Humpty Dumpty...Democracy...and the Experience of National Liberation: The Palestinian Case
"When I use a word"
Humpty said in a rather scornful tone, "It means just what I
choose it to mean - neither more nor less".
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can
make words mean different things".
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is
to be master - that's all."
Alice Through The Looking Glass
Democracy Real and Imagined
While today there seems to be universal unanimity that Democracy is a good and desirable thing, confusion more often than not is the outcome of any attempt to try and give precise meaning to this concept. This is hardly surprising. The word democracy has changed its meaning more than once. Its usage over time to signify different and apparently opposite meanings has created an ambiguity which has only been enhanced by the swelling ranks of its supporters (Benoist1993). Today more than ever democracy has become identified with a particular economic, social and political organisational structure. Historically this has not always been the case though this is conveniently forgotten. While this historical amnesia might be understandable as an ideological stance, what is more noteworthy is the need various regimes and political movements have to march under the democratic banner despite being totally alien to it. What is perplexing is the speed with which the political establishment in the liberal democratic states of Western Europe and the United States are prepared to grant indulgences, despite knowing full well the worthlessness of these protestations. This phenomenon itself is part and parcel of the new meaning the term democracy has assumed in the aftermath of the termination of super power rivalry and the temporary ascendancy of the liberal democratic model in the shape of the capitalist state and the unquestioned acknowledgment of the market as the final arbiter, regulator, and supreme God of humanity in the closing years of the final decade of the twentieth century. The term has come to posses a moral, some would say an almost religious, significance, which defies all attempts of analysis and understanding.
Originally, democracy meant rule by the common people. In this sense, and even before the advent of modern class society, it was very much a class affair. It meant that power should be in the hands of the largest class, the poorest, least educated and the propertyless. As a result, democracy was feared and rejected by the educated, the cultured, and the wealthy. As far back as classical Greece, democracy was seen by the enlightened and the educated as one of the worst types of government and society imaginable. The rule of the people (synonymous with the mob) was regarded as a threat to all the cherished values of a civilized and orderly society. It would curtail individual freedom and lead to anarchy. On this there was total unanimity among all traditional political thinkers starting with Plato right down to the mid nineteenth century. It was only with the birth of modern socialist, egalitarian and libertarian ideas that democracy once against acquired a positive connotation. After a long struggle to establish the right of universal suffrage, Democracy was to gradually become a legitimate contender as an acceptable perhaps even a desirable, form of government.
Currently Democracy has become a term of commendation. Though the concepts of "power of the people" and "will of the people" are rather vague, democracy as it is advocated today is linked in one way or the other to the idea of representative government. The key to representative government is voting, and participation in the electoral process, though this seems to be a far cry from the classical understanding of democracy. In contrast, classical democratic theory required participants in the electoral process to be informed, impartial and thoughtful. Indeed this applied to the practice of political action as a whole. Voting (the most visible act of participation in self government) placed the voter under an obligation to consider the interests of the public, not his own narrow private interests, and to be ever mindful of this moral obligation.
It is necessary before attempting to launch an investigation examining the pertinence of "democracy" in national liberation and national independence movements, to try and pin down the term and endow it with some recognisable content, removing it from the moral and rhetorical plain. What does democracy actually mean in practice? Does it denote a particular form of government? Does it denote a particular system of choosing a government? Does it signify the rule of the majority? Does it mean government by the representatives of a majority of the people? Is it government by the people? Is it government for the people? Is it government by consent? Where does sovereignty reside? Is democracy merely a method for choosing between a set of competing elites because the best government can only be that of the wisest, and these must always be a few? Or is popular power the fundamental substance of democracy without which we have form but no substance? Indeed there are as many definitions of democracy as there are questions.
The reigning confusion arises as a result of a deliberate equation of the ideal form of democracy with the form it has assumed in western liberal democracies. This has nothing or little in common with the Athenian form of democracy. Democracy in the classical Greek sense signifies a particular type of society not a particular form of government. Athenian democracy meant the absence of a division between the state and society. What this really meant was the absence of a professional state apparatus whose function was solely to administer the affairs of the citizens. The citizen body governed itself directly through active participation in administering its own affairs. Participation in government was a duty which fell upon every citizen. The current democratic model makes no such claims. It rejects citizen participation, or what has come to be termed direct democracy, on the grounds of impracticality(at best). More faithful proponents of elite theory want to protect it from "mass politics" and "mass opinion". Current political practice in the liberal democratic state does not however necessarily meet the criterion posed by advocates of the model. Democracy as government of the representatives of the majority of the people is not easily attainable. Both in the United States and in Britain participation in the electoral process is relatively low. In Britain for example, it has been pointed out that no British government in the past forty years has been elected with even a bare majority of the votes cast. In practice the government is elected by and so represents only the largest minority of those who vote. Thus the majority of the voting public are governed by a government not of their own choosing. That this is the end result of the workings of the system should come as no surprise to anyone well acquainted with the development of the struggle for universal suffrage and the affinity between the struggle for democracy and that for the transformation of society as a whole.
"Actually existing democracy" as it has evolved since the extension of universal suffrage to all citizens of the state who have attained a certain age is a relatively recent state of affairs. It has been described in the words of an enthusiastic proponent (Macpherson 1991) in the following terms :
" Democracy as a system of government is a system by which
power is exerted by the state over individuals and groups within
it. More than that, a democratic government like any other,
exists to uphold and enforce a certain kind of society, a certain
set of relations between individuals, a certain set of rights and
claims that people have on each other both directly and
indirectly through their rights to property. These relations
themselves are relations of power...." .
Written in the early 1960's the above passage is strikingly forthright. It would be difficult today to come across a similar exposition. Indeed, advocates of the Western liberal democratic model would most likely argue against the validity of the above, and insist on the universalist applicability of democracy to serve the needs and fulfil the desires of all peoples, nations, races, sexes, creeds, and social classes. In effect however, democracy has been redefined, narrowed and diluted to make it compatible with the persisting belief in the necessity and the virtue of rule by elites. Representation itself has become the means of limiting popular participation and control, and of retaining the day to day powers of government in the hands of an elite. The essence of Athenian democracy has always been understood to be the participatory component: popular power and popular sovereignty. Paradoxically when democracy gained acceptance, this central component was eliminated. It would be argued in defence of the existing structure, that participation continued to exist and that this took the form of pressure and interest groups. It was no longer individuals, but groups for whom this possibility existed. The democratic method itself replaced popular power as the core of the democratic system, and this was described by an another enthusiastic exponent (Schumpeter) as :
" That institutional arrangement for arriving at political
decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide
by means of a competitive struggle for the peoples
vote".
Another well known academic (Lipset) was equally laudatory. In his view
" the distinctive and most valuable element of
democracy is the formation of a political elite in the
competitive struggle for the vote of a mainly passive
electorate".
The concept of a "passive electorate" assumes a rather startling importance in the writings of many advocates of the western liberal democratic model. Amazingly it does not give rise for concern. On the contrary, it is viewed with approval. Some political theorists, throwing caution to the wind write that too much popular interest or activity could lead to mass movements subversive of liberty and democracy itself, while others go on to declare that "the belief that a very high level of participation is always good for democracy is not valid" (Lipset, Kornhauser, Lippman). At the heart of this attitude is a mistrust of the masses. This is intrinsically the same conservative stance evinced by political theorists like Burke who talked of " the swinish multitude", and of Mill who talked of "the common herd". Current academic opinion is of the view that electoral apathy has come to be seen as essential in maintaining stability, because "mass participation was associated with societal disorder and a tendency towards totalitarianism"(Deegan 1993). Thus in the "New Democratic Theory" and in the "Competitive Theory of Democracy", we find advocacy of a political order based on the existence of " a relatively apathetic majority during election periods". Democracy consists of free competition for votes. This is a competition of groups at the top and only a minimum level of popular participation is necessary or indeed useful. The absence of social unrest is a prerequisite for the success of this process. Thus only countries with a high standard of living and a reasonable spread of income can qualify. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the globe are unfit to practice democratic politics of this sort, because poverty, illiteracy, hunger and ignorance serve to render a country " unlikely" to sustain democracy according to the proponents of the model. We will return to discuss this when we look at the possibilities open to the backward capitalist states of the periphery later on in this paper.
The inadequacies of current democratic practice continue to make themselves felt. A main assumption of the democratic principle is that where there is no universal agreement on ends, matters should be settled according to the will of the majority. Yet the existence of permanent minorities within democratic societies, minorities whose aspirations, wishes, and even existence, are systematically overridden and ignored in the collective decision making process, can and often does lead to the disenfranchisement of large sections of society. In such cases a majoritarian democracy is simply unworkable. Northern Ireland with its large Catholic minority is a case in point. According to the prevailing democratic principle, the will of the majority should suffice to establish policy. In practice this has proved unworkable and led to an on going armed conflict which itself has further deepened the divisions separating the Protestant majority from the Catholic minority in the province.
A further problem which has proved just as divisive is the presumed presence of shared values among all the citizens of a particular society. Rousseau's general will has no place in contemporary societies whose nature is inherently pluralistic and diverse. This calls for the need to arrive at a consensus or compromise on what can and cannot be done among the various competing interests and groups. In this regard, some political theorists have observed that electoral democracy can only survive by ignoring major social injustices and thus not alienating powerful interest groups. Alternatively, for democracy to be able to survive and not to become immobilized, society must be founded on a substantial degree of social and economic equality. Political equality in and by itself will not suffice. Rousseau had long ago correctly observed that the existence of large inequalities within a society, would prevent a common will or common interest from emerging and binding the various social groups comprising this society together.
While formal political equality is the principle embodied in the possession by each and every citizen of one vote, inequality in wealth and economic power is in itself a form of political inequality. This contradicts the principle of the equality of political power expressed in the slogan one person one vote. Other forms of inequality, social, racial , sexual also run counter to the principle of political equality. In actually existing democracies there are blatant inequalities in the distribution of political power in every other significant respect. It goes without saying that economic power is political power, and it has not passed unnoticed that the principle of equality is strictly implemented only in respect to votes, while every other form of political power is left to be distributed according to the "gross inequities" of the capitalist market.
The issue of consent, another cornerstone of democratic theory is also not as straightforward as it appears on first sight. The issue is often posed in terms which appear to indicate that consent is the essence of democratic government. In practice it is not often clear whether democracy is a means of bringing about the peoples consent to what the government proposes to do, or whether it is the government which should conduct itself in accordance with the wishes of the people. As is readily observed the two things are fundamentally different. Yet in both cases consent exists, or as has been observed, can be "manufactured"(Chomsky 1988). More confusing still, it is theoretically possible for people to consent to the abolition of democracy itself. Is consent in this sense valid? Is a dictatorship resting on popular support a democratic dictatorship? Numerous dictators have been installed in power and continued to be supported by popular support. In the Middle East, and elsewhere to be sure, political parties , campaigning on a non democratic platform (and sometimes on an anti democratic platform) have garnered tremendous popular support. Evidently political democracy is/was not deemed sufficient in the eyes of those particular electorates. There are higher principles which supersede democracy. These can take either a moral or a material form.
