The Foundation of the Palestinian Resistance

The Palestine Liberation Organization was established in 1964 by decision of the Arab Summit with the aim of representing the Palestinian people and forming a Palestinian spearhead for Arab efforts toward the liberation of Palestine. Its charter, issued in 1964, adopted the pan-Arab nationalist dimension of the Palestinian cause, considering Palestine an Arab country whose liberation was the responsibility of the Arabs as much as the Palestinians. The charter regarded Mandate Palestine (as drawn by French and British colonialism) as the country of the Palestinians, which must be liberated by force of arms. The charter affirmed the necessity of taking the steps required for liberation and establishing an educational program to serve those steps. The charter rejected Zionist immigration to Palestine, and considered the international resolutions concerning Palestine — specifically the Partition Resolution — null and void.

The Palestine Liberation Organization worked to rally Palestinian energies behind it, without neglecting Arab forces, and set about establishing the Palestine Liberation Army. But the organization was not equal to the responsibility of its goal, and became entangled in internal Arab conflicts, which cost it part of the media glow and the popular hope it had enjoyed at its founding. As soon as the Arabs were defeated in the June 1967 war, the “nationalist” Liberation Organization began to crumble in favor of the Palestinian forces that had begun to grow active on the scene.

Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat, was the most prominent of the Palestinian movements that came to lead the fedayeen action, or armed resistance, against Israel. It is known that the semi-secret consultations over forming the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) coincided to some extent with the period in which the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser began thinking of establishing the Liberation Organization. Ahmad al-Shuqayri, the first chairman of the Liberation Organization, tried to contact those working to form Fatah in order to persuade them to join the not-yet-announced organization, but he failed. In turn, that group seeking to form a Palestinian organization tried to persuade him to abandon following in the train of any of the Arab regimes, joining them and working with them, but he refused.

At a time when the Palestine Liberation Organization reflected the viewpoint of the man who sought to establish it — President Abdel Nasser — Fatah was heading in a different direction. Abdel Nasser wanted the Liberation Organization to adopt the pan-Arab nationalist dimension, while the founders of Fatah were thinking in terms of the national, country-specific dimension. Fatah’s founders saw that the Arab arena was, at the time, drowning in internal conflicts that consumed time and effort and harmed the Palestinian cause, and they were not convinced that any of the Arab regimes was seriously working toward the liberation of Palestine. For this reason, they believed that the Palestinian people had to carry their own burden on their own shoulders and enter the arena of armed struggle against Israel.

Fatah saw the goal as the liberation of Palestine, and armed struggle as the path toward it. The movement did not put forward anything suggesting the possibility of conceding a single grain of Palestinian soil, and it called on the Palestinian people to take up arms and wage a guerrilla war that would end in liberation and the return of refugees to their homes and their land. The movement made entirely clear that it did not intend to interfere in Arab affairs, just as it insisted that others must not interfere in Palestinian affairs.

Fatah worked to be the movement of the Palestinian street, or of the Palestinian masses, and for this reason it was careful not to enter into ideological doctrines or adopt intellectual positions or philosophical frameworks, contenting itself with raising the banner of armed struggle in order to draw into its ranks anyone with the intention of bearing arms and fighting for freedom and liberation. It thus opened its doors to Palestinians of every belief and intellectual persuasion to join its ranks.

Fatah found it difficult to build a following and exert mass influence before 1967, owing to the hostility of Arab states toward its positions and to the modesty of its media apparatus and the secrecy of its movements. But matters changed after the war, as the movement became master of the situation in the area surrounding occupied Palestine. The movement began to move and to attack Israeli positions at a time when people were wracked with pain and grief over what had befallen the country and the humiliation that had struck the Arab armies, and at a time when the defeated Arab regimes were unable to face the people and justify what had happened. Fatah leapt to the forefront of the scene because people found in it consolation and an opportunity to restore Arab dignity and prestige. People’s chests were filled with feelings of humiliation mixed with a desire for revenge and for restoring face and respect, and so they rejoiced at the Palestinian development that might achieve what the Arab regimes had failed to achieve.

Fatah’s activity spurred the emergence of other Palestinian factions, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine appeared about six months after the June defeat. The Popular Front traces its origins to the Arab Nationalist Movement, whose leaders chose to transform into a fighting Palestinian organization after the defeat, which was considered a defeat for the Arab nationalists as well. President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who called for Arab unity, was defeated in the 1967 war, as was the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, which carried the banner of unity and defended it. The foundations of Arab nationalism were shaken after the war, and its dialectics lost most of their luster, and the Arab Nationalist Movement found no difficulty in transforming into a Palestinian organization. But the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Dr. George Habash, did not at the time abandon the idea of Arab nationalism, and made clear that it was a Palestinian organization open to the Arabs and calling for Arab unity.

What matters is that the Popular Front began to compete with Fatah in drawing in the masses, organizing and training volunteers, and launching military operations against Israel. The competition between the two movements at that time was not a competition of words, insults, or defamation, but a competition in the field of resisting the Zionist occupation. That said, the upper hand remained with Fatah, which remained the stronger and more capable movement, owing to greater experience in secret organizational work and to better assistance from some Arab states, whether in the form of facilitation or financial grants and donations.

The overall activity of Fatah, together with the Popular Front, led to the overturning of the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Ahmad al-Shuqayri, the organization’s chairman at the time, soon resigned, to be replaced by a chairman appointed by the Palestinian resistance, Fatah in particular. Yahya Hammuda replaced al-Shuqayri in late 1967, and arrangements were made at the level of the organization’s Executive Committee to restructure the organization and amend the Palestinian National Charter. In accordance with Fatah’s view of the nature of the conflict with Israel, which carried within it the national, country-specific dimension, the National Charter was amended to become the Palestinian National Charter, so that Palestine became the homeland of the Palestinian Arab people, instead of Palestine as an Arab homeland.

Yasser Arafat was elected chairman of the organization by the Palestinian National Council in 1969, and he continued to head it up to the completion of this book.

