Al-mahalliune wal 'aidune

Locals and Returnees in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA):

A Historical Perspective

By Roger Heacock, Professor of History, Birzeit University


This article is taken from the book, "The Becoming of Returnee States: Palestine, Armenia, Bosnia" published by the Graduate Insititute of International Studies, Birzeit University 1999
What distinguishes the Palestinian national movement after 1948 is, among other things, the fact that for a long time, and up to the present in some respects, the 'outside' substituted itself for the 'inside'. The exilic community took upon itself to carry the (virtually total) burden of national consciousness and liberation. From the beginning of the Palestinian national movement in the aftermath of the Balfour declaration of 1917 and the creation of the British-administered Palestine mandate up to 1948, Jerusalem had been the headquarters of the movement, while the Palestinian villages provided many of its militants and fighters1. In 1948, following the Palestinian dispossession, it became materially impossible to undertake that responsibility within the newly created Jewish state which the Palestinian nationalists viewed as occupied Palestine. .

This development was due to two main factors:

1. Palestinians remaining in the area which became Israel in 1948 were placed under military rule until 1965. They did not have the capacity to sustain a nationalist movement considered treasonous by the authorities of the state. The latter employed the methods of "segmentation", "dependence" and "co-optation"2 to ensure the short- and long-term quiescence of this minority.

2. Palestinians in the remainder of rump Palestine came under Egyptian (Gaza Strip) or Jordanian (West Bank) control. The only possible base for a national movement (which would of necessity be based in the urban centers) to regain lost rights was the West Bank. In fact, the Egyptians never annexed the Gaza Strip (for both theoretical and practical reasons. A part of Palestine, it was brimming with dispossessed refugees, who would have constituted an unnecessary burden). Furthermore, the Strip had after all witnessed the brief and stillborn, but nonetheless significant experience of the "Government of all Palestine" established in Gaza City under Ahmad Hilmi Pasha. The West Bank, on the other hand, was immediately, and by previous agreement between the Hashemite Emir 'Abdallah of Transjordan and the Zionist leadership, occupied and then annexed to Jordan. Two other factors, one psychological and the other ideological, likewise inhibited the short-term development of a Palestinian national movement in Palestine itself. These were the trauma of the 1947-48 nakba (disaster), marked by the establishment of 20 official UN-administered refugee camps (including eight in the Gaza Strip) as well as a large number of unofficial ones, and the hegemonic role in the Arab world of unitary Arab nationalism at the level of the masses and politicized intellectuals. And finally, given the increasing importance of Cold War priorities at governmental level, there was no question of building a Palestinian national movement in the West Bank. King Hussein of Jordan, who succeeded to the throne after 'Abdallah's assassination in 1950, vigorously repressed any such trend.3 As a result, the center of the Palestinian liberation movement (which was not primarily Palestinian nationalist at this point, but rather Arab nationalist) moved to the periphery of the area of so-called 'confrontation' between the Arabs and Israel: Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and the Gulf states (particularly Kuwait).

From 1948 to 1967, Israel and Jordan effectively suppressed any manifestations of Palestinian (or Arab) nationalism in the territories under their control. At the same time, (a related point) many Palestinians within Israel and Jordan attempted to 'adapt' for the sake of survival, i.e. to transform themselves subjectively into Jordanians4 or (a much trickier feat) Israelis5. These attempts were unsuccessful, because of the dialectics of the Arab-Israeli confrontation. The Israelis were determined to stop any return of Palestinians to their villages. They considered such returnees to be hostile 'infiltrators', and dealt with them accordingly, by imprisoning and deporting, or if caught in the act (of returning) by killing them.6 Those who had remained were classified as a hostile minority and kept under military rule. As in 1956 during the Israeli-British-French military campaign against Egypt, they were placed under curfew and sometimes subjected to state violence (as, for example, in the case of the notorious Kufr Qasem massacre). The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan likewise suppressed any tendency to create a Palestinian resistance movement. Israel responded massively to isolated fedayeen (commando) actions over both the Jordanian (West Bank) and Egyptian (Gaza) borders. Control and suppression on the part of the Egyptian authorities was almost as strict, and little was done to prevent Israeli incursions causing loss of life not only among Palestinians but also among Egyptian soldiers. Autonomous activities among Palestinians in Palestine, whether under Israeli or Arab control, were thus virtually excluded. Israelization and Jordanization, although surface phenomena, were the order of the day.

