The Grievances of the Palestinians Under the Occupation and a Popular National Uprising - Research Paper Example

Introduction The first and the second Palestinian Intifadas, or uprisings, were not borne out of isolation but were an immediate outcome of the violent confrontations which preceded them and expressive of the economic misery and socio-political oppression which the Palestinians suffered under the Israeli occupation. As such, the Palestinian Intifada may be defined as a social-political movement engaged in contentious politics for the purpose of bringing the Israeli occupation to an end. Given that the definitions of both intifada stages coincide, it may very well be assumed that the root causes and objects of both are similar. Indeed, as this research will argue, despite seemingly changing circumstances and conditions, both the 1987 and 2000 Intifadas were provoked by a similar combination of politico-economic circumstances and were incited by the desire to end the Occupation, i.e. political oppression and economic misery. The Outbreak “In November 1981, a cycle of protest in the Gaza strip took place. The initiators were [Palestinians] doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who struck in protest of new financial restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities and were joined by merchants and the Gaza municipality.”1 The Israeli reaction to the events was resolute and harsh; within a matter of hours, order was restored. A few months later on March 1982, “in reaction to the eviction of several West Bank mayors, a violent, widespread confrontations erupted, this time in East Jerusalem, resulting in the death of six Palestinians and one Israeli soldier. The fierce demonstrations lasted for a week and were countered by severe punitive measures by Israeli military forces.”2 Six years later, another wave of confrontation consolidated, this time differing in its modes of action, type of actors, scope, and results. In brief, on May 31, 1987 a large Israeli military force stormed Balata, the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, for the purpose of consolidating and reinforcing Israeli sovereignty after several days of disturbances in the camp. Suspects were arrested, a curfew was imposed on the camp and the soldiers searched each and every house. The military search was interrupted as women started to riot quickly enjoined by the men, forcing the military to pull back from the camp. Six months later, in mid November 1987 an unprecedented wave of violence took place in Jibalyya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. For the first time the mass of people tried to break through the military fence using stones and sticks and waving PLO flags. Several weeks after the Jibalyya incident, additional incidents occurred. In retrospect, those incidents were part of a gradually intensifying contention between Palestinian grassroots activists and Israeli soldiers that coalesced into a wide scale national insurgency against Israel. As the Intifada continued to spread and escalate, Oslo happened. The prospect of peace and the emergence of a liberated and sovereign Palestinian state, concomitant with the recognition of the PLO as the official representatives of the Palestinian people, had brought the violence to an end. As the events of 2000 were to later indicate, however, the Intifada had only been temporarily abated by the promise of peace and the prospect of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty. As it became increasingly evident, however, that Oslo was not going to be realized and as socio-political and economic conditions in the occupied territories continued to worsen, the second Intifada erupted, sparked off by the then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s effective storming of Al Aqsa Mosque. The Palestinian Intifada, as may be deduced from the preceding, is a confrontational resistance to the occupation. As the Palestinians have been resisting the occupation since 1948, it is necessary to distinguish the Intifada (both first and second) from other forms of Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. In essence, as contrasted with previous cycles of contention during the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian Intifada may be distinguished by two central features. First its structural context: the fact that the Palestinians were a national minority under Israeli military occupation as opposed to other past structures of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (e.g. two national movements grappling under a British mandate, 1919-1948). Second, and in contrast with other waves of confrontations during the long decades of occupation (1967-2000), it was the magnitude of collective action. During approximately six years, Palestinian in the occupied territories sustained wide scope and intensive collective action forcing Israel to acknowledge the PLO as their sole and legitimate representative and to accept that any resolution to the conflict must comply with the human needs of the Palestinians inside the occupied territories. The second intifada took recognition one step further insofar as it effectively led to Israeli, not to mention international, political recognition of the PA