The problem of consent in actually existing democracies is resolved in a formal fashion. Representative and direct democracy is rejected as impractical and time wasting. The organs of authority attempt to restrict popular influence or control over the political system in every possible way. Mass politics is to be avoided at all costs, as it is necessarily characterised by unruly activity by the citizens outside the structures and rules instituted by society to govern political action. Once the electors have made their choice, those elected to the task should be left to carry on their job, with the least possible interference or pressure. The role of referenda is " to advise and consent". Linked to the issue of consent is the exceedingly narrow sphere to which democratic practice is confined in society. Its sway extends to a very few public institutions (and to many voluntary ones which themselves comprise what is commonly termed "civil society"). The overwhelming number of centrally important institutions, both political and economic continue to be run by unaccountable and unelected oligarchies. Furthermore, in the workplace, where people spend a central part of their life they have no share in the decisions that immediately affect them. Democracy in the workplace is not even on the "democratic agenda".
It is important however not to loose sight of the fact that historically the struggle for democracy has been synonymous with the struggle for fundamental liberties. Universal suffrage in itself is only the first step on the road to the creation of a fully democratic society. If in the narrow sense the essence of democracy is taken to be the process of choosing between elites competing to govern, this itself requires a degree of freedom. The contending parties must be allowed to publish programs and to make competing claims. The electors must be able to question them and to voice their doubts and their support. Choice in itself implies debate, and this necessitates a degree of freedom. Yet the fact remains that it is possible to have pluralism without democracy, and to have participation without democracy. But pluralism and participation can be important stations towards a measure of democratisation. Democracy viewed as popular power should and can be seen as a "continuous process of interaction between government and society, with the maximum involvement of the people in public decision making at every level"(Arblaster 1993).As such there are today ,no existing states which can serve as models, and which can be reproduced carbon copy fashion throughout the world.
The struggle for democracy has essentially been a quest for equality and social justice. Not merely formal equality, but the construction of a new and as yet non existent world, a Utopia, which early on took a socialist form. The entrenched powers of wealth, property and privilege, saw democracy as a threat. They skirmished and waged numerous battles in order to preserve their power and privilege. The reform of the political process, which was the outcome of the steadfast struggle waged by movements like the Chartists in England, was agreed to reluctantly. The ruling classes consented to the surrender of part of their privileges in order to maintain their wealth and hegemony. Eventually a new state structure was built in Europe which paid homage to the principles of freedom, consent and participation. Tensions continued however to abound, and eternal vigilance was necessary to ensure that there will be no defaulting. Inevitably there were regressions, as with the rise of Nazism and Fascism between the two world wars, and the betrayal of the promise of the Bolshevik Revolution. Yet on the whole, the ruling classes succeeded in establishing their hegemony politically, while economically their long and profitable dominance of the colonial world enabled them to establish an economic order which gave the people a previously undreamed off standard of living. It can and has been argued that they have "manufactured consent" for this new power sharing arrangement. Whether this is true or not, it is undeniable that in Humpty's words, democracy currently means the Western Liberal model," neither more no less". We will now turn to the rest of the world where democracy does not obtain, and try to observe whether the historical experience of those countries, inextricably interwoven as it has been with that of the imperialist capitalist countries of western Europe can have any meaningful impact on their current political make up and practice.
The Colonial Experience
The struggle of the colonial peoples of Africa Asia and Latin America for independence and the control of their native resources has been an intrinsic part of the world wide struggle for freedom, justice, equality and democracy, despite the existence of differences and variations between country and country and continent and continent. It is worth bearing in mind at this juncture that the freedoms and liberties wrung by the powerless and the underprivileged in the emerging capitalist order in Europe had no parallel in the colonial world. Irrespective of the degree of political liberalization exercised at home, no colonial authority would sanction even the bare minimum of political or any other sort of rights when it came to the indigenous peoples of the colonies. Whereas the European working class was able to establish its right to its own political organization in order to press what it perceived to be its just demands, political, social, and economic, no parallel situation obtained in the colonies. The indigenous peoples were not allowed to establish their own parties and independence movements in order to press the case for self determination and statehood in an open and public fashion. Brutal repression was the traditional and inevitable response to any attempts at self organization for whatever purpose. Indeed the colonial masters were unable to comprehend the motives behind the natives constant violent outbursts. The problem presented itself as one of law and order. Given the premise of the white man's burden and the basic inferiority of the colored races, the situation could not be otherwise.
In specific colonial situations, North America, Australia, parts of South America, the aboriginal races were wiped out. Colonial possessions were seized by force and maintained by force. Neither consent nor participation were part of the process of government. Indeed even when changes were being reluctantly undertaken back home, surrendering a measure of power and autonomy to the public at large, the inhabitants of Europe's colonial possessions remained outside the pale. This should not be surprising. Athenian democracy excluded its slave population and of course Athenian women, while in most European states it is only well into the first half of the twentieth century that women have been given the vote. The need therefore does not arise to try and explain why the indigenous peoples of the colonies resorted to violence to achieve their liberation. There was no other avenue open to them . Thus throughout the long history of colonialism indigenous movements of rebellion and revolt against foreign rule continued unabated irrespective of the guise they happened to assume at any given historical moment.
The First World War heralded a watershed, both in Europe itself and as far as the colonial peoples were concerned. The League of Nations was established, and a new world order was declared, based on the principles of national self determination and the freedom of all nations as embodied in President Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points. Despite the rhetoric and the new discourse, the aftermath of the war, for the colonial peoples, merely signified a redivision of the spoils of war. As far as the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire were concerned, the dismemberment of the Empire was to result in a redivision between Britain and France, giving Britain the lion's share of the booty. The new boundaries drawn on the map aimed at concluding a compromise between the rival claims of the victorious colonial powers. Under the umbrella of the League of Nations, mandated territories and protectorates were established furthering the fiction that the aim of foreign rule was the well being of the indigenous peoples. Neither the peoples of Asia or Africa reaped any benefits from this new world order. The only bright star on the horizon was the successful Bolshevik Revolution in Czarist Russia. This was to be the new ally, (decidedly out of self interest), of the yet to be established national liberation movements in the colonies. Lenin, the architect of this new alliance, looked to the colonial peoples to play a supporting role. Capitalism's chains had to be broken where they had been forged. Only the world wide overthrow and transformation of capitalism would ensure the freedom and independence of the colonial peoples. The struggle for freedom could not be separated from the struggle for democracy, equality and social justice. The struggle of the colonial peoples and that of the working peoples of the capitalist countries complimented each other. They were natural allies. The First Congress of the peoples of the East was held in Baku in 1921 with the aim of forging this grand alliance (Tarabulsi1972,14). Later the Communist International was entrusted with the task of co-ordinating revolutionary activity word wide. The story of the twists and turns of Comintern policy do not concern us here, What is of import is the perception shared by revolutionary communists, by nationalists, and by the colonial authorities themselves, that this indeed was a single and unified struggle.
A real new world order, or perhaps, a different world order was ushered in at the termination of the second world war. This indeed was to be the signal for the demise of colonialism and the beginning of the de colonisation process. National independence and national liberation movements sprung up everywhere. Self selected groups of young people who had studied, fought, or worked in the colonial heartlands, returned home and took up arms against the continued presence of foreign rule. Violent means were employed to make the presence of the new movements felt and to mobilise the indigenous masses. In the writings of the theorists of the anti colonial struggle, like Franz Fannon, violence assumed a central place. It was necessary and it was cleansing. For all their protestations of civilisation and morality the colonial masters did not hesitate to resort to violence in order to defend their interests. It was only when the downtrodden, the exploited and the oppressed took up arms to defend themselves and to assume control of what is rightfully theirs, that the civilised world shook in horror at the unspeakable violence being committed, and which cast doubts on the validity and sanctity of their claims.
The borders of many of these colonial possessions had been drawn without taking into consideration anything other than the greed of the colonial settlers, thus they cut across tribes, races, nations, and ethnic groups. In some places more than one nationalist party vied for the affections of the masses, and to be recognised as the standard bearer of the national liberation struggle. Consequently this resulted in inter ethnic or inter tribal conflict which was to have dire consequences in the post liberation period. In numerous colonised territories, the reigning colonial power nurtured an indigenous class of traders and officials who were accorded economic privileges and some of the trappings of authority to be wielded on behalf of the colonial authorities. Inevitably this led to internal divisions as certain groups from among the rich and privileged sided with the colonial authorities in an attempt to protect their privileged status. Different colonial powers perused different paths in their efforts to extend and maintain their control. Thus Britain and France behaved in different ways. The French perused a civilising mission. In theory at least, they wanted to convert the indigenous people everywhere into loyal French citizens. This did not however imply extending the rights and privileges which French citizens in the metropole enjoyed, to the inhabitants of France's far flung Empire. Liberal rhetoric and racist practice co-existed side by side. The British on the other hand, preferred to rely on an indigenous class of collaborators to carry out their policies and to exercise their dominance through them. For the rest they left well alone. They did their best to tamper as little as possible with the existing social and economic order in so far as their interests were not involved.
The First World War, in addition to leading to a redrawing of the map of the world and the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, also created a new colonial discourse. The establishment of the League of Nations went hand in hand with the propagation of a new myth to the effect that old style colonialism had come to an end. The member states of the League, or at least the leading members, took upon themselves the task of watching over and leading the peoples of the colonial world to nationhood and self determination . Until such a time as the indigenous peoples achieved maturity their affairs would continue to be managed by the European powers according to the agreements they had reached among themselves. Palestine was singled out as a unique case. In the first place it had to be concocted by dismembering natural Syria into a number of parts. Thus Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq were established as separate entities. But whereas the neighboring territories were administered under the rubric of the new colonial discourse, Palestine was singled out for greater things. Its indigenous population was eventually to make way to an on going wave of immigration and settlement led and instigated by East European Jews, mostly under European protection, and with the support of the then currently existing world order. Thus the terms of the Balfour Deceleration were included within the terms of the Mandate when it was bestowed on Britain by the League of Nations. Paradoxically the major part of this enterprise took place at the same time as the overwhelming part of European Jewry was being wiped out in the gas chambers of Hitler's Germany, with little being done by the family of nations to thwart this early example of ethnic cleansing (at least as far as the twentieth century was concerned). The post Second World War era witnessed the attainment of independence of the overwhelming majority of colonised peoples in Asia and Africa. Algeria in 1962 was the last Arab country to break the chains of foreign rule. With the exception of a few isolated instances, (Zimbabwe, Portugal's African colonies, Namibia, etc), the age of colonialism was over. There were notable exceptions. The Apartheid regime in South Africa continued to enslave the country's black population; the Kurdish people ignored and marginalised at the close of Great War, remained divided in three different nation states; and the Palestinians remained uprooted and dispersed, Palestine itself dismembered, and those Palestinians remaining on their land pauperised and denied their national identity.
