Failing Peace Gaza and the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict
SARA ROY
Pluto
P
Press
LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI
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First published 2007 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Sara Roy 2007 The right of Sara Roy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Hardback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2235 3 ISBN-10 0 7453 2235 2 Paperback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2234 6 ISBN-10 0 7453 2234 4 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in Canada by Transcontinental Printing
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Contents Acknowledgements Preface
ix xi
Introduction
1
PART I LEARNING FROM THE HOLOCAUST AND THE PALESTINIAN–ISRAELI CONFLICT
1 Introduction to Part I 2 Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors 3 Searching for the Covenant: A Response to the Works of Marc H. Ellis
11 15 25
PART II ISRAEL’S MILITARY OCCUPATION AND THE FIRST PALESTINIAN INTIFADA: THE NATURE OF ISRAELI CONTROL
4 Introduction to Part II 5 The Political Economy of Despair: Changing Political and Economic Realities in the Gaza Strip 6 Black Milk: The Desperate Lives of Women in the Gaza Strip 7 Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration
31 40 54 61
PART III ISRAELI OCCUPATION AND THE OSLO PEACE PROCESS: DE-DEVELOPMENT ACCELERATED
8 Introduction to Part III 9 “The Seed of Chaos, and of Night”: The Gaza Strip After the Oslo Agreement
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79 87
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10 Separation or Integration?: Closure and the Economic Future of the Gaza Strip Revisited 11 Civil Society in the Gaza Strip: Obstacles to Social Reconstruction 12 Beyond Hamas: Islamic Activism in the Gaza Strip 13 The Crisis Within: The Struggle for Palestinian Society
102 123 160 191
PART IV THE FAILURE OF “PEACE” AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: THE SECOND PALESTINIAN INTIFADA
14 15 16 17
Introduction to Part IV Why Peace Failed: An Oslo Autopsy Ending the Palestinian Economy Hamas and the Transformation(s) of Political Islam in Palestine
215 233 250 294
PART V CONCLUSION—THE DISENGAGEMENT FROM GAZA
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18 A Dubai on the Mediterranean 19 Conclusion—Where Next?
311 322
Notes Index
333 369
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In Memory of Edward W. Said
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Acknowledgements It is, of course, impossible to list all the people who deserve to be acknowledged for their contribution to this collection. None of what appears in this book would have been possible without them—from the government official and university intellectual to the barber and taxi driver—I learned from them equally albeit differently. Most still live in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel; some have died while others have been killed. Some have left their homes forever; others never will. I am greatly indebted to all of them. They will always have my profound gratitude, respect, admiration and affection. There are some individuals who I would like to thank by name, knowing I may offend those I do not and for that I apologize. I hope they all understand the roles they have played: Alya Shawwa, Haidar and Huda Abd’el Shafi, Hatem and Aida Abu Ghazaleh, Talal Abu Rahme, Walid Khalidi, Martha Myers, Landrum Bolling, Eyad el Sarraj, Radwan and Itimad Abu Shmais, the late Ismail Abu Shanab, Charles Shammas, Salim Tamari, Munir Fasheh, the late Edward Said, Irene Gendzier, Linda Butler, the late Henry Selz, the late Russell Davis, the late Donald Warwick, Afif and Christ’l Safieh, Marc Ellis, Ruchama Marton, Amira Hass, Dan Bar-On, Herbert and Rose Kelman, Augustus Richard Norton, Fr. Steve Doyle, Fr. Vincent Martin, Jeffrey Feltman, Jacob Walles, Constance Mayer, Bob Simon, Roger Owen, William Graham, William Granara, Susan Miller, Cemal Kafadar, Roy Mottahedeh, Tom and Pat Neu, Peter Gubser, Robert Mosrie, Brian Klug, Nubar Hovsepian, Philip Mattar, Leticia Pena and Dayr Reis, Ellen Siegel, Hilda Silverman, Souad Dajani, Brigitte Schulz and Douglass Hansen, Jillian Jevtic, Deena Hurwitz, Lisa Majaj, Roger Banks, Denis Sullivan, Lenore Martin, Steve and Angela Bader, Ellen Greenberg, and Alexandra Senftt. A special and profound note of thanks to Elaine Hagopian for her invaluable input and friendship throughout. I also extend my sincere gratitude to Roger van Zwanenberg whose patience and encouragement ix
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meant more than I can possibly convey. I remain indebted and grateful to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, which has been my academic home for many years, providing me with constant support and a wealth of resources essential to my work. A loving note of gratitude to my mother, Taube Roy, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 86 and who always remained my guide and support; and my husband, Jay, and daughters, Annie and Jess, who give me hope and faith in the future. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the following journals and publishers for allowing me to reprint the articles contained in this book (each article also cites the journal in which it originally appeared). They are: the Journal of Palestine Studies/University of California Press, The London Review of Books, Current History, Journal of the American Academy of Religion/Oxford University Press, The Women’s Review of Books, Middle East Journal, E.J. Brill Publishers, the Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review/Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, Middle East Policy/Blackwell Publishers and Critique: Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East.
