The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

Summary, part 6

Chapter 5

The Fifth Declaration of War, 1987-1995

Israel succeeded in weakening the PLO with the 1982 war but also inadvertently strengthened the Palestinian national movement inside Palestine itself.

In December 1987, the First Intifada ignited “when an Israeli army vehicle struck a truck in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing four Palestinians” (p. 168-169). This intifada was led by a “secret Unified National Leadership” (p. 169). Things kept escalating, and in January 1988, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin instituted an “iron fist” policy wherein Israeli military personnel would break arms and legs, crack skulls, and carry out beatings – all of which created “major media backlash in the United States and elsewhere” (p. 169).

When the First Intifada broke out, the occupation had been in place for two decades. Israel began colonization immediately after the 1967 war and created over two hundred settlements. By 1976, the alienation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories had intensified. Any expression of nationalism (e.g. flying the Palestinian flag) was “severely suppressed” with fines, beatings, and jail time (p. 170). Protesting in public or in print could lead to the same result or even to deportation. Khalidi writes that “more active resistance, especially that involving violence, invited collective punishment, house demolitions, imprisonment without trial … and even extrajudicial murder” (p. 170). With these two decades of occupation, “a new generation of Palestinians had come of age having known nothing but military occupation” (p. 171). The years preceding the First Intifada were marked by mass demonstrations by young Palestinians

The Israeli response to the First Intifada was “ill-conceived, heavy-handed, and disproportionate” (p. 171). Khalidi writes that Rabin’s iron fist policy set the tone of the response but that “the excessive violence was also rooted in constant societal anti-Palestinian indoctrination, grounded in the dogmatic idea that Israel would be overwhelmed by the Arabs if its security forces did not deter them by force” (p. 171). From the beginning of the First Intifada to the end of 1996 (nine years, including six when the Intifada was ongoing), “Israeli troops and armed settlers killed 1,422 Palestinians, almost one every other day. Of them, 294, over 20 percent, were minors sixteen and under. One hundred and seventy-five Israelis, 86 of them security personnel, were killed by Palestinians during the same period” (p. 172).

The leadership of the Intifada consisted of a bottom-up campaign of resistance with no connection to formal political Palestinian leadership. They managed to have “coordinated leadership while remaining locally driven and controlled” (p. 173). The tactics of the First Intifada included strikes, boycotts, withholding taxes, civil disobedience, and some protests that turned violent (though those were often ignited by soldiers who inflicted heavy casualties against unarmed demonstrators or youths throwing stones). With this, “The entirety of Palestinian society under occupation opposed the status quo and supported the intifada” (p. 174). 

The intifada can be considered the “first unmitigated victory for the Palestinians” (p. 174). After all, the intifada managed to have a unified leadership, did not exacerbate internal divisions, avoided firearms and explosives, and shaped Israeli and world perceptions. Khalidi writes that “by the early 1990s, the unified Palestinian stance had successfully made it clear that the occupation was untenable, at least as it had functioned in its first two decades” (p. 174).

The grassroots intifada took the PLO by surprise, but they wasted no time trying to co-opt and profit from it. The PLO’s leaders, who were now in Tunis after 1982, were short-sighted and had limited strategic vision. They also had not been inside Palestine since 1967 or earlier, so their understanding of Israeli society and the political situation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories was murky. The problem became more acute when Abu Jihad, the closest lieutenant to PLO leader Yasser Arafat, was assassinated in April 1988, four months after the intifada began. Jihad was a close observer of the situation in Palestine, so when he was killed, the PLO was deprived of one of its key figures.

The PLO also had a problem because, after the 1982 war, Fatah faced a Syrian-sponsored mutiny among its people in Northern and Eastern Lebanon, which was the most serious internal challenge to Fatah’s leadership since its founding. Notably, Hamas was developing into a formidable competitor.

Additionally, the PLO had a weak understanding of the full measure of the US. Some senior PLO leaders attended sessions at the United National General Assembly, but they were legally restricted to travel within only a certain radius, and “they certainly never undertook the all-points diplomatic and public relations campaigns of Israeli officials” (p. 177). The PLO thought that appealing to a colonial power would work in their favor, but it did not. The US was, after all, too aligned with Israel.

In 1988, after seeing the international impact of the intifada, the PLO redoubled its efforts and produced the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was adopted at a meeting of the Palestine National Council in Algiers on November 15. This declaration “formally abandoned the PLO’s claim to the entirety of Palestine, accepting the principles of partition, a two-state solution, and a peaceful resolution to the conflict” (p. 178). It was a major shift for the PLO, but it went unacknowledged by the Israelis and didn’t lead to peace negotiations.

With the intifada, the PLO had been delivered “a gift of inestimable value, a store of moral and political capital” (p. 179). The PLO abandoned its formal strategy of armed resistance from bases outside Palestine and instead desperately pursued admission to peace negotiations whose parameters were enormously disadvantageous to Palestinians. For example, SC 242 has no mention of Palestinians despite the fact that UNGA 181 specified an Arab state and UNGA 194 mandated the return of refugees.