The Liberation Organization took its freedom of action in a number of Arab states, and was praised far and wide by those enthusiastic about Arabism, the liberation of Palestine, and hopes of turning back the enemy’s schemes. It is true that the organization’s enemies within some Arab regimes lay in wait for it, but its popularity among the masses stood in the way of any direct confrontation with its expansion — at least in the early stages following the 1967 defeat.

The Battle of Karameh

The Palestine Liberation Organization witnessed major and dramatic developments after the Battle of Karameh, fought between Israeli forces on one side and the forces of the Palestinian resistance together with the Jordanian army on the other. On March 21, 1968, Israeli forces crossed the line of fire with Jordan — the Jordan River — with the aim of eliminating the Palestinian resistance, which had made the Karameh camp in the Jordan Valley its main field headquarters. Israeli forces, equipped with armor, armored personnel carriers, and half-tracks, and backed by warplanes, entered in order to eliminate, according to official Israeli statements, the Palestinian resistance. The Palestinian forces were not equipped with comparable military equipment, and relied on light weapons, firm fighting resolve, and guerrilla-warfare tactics. A fierce battle raged inside the camp from dawn until evening. The Jordanian army intervened several hours after the battle began, which had a major impact on its course and produced a relative balance of forces.

Israel destroyed the camp and managed to capture a number of resistance fighters, and a number of martyrs fell from the ranks of the resistance and the Jordanian army. Israel sustained unexpected losses in equipment and personnel.

Although the losses on the Arab side were heavy, the battle was a source of pride for the Arabs, and for the Palestinian resistance in particular. It was the first strong battle that embodied a real confrontation between Arabs and the Israeli army after the 1967 war. The Palestinian resistance fought valiantly, as did the Jordanian army, and together they fought a battle that differed in performance and prowess from the 1967 war, which had been a farce in the history of wars. The battle stirred in Arab hearts enthusiasm and feelings of pride and dignity, and they felt themselves capable of fighting and of reorganizing their ranks and of teaching Israel lessons in combat and maneuver.

The battle was, specifically, a victory for the Palestinian resistance that opened doors before it for growth and development and an intensified mobilization and readiness. The battle dazzled Arabs and Muslims, and their respect for the Palestinian resistance grew, along with their desire to offer it support. And so it was: numbers of volunteers poured in to join the Palestinian resistance, Fatah in particular, donations flowed in, and the media opened its doors and its heart to support and to publicize the resistance’s goals and its heroics.

Despite the good reputation the resistance earned, and the sweeping popularity it enjoyed across the Arab world, several problems arose from the developments that followed, some of which I will try to explain below:

First: the serious infiltration of the ranks of the Palestinian resistance by various intelligence agencies. The resistance’s ranks had not been free of security infiltration by hostile intelligence agencies before the Battle of Karameh, since it became clear that some of the military operations the resistance carried out in the Jordan Valley area against Israeli targets had failed in a manner that raised question marks over how secret the military work truly was. Operations failed on the verge of execution, and military groups were ambushed by Israeli military ambushes set in advance. The Battle of Karameh itself showed that the Israelis possessed no small amount of important information about the movements and ranks of Palestinian resistance fighters. But this infiltration expanded, spread, and took root after the Battle of Karameh.

The Palestinian resistance, whether intentionally or not, opened its doors to volunteers who came from various countries and regions, and nothing prevented it from accepting anyone except the limits of its capacity to absorb them. The resistance did not take care to vet the volunteers, did not scrutinize their pasts, and did not put them through a trial period to be sure of their intentions. Joining the ranks of the resistance became an easy matter, costing the person nothing more than declaring his intention and his readiness to join the revolutionaries. In this way, the ranks of the resistance — Fatah’s ranks in particular — turned into something resembling a procession that any passerby could join.

Various intelligence agencies — foremost among them Israeli, Arab, and American intelligence — sent their agents to become comrades-in-arms with the Palestinian fighters, and to become administrators and commanders within the various factions.

Second: disregarding the people and leaderships of East Jordan. The Palestinian resistance felt a great deal of grandeur after the Battle of Karameh, along with excessive pride, and began to act as though it were the ultimate authority in East Jordan. Here I am not speaking of the Jordanian regime, but of the people who were supposed to constitute the human, moral, and material depth of the resistance.

The Arab complex of self-glorification existed among the men of the resistance even before the Battle of Karameh — a behavioral complex that Arabs pass down from generation to generation and which still exists strongly today. A source of power, whether money, weapons, position, prestige, or otherwise, invites a kind of condescending or authoritarian-paternalistic behavior, and self-display and the assertion of one’s own capacities in the face of others’ capacities. This is a complex that constitutes a prominent feature of Arab backwardness and has caused Arabs a great deal of internal problems and disputes, and has helped create an atmosphere of hatred and hostility between different families as well as between individuals. The men of the resistance practiced this complex before the Battle of Karameh, but its practice doubled in scale and recklessness after the battle. The men of the resistance felt themselves masters of the situation, the makers of the heroic battle that had raised Arab heads high, and instead of becoming humble and drawing closer to the people, they began acting under the slogan that the fedayee was entitled to what others were not, and behaving as though they were the leaders who planned, decided, commanded, and forbade. Nor was this the practice only of rank-and-file individuals — it was also the practice of the leaderships.

These practices led to two results:

A. Hatred of the Palestinian resistance by the people — Jordanians in particular — and, to a lesser extent, hatred toward Palestinians more broadly. The Palestinian resistance took matters into its own hands and worked to make the Jordanians — including national leaders, tribal notables, and thought leaders — subordinate to it, taking their orders from it. The resistance marginalized Jordan’s leaders, its chiefs, and its notables, curtailed their roles, subjected them to insults, and placed the Palestinian in a higher rank vis-à-vis the Jordanian.

A belief then prevailed among a number of resistance leaders and among a number of ordinary Palestinians that Jordanians were backward and incapable of leadership or sound thinking, and that they needed many long years before emerging from a primitive Bedouin way of life. And a notion prevailed that Palestinians were the people of culture and knowledge, superior to the other peoples of the Arab nation. The leaderships of the Palestinian resistance entrenched this illusion and this narrow-mindedness, which pushed Palestinians into behavior lacking in balance and equilibrium.