Invariably, the national liberation and national independence movements were born in violent opposition to the European colonial powers, Whether the Mau Mau in Kenya, The FLN in Algeria, or the Vietminh in Vietnam, none of these movements possessed or could ever hope to achieve the legitimacy accorded to political movements in the metropolitan country, even those totally opposed to the established order, and advocating its overthrow by force. These movements were born underground, or soon driven their after their creation, and persisted in their struggle until they achieved victory. Whether tribal coalitions, or national fronts grouped round a leading party or movement, their internal structures were shaped by the actual conditions of the struggle and of developments in the respective countries. They were not, and could not be mirror images of conservative, liberal, or revolutionary political groupings in the countries of the metropole. Survival in the harsh atmosphere of violent repression unleashed by the colonial power in its desperate attempt to hold on to its colonial possession necessitated secrecy and conspiratorial methods. These in turn gave birth to the required organisational forms, hierarchies and structures which enabled the struggle to continue. By necessity consensus politics obtained at the early stages; people joined voluntarily. There could be no compulsion at the start of such an adventure. With the passage of time, the increase in size and tasks, and the widening of struggle to embrace large masses of people and multi faceted forms, a centralised form of organisation was established. This was borrowed from the Stalinist parties of the Communist bloc. In the aftermath of victory and the realisation of independence, this was to make its presence felt, invariably with negative consequences. In the case of the Palestinian national movement, the picture is similar yet at the same time different, due to the peculiarities of Palestinian history and to the unique characteristics of the Palestinian problem, which became intertwined both with the still unresolved Jewish problem, and the struggle for Arab Unity. Both were to have an effect which dictated the form and path the Palestine National Movement was to adopt for a large part of its existence, and perhaps account for its many failures and rare successes.
The Pre History of the Palestine National Movement
It is commonly pointed out that powerful barriers inhibit the growth of democracy among Palestinians. Various arguments are called upon to validate this self evident assertion. The most important of course has been the inability of the Palestinians to realise statehood , or to state it more plainly, the success of the Zionist settlement project in transforming Palestine into Israel. For the Palestinians, the age of colonialism has not come to a close. A settler colonial regime which shares many similarities with the White settler regime in South Africa, while departing from it in some fundamental aspects, has prevented the Palestinians from achieving statehood, and continues to do so up to this date. Not only was Palestine itself transformed into an alien entity, Israel, but a large part of Palestinians fell under Israeli occupation, while those who found refuge in the neighboring Arab states were manipulated by Arab regimes and strictly controlled. Is it any wonder then that the Palestinians have been unable to develop a democratic process? Belatedly revisionist attempts are being made, in an open attempt to forward a specific political agenda, to point out the existence of a democratic process albeit " starting in a superficial elitist form under the British Mandate"(Maoz1993, 214), and highlighting the unique experiences of the Palestinians which render them "likely candidates to spearhead democratisation reforms in the Middle East"(Kaufman 1993,46). Nothing in the historical record gives substance to such claims.
The colonial experience itself in most of the countries of Africa and Asia which were in colonial tutelage to Western liberal democratic states has militated against the development of democratic practices and structures. Moreover, the requirements of the struggle for independence as has been noted by all students of the de colonisation experience, favored more often than not the emergence of a dominant single party or mass movement. This was the expression of a people totally united in a single and over riding will to throw off the yoke of foreign domination. Inevitably this has usually been carried into the post independent state structure as a one party system. Even where multi party politics have been tried in the immediate aftermath of the establishment of independence, these have been found wanting. They soon degenerated into tribal politics and served as a disguise for the promotion of inter ethnic tensions. The coming of independence forced the fledgling states to face the political implications of population mobility, displacement, statelessness, the absence of a bureaucratic cadre, and unresolved border disputes. It soon became apparent to all that a political independence which lacked economic substance was a mere charade.
In order to come to grips and comprehend the current workings of the contemporary Palestinian national movement, it is necessary to cast a look at its historical antecedents. For this we have to travel further back than the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or the 1948 war and the resulting dismemberment of Palestine and the consequent dispersal of the Palestinians. It is really necessary to go back even further than the period of the British Mandate and survey the last days of the Ottoman Empire, in order to witness the birth of Arab nationalism. Such an enquiry would confirm an important fact: Palestinian national sentiment, or Palestinian nationalism, is a phenomenon of fairly recent origin (Budeiri1997,195-198).
It was the Ottoman Empire's attempts to reform itself in order to withstand and repulse the on-going encroachments of the European powers that gave birth to a specific Turkish nationalism which served in the end to dissolve the ties which linked the peoples of the empire together. Once national or ethnic origin replaced the religious bond, the non Turkic peoples of the Empire began going their separate ways. This held also for the Arab subjects of the Empire. In this sense, Arab nationalism was the twin brother of Turkish nationalism, and raised the call for national political rights and freedoms for the Arab nation. This was a collective nationalist demand, not a democratic demand in the strict sense of the term. Shedding the non Turkic parts of the Empire, Mustapha Kemal succeeded in establishing a Turkish nation state. The Arabs were not so fortunate. The demise of the Czarist regime in Russia had earned the Turks a respite, while the British and the French were busily trying to digest those parts of the Empire which had already fallen under their control. The forcible termination of Faisal's rule in Damascus signalled the inability to withstand the combined onslaught of Anglo-French power. Syria was partitioned between the victorious allies with scant attention given to the demands of the nascent Arab movement. The new conditions forced themselves on the constituent parts of the Arab national movement. Already the foundations of a narrow local nationalism were being laid(Khalidi1997,167). By necessity each component of the national movement began to struggle for its own emancipation and against its "own" colonial regime.
In Palestine the issue was compounded as a result of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandatory power's declared intention of honoring its provisions. The Palestinian National Movement, a junior part in any case of the larger Arab national movement, was torn between its enmity to British colonialism and a perceived need to address itself to the Mandatory authorities to put a stop to Jewish immigration and the transfer of land. The mainstay of its policy was the demand for the termination of the Mandate and the establishment of an Independent Arab state in Palestine. Any attempt to co operate with the Mandatory authorities would in fact imply acceptance of the provisions of the Mandate, and the granting of legitimacy to the Zionist movement and its settlement activities in the country. Of necessity it could not raise democratic demands and address itself to the British to grant these, while at the same time calling for a struggle against continued British control and domination. The numerous political organizations which mushroomed in the twenties and thirties were not democratic, neither in form nor in content. They were indistinguishable, and did not require or solicit popular democratic recognition for their claims to address the Mandatory power on behalf of the Arab inhabitants of the country. Without exception, these organizations were controlled by members of the traditional elite, an oligarchy of notables and wealthy families whose authority was based on traditional elements of prestige, possession of land and senior religious and government positions. In other circumstances they would have been the natural mediating agents of colonial rule, and this in fact accounts for a lot of the tension that did exist within the Palestine national movement, and the dissension that was rife in its ranks.
In retrospect the death of Kassam and his followers in 1932 marks a watershed. A national leadership centered round the Mufti of Jerusalem, the appointed head of the Supreme Moslem Council, was intermittently engaged in a dialogue with the Mandatory authorities in an attempt to curtail Jewish immigration and prevent the continuing transfer of land to Jewish settlers. The British colonial presence itself did not figure prominently on the nationalist agenda. Indeed looking at the experience of neighboring states, a modus vivendi of sorts would have been worked out between colonised and coloniser based on the implicit undertaking that a time would necessarily arrive when foreign control and domination would come to an end. Britain's commitment to the terms of the Balfour Declaration militated against such a possibility. Changing conditions within Palestine and the transformations wrought by the influx of hundreds of thousands of European newcomers, forced a different set of policies on a national leadership than the ones they would have been naturally inclined to pursue . Targeting the British colonial presence itself as the main enemy was not a choice consciously made by the Mufti and the social and economic elite of the country, The beginnings of the armed struggle, symbolised by Kassam and his small band of rural desperados, was a spontaneous act of self defence at the grass roots level, which affected first and foremost the countryside and the peasantry(Swedenburg 1995,2,30).
1936 to 1939 were the years of the Great Arab Revolt which assumed and continues to assume a central place in Palestinian nationalist history and mythology. The military and political defeat suffered at the hands of British Imperialism brought to an end the period of independent Palestinian political activity. This defeat was the outcome of an unfavorable balance of forces and the determination on the part of Britain not to part with Palestine. Although internal dissension made itself felt in the Palestinian camp, specially during the latter part of the Revolt, this was not a factor of magnitude as far as the defeat itself was concerned. It is naive to deny that the Palestinians committed themselves to the revolt in a total fashion. Their organisation, their fighting methods etc. could have been improved upon. This was however a relatively backward society fighting a perceived threat to its existence with the materials available to it and under the command of its traditional leadership. The neighboring states did not fare better in their attempts to challenge the colonising power on the field of battle. Changed circumstances ten years later, with Britain having just emerged weakened and impoverished from a war with Hitler's Germany would cause British policy makers to react differently in the face of a Jewish rebellion with very much the same aims. Bringing the British presence in the country to an end and securing the country's independence. From then on, the neighboring Arab states, particularly those with close ties to Britain, were to assume a paramount role in speaking on behalf of Palestine and its Arab inhabitants. Palestinians would no longer be able to play a sovereign and independent role in determining their own and their country's future. This was to make itself felt on the termination of the Mandate in 1948 and the withdrawal of British forces from Palestine. The newly established state of Israel fought a half hearted war(Zionist and Arab myths not withstanding)with the neighboring Arab states, primarily in an effort to settle their common borders and realise the partitioning of the country. This was a fate which had already been decided on by the recently established United Nations organisation, the successor body to the League of Nations, and the embodiment of international legitimacy and the international will.
Part time actors in their own tragedy, the Palestinians found themselves in 1948/49 displaced refugees. Even those who had not budged but remained in their towns and villages had to undertake a novel form of exile: the denial of their identity. Just under a million Palestinians became homeless as a result of their eviction from the newly established Israeli state. They made their way to the surrounding Arab states, Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan, while large numbers converged on a strip round Gaza occupied by Egyptian troops, and similar numbers made their temporary abode in those areas of Palestine which fell under Trans-Jordanian occupation .Palestine was thus divided into three parts, with only an insignificant minority allowed to remain in its native habitat within Israel, while the largest concentration of Palestinians which now was in areas annexed to Trans-Jordan was forced to undergo an identity change. Henceforth they were no longer Palestinians. By royal decree, they were instantaneously transformed into Jordanian citizens(Wilson1987,194).
