years ago: “The coming conflict will be a drastic one whose barbarism will reach a primeval level. It will not be a political conflict such as occurs among contemporary states, but a bloody conflict that springs from primitive instincts beyond policy, and aims at asserting the self and expunging the other—motivated by fear of physical annihilation and blind adherence to full justice that accepts no bargaining—a violent ‘dynamic’ conflict that would not cool off or cease in the near term.”

This, in my view, is an accurate scenario or reading of what may happen in the coming phase. The question for us is: what must be done to prepare for this phase and confront the coming Israeli violence?

There are four elements that, if they materialize in the coming years, will enable the Palestinian people not only to face Israel but also change the balance in the entire region.

First: Comprehensive material support for the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and inside Israel. This support would ensure the building of an integrated Palestinian economy that provides all Palestinians with basic social services—health, education, housing, employment.

 

Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a new Arab era.

Promises of support will not by themselves be enough. There must also be methods and modalities to ensure their implementation. For example, an independent foundation can be established along the lines of the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Development to administer the support project and supervise the mechanics of implementation, etc. To make such a project work we need political will, rational organization and proper nationalist sensibility.

Second: Ensuring international protection for the Palestinian people. Lack of international protection and supervision that leaves the besieged Palestinians to the mercy of the Israelis, and the continuation of the status quo under Israeli military domination (a continuous state of siege and suppression) would surely lead to the most serious consequences for living standards, social and economic conditions, and would transform Palestinian society into an impoverished, shattered and illiterate society that suffers from diseases, impotence and internal paradoxes—a society easy to dominate and difficult to change for a long time to come.

Third: Internal reform to do away with the weaknesses and confusion of the present authority system, and to replace it with a system capable of mobilizing Palestinian energies and building an effective democratic state. This can be accomplished by forming a government of national unity, with the participation of all national ideologies, through free elections that would give the Palestinian people the right to have a voice in decision-making. Such a government would implement administrative and economic reforms which ensure the unity of Palestinian society and its ability to continue the struggle to regain its rights and achieve its national objectives. Is a people that launched the glorious intifada incapable of achieving internal reform, a prerequisite for national salvation?

Fourth: Arab coordination to bolster and safeguard the Palestinian position by means of political and diplomatic approaches that guarantee minimum Arab cooperation. A starting point would be cooperation among the neighboring countries of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, in addition to Jordan and Lebanon, to be followed later by the other Arab regimes.

The disappearance of the Clinton administration, the most biased ever in favor of Israel, and the coming of a new administration free of American Jewish elements that dominated the forming and implementing of American policy for the past eight years, will open new opportunities for Arab regimes. It will be easier now for them to adopt more cohesive positions limiting America’s pro-Israel bias, at the same time encouraging European powers to shoulder their responsibilities toward the Palestinian cause and play their role in implementing U.N. resolutions and human rights.

 

The Source of Strength

Promises are facile. Execution belongs only to the strong. And strength lies in the hands of the people.

Nowadays we see in certain regimes changes we never anticipated. Some of these changes have to do with systems of government and some with foreign policy. Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a new Arab era.

We continue to state that the more the Arab governments understand the wishes of, and follow the path called for by, their people, the stronger they become in safeguarding their internal system and the more capable of confronting external challenges—and therefore of cooperating among themselves. This is a cumulative process.

An Arab summit will be held in Amman at the end of March. We shall know better then if Arab rulers are able to implement the demands of their people at this historic juncture: To agree to some form of cohesive Arab cooperation with regard to the Palestinian issue; to adopt a unified position to support the Palestinian people and provide them with international protection; and to implement resolutions through the establishment of institutions and tools that guarantee a realistic fulfillment of these resolutions.

Dr. Hisham Sharabi is Georgetown University professor emeritus of European intellectual history and chairman of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. Translated by Salman M. Hilmy.