The Culture of Resistance
The creation of a culture, and later an organization, of resistance after 1948 thus took shape on the outside, primarily in the neighboring Arab countries, and most notably in Egypt, the Gulf (especially Kuwait) and finally, Jordan. The Arab regimes never looked favorably upon the activities of Palestinians within their countries7, and did their best to maintain strict control over them. The Arab League in Cairo had a bureau for Palestinian affairs, headed by Ahmad Shuqeiri. Stridently anti-Israeli, it also tried to keep tabs on the political activities of Palestinians in Egypt and elsewhere. When the Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964, it was intended to become an arm of Egyptian policy under President Gamal 'Abdel Nasser, and Shuqeiri was placed at its head. In the meantime, however, an alternative and, as it turned out, authentic, exilic national movement had been created -the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, known until the present day by its acronym Fatah. This is the movement which came to symbolize and progressively to define Palestinian nationalist goals. It is therefore not surprising that its leader Yasir Arafat, was (in 1968) elected as Chair of the Executive Committee of the PLO. This was the crowning act in a process which had begun nearly two decades earlier.

The resistance movement which slowly emerged during the 1950s did so on the fringes of larger organizations, first and foremost the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in Cairo, of which Yasir Arafat was elected chairman in 1952. Many of the future leaders of Fatah and the PLO were present from 1952 to 1956 in Cairo or in Gaza, Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf) and Abu Jihad (Khalil al-Wazir), for example. Together, they gradually developed the idea of what Fatah was later to become: an entirely independent, wholly Palestinian, purely nationalist movement in the diaspora, dedicated to regaining Palestine (later on, part of Palestine) for the Palestinians primarily through armed struggle (much later, through diplomatic means). They were inspired by Egyptian president Nasser in July 1956 when he nationalized the Suez Canal. But they were influenced even more by the example of the Algerian FLN (Front de libération nationale), whose armed struggle had begun in 1954. Early in 1957, the core group of future founders of Fatah left for various parts of the Arab world: Arafat and Abu Jihad went to Kuwait where they were later joined by Faruq Qaddumi (Abu Lutuf, until the present time the head of the PLO's political department of the PLO, residing in Tunis, and an opponent of the Oslo accords).Youssef al Najjar, Kamal Adwan and Abu Mazen went to Qatar, while Abu Iyad stayed in Gaza.8 By 1958, they had decided to call their embryonic movement Harakat Tahrir Filastin (Fatah being its reverse initials), and in 1959 they held a clandestine inaugural congress, bringing the movement officially into existence.

Once created, Fatah quickly went about seeking to rally Palestinians all over the Arab world and in the diaspora. This included the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but no particular preference was given to these Palestinian areas, indeed, it would appear that they were, if anything, relatively neglected by the recruitment drive.9 Commando raids by Fatah did not actually begin until January 1965, and these were mounted (usually in a not very effective manner) from Gaza, but also and mainly from the West Bank. The input of Palestinians living in Israel was totally ignored, since they had, in the dominant view of the diaspora organizations, become assimilated as de facto traitors, unless they left Israel. This was the view for a number of years thereafter. Even more inexplicably, the input of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians was also marginal, unless they moved resolutely to join the resistance organizations, notably Fatah, which was at that time concentrated in and around Amman. But such a move meant leaving the homeland and, after the experiences of 1948 onward, many were reluctant to do so. The explanation for this attitude can only be found in the phenomenon of "substitutionism": the Palestinian resistance had substituted itself for Palestine during this period. The phenomenon is clearly reflected in the articles of Filistinuna, the Fatah theoretical journal. 10

After 1967
After the six-day war in June 1967, things shifted slightly. With the defeat of all of the Arab countries, the occupation of what remained of Palestine, and the demonstration of Israel's overwhelming military superiority, the myth of Arab unity and Arab victory was destroyed. Arab countries such as Syria and Egypt became even less amenable to the launching of fedayeen actions from their soil, and the resistance movements gave somewhat greater attention to the establishment of clandestine bases and cells in the West Bank and Gaza. In the latter, resistance activities even escalated until they were severely repressed in 1970. Yasir Arafat himself, in the months which followed the occupation of the West Bank in June 1967, is known to have driven from Ramallah to Nablus, to Bethlehem and other towns, attempting to recruit for Fatah, and to have narrowly escaped capture. But the attempt to establish bases in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was a brief one, stretching from June 1967 to March 1968, and thereafter "the role played by the occupied territories in the national struggle had become an adjunct to the political, military, and institutional base evolving in Arab exile."11 If therefore, the main focus of activities in the period after 1967 was the neighboring Arab states, it was in part because "the leaders of the PLO were, understandably, not keen on seeing the emergence of local leaders on the West Bank"12