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Preface Humanism, scholarship and politics: writing on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict
. . . the writer’s role is not free from difficult duties. By definition he cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it . . . Not all the armies of tyranny with their millions of men will free him from his isolation, even and particularly if he falls into step with them. But the silence of the unknown prisoner, abandoned to humiliations at the other end of the world, is enough to draw the writer out of his exile, at least whenever, in the midst of the privileges of freedom, he manages not to forget that silence, and to transmit it in order to make it resound by means of his art. Albert Camus, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, December 10, 1957
When I started out to write this preface, I had planned an academic examination of the role of scholarship and politics in the presentation of politically charged issues. However, after months absorbed in the literature, I realized that such an examination had already been done and done exhaustively.1 The core issue underlying the discussion—the intellectual’s role in society—is a very old one with an extensive history of study and debate. A great deal of inconsistency, confusion and ambiguity surrounds the nature and activities of intellectuals and no one accepted definition of what an intellectual is or has to be. Not wanting to turn this preface into a literature review or summarizing report, I decided to go beyond such a review as it were, to take what I had learned from the literature and from my own two decades of experience working on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and combine it into a more personal reflection of certain themes, which have recurred in my work. These themes are: objectivity and partisanship, process, and dissent. On Objectivity There is perhaps no issue that has been more contentious and unrelenting in my work than that of objectivity and its stated antithesis, xi
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partisanship. Given the politically sensitive nature of my research, I have consistently been accused by those who disagree with my findings and analysis of being unobjective and unbalanced, that is, proPalestinian, anti-Israeli, a polemicist for the Palestinian “side,” even a self-hating Jew. The attacks often have been personal, directed at my alleged motives, rather than methodological or academic. According to some, the relationship between humanistic scholarship and politics in writing about the Middle East must be based upon an immutable (and to my knowledge, yet to be agreed upon) standard of objectivity, which mandates deference to balance, neutrality, impersonality, even indifference. In the absence of these criteria, the critique maintains, lies advocacy not scholarship, an argument that lies at the heart of the long debate on intellectual responsibility and how it is exercised. Yet a review of the literature (both past and present), or at least a good part of it, reveals something quite different. It reveals an argument that calls for individual judgment and imagination in the conduct of research, exposes the insufficiency of detachment, objectivity and essentialism as exclusive moral goals, and embraces the subjective as an essential component in scholarship, rejecting what Northrop Frye refers to as the “naïve ferocity of abstraction.”2 The issue of objectivity as a utopia for scholarship is not a given, despite current protestations to the contrary. The great philosopher Theodor Adorno argued that truth cannot be found in the aggregate but in the subjective, on the individual’s consciousness, “on what could not be regimented in the totally administered society.”3 The philosopher Stuart Hampshire echoed a similar sentiment when, writing during the Vietnam War, he decried the subordination of scholarship and critical analysis to society with a big “S,” which he said is often defined as “some giant boarding school in which we’re all required to prove ourselves as of sound character.”4 The inevitable result of such intellectual subordination, said Northrop Frye, is a dystopia—“a society maimed through the systematic corruption of its intelligence, to the accompaniment of piped music.”5 George Orwell perhaps put it best if not most eloquently when he said that uncritical and unthinking accommodation to the status quo in some false quest toward objectivity has the effect of giving “an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”6 These writers and many others do not dispute the importance of “detachment”—or a certain degree of it—as a “precondition for