For the next nineteen years, the Arab states of the Mashrek played the role of Guardians, calling for the return of the dispossessed Palestinians to their homes and the implementation of the United Nations Partition resolution of 1947. Yet no move was made to take the first step by allowing the Palestinians to establish their own independent state on those parts of Palestine which had not fallen under Jewish control, nor were the Palestinians allowed any autonomous form of activity. To be sure, there were variations in the situation of the Palestinians in the various host countries (Brand 1988,229-233). While in Jordan every attempt was made to absorb them and facilitate the assumption of their new identity, to the extent of issuing them with Jordanian passports and enabling them to travel freely, in Lebanon on the other hand, they lived in camps which were controlled by the security authorities, and where they were denied permission to work and even to travel, and deliberately kept outside the fabric of Lebanese political and social life. This situation began to change in 1964 as a result of the intensification of inter Arab rivalries. When the Palestine Liberation Organisation was founded in that year under the auspices of the League of Arab States, the prime mover was Egypt (Shemesh1988,40). The primary motivation for its establishment was Egypts conflict with Syria and Jordan. It was to serve the interests of Egyptian foreign policy, both by garnering Palestinian support for Nasser's Pan Arab policies, and by portraying Egypt as steadfastly working to realise the cherished aim of every Arab from the Ocean to the Gulf, the liberation of Palestine.
To head the organisation the Egyptians chose a professional diplomat, Ahmad Shukairy from the city of Acre, the scion of a well known family, and whose father had been one of the leaders of the Palestinian national movement during the Mandate. He had previously served both the Syrian and Saudi governments in diplomatic postings abroad. Shukairy established the PLO from the top down so to speak. It was he who appointed its leading body, the executive committee. The same went for what was to become the Palestinians parliament in exile, the Palestine National Council which was similarly chosen, though with the ostensible aim of reflecting the wide geographic dispersion of the Palestinians after their exile in 1948. So long as Shukairy enjoyed the confidence of the Egyptians he was able to steer the organisation in the way he thought best; this ensured that it would not contradict the basic tenets of Egyptian foreign policy. This was basically a one man show albeit with an attending chorus. Shukairy as it turned out did not enjoy a free hand. The executive committee boasted a number of well known personalities (among whom was Haidar Abdul Shafi from the Gaza Strip), and the Palestine National Council was not altogether supportive of Shukairy as the pro Jordanian faction was well represented in its ranks. The tasks that the PLO were expected to fulfil were of the diplomatic and ceremonial type. Being the legitimate offspring of the Arab League Council, it was unable to operate in any fashion without securing a consensus which was seldom forthcoming. It is difficult to speak with any justification of the PLO as an autonomous Palestinian organisation in this formative period. There is no denying that its establishment stuck a responsive chord both among the Palestinians and the wider Arab public, but its history in the pre 1967 period can best be understood as a function of Arab feuds, and the need to manoeuvre carefully in order to ensure survival. There is no doubt that Shukairy performed successfully in carrying out this task.
The confrontation of June 1967 resulted in a total Arab defeat. Paradoxically this freed the Palestinians from the tutelage and guardianship of their Arab hosts, while at the same time bringing the total area of geographic Palestine under Israeli military and political control. For the first time, well over a million Palestinians were now resident in "Palestine", now transformed into "Israel", and found themselves under the direct military rule of their enemies. For the first time since the expulsion and dispersal of 1948 there was a sizeable portion of the Palestinian people living on their own land, though as a minority under foreign rule and bereft of all civil and political rights. This was to prove of tremendous importance in the future, and would enable the Palestinians twenty odd years after the event to re-formulate their national demands in more realisable forms, and ones more acceptable to the international community.
The earthquake which shook the Arab world in 1967 could not but bring about change within the PLO itself. The Arab regimes, discredited as a result of their performance on the battle field, had lost all credibility and were now more than ever pre occupied with the immediate task of self preservation. As a result, the PLO was transformed from an instrument of inter Arab feuds, into a relatively independent and autonomous Palestinian organisation, mirroring to some extent the reality of the Palestinian's condition, and their efforts to create their own distinctive space as autonomous actors. Arab politics and inter state feuds would continue to influence the deliberations and policies of the PLO, but only as part of the necessary environment in which the organsiation had to operate, and as a reflection of the predicament of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were unwelcome guests cum hostages, in the neighboring states. The PLO would no longer remain an organisation of individuals appointed by one person to carry out his bidding. It was now transformed into a Front bringing together Palestinian armed groups, Pan Arab political parties, leftist organisations, refugees, and the representatives of the remnants of the old social classes which were dispossessed in 1948.
The Transformation of the PLO
For having committed the sin of being unable to defeat the British, prevent the Zionist movement from realising its objectives, and fail to achieve independence and statehood, the Palestinians have been regarded by their Arab brethren as not fully qualified to lead their own emancipatory struggle. The stigma of illegitimacy has repeatedly lent itself to any attempt on their part to assert themselves as fully independent actors. By strictly adhering to their own narrow patriotic interests as Palestinians, they were deemed to be betraying the broader Pan Arab cause. Curiously it was only the Palestinians who were held to this lofty standard. It was an accepted failing when Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Egyptians, etc acted in accordance with their own narrow interests. The Pan Arab ideal which to many appeared as a source of strength, was indeed a curse in disguise.
The creation of the PLO in 1964 was not an autonomous Palestinian act. Indeed the various Palestinian political groups which ostensibly were engaged in preparing for the liberation and the return did not welcome its establishment. They regarded this act, with justification, as another in a long chain stretching back as far as 1937 when the Arab kings and leaders prevailed on the Palestinians to call a halt to their revolt. When the First Palestine National Council did meet in Jerusalem in May/June 1964 it was regarded by politically active Palestinians as an inter Arab affair. The delegates themselves had been chosen by Ahmad Shukairy himself and were not seen as legitimate representatives of the Palestinian diaspora. Among the twenty nine delegates from Lebanon for example, which played host to nearly a quarter of a million Palestinian refugees, the overwhelming majority of whom lived in squalid camps, not one delegate was from a refugee camp. The delegates did represent the geographical spread of the Palestinians, but were not representative of political parties, professional associations, groups, and trade unions. They were chosen as individuals. Thus they were accountable to nobody but the person who chose them. In practice, over half the delegates came from Jordan. These were prominent members of society and pillars of the Jordanian establishment (Hourani1986,100). Ministers, members of parliament, mayors, leading business figures etc. One of the first prominent Palestinian figures to oppose this gathering was the Mufti of Jerusalem and the head of the defunct Higher Arab Committee. He called the legality of the whole exercise into question as the Palestinian people had not been given the opportunity to vote for their representatives, and dispatched a to telegram to King Hussein of Jordan calling on him to ban the meeting. Within the Arab League itself, Saudi Arabia called on Arab states to boycott the gathering declaring it to be illegal, and went so far as to prevent the Palestinian delegates living in Saudi Arabia from travelling to Jerusalem. On the grass roots level the conference was opposed by six radical organisations who brought out a statement a few days before its scheduled opening calling for the unity of all organisations wishing to carry out a revolutionary struggle for the liberation of Palestine. They condemned the conference for being held under official state auspices.
Despite this opposition, Shukairy, confident of Egyptian support continued with his efforts. He was faced with two main obstacles. First, the opposition coming from the small radical Palestinian organisations at the head of which stood Fath, a little heard of group which was preparing to engage in armed struggle. With this and similar organisations he tried to engage in a dialogue and to win them over to his side. He wanted to do this without making any material concessions, as he was not in a position to meet any of their demands. Already at its inaugural meeting in Jerusalem, the PNC had decreed that all members of that body should be chosen by a process of direct election. This was not deemed to be practical in 1964, and indeed it was not. But Shukairy was not averse to co opting individuals if he was certain of winning them over to his side. His real problem however was in his dealings with Jordan. These were very much a function of the relationship between Egypt and Jordan, and the friction between the two blocks, the so called revolutionary and reactionary blocs which were led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia respectively. The collapse of the third Arab Summit in September 1965 signalled renewed confrontation between the two blocs. This led to clashes between the Jordanian regime and the PLO. Jordan had been uneasy all along with the creation of the PLO and only went along in order to accommodate Nasser. In 1966 open hostility erupted. PLO officials were arrested in Jerusalem and the organisations main offices in the city were closed. Soon after, the Jordanian government in a memorandum to the Arab League declared that it had withdrawn its recognition of the organisation. It was only a few days before the outbreak of war in June 1967 and as a result of a reconciliation between Nasser and Hussein, that Shukairy was readmitted to Jordan and the organisation was allowed to resume its activities within the Kingdom.
Just as the defeat of June 1967 discredited the Arab regimes, it also helped bring the opposition to Shukairy to a head. His name was associated with the policies that led to the defeat of 1967 and the transformation of the PLO came from within when seven members of the executive committee submitted a memo to Shukairy asking for his resignation and accusing him of perusing harmful policies and leadership practices. Finding himself isolated and his patrons in no position to offer him support, Shukairy was forced to resign. To many it seemed that he was being used as a scapegoat. He was after all only doing the bidding of others. An interim period ensued in which members of the executive committee of the PLO tried to revive the PLO in co operation with the armed resistance groups by trying to entice them into joining the organisation on a power sharing basis. This however was not to be. Fath along with the numerous groups which had sprouted in the aftermath of the breakdown of authority and the loss of legitimacy of the various ruling regimes as a result of the defeat of June 1967,met in Cairo in January 1968 and called for unity on the basis of armed struggle(Cobban1987,43). There was to be no place for the old style politicians and power brokers, and all the leftovers from the Palestine of 1948.In a bid to wrest the organisation from the control of the old guard, Fath proposed the establishment of a preparatory committee made up of delegates of the armed resistance groups, representatives of unions, and independents to chose a new PNC. The PLO was to be the framework for unity and for the escalation of the armed struggle. The aim was to reorganise it as a broad based representative organisation, a front of all groups actively engaged in the struggle for liberation. A new executive committee was to be elected by the council which itself would elect its chairperson, and the decisions of the council should be binding on the executive committee. Already differences were emerging between Fath and the PFLP with the latter preferring to remain outside the framework of Fath sponsored/controlled activities. This was to prove to be the hallmark of PFLP activity in the future. From that early period the PFLP has chosen to play the role of opposition, and it continues to do so to this day. By occupying this ambiguous space, neither in nor out, the PFLP has not been successful in exerting a great deal of influence, but has contributed strongly to giving the Palestinian scene the semblance of diversity and pluralism.
The battle of Karameh in March 1968 merely accelerated a process which was already taking place although at a much slower pace. It gave added legitimacy to the armed struggle and specially to Fath as the organisation which was now undoubtedly the pace setter in the field. The perceived outcome of the battle engendered great enthusiasm for the armed struggle and for those participating in it, in that it was deemed to have shown that an alternative existed to the regular armies of the Arab regimes who were unable to bear the brunt of the Israeli attack of June 1967. Indeed this was the first victory, for so perceived, since the shattering defeat of 1967.