The PLO's first "Palestine National Congress" (PNC) was held in Jerusalem on May 28, 1964. Fatah was still not present except in the persons of a few individuals, Abu Jihad, Mohammed al Najjar and Kamal Adwan13, the idea being to tap some of the means being put at the new organization's disposal. Shuqeiri (and Nasser) kept the Fatah representatives at arm's length. The answer then, for Fatah, was to push for armed struggle, and their first action took place on January 1, 1965. This was the defining moment for Fatah, one which clearly made the movement's later evolution possible. Immediately after the six-day debacle, with the PLO discredited along with Arab regimes defeated in the 1967 war, Fatah moved to gain further ground. A meeting was held on June 12, 1967 in Damascus, where it was decided to resume armed struggle, taking advantage of the weakness of the Arab regimes. According to Abu Iyad, this was a key decision, one that would prove decisive in the long term:

[A] great fundraising campaign is launched, particularly among rich Palestinians from the Diaspora. Yussef El-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, Abu Mazen, Khaled el-Hassan are instructed to seek support from our sympathizers and our friends. Others are charged with requesting subsidies from oil-producing countries. We are no longer worried about compromising our financial autonomy, which we had until then jealously defended. We believe that the dramatic situation in which a large number of Arab regimes find themselves will make it impossible for them to place political conditions upon the assistance which they will grant us.14

Of course he - they - got it wrong. Financial dependence entails fiancial - and political - costs, and this was the beginning of the build-up of vested interests. A defeated regime is not necessarily a weak regime, as seen for example in the case of Iraq in 1991. Abu Iyad shows15 how interested in establishing strong financial ties some of the Arab states were, particularly oil-rich states such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, whose king Feysal received Fatah's Abu Jihad with open arms and pockets. The increasing dependence on Saudi Arabia was in fact criticized in the late 1970s by West Bank elites16, yet this essential point did not come up for discussion, certainly not between the 'outside' and the 'inside'. The reliance on Gulf oil money increased even more after the successful Palestinian-Jordanian defensive battle against the Israeli army at Karameh in 1968, the immediate result of which was a spectacular increase in the number of young Palestinians joining the fedayeen movement17. The Gulf states feared the potential radicalization of Palestinians living within their borders and elsewhere. They particularly feared the Marxist Palestinian groups18. It can thus correctly be said that PLO dependence on donor states, what fashionable political analysis today calls rentier regime status, began just after the 1967 six-day war. It continues to this very day, and serves as a secondary causal factor in explaining the many twists and turns of PLO policies.

At any rate, in July 1968 the fourth PNC declared that the only way to liberate Palestine was through armed struggle. With this succession of developments, the Palestinian myth was born: that of salvation by the sword and by Palestinians themselves, albeit coming from outside Palestine to liberate their homeland and their hapless fellow Palestinians living under occupation. And among these outside Palestinians, those of Fatah enjoyed the political and financial favors of the Arab world at large, at least of those with the means to make a difference through their financial support. The so-called 'left' groups, foremost among them the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, managed to frighten the conservative oil kingdoms into the arms of Fatah by the very radicalism of their rhetoric. These regimes showered Fatah with financial and material support, because nothing scared them more than the threat of communist subversion. The ingredients of Palestinian autonomy in parts of the West Bank and Gaza (where the Palestinian 'state' will eventually be declared) were thus created in the combination of myth, the generous financial assistance, and the 40-year reign of the very same men who founded Fatah, minus those among them who were murdered by Israel, that is to say virtually all of them except Arafat and his heir-apparent Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen).