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knowledge,” to quote Frye but not to the point where one becomes indifferent to consequences and unable to engage in “a range of imaginative sympathy.” 7 For Frye, “indifference is the vice of detachment”8 and its only corrective is concern, unrelieved concern, which “has nothing directly to do with the content of knowledge, but that it establishes the human context into which the knowledge fits, and to that extent informs it.”9 Commenting on the politics of censorship in American academia, the historian Joan Scott similarly stated: [C]onflicts of values and ethics, as well as of interpretation, are part of the process of knowledge production; they inform it, drive it, trouble it. The commitments of scholars to ideas of justice, for example, are at the heart of many an important investigation in political theory, philosophy, and history; they cannot be suppressed as irrelevant “opinion.” And because such commitments cannot be separated from scholarship and teaching, there are mechanisms internal to academic life that monitor abuses, distinguishing between serious, responsible work and polemic, between teaching that aims to unsettle received opinion and teaching that is indoctrination.”10
For Edward Said, the intellectual’s contribution must be a “critical and relatively independent spirit and analysis and judgment . . . But whereas, we are right to bewail the disappearance of a consensus on what constitutes objectivity, we are not by the same token completely adrift in self-indulgent subjectivity.”11 Complete detachment and the struggle to achieve it, a struggle informed by “a moral concern that is unstained by any emotion traceable to an origin in personal history,”12 is, ultimately, impossible as well as assailable for the “reconciliation of emotion and scientific objectivity need imply no ultimate sacrifice of objectivity.”13 Again, quoting Hampshire, “My suggestion is rather that committed writing, and committed scholarship in the humanities, is always an imaginative working out of problems that are felt to be urgent, in some external, resisting material. The concern ultimately has its roots in an individual history, but the problem has been displaced and given an objective form.”14 If pure objectivity is unattainable and, as argued, undesirable, then to what should the scholar be committed? What should scholarship embrace as its final goal? Again, there is some consensus on the answer: the scholar must seek accuracy (or as some have defined it, a detached
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point of reference) instead of objectivity, a requirement as essential in the humanistic and social sciences as it is in the natural sciences. An important corollary of this, of course, is the criticizing function of the intellectual—the critical sense of inquiry that seeks to break down stereotypes and reductive categories, which is the basis of his or her moral authority. This must always precede solidarity or what Julien Benda referred to as “the organization of collective passions”— national, political or ideological commitments. No one, in my view, embodies these values more than Noam Chomsky whose standards of accuracy and morality are unimpeachable. The intellectual’s moral and political responsibility is a theme that pervades the discourse and it points to the unresolved tension between knowledge and power, between individual reasoning and collective allegiance, between scholarship (with assumed standards of objectivity) and ideology (with none at all?).15 Given the virtual seamlessness between the public and political realms, can intellectuals ever truly be nonpolitical and should they be? Edward Said asks whether we as scholars must always depoliticize context as if we were trying to clear up an infection? He, like others (including Benda) before him, argues for the importance of passionate public engagement—by the desire for articulation over silence—that is informed by a commitment to principles (notably tolerance) and a willingness to confront those impregnable structures of belief and unmediated assertions that remain unchallenged and undiscussed. Humanism, writes Said, “should be a form of disclosure, not of secrecy or religious illumination.”16 And this disclosure is not meant to consolidate and affirm what we have always known but is a means of disarming it by making more information available to critical scrutiny, by presenting alternatives too often marginalized, thereby contesting our comprehension of reality, so long protected and inviolate. The danger lies not in taking a position but in doing so unthinkingly, mechanically, ritualistically, unconscious of the patterns of tyranny within us.17 The need for continuous questioning, demystification and testimony that is required of humanistic scholarship—particularly as the artificial demands for greater objectivity become more hysterical and irate— reflects certain problems that have always been central to my own experience with the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and writing about Israeli
