In search of leadership

Socialist Outlook March 1996
Roland Rance

The suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by supporters of the Islamic movement Hamas have left the policies of Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton in disarray. Arafat has won his election as President of the Palestinian Authority, but the latest attacks threaten Peres’ lead in the forthcoming Israeli elections, and weaken Clinton’s image as a world peacemaker. Once again, scores of Israelis are dying in random attacks in population centres; once again, millions of Palestinians are besieged in their homes while Israeli army patrols return to the streets. Yet another emergency conference to save the ’peace process’ will be held in the Red Sea resort of Taba; John Major has promised to attend, in order to share Britain’s experience of dealing with terrorism.

No one should be surprised by these developments. As Socialist Outlook has consistently argued, the Oslo agreements, which legitimised the existing social and demographic situation and recruited the PLO to police the Palestinian people on Israel’s behalf, while offering less than nothing to the impoverished Palestinian masses, were inherently unstable and could only be implemented by ever increasing military coercion. The failure of the secular Palestinian left to pose an effective challenge to Arafat’s increasingly autocratic rule has left the way open for Hamas to establish itself as the genuine voice of Palestinian resistance - much in the same way that the PLO established itself in the 1960’s and 1970’s against the pro Jordanian and tribal traditionalists.

For almost twenty years, the debate on Palestinian strategy polarised around so-called ’military’ and ’political’ options. In reality, the main proponents of both of these options offered an elitist approach, with the ’military’ supporters focussing on spectacular terror attacks and the attempt to develop a standing army capable of confronting the might of the IDF, while the eventually triumphant ’politicals’ called for diplomatic negotiations with Israel under the auspices of the UN. Neither camp proposed a strategy capable of mobilising the Palestinian masses in an integrated political military struggle for liberation.

The Palestinian Intifada which erupted in December 1987 was as much a challenge to this failure of the national leadership as a revolt against continued Israeli military repression. Particularly in its early stages, the Intifada brought tens of thousands of Palestinians onto the streets in a concerted challenge to Israel’s military and political hegemony, while at the same time establishing popular committees across the Occupied Territories. This struggle and these committees provided an inspiration for popular risings and insurrections throughout the Arab world.

In many cases, these risings took on an Islamic colouration. Religious language, ritual and structures could provide a cover for political activity in societies where any open political activity was brutally repressed. Additionally, Islamic movements were seen as a credible, and less corrupt, alternative to nationalist regimes which had failed to fulfil the promises and expectations raised in the struggle for national independence.

Ironically, for a long time the Israeli authorities tolerated, and even fostered, Islamic fundamentalism in an attempt to weaken the hegemony of the PLO in the Occupied Territories. Although the PLO and its affiliated organisations had always been banned under Israeli rule, Hamas was not banned until September 1989, by which time it had managed to establish a real presence and an effective cell structure.

There is growing evidence of a split in the Hamas ranks, with some ’pragmatists’ tempted to enter the ’peace process’ in the expectation of gaining power from a discredited PLO in the near future, while more ’ideological’ elements reject any possibility of a compromise with Zionism or Palestinian secular nationalism. In the absence of any serious attempt to alleviate the miserable conditions of the impoverished Palestinian masses, and with the failure of the secular left to provide any credible political alternative, these more uncompromising forces are likely to grow, and to carry out further dramatic attacks.

Roland Rance has been a socialist activist in Israeli, Palestinian and British politics for many years.