In Jordan, the Palestinians came close to taking over the state in 1970, but were crushed before they could do so in what has become known as the Black September campaign, launched by King Hussein. At that point, the Palestinian leadership moved to Lebanon, where they set up "Fatah-land" (from the Israeli border to the southern outskirts of Beirut), and concentrated their political and military activities in that country and on the northern border of Israel. The 'inside' still had no significant role in the vision and the strategies of the PLO. Indeed, after the loss of its Jordanian base, the PLO leadership became openly fearful of "secessionist tendencies" in the West Bank19. Whether it was a democratic, non-denominational state over all of Palestine, or the establishment of an 'entity' (perhaps a state) in the West Bank and Gaza, an idea adopted by some organizations in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it would be achieved, according to the main thrust of the resistance ideology of the time, through armed struggle and diplomatic negotiations involving the PLO, Israel, and the great powers, mainly the US and the Soviet Union. There was absolutely no notion that the activities of the Palestinians under occupation would make a difference. In the meantime, on the inside, the 1970s, with Israeli occupation, brought grassroots mobilization, sponsored and encouraged largely by the indigenous Communist Party (CP), which achieved primacy during this period over a largely indifferent Fatah, as well as the other PLO factions. The Communists centered their activities on creating an indigenous and local base for the Palestinian national movement - a domestic, as opposed to diaspora resistance movement. Its advantages were also its disadvantages: it was highly trained in clandestine mass organizing; it was pragmatic and secular. Following the lead of the Soviet Union, the CP had always called for the recognition of Israel and the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for the solution of the Palestinian-Israeli and indeed the Arab-Israeli conflict. By 1973, it had combined this position with advocacy of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the recognition of the PLO as sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Yet at this point "the PLO had not yet discovered any political significance in the occupied territories". 20

For most people, the CP was not a solution, because of the conservative and religious nature of the society as a whole and because the PLO, despite its distance in the early 1970s, had rapidly gained ideological hegemony. Meanwhile, the PLO continued to view with concern and some alarm the rise to prominence of even the pro-PLO mayors elected by the largest West Bank towns in 197621, although Israeli repression (deposing and deporting some of them) combined with settler violence (the maiming of two mayors by booby-traps) contributed to the eclipse of their power within five years.

This was demonstrated as, despite all efforts by the CP, the party was progressively displaced by the PLO in general and Fatah in particular in the various social sectors where it had been dominant throughout the 1970s.

The process was accelerated after September 1982, when the Israeli invasion of Lebanon culminated in the PLO's departure from Beirut (followed that same month by the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, for which Ariel Sharon, then Israeli defense minister, was found responsible by Israeli judges). At this time, the PLO lost its last bases on the Israeli border. The Palestinian military forces were moved to Algeria, South Yemen and similar remote places. The focus at this point clearly shifted to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But now the PLO was faced with a dilemma: how to bring the occupied territories into the picture without fundamentally losing part of its authority to the insiders. This is the kind of concern that had in the past been faced by other revolutionary movements and leaders, notably Lenin when he was in exile in Switzerland. But the difference here was that the PLO leadership could not travel back and forth from the outside to the inside. Delegating authority would probably mean alienating it for good, and this is something which, time and again, Arafat, followed by the other leaders, was unwilling to do. He sought a variety of solutions, and even the signature of a kind of condominium accord with King Hussein in 1985 for a measure of co-rule (condominium) between them, which meant in effect with Israel itself. But never was the inside empowered.

The Role of the Intifada
During the Palestinian uprising or intifada which began in December, 1988, the inside proceeded for a time to empower itself. The uprising took the Palestinian leadership by surprise, and quickly spun out of its control. They worked tirelessly to regain the upper hand22, but even after the UNLU (United National Leadership of the Uprising) had been brought under the control of the PLO in Tunis through a process of constant communication, the weight of the inside played a major role in forcing Arafat to make his declaration of independence (November 15, 1988)23 and, later, in establishing his negotiating strategy after the Madrid conference (October 1991). Indeed, the inside played such a major role in the negotiations which followed in Washington that the Oslo accords can be seen as a response of the outside to the challenge posed by the inside. It has also been interpreted as the result of the financial crisis occasioned in the PLO by the interruption of the Gulf States' assistance from 1990, something which doubtless played a role, albeit a modest one24. Israel was offered a variety of things it had not been able to obtain in Washington (most notably, the postponement of any discussion of Jerusalem and settlements to the final status negotiations, and no prohibition on settlement expansion during the interim period). This was an important factor in Rabin's decision to sign with his enemy, Arafat, and the PLO. The price paid was heavy in terms of serious errors on the part of the Palestinian negotiators, errors which could partly and perhaps largely have been avoided had there not been this fundamental ignorance and mistrust of the inside on the part of the outside.

Paradoxically, this continued and currently reinforced supremacy of outside figures comes at a time when diaspora concerns have all but been abandoned, notably the problem of the three and a half million Palestinian refugees and their right of return 25. There is a particular type of literature which is increasingly pointing the finger at Western aid-givers as being partly responsible for the PNA's rising authoritarianism and lack of accountability through their donor policies, which do nothing to help ensure the development of the institutions and practices of civil society and democratic institutionalization; in fact, the reverse is true. I personally do not think this is a trend but rather an ongoing reality, traceable through the European and American phase of influence back before 1991 to the period when the Gulf oil states were the main sponsors of the PLO.