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occupation in particular. These include: the absence of a more accurate model of occupation; the “absence of a greater sense of abhorrence” to quote Gabriel Kolko, one based essentially on empathy with the sufferings of Palestinians rather than only Israelis; the ways in which policy—American and Israeli—has numbed or, perhaps more correctly, mutilated our understanding of reality, impoverishing and narrowing our vision, and the seeming impossibility of achieving an undomesticated, let alone commonly accepted representation of that reality.18 The disinterested pursuit of knowledge—that is, objectivity—in writing about the Palestinian–Israeli conflict aims, among other things, to create balance or equity where none in fact exists. Consequently, not only does the process of inquiry become severed from the local realities it is there to examine, it has the effect of displacing any kind of sustained attention to those realities and their damaging impact, to what is taking place before our eyes. Instead, the “need” to be objective results in ideological warfare and political gamesmanship where the stronger party, Israel, predominates. Within this paradigm, to borrow from Said, it becomes easy to denigrate, demonize and dehumanize Palestinians on presumably humanistic grounds. This points to the kinds of choices intellectuals make when writing on the Palestinian–Israeli issue. Although there are many exceptions among whom I humbly include myself, the propensity is to reflect extant divisions rather than bridge them, to reproduce accepted orthodoxy rather than confront and possibly redirect it, to remain still rather than articulate a different way of thinking. In this way, the intellectual mainstream can (continue to) define and control the terms by which we understand the conflict and the boundaries of legitimate (and illegitimate) debate. To disengage from such public identifications or otherwise reject them violates a status quo that has long demanded and assumed our silence. Intellectual transgressions have seldom gone unpunished. Punishment is typically in the form of an attack against one’s character, motives or academic rigor (within which the objectivity argument is often couched). I have always found the latter most disturbing although the easiest to address. Just as there is historical evidence that distinguishes history from legend, so there are natural facts that distinguish political repression and social injustice from polemic. Exposing the mechanisms
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that govern such repression may not end or even mitigate the attacks but it does provide hard data that are difficult if not impossible to assail. There are two important lessons here I have learned over time, particularly as it regards the issue of objectivity. The first is that every individual involved with the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, no matter the extent, has a position. Any claim to neutrality or, for that matter, objectivity, is, in my experience, nothing more than calculated indifference. The concern, however, should not be with the position but with how it was formed, how it evolved and on what it is based. The second lesson is that challenging the consensus is, by itself, insufficient and ineffective; doing so on rational, methodologically rigorous and evidentiary grounds, however, can be far more powerful—regrettably or not—than any moral argument. As Frye said, “It is fatally easy to name things that are not there.”19 Who Do I Represent? The gross lack of objectivity of which I am often accused involves, among others, the issue of who I represent. The common response, of course, is that I represent the Palestinian side as an advocate or polemicist. This answer, however, is incorrect and misleading for it reduces years of study, research and analysis to mere ideological positioning. I do not and have never represented the Palestinian point of view or some version of that viewpoint. I reject those expectations, no matter who articulates them, that would have me think, say and perform in a certain way, as if some external authority was directing me. In the end, I represent only myself and what I believe. My commitment is to accuracy—to representing the facts to the best of my ability—not neutrality or objectivity; neither is possible in any event. Neutrality is often a mask for siding with the status quo and objectivity—pure objectivity—does not exist and claiming it is dishonest. The commitment, fundamentally, is to be as close to knowledge as possible rather than to truth with a capital “T.” The really difficult issue for any scholar involves the kinds of problems and questions we choose to address and our reasons for choosing them: Why do I do what I do and how is my work constructed? What is my starting point? Why do I look for the material I do? What does it mean to examine a certain kind of problem? What constitutes rational