It is true that Arabs west of the Jordan enjoyed a greater share of education than Arabs east of the Jordan, for various reasons, but this should not have led the Palestinian to forget, or pretend to forget, that East Jordan was one of the Arab regions to which he had fled as a refuge. And it is true that this ground was not comfortable and contained irritations and problems, but it was better than another ground that would have left the Palestinian utterly lost. The resistance’s leaders ought to have shown a balanced outlook, on the premise that Arabs everywhere face the same fate and build their future together, but condescending behavior proved stronger than rational considerations.

B. The intensifying of country-specific — as opposed to pan-Arab — consciousness, and the feeling of separation between the Jordanian and Palestinian peoples. This consciousness existed before the Palestinian resistance, but it moved at a quiet pace and was confined to politicians and some intellectuals, without deep roots in the Palestinian and Jordanian street. Matters changed as a result of these practices, and feelings of separation began striking deep roots and taking their place in Jordanian and Palestinian sentiment. In saying this, I do not mean to absolve leaders on the Jordanian side of pushing in this direction, or to deny their destructive role on the path of unity between the two peoples of the two countries, but I am focusing on the Palestinian role because it was the Palestinian side that initiated the resistance and was, in principle, the one concerned with seeking out sources of strength and creating the conditions suitable for continuity, fortification, and the mobilization of various energies.

This country-specific dimension became entrenched in the handling of the Palestinian National Charter, which was an amendment of the Palestinian, pan-Arab National Charter. Of course, one cannot separate the field development of the “nationalization,” in the country-specific sense, of the Palestinian dimension from Fatah’s basic orientation, but the matter was carried out crudely, in a way bound to sever ties and create an atmosphere of hatred, grudges, and confrontation. Thus began a phase of distancing from the Arab masses and confining Palestinians within their own Palestinian identity — a phase that also happened to align with the vision of a number of Arab regimes for how affairs in the Arab homeland should be arranged, a vision premised on insularity and the creation of divergent cultures among the Arab peoples.

This drew the Palestinians into the circle of official Arab conflicts and distanced them from the search for popular harmony at the level of the Arab homeland, which had serious repercussions for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people in the years that followed — repercussions we still witness to this day.

Third: moral decline in the conduct of daily dealings. Many members of the Palestinian resistance stepped outside the bounds of proper daily conduct and began overstepping crudely, including interfering in people’s private affairs, assaulting their property, and violating their honor. Many resistance members began behaving as though they were the holders of authority and decision-making power, which created an atmosphere of revulsion among many people in Jordan, Jordanians in particular.

These transgressions occurred in full view and hearing of the Palestinian leaderships, and the organizational disciplinary forces were not carrying out their duty. Indeed, the leaderships themselves, and those responsible for discipline, were often first in line in moral deviation and decline. There were no moral rules to restrain those leaderships, nor standards resting on breadth of vision and a concern for balance and the values of justice. It is only natural that a negative popular reaction toward the Palestinian resistance and those in charge of it would accumulate. And despite the many Palestinian and Jordanian voices that warned of the danger of this deviant behavior, the Palestinian leadership did not work to correct the errors and left matters to fester.

Many members of the resistance wronged various segments of the population. They tried to extort merchants, harassed women, insulted army officers, meddled in public institutions, worked to humiliate officials, and interfered between husband and wife and between brother and brother, and so on. This is not to mention the improvised, senseless use of the weapons in their hands. Gunfire would ring out in city streets generally, for a reason or for no reason, over the most trivial matters. Those acts exceeded every standard that could be morally acceptable and stood in complete contradiction to the moral requirements of revolution and liberation.

This does not mean, in any way, that there were no parties tampering with the situation and carrying out immoral practices with the aim of harming the Palestinian resistance’s reputation. Certain parties worked to recruit people to carry out acts offensive to decency and sound morals, with the aim of creating a great gulf of hatred between the men of the resistance and the general public — a gulf that would lead to conflict and the fragmentation of forces. A revolution is bound to pose a threat to several parties in the region, and harming it and undermining it from within in particular is a priority for those parties.

The head of the serpent was King Hussein, who was poised to pounce on the Palestinian resistance — not because it mistreated people, but because it contradicted the very purpose of his existence as ruler of East Jordan, tasked with protecting Israel’s eastern border. British colonialism had installed the King’s family over East Jordan in exchange for defending Western colonial interests and carrying out Western goals in the Arab region. And since the King was not able to strike the Palestinian resistance directly right after the defeat, he found it important to create the appropriate conditions to deliver a blow that would appear justified to the public. The King was certainly pleased at the resistance men’s misdeeds, and worked hard to establish formations operating under the banner of the resistance in order to reinforce the popular resentment that would justify his actions against the resistance.

But the problem, in truth, did not lie in outside parties, but in the Palestinian resistance itself, which allowed these transgressions and turned a blind eye to them. That is, the resistance itself created the atmosphere suitable for various forces to carry out their designs. And since the Palestinian leadership was aware of what was happening inside the resistance, and was itself engaging in the very same practices, it ultimately converges — intentionally or not — with the hostile forces.

Through its own actions, the Palestine Liberation Organization sowed the seeds of its own demise; indeed, it went further, sowing the seeds of failure across the Palestinian arena and of the deterioration of the Palestinian cause toward continuous concessions that cost the Palestinian people a great deal of loss, suffering, sorrow, and pain. It did not merely sow a bad seed — it created revolutionary illusions among the Palestinian people that drove its sons to throw themselves into a revolution that consumed effort, blood, and lives to no avail.

The resistance factions stumbled along, even as they engaged in competition with one another to prove leadership and to try to extend dominance over the arena. This competition was not confined to sending armed cells across Jordan, but also took the form of military confrontation among themselves. The Palestinian factions opened fire on one another several times in Jordan, and carried out mutual raids on military bases and administrative centers, claiming the lives of a considerable number of Palestinians.

This is in addition to the fact that the number of Palestinian factions in Jordan kept increasing. Factions split off from factions, and new factions and numerous leaderships appeared. A number of these factions were established by Arab states competing for influence within the Palestinian resistance and the Liberation Organization; some must have been established by hostile intelligence agencies; but some arose from purely Palestinian initiative. This led to fragmentation, disintegration, and a weakened ability to unify ranks.