The problem has persisted to the present time, through the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, which must themselves be understood in large part as resulting from the single-minded pursuit by the PLO, then still based in Tunis, of recognition by the US and by Israel as a legitimate negotiating partner. At the time of the Madrid conference of October 1991, which inaugurated the drawn-out set of negotiations between Israel and her Arab adversaries, Washington had accepted Israeli demands to the letter and imposed them at the outset on the Arabs, especially on the Palestinians, now weakened by the consequences of the Gulf War. These demands included the rejection of a separate Palestinian delegation, of PLO participation, or of participation by Palestinians from Jerusalem or outside the occupied Palestinian territories26 .

Arafat thus succeeded in carrying out a historic 'diplomatic revolution' between 1991 and 1993. In exchange, it would seem, excessive concessions were made to Israel which have cast serious doubt on the viability of the coming Palestinian state. This is the view, for example, of one of the West Bank elites, attorney Raja Shehadeh27, whose writings are fraught with deep pessimism28. In his view, "[t]here were good reasons to fear that if a deal was struck between the Israeli side and the Palestinians from within the Occupied Territories the organization outside would become redundant."29 In order to bridge the geographical gulf with the inside by convincing Israel to let the outsiders return, the interests of the inside (that is to say, of Palestine itself, and not only of the local refugee and non-refugee community) were probably sold short30, although the verdict of history has not yet been definitively cast.

When Arafat and tens of thousands of fellow outsiders (mostly PLO members and their families) returned to Palestine beginning in 1994, the outside and the inside together became involved in building the institutions of the PNA. By now, there are tens of thousands of people on the state payroll (if one includes the security services). The exact relationship between outsiders and insiders is unknown. But at the highest level they are all outsiders: Arafat, Abu Mazen, Ahmad Qrei' and Nabil Sha'ath (the first two, founding members of Fatah, Qrei' -[Abu Ala'] the head of the Palestinian negotiating team in Oslo, and Sha'ath a principal in the preparation of the Oslo-based Interim Accords on Palestinian Self-Governance. President Yasir Arafat's wife, Soha Arafat, made the point candidly in a 1998 newspaper interview, when she accused the President's close advisors (all of whom are returnees) of being corrupt and authoritarian, and thus tarnishing his image. At the same time she minimized the role in this respect of his government ministers (in their majority locals )31 because of their lesser importance in the decision-making process32. The most notable instance of quarreling over patronage and pie-dividing in the area of international aid moneys and programs has taken place at the top, among returnees, for example between Nabil Sha'ath and Ahmad Qrei' before the latter took on his job as President (Speaker) of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). It is always Arafat who makes the crucial decisions33 in his 'neo-patrimonial' style, aimed at maintaining a 'healthy' level of competition among his followers, while avoiding an explosion. At the next level, in the ministries, directors-general number 460, according to the archivist of the presidential office, when in fact there are closer to 1,000. Up to 65 percent are outsiders, depending on sources. The same goes for the perhaps 2,000 directors in the ministries. They dominate the executive branch. On the other hand, the inside heavily dominates the PLC, or parliament elected in 1996 (although the numbers vary depending on how many years of exile defines a person as a returnee rather than a local, there are by all counts well over fifty locals in the 88-member body34. But its head, Speaker Ahmad Qrei', a returnee who was elected to the PLC from Jerusalem and who for decades has controlled large portions of PLO finances, in turn heavily dominates that body.

Conclusion
It would appear that the struggle will continue between those two bodies, reflecting to a certain extent the clash of interests between the inside (and as it happens of the democratic and civil society striving to emerge) and the outside respectively (i.e., the legislative branch representing the inside, the executive branch the outside). If a prediction may be ventured (something very tenuous): as long as Arafat is there, the outside will tighten its grip. When Arafat retires or disappears from the scene, the inside will have a fighting chance (and I am speaking of a political fight) of prevailing in the succession struggle. Socially speaking, the Palestinian case resembles other examples of national and revolutionary movements coming to power, such as the Soviet or the Algerian cases, where the outside (Lenin and Boumedienne) took over after the struggle had been won. What distinguishes this case is the extraordinarily long period of struggle (over half a century), and the resulting fact that two cultures (the locals and the returnees) have emerged within a single nationality. And this breach will be long in healing.