The scene was now set for a transformation of the PLO and this took place in the 4th PNC meeting in Cairo in July 1968. Of a total membership of one hundred, sixty eight were official delegates of the armed resistance groups. Already disagreements were surfacing in the allocation of seats to the various armed resistance organisations. In the absence of elections, and nobody contemplated holding these seriously, a quota system was devised to allocate seats to each organisation according to its actual strength and popular support. The PFLP boycotted the Fifth PNC meeting in Cairo in February 1969 on the grounds that the quota system agreed to by all the other organisations would give control of the PNC to FATH, which according to its own way of thinking would be harmful to the cause of national unity and lead to splits and dissensions. Despite this discordant note, the meeting went ahead as agreed to by the two main organisations FATH and the Syrian sponsored AL SAIKA, and Yasser Arafat was elected head of the executive committee.
Factionalism ,an ominous feature of Palestinian politics made itself felt even at the very moment of historic conception .In 1968 and 1969 the PFLP had undergone a number of splits, giving birth to the PFLP-GC, the Democratic Front, and the Arab Palestine Organisation. At the same time Issam Saratawi and a small group of supporters split from FATH IN 1969, while another group, the Popular Struggle Front had departed a year earlier. In April 1969, the Iraqi Baathist regime, established its own Palestinian organisation, the Arab Liberation Front, while in 1970 various Arab communist parties established their own armed resistance organisation Al Ansar. Eventually, all these organisations would be accorded representative status within the PNC, while the most important ones would also be represented within the Executive Committee itself. This mosaic like structure could not hold together except on the basis of a continuing consensus, if not unanimous, at least among the recognized major groups. Likewise, the quota system by which each group was accorded representatives and received financial allocations, was the foundation on which this structure was based, and simultaneously was the cause of numerous disagreements and conflicts. FATH was determined that the PLO should remain the framework which embodied Palestinian national unity, as it represented the official Arab commitment to the Palestinian people and to the Palestinian cause. Any weakening in its all encompassing character as the united national front of the Palestinian people as a whole, and the spinal cord of the Palestinian armed struggle, would allow the Arab regimes to withdraw their support and renege on their commitments.
Two features are important to note even at this early phase of the development of the PLO. The first has to do with its internal structure, while the second highlights the narrow limitations imposed on its operational ability by its surrounding environment. As far as structure is concerned, nothing major was accomplished until the eleventh PNC which was held in Cairo in January 1973. There it was decided to establish the Central Council as a connecting link between the PNC and the Executive Committee, the members to be chosen according to the time tested quota system, where each organisation would receive a fixed number of seats, in addition to a number of Independents who would also be nominated by the various organisations (Hameed 1975,38). It is important to note here that the number of PNC delegates continued to be increased at regular intervals (in 1968 there were 100 members, while in 1973 the number had risen to 180). This is accounted for by the desire to draw in ever larger circles of the various Palestinian strata and involve them in the PLO's activities. Thus the quota for the "independents" and the various professional and union associations continued to be expanded (in 1968,three seats were allocated to the various associations, and twenty nine to the independents, while in 1971,twenty six seats were allocated to the associations etc, and forty nine to the independents). At the twelfth PNC meeting in June 1974, three members were added to the executive committee as representatives of the Palestine National Front within the occupied territories. Although these three were from among a group of political activists who had been expelled by the Israelis, this was both an attempt to accord representation to a hitherto unrepresented section of the Palestinian people, and an indication of the increasing importance which the PLO was according, for the first time perhaps, to the territories occupied by Israel in June 1967.It is no co-incidence that this same meeting adopted the transitional political program which called for the establishment of a Palestinian national authority in those occupied areas.
The second feature, relating to the geo political environment the PLO operated in was to prove of paramount importance in narrowing the choices available to the Palestinians. In a deep state of shock and potential disintegration as a result of the shock of defeat in June 1967, the Arab regimes were gradually recovering and attempting to assert their authority. Already in 1968 there were clashes between Jordanian troops and Palestinian armed groups, with 1969 seeing more numerous clashes both in Jordan and in Lebanon. This was to culminate in the September 1970 war initiated by the Jordanian regime in order to re-assert its authority in the country and curtail the Palestinian armed presence. It eventually dawned on the Palestinians that they will have to fight on two fronts. The Israeli front, which after all was the ostensible reason for their existence, and against the neighboring Arab states which wanted Palestinian armed activity as a lever in order to create pressure on Israel to come to the negotiating table, but could not tolerate an autonomous Palestinian role which might endanger their very survival. When the first opportunity to reach an accommodation with Israel appeared to present itself ,in the shape of the Rogers proposals in 1970, the verbal and material support extended to the PLO's various constituent groups from a wide variety of Arab official sources came to an abrupt stop.
Until their final expulsion from Jordan in the middle of 1971, the armed organisations which had become synonymous with the PLO were pre-occupied in a defensive battle which they were unable to win. Without a secure and safe base in Jordan, they could not pursue an armed struggle against Israel, and without organising the Palestinians in that base and presenting a credible choice to the Jordanian component of the population they could not begin to establish that safe base. Circumstances did not allow the PLO the luxury of choice. There was neither the time nor the opportunity to make a serious attempt at establishing the prerequisite political presence. A new phase was to start with the move to Lebanon where the PLO would continue to be tested as a result of being engulfed in what was rapidly to become a multifaceted conflict which would further detract from the primary task of liberation.
The Lebanese Period
For the next twelve years the PLO set up camp in the Lebanon. Events however did not allow the Palestinians to catch their breath. From the very beginning, clashes would erupt between one or the other armed resistance group and the Lebanese army. The Lebanese feared that the Palestinian presence would threaten the delicate internal political balance on the one hand, while inviting Israeli punitive retaliation on the other. Later the PLO became embroiled in a civil war which broke out in 1975 and continued well after the Israeli siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982, and its forced expulsion from the country. All this not withstanding, it was in Lebanon that the PLO established itself as a quasi state, and acted out its role regionally and internationally.
The initial task of the PLO had been to embark on an armed struggle against Israel with the aim primarily of mobilising the Palestinian people. By losing its major operational and social base in Jordan in 1970-71, it could no longer operate freely against Israel from Jordan, or draw on the resources and power of the large Palestinian population of the country, who not only constituted the largest concentration of Palestinians anywhere, but also made up a majority of the country's inhabitants. Unable to exercise its authority over this larger part of the Palestinian people, it was forcibly prevented from doing so in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip by the constantly watchful and repressive Israeli security apparatus. Likewise the Syrian authorities, for all their verbal support for the armed struggle, would not sanction an autonomous situation for the inhabitants of the refugee camps in their country. The PLO had to make do with the Palestinian population of the Lebanon, who now assumed the role of surrogates.
It was evidently clear from the very beginning that the PLO and its constituent groups conducted themselves on the basis that the occupied territories were not the main arena of the national struggle. Increasingly, voices from left leaning organisations would argue that they had a role to play, perhaps an important role, but even the proponents of increased involvement in the affairs of the occupied territories regarded this as merely a supportive role. The inhabitants of the occupied territories constituted only a part of the Palestinian people, and so long as the PLO was entrenched in Lebanon, it was the Palestinians in the diaspora who mattered most. Some observers would belatedly claim that the shift of the centre of gravity of the Palestinian national struggle from the diaspora to the occupied territories "began in a sense with the massive defeat in Jordan in 1970-71".This itself would help explain the abandonment of the slogan of liberation in favour of that of statehood as the goal of the movement. The ten point "Transitional" program adopted in the Twelfth PNC in 1974 is regarded likewise as an early manifestation of this trend. Yet the course of development and transformation which the PLO underwent during the 1970's indicates that this was not the case. It was only the loss of autonomy as a result of the forced departure from Beirut in 1982 that placed the organisation in a quandary and forced it to reorient itself and set a new course.
The early task of the PLO had been to accomplish a unifying role, to reconstitute a shattered Palestinian society, and to maintain and develop Palestinian national identity. The PLO was the organisational expression of this national identity. Its role went beyond that of a traditional national liberation ,or resistance movement. It not only struggled to realise the national rights of the Palestinian people, and to end foreign colonial rule. Simultaneously it had to reconstitute a shattered Palestinian society, to rehabilitate it, and to carry out the task of nation building. Thus it carried out a dual task. Ostensibly, its raison d'etre was the armed struggle against Israel. The more fundamental task was the building of a civilian institutional infrastructure that catered to the needs of the Palestinian nation in exile. The situation existing in the Palestinian diaspora affected both the evolution of the PLO and the organisational shape it took. Objective differences existed between the conditions of Palestinians and of Palestinian society in the occupied territories and their counterparts abroad. But the framework which was established in Lebanon was meant to create the institutions necessary for the conditions existing in the diaspora. When the time for a shift of focus came after the departure from Beirut ,this was to prove difficult .The existence of an "inside" and an "outside" would present itself as a reality which had to be taken into consideration and overcome, and not merely a political construct which could be discarded at will.
In order to carry out its "nation building" role, the PLO in Lebanon was forced to provide state like functions. These ranged from health care, education, employment, and judicial, to police and military protection(Sayigh1994,100/109). It had to meet the needs of a people spread among various countries, and this tended to increase a predisposition towards bureaucratisation within its ranks. The semi autonomous status it enjoyed in Lebanon extended this trend; furthermore, its involvement in the Lebanese civil war led to enlarging and regimenting the military formations of the PLO and its constituent groups. It cannot be denied that in the prevailing conditions, it was the PLO itself and its constituent groups which initiated "civil society" type institutions in the wider Palestinian community. These ranged from youth and women's associations to clinics and artisan shops. This meant that the growth of community features for the Palestinians of the diaspora during the 1970's and early 1980's was generally confined to areas where the PLO had control or was allowed to function. Once the situation changed as it did after 1982, these community like structures, erected, financed and administered by the PLO collapsed, withered away, or were banned. With the loss of its territorial base in Lebanon ,first as a result of the forced departure, later because of the split within Fath's own ranks, and soon after the camp war unleashed by Amal with the backing of the Syrian government, the PLO was severed from direct interaction with the largest Palestinian community which had previously given it support. The cohesiveness and effectiveness of many of the institutions built during this period did not weather this loss. Most of the mass organisations and popular unions had been established primarily as political vehicles rather than with regard to the community's social economic or educational needs. These bodies were thinly disguised political fronts not primarily concerned with protecting and promoting the interests and rights of their members. Throughout that period, the large sums of money contributed by the oil rich Arab states made possible the employment of large numbers of individuals in the organisations offices, departments and mass organisations. True to form, the PLO in adopting a state form, became also a significant employer. Large numbers of Palestinians were dependent on it for a livelihood, while numerous organsiations owed their existence to the direct subsidies which they received. This bureaucratisation was not restricted to the PLO's top leadership as all its various constituent groups duplicated the state functions developed by it (Hilal1993,52/53). Each acted as a mini state and reproduced as far as its resources allowed, the functions of the parent organisastion, maintaining their own military units, security apparatus, clinics, prisons, publications, nurseries, workshops etc.