as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. Root Causes: A Review of the Literature There are several views on the root causes of the outbreak of either of the Palestinian intifadas. The first views both of the Palestinians uprising as another repercussion of the more general Arab-Israeli conflict. Stemming from the inter-state level of analysis to conflict dynamics, this view concentrates on regional, territorial and political trends. It detects the roots of the uprising in the Palestinians disappointment with the Arab States conflict management after the June 1967 war defeat and the subsequent Palestinian development of a distinct nationalism inside the occupied territories.3 The Arab states' consistent refusal to recognize the role and importance of the PLO, as was the case in the Arab summit of November 1987, is commonly seen as a central cause of the Intifada of the first intifada and their failure to react to the storming of Al Aqsa and to take a political stand against Israel, is argued to lie at the roots of the second. The implication here is that both of the intifadas were instigated by Palestinian disappointment in Arab reaction to Israeli oppression and domination of the occupied territories, leading to a determined effort to take control of their own affairs. In contrast, the second view centers on the internal Israeli context and analyzes the social and economical conditions the Palestinians under occupation experienced. As such, it traces the causes of both of the 1987 and 2000 uprisings to the increasing grievances and frustrations among the Palestinians in the local arena.4 As per this view, therefore, ever-worsening economic conditions, the increasing stronghold of the occupation, the ever-growing conviction that nothing was going to change, the fact that human rights situation was going to go from bad to worse and the popular view that socio-political oppression was going to increase, motivated Palestinian resistance in the form of the intifada. Within the parameters of this view, both intifadas are a reaction to the occupation and a determination to end the suffering which it resulted in. Contextualizing the Intifadas: Expressions of Resistance Whether one accepts the first or the second view, the fact is that both ultimately interpret both the intifada of 1987 and the intifada of 2000 as a form of resistance to occupation and a resistance guided by the objective of independent statehood. Each of these intifadas may have been triggered by a complex web of socio-political and economic factors but they were each incited by a single event. As with numerous uprisings in history, the first Palestinian intifada had its final triggering point on November 10, 1987, when a 17-year-old Palestinian girl was shot in the grounds of her school in Gaza by a Jewish settler after his car had been stoned by Palestinian youth. The settler was released on bail. The Palestinian incentive to wage an intifada was enhanced when on November 25 a hang-gilder was flown across the Lebanese border by a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who killed six soldiers in an Israeli army camp.5 Although some Palestinians had access to arms, these were not used against Israelis, and this helped achieve widespread international sympathy for the Palestinian cause. The first wave of riots went on daily until December 20, 1987. Members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) took the rioting into Jerusalem itself, and on December 19, the Green Line - which used to divide the city - was rebuilt with stones, earth, and waste. The Israeli Defense Forces were ultimately unable to prevent a full-scale intifada.6 As may be inferred from the preceding, the first intifada (1987-1991) was thus an outcome of a complex web of events and patterns. Perhaps what partly explains the intifada's endurance is its organization under auspices of the United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), which managed to unite under its umbrella traditionally rival factions like the PFLP, DFLP, and Fatah. Intifada activities included stone-throwing, mass demonstrations, and civil disobedience such as refusing to pay some taxes.7 This intifada rendered the local stone-thrower - as opposed to the guerilla fighter - the bastion of Palestinian heroism.8 The first intifada officially ended in 1991. The Madrid peace talks, which began in 1991, would eventually culminate in Israel and the PLO's announcements that their representatives had secretly completed a framework for future negotiations that could end their conflict.9 On September 13, 1993, Arafat and Rabin exchanged an historic handshake on the White House lawn confirming the declaration of principles (DOP) between Israel and the PLO. Each of the long-warring parties finally recognized the other's existence. According to the Oslo agreement that was to come into effect on October 13, 1993, Israel would begin to withdraw its troops within two months from Gaza and the West Bank city of Jericho and complete its withdrawal three months later. The Cairo Agreement, which translated the DOP into reality by creating the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza and Jericho, was signed on May 4, 1994. Palestinian elections for PA presidency (which Arafat