INTIFADA AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF PALESTINIAN POLITICS
by Khalil Shikaki
Khalil Shikaki holds the Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. He teaches Political Science at al-Najah National University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Currenriy, he is visiting Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Africa/Middle East 1989-90/No. 18
Field Staff Reports
Behind the complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, there has always existed a simple process of mutual denial. For almost 100 years, Zionists and Israelis have refused to recognize not only the rights of Palestinians to their homeland, but also the existence of the Palestinian people as a nation. Similarly, the Palestinians have refused to recognize not only the claims of the Zionists and Israelis to Palestine, but also the Jews as a people with national aspirations.
Fifty years into the conflict, a compromise was suggested by the international community and supported by the US and the USSR: a Jewish-Palestinian settlement based on a two-state solution. The two sides were asked co recognize the existence and the legitimate national rights of each other. The land itself, the land called Palestine, was to be partitioned between the two sides. The Zionists accepted the compromise; but the Palestinian side, believing Palestine to be historically Arab and Islamic, and seeing itself as constituting the popular majority and entitled to the greatest part of the Palestinian land, refused to accept the two-state solution.
Today, the situation has changed. Seen from the perspective of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), prospects for a political settlement based on a two-state solution have never been brighter. If the Israeli political establishment can be brought to support such a settlement, then a unique opportunity to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict might be created. Thirty months after the beginning of the intifada, the continuing Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories, main-stream Palestinian thinking now seems clearly committed to an Arab-Jewish historical compromise based on the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
This report examines the main elements of the current Palestinian position; the conditions, challenges, and opportunities that compelled and motivated the Palestinian leadership to embrace that position; the possible consequences of the continuation of the status quo; and the future of the PLO peace program, as well as the future of the intifada.
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The PLO h.as embarked during the past 18 months on � new strategy, approved by an overwhelming majority during the 19th session of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), or Palestinian parliament, in Algiers in November 1988. It called for a just and durable peace and for the fulfillment of Palestinian rights while condemning terrorism. It accepted a two-state solution as embodied in the UN General Assembly resolution 181 of 1947, which divided Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, and approved UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. which recognized the existence of the state of Israel within secure boundaries and called upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied Arab terrirories.1
For a long time, Palestinians' belief in the absolute justice of their cause and the feasiblity of achieving their objectives prevented them. decades after the conflict began in the late 19th Century, from seriously considering any compromise that would require them to willingly give up the greater part of their homeland. When, in the aftermath of the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, the Palestinian leadership finally came to recognize the Arab-Israeli balance of power and rhe reality of continued Arab division, two factors began to force a slow process of transition to a "moderate" position. Past commitments had created popular cultural aversion to the concept of partition; time was needed, in the words of a senior FLO official, to convince the Palestinian people of the need to accept the existence of Israel "in return for a small Palestinian state in less than 23 per cent of the land which we claim' to be ours."2 And perhaps more importantly, the internal balance within the PLO's decision-making bodies, which had favored the hardline advocates and rewarded "rejectionist" tendencies, began to shift. The Palestinian intifada - itself a force for change in the stand off -- provided the necessary vehicle for new changes to be carried out and promoted.
The new PLO policy does not, however, represent a fundamental break with the past. Rather, it should be seen as a culmination of a trend that has been underway since the early 1970s. A continuous process of change toward "moderation" can be found in the resolutions and deliberations of the highest Palestinian decision-making body, the PNC, since its 12th session in 1974, and in the failure of the so-called "rejectionist" forces, both within and outside the PLO, to provide a viable alternative, despite their success in slowing the process down.3.....MORE