The modus operandi of the PLO during its sojourn in Lebanon faithfully reflected the objective situation of the Palestinians; dispersion, social divisions, fragmentation, the existence of numerous small groups and the absence of a single authority. The FATH organisation itself was indeed the largest, the wealthiest and the most influential. Yet it was neither able nor desirous of setting policies without co-ordinating with the other small groups for fear of further fragmentation and loss of the representative image of the PLO. Thus right from the very beginning a plurality of groups arose each claiming to speak for Palestine and the Palestinians, and each pretending an equal measure of legitimacy.
Whether by choice or as a matter of necessity, tolerance of division and diversity characterised the PLO right from the very start. This is not to deny that armed clashes did take place at an early stage, with FATH dealing severely with those contending to embody Palestinian will and authority. By and large however, the existing plurality has been preserved and national unity has always been given pride of place. Perhaps this can be partly accounted for by the Arab environment which the PLO was forced to operate in. Both Iraq and Syria at various times intervened forcibly in Palestinian affairs through their surrogate organisations. Other Arab states intervened in more covert forms. This patronage itself provided protection and forced the PLO to accommodate these smaller groups and permit them political leverage far beyond their size and capabilities. Some Palestinian groups were extensions of Pan Arab parties, while others still were ideologically based. Another factor also helped preserve this plurality of organisational frameworks. Israel did not distinguish between one Palestinian group and another. The constant threat and persistent military harassment made national unity all the more important. Although the basic constitution of the PLO requires a simple majority for most decisions, the PLO leadership more often than not used to strive for consensus decision making. Thus the aim was to arrive at a balance among the diverse political factions, and the tools employed were those of persuasion and bargaining. Undoubtedly FATH as the largest and strongest faction could impose its will without serious opposition, but usually chose not to do so. When an opposition did constitute itself outside the framework of the usual organisational structures on a major issue, as the Rejection Front led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine did in the 1970's, this was tolerated.
It has been argued, correctly, that the non centralisation of PLO authority in a finite territorial state has helped to thwart the development of an authoritarianism that would aim at the crushing of any and all opposition (Hassasian1993,268). It could of course be argued that Fath did not really have much choice in exercising such tolerance. On the one hand, there were always various Arab states in the wings ready to intervene on the behalf of their own surrogates, while on the other, dispersal and the absence of a territorially based national authority, constituted objective constraints, which force FATH and its leadership to seek the politics of consensus with its rivals, and to try and accommodate factionalism (Muslih1990,26). Thus the "Republic of Fakhani" as the Palestinian presence in Lebanon was called, possessing semi state institutions, including several security apparatus and prisons, was a situation which allowed for a large measure of tolerance and co-existence between the various constituent groups of the PLO.
In theory at least, the Palestine National Council is the Palestinians highest political authority. From the beginning however a "quota" system has been in operation which meant that the locus of real power was situated elsewhere. Historically, it is not difficult to understand how such a situation arose. It was established in order to guarantee the hegemony of the armed resistance organisations within the old style PLO in 1969. This assured the resistance organisations a majority of seats in the PNC and the Central Council, and assured that each group is represented on the executive committee regardless of its size. Thus in effect the power of decision-making on national issues is in the hands of the political factions and not the representatives of the various Palestinian communities .The Palestinian establishment has ensured that the PNC remains an empty shell through which various charades are carried out, and is not a platform for different social groups to put forward their demands and views in opposition to the executive authority (Khatib1993,14). Furthermore, the actual role of the PNC has been to provide a formal legitimacy, without playing any role in mapping out Palestinian policy ,or carrying out the task of control and overseeing the actual practice of the executive committee. The actual members of the PNC perform the role of rubber stamps for policies decided by others. Their acquiescence in this role is a function of the "quota" system. One third of the seats are allocated to the organisations, one third to the mass organisations, and one third to independents. The first and second are of course the same, while the third group is chosen by the organisations themselves. The "quota" system exists within the mass organisations as well. Each of the factions has a given number of seats in the PLO leadership bodies and a set representation in the mass organisations irrespective of its size, ideology or influence or popularity among Palestinians. As positions in leading public institutions are not filled by elections, it is not possible to determine objectively the degree of support enjoyed by the various political organisations. On top of this, some Arab state-sponsored factions, are disproportionately represented in the leading bodies of PLO institutions and in the mass organisations for reasons of expediency and in order to curry favour with the sponsoring states.
The fact that there have always been major political disagreements among the political groups, leading to vigorous arguments and debate, does not alter the fact that PNC sessions are rather formalistic and ceremonial in nature. The democracy practiced by the Palestinians in Lebanon it is correct to surmise was the democracy of the leaders of the various factions. Decision making has always been outside the national legislative and executive institutions of the PLO. By denying these institutions any authority, a vacuum has been created at the top of the power structure, and this has been filled by one man. The leader, historically, has taken the place of the institution. The left factions within the PLO have repeatedly called for collective leadership and for the introduction of a measure of democracy in the working of PLO institutions. The FATH leadership has always been accused of running PLO institutions in an autocratic manner, and of dominating the PLO's institutions, departments ,etc. through the appointment of its own followers and the appropriation of the bulk of its funds. These calls made by the left have always assumed a party factional aspect. They never gained active popular support because they were seen as little more than bids to improve the left's share in the "quota" system (Hillal1993,54/55). The left was demanding a larger piece of the pie. This was reform behind the scenes and in the corridors of power. Its tools were pressure, manoeuvre, threats of withdrawal etc. The aim was to increase the representation of one faction, to gain one more seat in one more council. There was no perception that there was a sincere striving for real representative democracy based on the verdict of the ballot box (Khatib1993,12). If on the other hand, collective leadership was going to be anything more than a confederate alliance between general secretaries of the various factions, then elections would have to take place from the popular base at every level in every faction before it is introduced in the institutions of the PLO. Candidates to PLO bodies would no longer be appointed by the factions. FATH, legitimately countered by accusing those claiming to be democrats of opportunism. The argument over democracy in the PLO's bodies was itself a manifestation of a larger malaise. The Israeli siege of Beirut, and the forced expulsion which ensued, put an end to the debate, as the very survival of the PLO was now at stake. The period extending up to 1988 was one of continuing declining fortunes what with dispersal, splits, further interference by Arab states, the loss of prominent leaders by assassinations, and a general weakness which reflected itself in an increased marginalisation of the PLO's role both regionally and internationally.
Inside the Occupied Territories
The loss of its territorial base in Lebanon not only created difficulties for the PLO in maintaining the cohesiveness and effectiveness of its institutions, it also meant the end of the armed struggle and the legitimising role this played as a source of authority for its historic leadership. A new source of legitimacy was required, and this was to be provided by the Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The territories were now the only field open to the PLO and thus acquired increasing significance. The Intifada which erupted when Arab support was at its lowest, was crucial in renewing the PLO's waning legitimacy. There was however, and continues to be a certain tension in the relationship between the two wings of the Palestinian national movement. This is usually explained in terms of the sharply differing conditions and experiences of the widely dispersed Palestinian community, from those of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. The outcome has been dissimilar paths of development. Undeniable as this description of objective reality is, it ignores the actual policies, or lack of them, pursued over the years by the Palestinian leadership towards the occupied territories and their inhabitants.
The PLO and its constituent groups, had until the loss of the Lebanon as an autonomous base of operations, accorded the Occupied Territories the status of a sideshow. The expectation was that its inhabitants would perform a secondary role; at best, all that was required of them was to be supportive spectators. Jealous of its standing as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and having continuously to safeguard this status against the encroachments of one Arab state or the other, the PLO was wary of any independent political activity emanating from the occupied territories. It regarded any divergent political attitudes exhibited there, as the manifestation of a challenge to its legitimacy and representative status.
In the immediate aftermath of the occupation of June 1967 attempts were made to establish an opposition foci which would gather round it political groups and individuals engaged in active resistance to the new reality of military rule. The National Guidance Committee-NGC (Lajnat Al Tawjih Al Watani), a semi clandestine group was established in Jerusalem bringing together representatives of the Jordanian Communist party, the Arab Nationalist Movement, the head of the Islamic Council, and Jordanian notables and officials. A co-ordinating committee, Lajnat Al-Tawjih Al-Watani fi Al-Daffa Al-Gharbiya, brought together the NGC's established in the main urban centres, in addition to the Islamic Council. Noticeably the membership of the Committees was markedly conservative, and their main plank was the return of the West Bank to Jordan and the implementation of Security Council resolution 242. In the Gaza Strip, the situation was different. Both the nature of the Egyptian regime in control prior to the occupation, and the existence of units of the Palestine Liberation Army in the strip before 1967 generated a different political atmosphere. Right from the very beginning resistance activities in Gaza assumed a violent form. In the West Bank, the NGC's did not however have a long life. The Israeli authorities carried out a policy of harassment, imprisonment and deportation against their members. When Sheikh Abdul Hamid Sayeh the chairman of both the NGC's and the Islamic Council was deported, the committees became defunct.
The growth of the Palestinian resistance organisations, and their increasing clashes with Jordanian army units, led to a growing rift within the occupied territories themselves. While trying to assert itself on the East Bank, the Jordanian regime was also trying to re-establish its authority vis a vis the inhabitants of the West Bank albeit under the umbrella of the occupation. The Islamic Council itself was rapidly transformed into a bureaucratic department of the Jordanian Ministry of Awkaf. The Jordanian Communist Party attempted to establish an underground political resistance movement and established for this purpose The Popular Resistance Front (Jabhat Al-Muqawama Al-Shaabiya). In the prevailing atmosphere, when the Palestinian resistance organisations in Jordan were calling for rejection of Security Council resolution 242,armed struggle, and the liberation of Palestine, the Communists were swimming against the tide. After nineteen years of Jordanian rule, a Palestinian identity was being forged on the basis of Palestinian independence and separateness. A call for the return to the West Bank to Jordanian rule was not going to find a receptive ear. Moreover ,in the prevailing atmosphere of guerrilla operations and armed struggle, talk of "political" resistance to the occupation was even more incongruous. The tide was flowing in a different direction altogether. To those who wanted to act out their resistance to the occupation, mere verbal opposition did not suffice. Thousands of mostly young people with roots predominantly in the Palestinian countryside enrolled in the armed resistance organisations eager to engage in the armed struggle, not merely against the occupation, but with the aim of liberating Palestine and establishing an independent Arab state in place of Israel.