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evidence? What is justifiable to include that others exclude? What is a legitimate set of guiding principles on which to base my analysis? What is intolerable for people to think about and why? Who benefits from my work and who does not? Who is my natural constituency? What does my work reveal about my choices and priorities? In committing oneself to a given issue, one is forced to confront the consciousness of what one really is and wishes to be. In representing something to their audience, Said argued, intellectuals also represent something to themselves. Who I am and what I represent and the basis of my work are deeply tied to my Holocaust background, which cannot help but transform how one looks at the world. The concerns that propel me are rooted in the belief that there is an essential humanity in all people. As a child of Holocaust survivors I have, throughout my life, experienced, insofar as I could, the meaning of lives extinguished, futures taken, histories silenced. Although my parents survived the horror and went on to live full and productive lives, they were never again who they once were or able to know the people whom they loved so much. There was always within them a reservoir of loneliness, a mournful longing that could never be resolved. One of my greatest struggles as a child of survivors is how to remember those who perished. How do we speak of their lives—how do we celebrate those lives—beyond the carnage and destruction? How do we preserve and protect their identity as human beings while grieving for them? The themes of my life have always centered on the loss of humanity and its reclamation, and on its amazing resilience even in the face of unimaginable cruelty. That these themes would extend to my work with Palestinians and Israelis was not random. Many of the people—both Jewish and not—who write about Palestinians fail to accept the fundamental humanity of the people they are writing about, a failing born of ignorance, fear and racism. The suffering inflicted on Palestinians directly by Israel and indirectly by the larger Jewish (and non-Jewish) community does not affect us, or our view of the world. Such willful blindness causes destruction of principle and destruction of people. Hence, if one of my greatest struggles is remembrance then one of my greatest fears is indifference and disinterest. Within the Jewish community especially, it has always been unacceptable to claim that Palestinians are like us, that they, too, possess an essential humanity and must be included within our
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moral boundaries, ceasing to be “a kind of solution,” a useful, hostile “other.”20 That any attempt at separation is artificial, an abstraction. By refusing to embrace proximity over distance, we find ourselves living in a dissonant place, a dissonance borne of fear and uncertainty. Brian Klug states it thus: “[w]e do not honour the dead if, in memorialising them, we dishonour the living.”21 Do we choose to be among “those who memorialize the dead in institutional and liturgical settings,” asks Marc Ellis, “or those who recognize and accompany the victims created in the shadow of the Holocaust?”22 (See Chapter 3.) What is at stake in our continued representation of the other is the loss of our own humanity. By reflecting on who we are and what we stand for, we are also engaged in a process of self-investigation, of judging and understanding our own behavior from viewpoints outside our own. If real detachment is possible and has a role it is in enabling us to see ourselves as others see us, using what Doris Lessing called the “other eye.” And a critical component of this lies in maintaining a living connection with the people whose problems we are trying to understand, experiencing with them the conditions of their lives, “tak[ing] into account the experience of subordination itself,”23 making those connections that allow us to “unearth the forgotten”24 and create linkages too often denied, helping us learn—“what to connect with, how, and how not.”25 At the core of this needed connection, writes Jacqueline Rose, lies a “plea for peoples, however much history has turned them into enemies, to enter into each other’s predicaments, to make what . . . [is] one of the hardest journeys of the mind.”26 This was a crucial part of Said’s quest as a humanist and scholar, for it is only with such understanding of the other, especially perhaps a shared understanding of suffering and loss, that we can humanize him, allowing us to find and then embrace what joins and not what separates us. Humanizing the other, who is often perceived as the enemy, is, in my view, a critical task of the humanist scholar but in order to do so one must hold to a universal and single standard of basic human justice (and of seeking knowledge) despite ethnic or nationalist affiliation. There can be no other way. If it is wrong to harm Israelis then it is just as wrong to harm Palestinians, Rwandans or Americans. Anything short of this requires a kind of ethical and intellectual contortion and inconsistency that has no place in humanistic scholarship. This is a