The 1970 war between the Jordanian army and the Palestinian resistance was not a surprise. The clash was inevitable, given the general political situation that characterized the Arab regimes and the extent of their readiness to devote energies to confronting Israel. That is, the resistance was in total contradiction with the situation, the policies, and the ambitions of the Arab regimes, and the pouncing on the resistance was a matter of timing, not of principle. And if the resistance lived in Jordan for three years, this was owing to the circumstances of the 1967 defeat, not because the Jordanian regime wished for its presence.

Despite this inevitability, the Palestinian resistance created the conditions suitable for hastening the pouncing upon it. Instead of following policies suited to prolonging its life, it pursued behaviors that hastened its shortening. The behaviors of the organization and of the resistance generally, mentioned above, led to the creation of a hostile atmosphere among the Arab populace in Jordan — whether of East Jordanian or Palestinian origin — and among the ranks of the Jordanian army. And this atmosphere was entirely in keeping with the regime’s own view of how affairs in Jordan ought to be run, and the political orientations that ought to govern them.

The outcome was the expulsion of the Palestinian resistance from Jordan.

Departure from the Occupied Territory of ‘67

By “departure” here I do not mean physical withdrawal, but the elimination of serious resistance in the territory occupied in 1967. To clarify my idea, I define resistance here as an attempt to inflict direct harm on the enemy and prevent it from implementing its policies. This definition encompasses four forms of resistance, which I rank below in ascending order:

1. Boycott, which is considered the lowest form of resistance, meaning not dealing with the enemy in the fields of daily life, particularly in the economic sphere. Among the least a people living under occupation can do is boycott the occupying power — specifically, refrain from buying what it produces in the way of goods and merchandise, and focus on the task of self-sufficiency independent of the enemy. This is the very least that can be done by one who refuses the existence of an overpowering force controlling him.

Some individuals adopted boycotting right after the occupation, and tried to spread and entrench the idea, but they failed to do so. There are several reasons for this failure, among them the absence of mass awareness of the importance of this step, and its absence from the program and vision of the Palestine Liberation Organization. From the very first days of the occupation, Palestinians flowed into Israeli facilities to work, and their numbers increased over time, and they began establishing commercial relations with Israel. And so people were left without a leadership to make clear to them the dangers and harms that could befall the people as a result.

2. Partial civil disobedience, meaning collective refusal of selected occupation measures, such as not paying taxes, not licensing cars, and going out without carrying military-issued identity cards. This can be carried out alongside boycotting.

3. Comprehensive civil disobedience, meaning the collective refusal of all civil measures of the occupation, including disposing of the identity cards it issued. This alongside boycotting measures.

4. Armed resistance, which is the highest form of resistance and the most severe in its toll on the occupation and on the people at once. It has been proven historically that this is the most effective type of resistance, and although it costs people heavy losses, it places the occupation before a choice between attrition or withdrawal from the occupied land. Historically, the occupation has chosen to withdraw.

If we stop at this type of resistance and total up the sum of Palestinian losses under occupation, whether in lives, property, arrests, or grief, we might find that the people offered enormous sacrifices that could have led to liberation had it decided to offer them within the framework of sustained military resistance or armed revolution. The Palestinian people could have waged an armed struggle that would have shortened the days of occupation, as happened in southern Lebanon after the 1982 war.

If we trace the course of the Liberation Organization through the years of occupation, we find that it did not work to build a methodical resistance according to a clear program. It never adopted any of the forms mentioned above in an organized manner except in brief phases and limited periods — among them an attempt to establish armed resistance directly after the 1967 war, and an attempt by the Palestinian masses to adopt an economic boycott during the Intifada. In the territory occupied in ‘67, there was no methodical, organized resistance with pillars, foundations, and mechanisms leading to forcing the enemy to consider leaving through losses it could not bear, whether at the popular level inside Israel or at the level of the government.

After the June war, military attempts were made in confrontation with the enemy, particularly along the Gaza coast. Secret military cells managed to carry out a number of successful attacks against Israeli military targets, leading to Israeli military alerts and to losses in personnel and equipment. But these attempts did not rise to the level of a revolution — that is, they did not turn into an armed revolutionary phenomenon whose range and scope expanded and whose intensity grew so as to inflict mounting pain on the enemy. But they were, at least, a step in the direction of organized resistance that could have deepened over the days and accumulated combat experience in guerrilla warfare. These cells belonged mainly to Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and to a lesser degree the Popular Front - General Command.

Of course, Israel worked to mobilize its energies to confront these attempts, but the decisive factor in their decline lay in the security infiltrations within the ranks of the resistance factions and within the ranks of the Palestinian people. The ranks of the factions were infiltrated, as I mentioned earlier, and Israel’s spies and agents rose through the ranks of responsibility within the Palestinian resistance and began learning of its secrets and hidden matters, which enabled Israel to gradually crush the resistance cells within the homeland. Israel managed to suppress these attempts and prevent their development into a daily revolutionary phenomenon.

Spies and security infiltration did not work only against resistance operations inside the homeland, but also worked against the resistance outside it as well. Many of the military operations launched from East Jordan were foiled by the Israelis. And although Palestinian military statements about these operations spoke of heavy losses on the Israeli side, the figures the Palestinian resistance provided regarding these losses were exaggerated. The Palestinian resistance sustained many losses in these operations — more than the Israeli side sustained.

It was tragic that many of the military-operation cells coming from outside fell into Israeli traps set in advance, based on prior knowledge of the Palestinian movement. Many of our Palestinian sons were martyred in Israeli traps set beforehand, with the Israeli side being the one to surprise the operating cells, rather than the other way around. Yet the Palestinian statements would go beyond this and announce to the public the achievement of one victory after another against the Israelis.

Strangely, some of the commanders of groups who crossed into West Jordan and returned to the East Bank, leaving martyrs behind, would be sent out a second time to lead new groups toward the same fate. Stranger still, these men were never questioned about what had happened, nor brought before military tribunals. The matter was astonishing and frightening. Why would one person escape the enemy’s bullets when his comrades did not, and then return to head another group, escaping once again while others did not, remaining in his position or even rising to a higher one? Was he regarded as a hero who had managed to evade the enemy’s bullets and demonstrated an extraordinary ability to survive?