won), originally scheduled for early 1994, took place two years later.10 The Oslo peace accords began with bright optimism on both ends of the conflict for conciliation - 65-75 percent of West Bank/Gaza Palestinians and Israeli Jews expressed support for the initial accord, a sentiment which would eventually turn into dejection, violence, and a breakdown of the peace process.11 From the outset, the Oslo accords drew much criticism from a number of Palestinian intellectuals and political activists. Israel's conditions for signing, they argued, raised doubts as to whether a lasting, just peace was really attainable. This opposition, for example, protested leaving Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories (especially in the heart of Hebron and the Gaza Strip), postponement of the final status talks over Jerusalem, delayed release of Palestinian prisoners, and the small amount of territory to be transferred initially to the PA.12 Events like the 1994 Hebron massacre, where Israeli Baruch Goldstein killed 29 worshippers in the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron (West Bank), certainly helped stall the peace process.13 The 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who signed Oslo on the Israeli side) and the subsequent election of Binyamin Netanyahu, a right-wing, Likud opponent of Oslo, helped further shatter the hopes for Palestinian-Israeli peace. Tensions rose as construction plans were expanded into areas of Arab Jerusalem and in the settlements. Additionally, the Israeli government's 1996 opening of the Western Wall Tunnel - which extended underneath the Noble Sanctuary (which is composed of the Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques) - was considered by Muslims as a threat to the status quo of the two mosques. In fact, the tunnel's opening incited demonstrations and riots which killed and injured tens of Palestinians The following excerpt sheds light on nuances that also helped eventually culminate in the second Palestinian intifada, this time in closer connection to Oslo's aftermath: “The Oslo Accords … accelerated the Palestinian economic decline. Unemployment increased, the gross national product decreased, and the economy fragmented, largely as a result of Israel's policy of closing off the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Israel, from each other and from external markets. This situation was not helped by the policies of the Palestinian Authority, which while establishing a banking and tax system, failed to attract significant foreign investment with its hostility to economic reform, its mismanagement and bureaucratic corruption. But, in effect, under the Oslo arrangements, that authority controlled only small enclaves separated from each other. As well as the indirect control achieved by this fragmentation of Palestinian lands, by the middle of 2000 Israel retained direct control over more than 20 per cent of the Gaza Strip and 59 per cent of the West Bank.”14 Under the administration of Ehud Barak it briefly seemed as though the situation could improve, especially with the launching of the Camp David II peace talks in July of 2000, which were mediated by President Bill Clinton. When Barak took office, his proposed policies involved offering a Palestinian state that would consist of something more than fragmented enclaves, as a trade-off against Palestinian demands with regard to refugees, Jerusalem, and control of certain resources. But Arafat's unwillingness to compromise on these issues prevented reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord at Camp David.15 Even before the negotiations took place in July, the situation in Palestinian territories was already volatile. The West Bank and Gaza Strip featured demonstrations in support of a hunger strike by Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. On May 15, 2000 (May 15 is when Palestinians mourn loss of their land to Israel) violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers were reminiscent of the first intifada.16 All this made the situation ripe for the second Palestinian intifada, only two months after the Camp David talks broke down. Sharon's provocative visit to the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount on September 28, 2000 was essentially the tipping point for the second intifada's birth.17 Conclusion Evident from the facts presented in the preceding paragraphs, both intifadas are only seemingly different in cause, if not in objectives. Both are rooted in the grievances of the Palestinians under the occupation and both may be interpreted as resistance to oppression, on the one hand, and a popular national uprising in the name of sovereignty and statehood, on the other. Certainly, the one predated self-determination and the other postdated it but this is a minor difference considering that pre- and post- supposed self-determination witnessed a comparable economic destruction of the Gaza and West Bank, the continuation of political oppression and unchanging Israeli intransigence vis-à-vis the questions of the refugees, the settlements and a sovereign Palestinian state. Within the context of the stated, both the first and second intifadas had the same set of causes as they did identical objectives. Read More