An additional problem for the PLO was that ‘Arafat profoundly miscalculated everything regarding the 1990-1991 Gulf War, where Iraq invaded Kuwait. The PLO supported Iraq because Iraq had previously supported them, even though every other Arab state supported Kuwait. They also overestimated Iraqi military capabilities. One voice in PLO, Abu Iyad, saw through this because he was concerned about the protection of the prosperous Palestinian community in Kuwait, but he was assassinated by an Iraqi-linked actor. As a result, no one in PLO leadership challenged ‘Arafat during the Gulf War.

As this was ongoing, James Baker, US Secretary of State, began planning for a peace conference to be held in Madrid in October 1991, “hoping to jump-start direct Israeli-Arab talks and determine the future of Palestine” (p. 185). ‘Arafat was given a proxy seat but failed to assess how disadvantaged they were.

In the summer of 1991, Khalidi visited Faysal Husayni, a relative by marriage who was the foremost Palestinian leader in Jerusalem and a senior figure in Fatah. Husayni asked Khalidi if he would serve as an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the peace conference. Khalidi didn’t think it would happen so he agreed, but then found himself in Madrid a few months later.

There, the PLO agreed to Baker’s terms that there would be no independent Palestinian representation. Rather, the PLO would be attached to other states’ delegations as Israel’s Yitzhak Shamir’s government wanted. Additionally, Shamir dictated who could talk and what they could talk about. Palestinian self-rule was on the table, but not self-determination, sovereignty, the return of refugees, or the end of occupation and colonization.

The U.S. encouraged all sides to avoid unilateral acts but never made good on those promises and was allied with Israel. The US considered Israeli’s position “the ceiling of what was feasible or could be discussed” (p. 189). That said, Baker was not afraid to confront the Shamir government publicly, saying, “When you’re serious about peace, call us” (p. 189). Baker seemed to be sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle, but he was only able, or willing, to do so much. He did not restrain Israeli actions that changed the status quo in Palestine while negotiations were ongoing (e.g. building of settlements). Eventually, Baker would be taken away from his duties as they related to the Middle East to take care of Bush’s failing presidential campaign.

The negotiations for the remittance of Palestinian land did not get any better under US President Bill Clinton. His officials were under the strong influence of officials they inherited from the Bush administration (e.g. Dennis Ross). These people made a career out of the peace process and didn’t have sympathy for anyone involved except Israelis Dennis Ross, very influential in his time with the two administrations, later became a lobbyist for Israel in all but name.

Eventually, Shamir’s government was replaced by a labor-led coalition with Rabin, who was now prime minister. Rabin changed little about Israel’s core approach to Palestinians at the negotiating table and was committed to Begin’s Camp David approach (i.e. autonomy but no independent state for Palestinians). 

Despite the discouraging signs in Washington in January 1992, the Palestinian delegation put out the Palestinian Interim Self-Governing Authority (PISGA), which they foresaw as a stepping stone to forming a Palestinian state. The PISGA wanted the creation of a Palestinian governmental entity chosen by democratic elections and for the Israeli military government and occupation bureaucracy to transfer power to the new authority, who would then have complete jurisdiction (but neither sovereignty nor full control) of air, land, and water of the occupied territories, and Israel would freeze settler activity. It was a genuine effort to transition from occupation to independence, but it did not succeed. The main reason for its failure was “the Zionist doctrine of the exclusive Jewish right to the entirety of Palestine” (p. 194). The PLO approved the proposal but failed to promote it internationally, and Washington received no serious counterproposal from the Israelis. Ultimately, “the Washington talk proved fruitless” (p. 195).

As all of this was ongoing, the PLO and Israel actually reached a confidential understanding that PLO cadres and forces (potentially including members of the Palestinian Liberation Army) were to be allowed in the Occupied Territories and take up the duties as security forces. This meant that the PLO and Israel had engaged in covert, direct negotiations, which was stunning news to many. This shift occurred in part because Rabin learned that Israel could no longer control the Occupied Territories with the use of force alone, so he authorized direct contact with the PLO and recognized the PLO as a representative of Palestinians (and, in turn, the PLO recognized the state of Israel). That said, Israel still did not recognize a Palestinian state or make a commitment to allow the creation of one.

By June 1993, the Washington Talks were no longer the main vehicle for negotiations, but rather, the Oslo Talks were. Oslo I brought about a Declaration of Principles, but the formation of this was not a smooth process for the Palestinians. The Palestinian team in these negotiations was unprepared, ill-equipped, and out of their league. They signed on to a “highly restricted form of self-rule in a fragment of the Occupied Territories, and without control of land, water, borders, or much else” (p. 200). The Palestinians agreed that the Palestinian Authority would help “Israel police the restive Palestinians living under its military regime as their lands are gradually appropriated by Israeli colonizers” (p. 201). Essentially, the PLO and Palestinian Authority became a subcontractor for the occupation.

Oslo II brought about an interim agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It broke out the Occupied Territories into Areas A, B, and C, where Area C was under complete, direct, unfettered Israeli control (60% of the region), Area A was under the administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority (18% of the region), and Area B saw Israeli control of security (22% of the region). Notably, Areas A and B contained 87% of the Palestinian population. With this agreement, settlements continued to be built, Jerusalem was severed from the West Bank, and Palestinians were increasingly barred from entering Israel. Oslo was not solely Israel’s venture but also their “indispensable sponsor,” the US (p. 205). After this, many PLO leaders in Tunis moved back to Palestine, but there was some peril in this in that they effectively “put themselves in a cage” (p. 204).