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lesson I learned from a very young age from my mother and father: justice applied selectively is no longer justice but discrimination. Moral ambivalence ceases to be moral and becomes, inevitably, repression. The task, ultimately, of the humanist scholar is to universalize crisis, to give greater human scope to suffering and “to associate that experience with the sufferings of others.”27 The challenge lies in this: “[H]ow to reconcile one’s identity and the actualities of one’s own culture, society, and history to the reality of other identities, cultures, peoples.”28 Conor Cruise O’Brien takes the lesson further, arguing that intellectuals must also pay attention to those parts of the world over which their societies have power, looking at their involvement elsewhere and what it created. He writes: Professor Frye . . . has said that “the only abiding loyalty is one to mankind as a whole.” The principle is surely sound, though the expression in practice of “loyalty to mankind” is extremely difficult, since one’s conception of what is good for mankind is conditioned by one’s own culture, nationality and class, even when one speaks in terms of transcending such limitations. But if we are to move in the direction of a meaningful loyalty to mankind, the first step must be the realization of moral responsibility in relation to those regions over which our society has power—open economic and partly concealed political power. That is to say, if the intellectual community is going to be moral at all, its morality, whatever form it takes, must concern itself with those great and populous regions which live, to use Graham Greene’s words, “in the shadow of your great country.” On postulates of morality and responsibility, imaginations should be haunted by these regions and their peoples. On the same postulates, intellects should be preoccupied with their problems . . . .29
Yet, this is seldom the case. We are not haunted or preoccupied, seldom comparing our behavior to a moral norm. To the contrary, we fight hard for our known beliefs, refusing to change the pattern of our understanding and lacking the courage to confront a history that demands to be retold. On Process What is the relationship between scholarship and everyday life, between the universal and the local? The scholar’s need for connection—for experiences actually lived through, for an association with people and their problems—that I described above is vital to our comprehension of
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knowledge. I have always felt that if people “outside” knew, saw and lived—even in small part—what Palestinians do every day, they would be transformed and the boundaries between them would shift, creating possibilities that for now remain abstract. Thus, if it is authority’s role to obfuscate then it is the intellectual’s role to reveal, to challenge the dominant discourse by providing a different way of thinking about a given problem and introduce a different set of questions, to exercise “criticism in a society of submissive courtiers,”30 making their work public and accessible. As Edward Shils often argued, the intellectual must be concerned with the “elaboration and development of alternative potentialities.”31 Being tied to a continuous and concrete experience in society means seeing realities as having evolved over time. It also means resisting the displacement of those realities into simple and rigid theoretical constructs. It is essential not only to see things as they are but how they came to be, and to show that they are not inevitable but conditional, the product of human choices that can be changed, even reversed.32 If my research teaches anything, it is hopefully this—that Palestine’s economic de-development, for example, was not natural but imposed, that the growing violence within Palestinian society is not predetermined or inexorable but the logical and tragic result of unabated oppression. Thus, under the right conditions these problems can be resolved. By understanding how events occurred and why, they assume a history and rationale that defy static and reductive explanations, allowing, says Said, description (and explanation) to become transformation. The kind of direct engagement I am calling for, one that situates the present in an unfolding and elaborative past, forces choices on the scholar he or she may be unwilling to embrace. Perhaps the most difficult involves choosing between inclusion and exclusion and their attendant consequences. On Dissent Why is it so difficult, even impossible to accommodate Palestinians into the Jewish understanding of history? Why is there so little perceived need to question our own narrative (for want of a better word) and the one we have given others, preferring instead to embrace beliefs and
