A New Palestinian Intifada?

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

For years now, Arab media have asked, with every Zionist assault on Palestinian land, whether a third intifada is about to erupt in the West Bank. Academics and commentators try to answer, some judging an intifada highly likely, others playing down the prospect. It has become clear that many Israeli assaults, especially on Al-Aqsa Mosque, have failed to stir the Palestinian masses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip into motion. If we trace the course of Palestinian uprisings, we are in fact awaiting intifada number twenty-six, not number three. Since 1920, Palestine has witnessed twenty-five uprisings, none of which managed to liberate the country or achieve any part of the Palestinian people’s aspirations. A close observer will note that these uprisings tended to erupt spontaneously, without prior planning, filling a vacuum the arena was suffering from. Palestinian uprisings have not occurred under active, effective leaderships, nor amid a broad resistance movement — rather, they have erupted precisely when Palestinian leaderships were weak and the arena was devoid of any state of resistance or confrontation against the Israeli occupation.

An intifada is a spontaneous popular condition through which people express themselves by various means — demonstrations, statements, road closures, stone-throwing, wall graffiti, and so on. It generally springs from an acute sense of frustration and despair at the powerful players who might otherwise offer solutions to the impasses people suffer under. For this reason, an intifada is classified among acts of protest, not acts of resistance. Acts of resistance are, in practical terms, a more advanced stage in confronting occupation than uprisings, because they represent major undertakings capable of costing the occupation dearly and placing it before a security and economic impasse it may not be able to bear. Uprisings are protests, while acts of resistance are acts of parity, built on the principle of mutual harm and mutual deterrence; they begin with a simple step — boycotting the occupation across the various spheres of life, foremost among them the economic sphere — and then escalate until they reach armed military action.

People rise up as a result of accumulated grievances, and out of an awareness that solutions seem to be lacking, and that those who hold the keys to solutions are absent. They undertake this activity without political decisions or media speculation, and without being subject to the push of any button — they simply pour into the streets, set up barricades, and burn tires. It is extremely difficult to predict when the masses will take to the streets.

There are many reasons to assign a high probability to the outbreak of a new Palestinian intifada, some related to the occupation’s assaults, others to the practices of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian conditions are difficult and ripe — not merely for an intifada, but for a revolution. Even so, the restraining factors ought to be taken into account, and I list some of them below:

“Corruption has spread into every corner and crevice, to a degree that has damaged, powerfully, both the moral and social fabric of the people.”

First, the Palestinian people in the territory occupied in ‘67 have undergone a cultural re-conditioning since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, such that a culture of consumerism has come to dominate over national culture. The Palestinian Authority, Israel, and the Western states have kept the Palestinian people preoccupied with salaries, money, comforts, and material well-being, in a manner that manufactured daily, livelihood-related concerns for the Palestinian citizen, diverting his thinking and his attention away from the national cause and toward personal, everyday concerns. The Palestinian Authority has contributed enormously to reordering the Palestinian citizen’s priorities, such that the homeland is no longer the central axis commanding his concerns and activities.

Second, the Palestinian people have been heavily affected by the atmosphere of corruption that has come to dominate the West Bank and Gaza. People have become preoccupied with talk of the fortunes amassed by influential figures, and their thefts and embezzlement of the people’s money. Corruption has spread into every corner and crevice, to a degree that has damaged, powerfully, both the moral and social fabric of the people. And when the social and moral fabric suffers such damage, a people cannot stand on its own feet — this holds true for any society, not only Palestinian society.

Third, the Palestinian people of the West Bank and Gaza have been shocked by the poor conduct of the Palestinian leaderships, and by their mismanagement of the occupied territory. People believed the Palestinian state was just around the corner, that the refugees would soon return, and that the occupied territory would become the Singapore of the East; and over the years they discovered that all these expectations were nothing but wishful thinking and the lies of their leaderships. They saw that they had offered enormous sacrifices in previous uprisings, only for those sacrifices to end up benefiting corrupt leaderships skilled in plundering money, lying, and misleading. The question the Palestinian now increasingly asks himself is: for whom am I sacrificing? For whom do I die, leaving behind my wife and children?

Fourth, amid all this, the Palestinian sees the Palestinian Authority coordinating with the occupation, particularly on security matters. It pursues Palestinians who resist the occupation, on the pretext that a person engaged in resistance will provoke a response from the occupation leading to Palestinian losses, and that the best way to provide security for Palestinians is to prevent those engaged in resistance from resisting. The president of the Palestinian Authority has previously said that he will not allow an intifada to break out as long as he remains at the helm, and it is clear from the conduct of the Palestinian security services that they are trying to prevent any popular movement against the occupation.

Fifth, the Arab arena constitutes a restraining factor, because the Arab peoples are preoccupied with internal concerns stemming from the Arab upheaval that began in Tunisia. The Palestinian arena has traditionally looked to the Arab arena to support it in pressuring Arab rulers, and the Western states allied with them, in order to ease the burden on the Palestinian people and relieve the pressure of the occupation upon them. This is not available now, and the Arab peoples themselves need someone to stand in solidarity with them and lift them out of their own accumulated troubles.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “انتفاضة فلسطينية جديدة؟” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.