The failure of external military operations coming from East Jordan, and the erosion of military action inside the homeland, showed that there was a serious flaw within the ranks of the Palestinian resistance, yet no one moved to correct the situation, investigate it, or discover its causes. Matters were left within a demagogic mold of influencing people, covered over by statements about illusory victories. People, generally, lacked the awareness to raise questions or search for the facts. They had taken up the idea of armed resistance, and their minds were wrapped in resounding speeches and the celebratory rattle of gunfire in the streets of Amman, and the massive funerals of martyrs who fell on the banks of the Jordan.

It appears that the serious flaw was not in the lower ranks of the resistance; rather, it was clear that the security infiltrations were in the upper layers of the organizational pyramid, which appeared revolutionary and militant in the mold of Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong. The mental image built in the Palestinian and broader Arab street around the resistance and its men prevented any questioning or doubt. This image was reinforced by media fabrication, pageantry, slogans, and resounding speeches, and became so widely entrenched that it did not even permit the mere raising of a question by anyone who harbored doubt about what was happening. Questioning was considered an unforgivable betrayal, and an act of fifth-columnism serving the enemy.

Palestinian heroes were arrested and martyred on the field of battle, and the masses, like the leadership, were keen to glorify them and pledge to follow in their footsteps. But the masses did not ask why the arrests happened, or why the operations ended in martyrdom. People did not ask why a cell in Gaza that had operated in secret for a period of time without being harmed was suddenly arrested, nor about the Israelis’ increasing success in striking resistance cells. The Palestinian fedayeen of East Jordan did not ask about their losses in lives, and the elimination of entire cells as they crossed the river to confront the Israelis. And so matters proceeded, as though the hidden explanation for everything happening rested with an ineluctable fate, subject to no logical or scientific process.

The elimination of the effective military cells inside the homeland opened the way toward resigning oneself to confronting the enemy only through protest. By the start of the 1970s, the Israelis had established an effective military administration and gained control over the general situation in the occupied territories, and recruited many spies and agents who provided abundant information about various Palestinian activities in the various fields of life. Conditions became settled for the Israelis in a manner that made the Palestinians appear submissive and resigned, awaiting relief that would come to them from outside the country. And with the exception of some scattered military operations at widely spaced intervals, the Palestinian people contented themselves with protesting the occupation’s policies through strikes, anti-occupation gatherings, mobilizing demonstrations, and the like.

Amid these forms of protest, simple matters that should have been considered and thought through were absent from people’s minds. For example, there was no thinking about how to arrange the country’s economic affairs so that the people could secure their livelihood without depending on the enemy, and no serious steps were taken toward spreading housing across the length and breadth of the country, even though the occupation’s laws in this regard in the 1970s were not as strict as they are now in the 1990s. There were no housing projects, nor attempts at large-scale land reclamation, nor was there a mentality searching for means of production and self-reliance. This is in addition to the growing numbers of Palestinians heading toward Israeli sites of production, and toward work in Israeli construction projects, particularly the settlements.

Matters proceeded within the Palestinian homeland in a strange way. One Palestinian works in an Israeli factory and contributes to Israeli productive capacity; another builds a settlement on confiscated Palestinian land; another passes on the latest news of activities to the enemy; leaderships speak of liberation coming from outside; a mosque imam preaches to people about scantily-clad women while the homeland’s own nakedness lies entirely exposed; a merchant strikes commercial deals with the enemy at the very time he blames the Arabs for slackness and betrayal; a teacher hides from his students’ questions about the map of Palestine and the paths to liberation; a demonstration leader gives speeches to people by day and slips off to the enemy’s centers by night; and a mother seeks salvation through prayer and asks her son to keep away from any path that might touch the occupiers. The homeland filled with contradictions and with deeds that gave the lie to words.

And what of the leaderships of the factions and of the Liberation Organization? They were, from outside, speaking of grinding battles and one victory after another, without possessing a discerning mind or an enlightened outlook capable of guiding the people toward action that might bear good fruit. Those leaderships proceeded without guidance, in a procession buffeted by the agents of intelligence agencies and overshadowed by illusions of victory and liberation — this, if a number of front-rank leaders were not themselves linked to hostile intelligence agencies.

The Resistance in Lebanon

The center of gravity of the Palestinian resistance moved to Lebanon after its presence in Jordan was ended. The resistance had existed there before that, particularly in the south, though its leaderships were in Jordan, and an agreement had previously been reached between the Lebanese government and the Palestinian resistance to organize the resistance’s activities, under the sponsorship of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1969.

Not all segments of the Lebanese people were sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian resistance. The positions of those segments ranged between fierce rejection of the resistance’s presence and welcome. Palestinian refugees and economically downtrodden Lebanese segments, such as the Shia, found in the resistance a hope that it might lift them out of their deteriorating living conditions and organize their ranks toward liberation, while the Maronite establishment and some wealthy segments, whether Muslim or Christian, found in the resistance a threat looming over them. That is, even though there were segments inclined to support the Palestinian resistance, there were segments that could not coexist with it or leave it be. These were segments loyal to the Western colonial powers, tied by friendly relations to Israel, and their clash with the resistance was inevitable — exactly as was the case with the Jordanian regime, which was never expected to coexist with the resistance.

But the matter depended in part on the Palestinian resistance itself and on how it handled affairs, in a way that might have prolonged its presence on Lebanese soil. That is, a clash on the Lebanese scene was to be expected, but it was important for the resistance to take various steps to avoid it or postpone it for as long as possible. But what happened did not differ radically from what had occurred on the Jordanian scene. The Palestinian resistance engaged in the very same practices that had bred hatred toward it in the Jordanian street and turned vast segments of the population against it. The resistance learned no lesson from the Jordanian experience, and repeated the very same mistakes and the very same behaviors.