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sentiments that remain inert? Why is it virtually mandatory among Jewish intellectuals to oppose racism, repression and injustice almost anywhere in the world and unacceptable—indeed, for some, an act of heresy—to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor? For many among us history and memory adhere to preclude reflection and tolerance, where “the enemy become, not people to be defeated, but embodiments of an idea to be exterminated.”33 “No,” wrote Doris Lessing, “I cannot imagine any nation—or not for long—teaching its citizens to become individuals able to resist group pressures.”34 Yet, there are always individuals who do, and the role of dissent is another important theme in my work. Within the Jewish tradition (but by no means exclusive to it), dissent and argument are old and revered values—deeply embedded in Jewish life be it religious or secular, political or Talmudist35—but like any tradition, less valued—at times, vilified—when the dissenter stands out against his own group, against what Hannah Arendt called their organic sense of history. For those of us who challenge those assumptions so sacred and silenced by the group, we are often disqualified as marginal and traitorous, existing outside the boundaries of legitimacy and influence. For me being an outsider from within means speaking with an unclaimed voice, beyond what we as a people have been given and educated to see, but very much from within our own tradition. “We belong to something before we are anything,” wrote Frye, “nor does growing in being diminish the link of belonging.”36 Being a part of the Jewish community does not mean accepting—often uncritically—the social laws that govern us, the self-perception of our members or the collective “we.” It does mean situating oneself within a cultural value system and choosing ethical consistency over collective engagement, exposure over concealment. In one of his last works, Edward Said wrote that the “intellectual is perhaps a kind of countermemory, with its own counterdiscourse that will not allow conscience to look away or fall asleep. The best corrective . . . is to imagine the person whom you are discussing—in this case the person on whom the bombs will fall—reading you in your presence.”37 How morally tenuous is our condition? Have we become brutal and desensitized? My mother was not shy about saying that we as a people must fight against our own savagery and struggle to maintain our moral
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center. Having suffered great horrors does not assure us of that center but can just as easily dissolve it. The difference between maintaining our humanity and abandoning it is often slight, and ultimately lies in remaining faithful to our ethics rather than to ourselves. A Concluding Thought In the end, who we are and what we offer is often rooted in the people with whom we have lived our lives. For me there is no question of my parents’ precedent and impact, especially my mother’s. There are so many stories, memories and moments I could point to describing this woman’s profound example but I will end this reflection with just two. These stories are from the Holocaust and were told to me not by my mother but by her sister Frania with whom she survived the war (see Chapter 2). One story that my aunt Frania has always insisted on telling me took place when she and my mother were in the Auschwitz concentration camp: Whereas I was the stronger in the ghetto and took care of Tobka [my aunt’s name for my mother], your mother helped me survive in Auschwitz. Without her I would have died. She saved me because she hoarded and rationed our food, our few pieces of bread, spreading it out over time so that I had something to eat each day. Had it been up to me, I would have eaten it all at once and starved. Your mother also gave me her bread, sometimes part of it, sometimes all of it, which I ate as I cried. Do you know what this meant, to give up your bread to another under such horrible circumstances? Bread was life. People beat each other for it and some were killed for it. Mothers would steal from children and children from mothers, sisters from sisters and so on. In the midst of all this horror and shame your mother gave me her bread, an act of selflessness that I shall never forget. Of course I love her deeply but there is no person in my life for whom I have more respect and admiration.
In another story, Frania describes how she and my mother were standing in a line outside their barracks in Aushwitz: I turned to Tobka and said, “Let’s start to run and they will shoot us. It will be quick and all of this will be over.” Frania says my mother refused not out of fear but out of conviction and determination. “There is plenty of time to die,” she said to my aunt, “let us concentrate on living. If we must die then let them kill us but we will not kill ourselves.” She then held
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my aunt by the arms and said, “Whenever we are in a line together you must always stand in front of me, never behind. I will always follow you no matter where you go, even to death. I will not leave you. We shall survive together or we shall die together. You will never be alone.”
Each of us is responsible for how we live our lives and the kind of society we want to create. My mother was a remarkable human being and she left me an equally remarkable legacy, one I have always tried to honor. She and my father both are written into every word of this book.