Notes

1. Olivier Carré, Le mouvement national palestinien (Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1977), pp.66-76.

2.Categories developed in Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State. Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin, Texas: Texas University Press, 1980), Chapters 4, 5 and 6. The national consciousness of these '1948 Palestinians' and its articulation by cultural and political elites have greatly developed since the decade which followed the nakba (Palestinian disaster) of 1948, particularly after the mid-1970s.

3.Helga Baumgarten, Palestina: Befreiung in den Staat (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991), 1991, p. 211; Gresh, The PLO, pp. 20-21.

4.Ibid., p. 26.

5. Elias Sanbar, Palestine 1948. L'expulsion (Paris and Washington, DC: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1984), pp. 211-212.

6.Ilan Halevi, Question Juive: la tribu, la loi, l'espace (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1981), p. 278. Gresh, The PLO, pp. 25-26.

7.Abou Iyad, Palestinien sans patrie: Entretiens avec Eric Rouleau (Paris: Fayolle, 1978), p. 51.

8.Carré, pp. 131-132.

9.Baumgarten, pp. 175-176. In explaining the ideological evolution of Fatah, the author places great emphasis on "the specific situation in which the Palestinian migrants had lived since 1948 in Kuwait" (p. 176).

10. Yezid Sayegh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford, Oxford University Press) 1997, p. 181.

11.Emile Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics Since 1967 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1988), p.

12.Abou Iyad, p. 75.

13.Ibid. p. 90.

14.Ibid. p. 91

15.Sahliyeh, p. 71.

16.Sayegh, p. 207.

17.Abou Iyad, pp. 105-106.

18.Gresh, p. 112.

19.Sahliyeh, p. 92.

20.Rafik Halabi, The West Bank Story (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanvich, 1982), pp. 121 and 127.

211.Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Intifada (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), pp. 191-192.

22.Jamal Nassar and Roger Heacock, "The Revolutionary Transformation of the Palestinians Under Occupation" in Jamal Nassar and Roger Heacock, eds., Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990), p. 198.

23.For the political economy approach to contemporary developments in the region, and particularly with regard to the PLO, see Martin Beck, "Can Financial Aid Promote Regional Peace Agreements? The Case of the Arab-Israeli Conflict", Mediterranean Politics 2(2), (Autumn 1997) pp. 49-70. On the role of the withholding of Gulf oil revenues, see p. 63.

24.Lamis Andoni, "Extremism and the Prospects for Palestinian National Dialogue" in Muriel Asseburg and Volker Perthes, eds., Surviving the Stalement: Approaches to Strengthening the Palestinian Entity (Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos Verlag, 1998), p. 58.

25.Camille Mansour, Beyond Alliance: Israel and US Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p.187.

26.Raja Shehadeh, From Occupation to Interim Accords: Israel and the Palestinian Territories (London: Kluwer Law International, 1997), p. 16.

27.Ibid., p. 2.

28.Ibid., p. 128-129.

29.This is indeed the perception of the principal negotiator of the Oslo accords on the Israeli side, Yuri Savir: "…Arafat was sending us a definite message: the Washington talks would grind on endlessly, but in Oslo, where the PLO was officially represented, he was prepared to compromise." Yuri Savir, The Process. 100 Days that Changed the Middle East (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 4. He also contrasts the meticulous preparation of the Israelis at all levels and in every field (political, economic, security) during their negotiations on implementing the Oslo accords of September 1993. "The jockeying for position within the PLO was the main reason that Arafat stalled on choosing a delegation to the talks on implementing the agreement [signed in Washington on September 13, 1993]. Neither did the Palestinians do any serious preparatory work. The situation on our side was precisely the opposite." (Ibid., p. 81).

30.Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre (JMCC), "The Final List of the Palestinian Cabinet as announced by Tayeb Abdul Rahim, Presidential Secretary on August 9, 1998" (Jerusalem, 1998). According to this list, 17out of 28 ministers and ministers of state are 'residents' while 11 are returnees (13 of 22 full ministers).

31.Al Hayat newspaper, London, December 14, 1998.

32.Rex Brynen, "Buying Peace? A Critical Assessment of International Aid to the West Bank and Gaza", Journal of Palestine Studies 25 (3), (Spring 1996) p. 84.

34.Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre, The Palestinian Council (updated second edition), Jerusalem, 1998 Back to top


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