Perhaps one could have overlooked the mistakes the resistance fell into in Jordan, on the grounds that it was still new and inexperienced, lacking deep experience in mobilization and in winning sympathy and support. The resistance’s leaders, on the whole, were not people of rich experience and did not possess military, political, and administrative expertise, and under this justification one might have understood these leaders’ inability to keep matters under control, and given them the benefit of the doubt. This is in addition to the fact that the men of the resistance, whether leaders or rank and file, were influenced by Arab traditions rather than by revolutionary traditions and ethics. Their educational roots and their manner of thinking — influenced by tribalism, love of self-display and boasting, and the chasing of personal interests — were far stronger than their desire to mobilize energies in the optimal manner that would lead to liberation.

But any inclination toward this understanding and this justification dissolved entirely once the behavior of the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon became clear. For it emerged that the resistance — its leaders specifically — learned no lesson to draw conclusions from and correct course; rather, they used their previous experiences to repeat them in a cruder manner, particularly in a society more open than Jordanian society. It became clear that there had been no intention to study the Jordanian experience, examine its mistakes and their causes, and the methods for correcting them. No serious evaluation of the Jordanian experience was ever conducted, nor any scientific inquiry into the resistance’s conduct, or into why the population stood aside and withheld support when it fell into crisis.

The leaders of the Palestinian resistance met after the resistance’s departure from Jordan, whether in 1970 or 1971, but the deliberations revolved around the conspiracy against the resistance and the forces of evil and aggression that had woven plots and worked to entrap the progressive revolutionary forces. Some resistance factions were blamed for some of their conduct in Jordan, but this never reached the point of assigning responsibility, nor did it develop into holding leaderships accountable or examining daily and general behaviors. The focus was on others and the forces of darkness, rather than on self-examination and narrow-mindedness, and no balanced assessment was conducted that would give each factor of failure its due weight.

The Palestinian resistance was struck by a violent shock — indeed, by a major defeat and a resounding failure. The men of the Palestinian resistance paid a heavy price in Jordan, and Palestinians too paid a price, the greater part of which is still being paid to this day. And despite this, no trials were ever held for the leaders of this failure, nor was any of them ever questioned or held responsible. The tragedy occurred on this vast scale, and there was no one calling for the failures to be held accountable, or even for an investigation into what happened and a search for the causes, the gaps, and the lapses. Matters proceeded as though none of the resistance’s leaders had erred, and as though the explanations for what happened concerned only others, the hostile forces.

A mentality of placing responsibility for the Palestinian people’s calamities on others took hold of the Palestinian arena, and hearts and minds never opened to the possibility that the Palestinian people — and specifically its leadership — could fall into error or misconduct. And so the matter of the resistance’s departure from Jordan and the elimination of the resistance in Palestine passed just as the June defeat had passed among the other Arab peoples. This situation gave the leaderships the strength to face their future defeats, in that they always employed a justificatory mentality to fend off criticism of themselves and to place the whole responsibility on external forces and on the Palestinian forces cooperating with them.

The Palestinian leaderships learned no lesson from Jordan — or did not wish to learn one — and continued the very same behavior in Lebanon, but at a sharper and wider pitch. The very same mistakes committed in Jordan were repeated in Lebanon: the arrogant conduct, the sidelining of Lebanese leaderships to make them subordinate to the orders of Palestinian leaderships, the effort to constrain the authority of the Lebanese government, and assaults on private property and attempts to violate people’s honor and matters bound up with dignity.

For the ordinary Palestinian and the simple fighter, these mistakes were not part of his awareness, and even if they were, they would not have raised in him an awareness of their repercussions for Palestinians and Lebanese. He looked at matters from the standpoint of a revolutionary who wanted to liberate his homeland, and who saw the revolution as the natural cradle for his efforts and the embodiment of his hopes; if a mistake occurred from this person or that, the matter was ordinary, because people are not infallible and can fall into error and lapses. Wrongful practices were not part of the simple fighter’s concern, overshadowed as he was by his revolutionary zeal and his focus on confrontation with the enemy and martyrdom for the sake of God and homeland. He would see planes bombing positions and hitting targets, and martyrs and wounded falling, while he himself engaged in maneuver and stood watch over the comfort and safety of the residents in the camps. The idea of liberation dominated his emotions, feelings, and sentiments, and within him was woven a world of ideals and sound morals in which the revolution flourished and grew.

Perhaps the simple fighter was also swept up by the support the Palestinian resistance enjoyed from Palestinian and Arab popular circles, and by the sympathetic responses from states that led the world revolutionary movement at that time, such as the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Vietnam. And perhaps the resistance leaderships’ local practices were lost amid a global momentum, an active political movement, and continuous media reports. For what did it mean that an officer had assaulted a girl, set against news bulletins speaking of fierce military confrontations, the resistance men’s legendary steadfastness, and the heavy losses inflicted on the enemy’s ranks? And what did it mean that a piece of land had been seized from a farmer’s field to become an area designated for the revolutionaries, set against a plane bombing and a Katyusha launched toward the enemy’s settlements in northern Palestine? And what importance did Palestinian military vehicles roaring down Hamra Street with loudspeakers blaring have, set against news of an armed cell infiltrating into Palestine, inflicting casualties on the enemy, and returning safely to its bases?

This logic did not apply to the simple fighter alone, but extended to Palestinians in Lebanon and beyond. An image took shape in people’s minds of a pure revolution and pure revolutionaries whose conduct could not possibly be tainted, or whose decisions could not be governed by desire and appetite. And mythical conceptions of the Palestinian leaderships became entrenched in people’s minds — leaderships described by many as brilliant, cunning, and possessed of an extraordinary capacity for sacrifice and giving.

There is no doubt that the Palestinian resistance was filled with tough, genuine, and loyal fighters and revolutionaries who were martyred defending the rights of the people and the safety and peace of mind of their families. But these men did not have the final — or the first — word in setting the resistance’s policy and its course. They were seeking victory against the enemy, or martyrdom for the sake of God, and Beirut was not their proper place or their desired location. These men were in the south, on the soil of Nabatieh, Tyre, Jezzine, and Marjayoun, on the direct line of confrontation with the enemy.

As for the senior commanders who planned militarily and politically, they were in Beirut, particularly in its western and southern districts and its camps, and it was they who determined the general policy of the Palestinian resistance, and who therefore shaped events before they happened and decided the fate of the true revolutionaries and of the resistance in general.