The war unleashed by the Jordanian regime in 1970 which was to culminate in the expulsion of the armed resistance organisations from Jordan dealt a heavy blow to resistance activities within the occupied territories. With the move of the PLO to Lebanon the "armed struggle" itself was transformed and assumed a new form; infiltration across the Lebanese border. Meanwhile, the trans-formations wrought by the Israeli military occupation were bringing about changes in the social and class structure of the Palestinians living under its control (Budeiri1982,63). These would further contribute to endowing them with a distinct and separate identity, as a social formation with its own particular characteristics. With the passage of time those characteristics will become markedly different from those possessed by other Palestinian communities, whether in Trans-Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, or other places of exile.
Already in 1967, the Palestinians of the occupied territories, unlike those in the diaspora, possessed a socially differentiated society, rooted in the land, with its own economy, agriculture, crafts and service sector, and with its own civil institutions, etc. Thus side by side with secret and clandestine organisations, engaged in carrying out armed struggle type activities against Israelis, a whole range of grass roots organisations began to take shape trying to effect changes in the existing social and economic order. The norms of Military occupation itself allowed and facilitated the development of mass organisations and open organisational frameworks allowing for public participation in those civil society type of structures. The result was the establishment of numerous welfare, voluntary, professional and mass associations and trade unions, research centers, universities, colleges, clinics, newspapers, magazines and information centers. Later on there would also be a flowering of political organisations operating in conditions of semi legality.
The Palestine Patriotic Front (PPF) was formally established towards the end of 1973 in the aftermath of the October 1973 war, although preparations for its inception had been going on since at least a year beforehand (Dakkak1983,75). Again, the core group was the Jordanian Communist Party, but this time it managed to bring in representatives of FATH, and those of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in addition to a number of active independents, like the mayors of West Bank towns. Although contacts were maintained with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, this organisation preferred to remain outside the ranks of the Front. For the first time since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians fielded a political leadership which was made up not only of the representatives of political groups, but included within its ranks delegates from labour unions, professional associations, student councils, women organisations etc. and which was seen to represent the prevailing mood within the occupied territories.
Relations between the PPF and the PLO were initially cordial. Prior co-ordination and consultation had been carried out with delegates from the occupied territories travelling to Damascus and Beirut to ensure the endorsement of the PLO's leading bodies. The PPF for its part expressed its commitment to the leading role of the PLO, while leading PLO members declared that the PPF represented the organisation in the occupied territories. The request of the PPF that a number of deportees be included in the National Council was acceded to, but no answer was forthcoming to the demand that the Palestinian communists be represented in the PLO's executive committee (Dakkak 1983,76).
Soon however ,relations between the PLO and the PPF took a turn for the worse. The PPF was portrayed from within the PLO as communist controlled, while the PLO was accused from within the PPF of trying to control its own activities. The PPF was now regarded as a rival, and what ensued was an attempt on the part of the "outside" to exercise its control over the "inside" and relegate it to a subordinate position. While already in the summer of 1974 the Israelis had initiated an assault on the PPF with a wave of mass arrests and deportations, they were soon to be aided by the PLO's attempts to dismantle the Front from within. The outcome of this double assault was the to all intents and purposes paralysis of the Front, and by the end of 1976 it had ceased to exist as a functioning organisation. Some would say even earlier.
During its short life span the PPF succeeded in accomplishing two tasks, both of which would prove to be of lasting importance. First it created a public debate within the occupied territories, and consequently within the PLO over the desirability of establishing an independent Palestinian state in the areas occupied by Israel in 1967, and for the implementation of UN resolutions concerning the refugees. Implicitly this was an endorsement of the two state solution long favoured by the Palestinian communists. This was to eventually become the official policy of the PLO, but only fourteen years later with the declaration of statehood in 1988.These were early days though, and the PPF stand was a far cry from the PNC endorsed transitional program of 1974 which called for the establishment of a "national authority" without spelling out the practical implications of such a step. Second, it created a tradition of open political activity, utilising the margin tolerated by the Israeli occupation authorities, specially as regards political activity in Jerusalem itself, which according to Israel law did not fall under the jurisdiction of the occupation authorities. This was to be expanded in the ensuing years to such an extent that the various constituent groups of the PLO, or at least the major ones which created a political presence for themselves in the occupied territories, existed quiet openly and acted as if they were in possession of legal immunity.
IF the FATH leadership thought that by getting rid of the PPF they would ensure a more pliable political movement in the occupied territories, they were soon to discover that they were very much mistaken. Already during the elections for the Municipal Councils in 1976 they were unable to guarantee the success of their candidates in apposition to the wishes of other political actors in the territories. In the event, a large number of leftist councilors were elected, and it soon became apparent that the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah were in alliance with the leftist forces (Maoz1984,167). Moreover, when Sadat carried out his visit to Jerusalem in 1977 this provided the impetus for a new radicalisation of the national movement.
Opposition to the Camp David agreement and Begin's autonomy scheme which was first made public in December 1977, helped spur the nationalist forces to launch a new organsiational framework with the aim of subverting it. The "Jerusalem Conference" was held in October 1978 and attended by a majority of mayors and council members of West Bank municipalities and local councils in addition to representatives of national institutions (Gresh1985,218). Despite calls for restraint by the leadership of the PLO which let it be known that it was still studying the Israeli Egyptian agreement, the conferees issued a statement condemning the Camp David Accords and the autonomy plan. A follow up committee was set up and in November another meeting was held at which a National Guidance Committee (NGC-2)was set up, and an executive committee was elected. It was also decided that this new committee, unlike the PPF was to function in the open. This was made up of Mayors, representatives of trade unions, students, professional groups, the women's movement, charitable associations, the Gaza strip, and individuals in their personal capacities. It is also claimed that representatives of the Islamic trend were later co-opted to its ranks. Despite pressures by the outside to include pro-Jordanian figures and mayors who had expressed support for Sadat, within the ranks of the NGC, its leadership was successful in repulsing these attempts. Although skepticism was initially exhibited by various political groups concerning the credibility of this new structure, it was to successfully operate until it was banned in 1981 by the then Israeli Minister of Defence, Ariel Sharon, and the nationalist mayors and councils summarily dismissed.
It is noteworthy that in the two instances when the occupied territories themselves established a political and organisational framework to give expression to their resistance to the Israeli occupation, they found themselves in opposition to the established PLO leadership. In both instances the division took the form of an ideological clash between right and left. Of course the quota system also operated in the occupied territories, though this was not the case at the beginning, and even then there were differences which made themselves felt. Unlike in Lebanon, initially, only groups with some local following could be represented in the various representative bodies. As a result of factionalism , necessarily imported from the outside, each of the main political groups established its own trade unions, professional associations, womens groups, and mass associations. Left wing groups possessed an advantage, in that they had started their activities at a much earlier date, and found it easier to make an appeal to young workers, students, and women, who presented themselves as their target audience. FATH, despite its financial clout and bureaucratic weight was not initially able to make itself felt. It was in fact a latecomer to the field. This was to soon change after the exile to Tunis, when the occupied territories became the main, perhaps even the sole arena of competition and struggle, and when even Arab sponsored organisations reared their heads.
Most observers who have written about this period have unreservedly noted the grassroots nature of the organisational structures established within the occupied territories,and view both the PPF and the NGC as representative bodies. They are regarded as legitimate not because they are elected bodies, which evidently they are not, but because they are perceived to be the outcome of a broad based political participation, and to embody a measure of democratisation in Palestinian society. It is indeed true that repeated calls for "democratisation" have come from within the occupied territories. But what these calls have in common is a rejection of the political strategy adopted by the PLO leadership at any given time. Thus often the main motive behind this "democratic" position is an opposition to the policies pursued by Arafat and the groups around him. This was the case for example when Arafat tried to affect a rapprochement with Egypt and with Jordan, with the aim of arriving at an agreement with the United States. In both instances he was termed "authoritarian and antidemocratic", which he probably was and is, but his accusers lacked the credibility which comes with consistency and the determination to keep to their principled positions. So long as decision making remained an individual and not an institutional affair, calls for democracy were and are meaningless. Furthermore, so long as institution building was and continues to be a factional affair, these institutions, however much they multiply will continue to lack any democratic content.
The Revenge of Bourghiba*: The New Palestinian Discourse.
Summarising the period since 1982 when the Palestinians forcibly transferred their headquarters from Beirut to Tunis, the assertion can be safely made that at both the regional and international levels, the balance of power tilted more heavily than ever in favour of Israel and against the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination and independence. In retrospect, the Intifada itself has not contributed in any way to transforming this unfavourable situation, but it has provided the PLO with the means and the impetus to accommodate itself to this new reality.
In 1982, Israel embarked on a multi fronted attack on the Palestinian national movement. The Israeli army occupied the larger part of Lebanon and laid siege to the PLO in Beirut. In the same period the Israeli occupation administration issued an order banning the National Guidance Committee and dissolving a number of the most active elected municipal councils in the occupied territories. In an effort to re-establish its waning authority, it unleashed the Village Leagues, and installed the Civil Administration to carry out the day to day affairs of the occupation. To a large degree this was made possible by, and complimented, Israel's success in concluding the Camp David Agreement with Egypt.
The PLO's departure to Tunis signalled a downward spiral in its own and the Palestinians fortunes. The organisation had of course already reached a dead end prior to that, but this remained camouflaged by the need to carry on its state like functions in Lebanon, and as a result of its involvement in the on-going armed conflict in the country. The semi state apparatus (military, diplomatic, administrative) which had been built up over the years became, in the new conditions, a political and financial burden. Political disagreements over the choice of Tunis as a final destination, Arafat's re-opening of contacts with the Egyptians while still under siege in Beirut, and his consequent call on President Mubarak as his first port of call after embarking from Beirut, had already erupted.
Within Fath itself a split took place in 1983 which paralysed the PLO, though in retrospect it has become clear that this gave Arafat greater freedom of movement to pursue his own policies. The loss of Lebanon as a territorial base, led to increasing difficulties in maintaining the effectiveness and cohesiveness of the PLO's institutions, which consequently contributed to increasing the role and power of individual leaders in possession of the requisite resources. This was to become evident on the outbreak of the Intifada in the occupied territories, when control of financial resources became a matter of paramount importance in the "institution building industry".
Until the outbreak of the Intifada in December 1987 accorded a much needed legitimacy to a largely impotent and inoperative PLO, it appeared as if the Camp David Accords and the 1982 Israeli-Palestinian war had served to marginalise the PLO and render it ineffective. The separate peace between Israel and Egypt had undoubtedly transformed the regional balance of power. The holding of the Seventeenth PNC in Amman in 1984 was an early sign that a core group of the Palestinian leadership was edging towards recognition and acceptance of the new geo political realities created by Egypt's withdrawal from the struggle with Israel. There had always been two strands within the Palestinian Movement. One called for armed struggle and social transformation as the path to liberation. The other, more pragmatic and in tune with the existing Arab state system, preferred to work within the international system, as embodied by the United Nations, international public opinion, and what was termed "international legitimacy". So long as Israel pursued the Jordanian option and refused to recognise the Palestinians as independent players this path was blocked. The demise of the Israeli Labour Party transformed the situation. The Likud, in its desire to retain the whole of the Occupied Territories, recognised in the Camp David Accords the Palestinian issue as a question to be dealt with in partnership with the Palestinians themselves,(though those were narrowly defined to exclude all Palestinians who were not resident of the Occupied Territories).