A considerable number of these leaders — people well known, with no need to name them here — were sexually depraved men who brought shame, disgrace, and dishonor upon the Palestinian people. These men spent their time in the pursuit of pleasures of every kind, and violated people’s honor through inducement and intimidation, and often used the Palestinian rifle — which was supposed to be sacred — to extort sex and defile people’s dignity. Among these men are people still in our midst today, standing at the top of responsibility in some agencies and institutions within the Palestinian Authority.

A fair number of Palestinian leaders came to frequent hotels, bars, and brothels, and had no compunction about issuing revolutionary statements upon leaving a bar or a scarlet evening at a luxury hotel. And the Palestinian people had to hear fiery statements pouring out of a drunken mouth in order to renew their loyalty to the revolution, sharpen their resolve, and stir their emotions. Of course, this does not apply to every leader in every position, but it was one of the prominent features of Palestinian leadership performance.

It was clear that the true revolutionary leader who wanted a genuine revolution grounded in sound moral standards was not the one to rise up the ladder of responsibility, and often preferred to go to southern Lebanon to escape the un-revolutionary trappings that surrounded him. A number of senior officers were sidelined into field responsibilities, while others preferred silence and appeasement of the status quo, because their future and their families’ future were bound up with the Palestinian resistance.

The striking thing about the matter is that what are called “mistakes” were committed in broad daylight, witnessed by a number of people, without leading to anyone being held accountable for his disgraceful acts. There was an uproar among some junior officers, among Palestinian popular circles, and among Lebanese circles over bad practices, without anyone taking action. At most, the person in question might be transferred to another post if the scandal was too widely known to be easily overlooked. Why did these practices pass without those responsible for them being held to account? Why were there no moral rules to govern conduct and pursue those who violated them? Indeed, why would a bad person rise up the ladder of responsibility? Was the measure of promotion tied to moral dissolution and declining discipline? It seems this was in fact the case, particularly when one evaluates the reasons behind the promotion of a number of individuals still alive at the time of writing this book. The Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip witnessed, after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, how officials were appointed or promoted in rank, grade, and responsibility. Professional and moral competence are not among the priorities.

It seems the questions above are consistent with the ordering of the Palestinian resistance in the form of a regular army, dominated by military ranks, salaries, leaves, and privileges. The Palestinian resistance shed its guerrilla character over time and turned into battalions, officers, individuals, and non-commissioned officers, and into an administrative hierarchy marked by an ever-intensifying bureaucracy. The revolutionary spirit that insists on dissolving distinctions among fighters was no longer present, nor were the revolutionary cells organized as fighting bands any longer present, and the organization began to take the form of the monotonous army, seeking the weapons and the routine of a regular army.

The pattern of regular armies seeped into the ranks of the resistance until the revolutionaries began competing over military ranks and positions of administrative responsibility — this on top of the salaries, bonuses, privileges, and leave that ranks bring with them. This certainly affected the fighting spirit, indeed the very desire for confrontation and combat, and slackness began to creep into the ranks of the simple fighters. A system reflects itself onto all of its parts, even if some of those parts are a torch of struggle and revolution. This, even though the simple fighters were fuel that the senior figures burned in southern Lebanon in order to entrench an illusion in the minds of the Palestinian people that the revolution was ablaze and that victory was near. Many were those driven south to carry out military operations, whether by sea or by land, who never returned safely to their families. And often Israel had advance information about every infiltration attempt, which was thus predestined to fail.

The Palestinian leadership reinforced this monotony and corruption by acquiring old conventional weapons — tanks, artillery, and the like — and storing them in warehouses in southern Lebanon. Of course, these weapons were not fit for fighting against Israel, given the modern equipment it possessed, but the leadership was keen to acquire them as an appearance meant to mislead the observer of the revolution into hope and confidence in the future. These were weapons left over from the Second World War, incapable of holding up in a conventional war employing the latest military technology. It is well known that most of these weapons were seized by Israel while still sitting in their warehouses in 1982.

In contrast to this eagerness to acquire outdated weaponry, the Palestinian leadership did not work to develop weapons suited to the nature of the confrontation in southern Lebanon. Over the course of twenty years, this leadership did not develop weapons commensurate with the challenge, despite the availability of material resources and human energies. The resistance developed the RPG launcher, but did not work to develop the art of confrontation and the types of weaponry suited to it. The confrontation remained within a fixed pattern devoid of military creativity or strong effect on the enemy. To grasp this point, the reader may compare Hezbollah’s capacity for development and innovation with that of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In addition, the Palestinian resistance entered into armed conflicts whose scale could have been reduced or avoided. Here I repeat what I said regarding the resistance’s presence in Jordan: that the regime was dialectically and materially at odds with the resistance and could not accept it. So it was in Lebanon, in that the official establishment and some Lebanese segments could not accept a Palestinian resistance on their soil because of their interests and their international ties. There were, in Lebanon, those tied to the United States and Israel, who derived their strength and their continued influence and control from those two states, and who considered their interest to lie in maintaining a political stability that did not challenge the interests of the two states. Moreover, those in power did not want anyone who might upset the social, economic, and political equation, and were prepared to wage war in defense of the equation they saw fit. It was to be expected, then, that the influential Lebanese forces would try to create problems and seize opportunities to pounce on the Palestinian resistance. That is, confrontation in Lebanon was to be expected even had the Palestinian resistance not committed its mistakes.

The Palestinian resistance provided the justifications to the influential Lebanese, and gave them popular support, even if partial, because of the wrongs committed against ordinary people. And so the Palestinians entered a war that need not have happened, and the Lebanese entered a fierce war to settle long-standing problems. Energies were drained, and pain and grief afflicted the people.

Despite the ferocity of the internal war in Lebanon, and the staying power that marked the warring factions, an observer would not have noticed that same fighting spirit in the confrontation with the Israelis in their attack on southern Lebanon in 1978. The Israelis attacked southern Lebanon with the aim of pushing the forces of the Liberation Organization away from the Jewish settlements in northern Palestine and removing the threat of the Katyusha rockets that Palestinian fighters were firing at the area. The Palestinian forces put up fierce resistance at the time, and there is no doubt that Palestinian fighters displayed remarkable heroism in repelling the hostile forces, but they did not fight the battle they should have fought. The Palestinian forces should have been prepared to wage guerrilla warfare, since this is the most effective fighting method for confronting a strong regular army like the Israeli army. But it turned out that the Palestinians’ capacity to wage guerrilla warfare was weak, and they were unable to hold out in a semi-conventional war against a massive military machine. The observer did not witness a war of hit-and-run, and no ambushes were laid that might have surprised the Israelis and inflicted significant losses on them. It was observed that the Israelis were cutting their way forward slowly, but with few losses.

Who planned for the battle to proceed for the Palestinians in that manner? Why was the simplest method of military action set aside in favor of a method that could only lead to swift failure? Why were the sons of the Palestinian people driven into a conventional fighting pattern that the Liberation Organization was working to move beyond? Had a number of Palestinians not been sent to China and Vietnam to train in guerrilla warfare to confront the Israelis? And why did the leadership that had been so concerned with the guerrilla model lose its concern in the actual practice of the battle?

This question was sidestepped through the declarations of victory issued by the Liberation Organization. Instead of the leadership speaking about the mistakes and studying the course of events with a view to accountability and learning lessons, it began speaking of its victory in having forced Israel to reach a ceasefire agreement with it — which was, in itself, an Israeli acknowledgment of the organization’s existence. Palestinian statements and commentary on the matter were issued, while I heard and read nothing about the flaw that pervaded the atmosphere of the battle. The organization distracted people with a ridiculous, meaningless victory, particularly for an organization that always announced its determination to eliminate the very enemy that had just acknowledged it. The organization said at the time that the Israelis had been forced to stop outside the city of Tyre because of pressure from the Palestinian resistance and because of their unwillingness to become entangled in a deadly war. Leadership circles said at the time that Tyre could have become a graveyard for Israeli soldiers, and that the fighting inside it could have continued for several months.

But propaganda talk does not hold up for long. Tyre fell in 1982 within twenty-four hours. The Israelis announced at the time that they were surprised by how quickly it fell, and that they had expected it to fall within forty-eight hours. Naturally, the organization’s leadership offered no explanation for why Tyre did not become a graveyard.

The situation during the 1982 war did not differ from that of the 1978 war. As soon as the Israelis entered southern Lebanon and began advancing, the Palestinian leaderships who were supposed to run the battle from their main positions in the city of Sidon fled. The general staff commanders fled, leaving behind junior officers, inexperienced fighters, and the young Ashbal (cub scouts) to defend Sidon and the land of the south. They fled in disorderly fashion, without prior warning or planning, leaving those under their command to face the harshness of battle according to their own individual judgment.

As happened in 1978, the Palestinian forces fought according to a pattern close to conventional warfare. And naturally, the Palestinian fighters were unable to hold out against the massive, advanced Israeli military machine. Israel managed to reach the outskirts of Beirut within six days, during which it inflicted heavy losses on the Palestinian forces and on the Syrian forces, which entered a losing battle over three days, and seized large quantities of weapons that had been stockpiled in the warehouses of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israeli forces besieged Beirut for eighty-two days. The days of the siege alternated between fierce bombardment of Palestinian positions and a tense calm that allowed room for a search for a way out to stop the fighting. Diplomacy and political activity were busy, with the United States taking the largest share in them. It was agreed that the Palestinian fighters would leave in exchange for Israeli forces not attacking them. It was also agreed with Yasser Arafat to accelerate the search for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian cause, within a framework of self-rule led by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

When the Liberation Organization speaks of the heroics of the war, it speaks of the siege of Beirut, which it considers a heroic epic in the face of the enemy. But it does not speak of southern Lebanon and the absence of strategy and military art that marked its battles there. There is no doubt that Palestinian fighters fought valiantly in defense of Beirut, offering continuous sacrifices without hesitation or fear. The Palestinian people had grown accustomed to the courage of their fighting sons and their distinguished capabilities in military performance and daring, and it was not unusual for fighters and non-fighters alike to offer themselves as martyrs in defense of Beirut and the land of Lebanon. But the matter is not always solely about a fighter’s capability and his desire to defend his own; international dimensions, leadership vision, and the goals being pursued are also intertwined in it. In this regard, I will note only what the Israeli media reported regarding thanks offered by Abu Mazen, Mahmoud Abbas, to Sharon, the Israeli Minister of Infrastructure — who had been the Israeli Minister of Defense during the Israeli invasion of the south and the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Beirut. This occurred in late 1997.

I wrote an article at the time in Al-Risala newspaper, published in Gaza, in which I questioned the accuracy of the Israeli reports and said that the matter was unbelievable, and that Mahmoud Abbas would comment on it and deny it. But Mahmoud Abbas did not utter a single word. In truth, I did not expect him to comment on the matter, whether I wrote about it or someone else did. I believe the reports were accurate, and that the organization, as we shall see over the course of this book, wanted the battle for two reasons: to relieve Syrian pressure, and to find a justification before the Palestinian people for the concessions required by the establishment of Palestinian self-rule. The organization was seeking a peaceful solution through American diplomacy, and was fully aware that the American solution imposed requirements the Liberation Organization would have to meet. The organization could not accept the American conditions without being subjected to major Syrian pressure and without a strong Palestinian reaction. Only by way of a military defeat could the Palestinian leadership proceed along its own vision for a solution.

And naturally, the Palestinian leadership wrapped the tragedy in an aura of illusory victory and fiery statements. The Palestinian fighters left Beirut firing their weapons into the air in celebration of victory. At the same time, a Palestinian campaign was launched against the Arabs for their failure to provide the necessary military assistance during the war. With the exception of Syria, the Arab states provided no military support, and worked to suppress the Arab peoples and prevent them from expressing their outrage at Israel and those who stood behind it. But the problem lay with the Liberation Organization, which believed that the Arab regimes could be a support for the Arabs against the enemies of the Arabs. The matter, in any case, was aimed at building up further bitterness in the Palestinian street, in order to justify the Palestinian leadership’s political steps to it.