The Intifada provided the opening which allowed this pragmatic group to pursue its aims. Already by holding the Seventeenth PNC in Amman in flagrant disregard of the opposition, not only from within FATH, but also that coming from other political groupings within the PLO, it was becoming clear that the era of consensus politics within the PLO was over, and that a shift to a majority politics was taking place(Sahliyeh 1986,198).By the time the unification conference of the PLO took place in Algiers in 1987(The eighteenth PNC)the battle over "numerical democracy" had been won. Henceforth, and this was to prove of crucial importance once the decision had to be made to enter the American brokered negotiations, a numerical majority was all that was needed to arrive at binding decisions in the leading bodies of the PLO. To all intents and purposes formal democracy was being observed.
Indeed dialogue and heated debates have been a hallmark of Palestinian politics since the inception of the PLO. When consensus was the basis of Palestinian decision making, dialogue and debate had their role in fostering negotiations and compromise. Even then, some opposition groups had found it difficult to abide by consensual decisions and more often than not, some groups, notably the Popular Front, have preferred to remain outside the organisational framework of Palestinian politics rather than abide by decisions they could not agree to. Even so, they were careful not to stray too far. Once majority voting replaced consensual decision-making as accepted "democratic" procedure, this called into question the whole issue of the PLO's representative bodies and the method of their selection. The "quota" system, in operation both in the selection of representatives for the PNC and the Central Council, has also been used in the ongoing task of building a civilian infrastructure and institution building within the Occupied Territories. What the PLO did was simply to export its bureaucratic structures to the inside. The various groups within the organisation wanted to be represented in every institution, with the aim of safeguarding their factional interests and those of their members. While paying lip service to democracy, the election process is shunned under a variety of excuses, not all of which are illegitimate. The end result is the institutionalisation of the quota system which continues to be inseparable from political alliances among like minded groups.
Easy though it is to criticise this set up, it is necessary perhaps to pose the question whether in the prevailing circumstances there is a more suitable form of democratic procedure, and what the aim of introducing this would be. There are those of course who argue that the quest for democracy has become a "global phenomenon", and that it is now "a universal political norm". There is thus no need to put forward such questions.
In many ways this is undoubtedly true, as has only recently been demonstrated and in a rather dramatic way .On the First day of the New Year, the first of January 1994,peasants in the southern province of Chiapas in Mexico staged an uprising against the continued rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which has been democratically in power in Mexico since 1929,the world's oldest one-party state. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation, in a statement issued on the first of January 1994,called on the Mexican people to support the struggle for "work, land, housing, food, health. education, independence ,freedom demoocracy, justice and peace." Emiliano Zapata, murdered in 1919,was the foremost leader of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1919,which raised as its rallying cry the slogan "Land and Liberty". Today, the World Bank estimates that thirty two million of Mexico's eighty five million people live in poverty. Perhaps this is so, but it does not detract from Mexico's democratic credentials. It is not clear whether the rebels choice of the first of January to embark on their revolution was in any way connected to the fact that it was the date set for the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Mexican Governments response so far has been to send in the army and to carry out aerial bombardments of suspected rebel positions.
It could of course be argued that in some regions of the word the groundwork necessary to accommodate liberal democracy has not yet been accomplished. Thus Charles Issawi's well known and often repeated argument that democracy does not exist in the Arab world because the economic and social basis which it requires is still non existent. Others, characterising the state in the Middle East as a rentier state, argue that because revenue is not raised by the state through taxation which is necessarily associated with demands for popular reform and legitimisation, but through the sale of oil, no social differentiation has taken place in society, and the state is immune to any popular pressure or influence. Furthermore, having experienced a brief interlude of liberal democracy between the ending of colonial rule and the onset of the military regimes which have become so well entrenched in the Arab world, democratisation is regarded by many as essentially elitist and inequitable. The ruling elites, using the rhetoric of socialism, have maintained themselves in power and enjoyed the benefits of material privileges denied to the overwhelming majority of the populations of the Arab world. Currently, an aspiring elite, under the banner of economic liberalism, is employing the rhetoric of multi party democracy, markets, trickle down etc, to challenge the ruling elite. Democracy, no less than socialism, is consequently regarded as merely a smoke screen hiding what is essentially a struggle for wealth and power between rival factions of the same social and economic elite.
It is hardly necessary to observe that the Palestinian national movement does not exist in a vacuum. It is affected and influenced by what goes on in its surrounding environment. The PLO itself differs from the existing Arab ruling establishments only in so far as it lacks a territorial base, and in that it is unable due to its peculiar circumstances, to confront head on its own civil society. In Algeria, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, we see how state and society interact. The current popularity of the concept of civil society conceals the unique characteristics of specific civil societies, and imbues them with the very much desired qualities of the ideal type. It is for this reason that it is important to cast a more inquiring eye at civil society in the occupied territories, and to examine its antecedents.
Observers have enthusiastically recorded the multifaceted activities of the grass roots movement which has over the lengthy period of over twenty years of Israeli occupation created a civil society representing the "inside". This seems to carry the promise of a regenerated Palestinian national movement, as juxtaposed to a bankrupt and bureaucratic "outside", which is portrayed by the Media, Arab states, The United States, Israel, and indeed the whole wide world, as constituting a barrier to the establishment of peace in the region and settling once and for all the Arab Israeli conflict.
In this respect, the thesis has been put forward that the Israeli Occupation itself, which has been the incubator of this particular civil society, has fostered the development of a democratic pluralist Palestinian politics (Maoz1993,231),and that military control in the occupied territories has itself "promoted the stirrings of democracy among people who are ruled undemocratically"(Kaufman1993,47). Furthermore, the occupation has been credited with familiarising the Palestinians with the election process, thanks to its having allowed elections to be held for municipal councils (not withstanding that the last such election took place in 1976). Even the repressive policies directed against Palestinians have been benificial, in that they have accelerated the dispersion of decision making power to the grassroots level and to the younger generations. Thanks to the continuation of the occupation, the Palestinians carried out the Intifada, which has established new patterns of collective behaviour and allowed people to take new initiatives. Even the forced dispersal of the Palestinians round the world has contributed further to decentralise decision making, as diversity is the outcome of exile, and only democracy can encompass this diversity. More importantly, the constant defeats suffered by the Palestinians and the transformation of the regional environment as a result of the Gulf War, and the International environment as a result of the demise of the Communist world and the Cold War, have made the Palestinians realise that they cannot afford to alienate Western countries by creating a non democratic state. Strengthening this trend towards democracy is the fact that the professional and political elite currently occupying centre stage is "almost exclusively Western educated and ...Western oriented". thus the issue of freedom is fundamental to its outlook and it will not accept anything less than a future democratic state. In perhaps a slightly less vulgar fashion these and similar arguments have been employed by the apologists of every colonial power.
In reality, Palestinian civil society has been stunted and deformed by the workings of the Israeli military occupation. The twenty seven years of military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been instrumental in accelerating the proletarinisation process of the Palestinian peasantry, and in facilitating an on-going emigration from the country (Semyonov/Lewin-Epstein1987,114).This has markedly affected those with more marketable skills. Those that remained, despite continued resistance to the occupation by a militant minority of the population, and despite the outbreak of the Intifada, which at the outset possessed a popular mass character, have acquired a unique political outlook. This differentiates them ,both from the Palestinians who remained in their homes in 1948, and consequently became Israeli citizens without however relinquishing their Palestinian identity. It also separates them from Palestinians who were dispersed further afield ,and continued to hold on to the myth of Palestine and the dream of liberation and return. The realism and pragmatism which observers tend to observe among the more eloquent spokespersons of the occupied territories, and indeed even the proverbial man in the street, is perhaps more the outcome of resignation and impotence, rather than political maturity or a newly found faith in peaceful processes. If numerical democracy is the ensuring that popular wishes become the arbiter of political decisions, then the enthusiasm for majority supported resolutions can only mean that civil society in the occupied territories has reached the point where any change in the situation, irrespective of its long term effects, and irrespective of its results as far as the majority of the Palestinians outside Palestine are concerned, is preferable to the continued state of affairs.
The new Palestinian discourse has been welcomed as a sign on the one hand of a "philosophical commitment to the development of democratic institutions", while at the same time demonstrating the beginnings of a new and welcome pragmatism, "Palestinians realise that they cannot afford to alienate Western countries by creating a non democratic state...". Democratisation is deemed to be positive because it serves to enhance the political process. But what is actually required from it? and what is it exactly that it is supposed to achieve? Is the aim to allow those with vested interests to make their voices heard? Or is the aim perhaps to give weight to the voice of the silent majority? Is it necessary in order to enhance the legitimacy of both national goals and national leaders? Is it a more useful way of combating the Israeli occupation and enhancing national solidarity? Will it allow for the redressing of a balance of power which is markedly tilted in favour of Israel?
These and similar questions are meaningful only if they are posed in a concrete way. What is currently at stake is the division of power and authority between the PLO bureaucracy which is marooned outside, and the new intelligentsia which has grown, and been shaped by its experiences under the occupation. The constant battering the PLO has been subjected to and its failures, the Intifada, the changed regional and international environment, the increased differentiation created by the workings of the occupation, all these and many other factors have served to provide an opening for the appearance of articulate social groups who want to take part in the political process and share in determining their own future. So long as the PLO operated at a distance from its very own "civil society", it was possible to carry on with the process of "manufacturing consent". All that was required was arriving at a compromise acceptable to half a dozen general secretaries. Now, with the Palestinians at the threshold of some form of self rule, new rules have to be formulated to establish the relationship between Palestinian society and the Palestinian state (authority. At the same time, the "historic compromise" hesitantly entered into by the Palestinian leadership and part of the Palestinian people with a reluctant and hesitant Israel, requires a new institutional structure reflecting the material interests that brought it about in the first place, and endowing it with the strength to weather the coming storms ahead.
* Al Habib Bourgiba suggested in a speech in 1965 that the Arabs should accept the UN 1947 partition decision, endorsing a two state solution and implicitly recognition of Israel. There was unanimous Arab official and unofficial rejection of his proposal. For the official Palestinian position see Fayez Sayigh, Hifna Min Dabbab: Bahth Fi Mafaheem Al Bourguibiya Wa Shiarateha. Palestine Research Centre. PLO. Beirut, May 1965.
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