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Introduction
A
book has hopefully shown, I have always been greatly impacted by the tradition of intellectual humanism—the belief that knowledge should improve humanity at the universal level. The purpose of scholarship, therefore, is to inform. The purpose of politics is to develop and implement public policy based on the knowledge provided. This relationship between scholarship and public policy, especially in the area of foreign policy, is rarely achieved. More often than not power politics produces the “scholarship” it needs to legitimize itself. Given my commitment to the tradition of intellectual humanism, I offer my life’s work to date as a way of addressing the disconnect between scholarship—as I define it—and politics. This book—a compilation of my selected works—represents 20 years of research, fieldwork and analysis on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, and the impact and strategic consequences of Israeli occupation on the Palestinian economy, society and polity. The focus of my work has been on the Gaza Strip, an area consistently neglected by both Western and Arab scholars, particularly before the start of the Middle East peace process, and an area that remains painfully mischaracterized and misunderstood despite its political centrality. This book is a chronicling of what I have learned and observed over two decades, much of it living and working in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It is my attempt to contribute to knowledge on this issue in a way that challenges and often refutes the dominant discourse through a combination of rigorous scholarship and first-hand experience. The core of the book can perhaps best be understood as an example of humanity weakened. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, now almost four decades old (and among the world’s longest), has, without question, resulted in the systematic incapacitation—and now, S THE PREFACE TO THIS
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decimation—of the Palestinian economy, and in the slow but consistent decline of its society, a process that I first defined as “de-development” in my earliest writings (a concept that has since gained wide use and currency in the literature on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict). Dedevelopment refers to a process that undermines the ability of an economy to grow and expand by preventing it from accessing and utilizing critical inputs needed to promote internal growth beyond a specific structural level. Unlike underdevelopment, which may distort but not forestall development entirely, de-development precludes, over the long term, the possibility of any kind of developmental process, even a disarticulated one, by destroying the economy’s capacity to produce. In Gaza, the de-development of the economic sector during the first two decades of Israeli rule transformed that economy into an auxiliary of the state of Israel. The social ramifications of de-development have similarly been devastating and in the selections chosen for this book are examined in detail over two decades. Today, given the massive destruction of its economic base over the last five years in particular, some analysts question whether an economy—as opposed to a set of economic activities—still exists in Gaza. In my early writings I was primarily concerned with the economic impact of Israel’s then 20-year occupation on the Gaza Strip because it was the economy that so starkly and unsparingly illustrated the profound inequities that form the structural and philosophical core of occupation policy. My initial focus on the economy stemmed from the profound shock and confusion I felt when I first lived in Gaza. The chasm between what I had been taught and what I actually encountered in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians stunned me. As an American Jew growing up in the 1960s and 1970s and educated in elite schools, I was told—often implicitly—to believe in and never question Israeli beneficence and morality and Arab incompetence and incivility. Although my parents taught me to think critically and often provided some needed balance, the intellectual and political weight of the times was difficult to cast aside. There was simply no context for speaking critically about Israel or sympathetically about Arabs, who were forbidden—as we were—to embrace the word “Palestine” or “Palestinian.” Although I had visited Israel many times during my childhood, my first trip to the West Bank and Gaza occurred in the summer of 1985.
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I traveled there (against the wishes of my Israeli family) to conduct fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation, which examined an American program of bilateral economic assistance to the Palestinians. My thesis asked whether economic development was possible under conditions of military occupation and my search for an answer immersed me in a reality, indeed, a world, I was wholly unaware of and unprepared for. As a well-trained graduate student I felt I had an understanding of the political complexities of the area, the actors involved, their histories, and the many arguments and sides of the conflict. I went, I believed, with a critical but open mind, prepared for anything. I was wrong. Those first months in the West Bank and Gaza Strip changed my life as my personal essay in Chapter 2 explains in greater detail. I distinctly remember the day I first entered Gaza. I had been in the West Bank for some time and had acquired some familiarity with the people and the region and felt comfortable living there despite the harshness of the occupation. However, the thought of living in the Gaza Strip made me nervous, even scared. I had heard terrible and frightening stories about Gaza and its people, especially from my Israeli friends. I remember one U.N. official telling me that there were never more than 35 foreign visitors in Gaza at any one time (excluding those who worked for international organizations) because it was so inhospitable a place. I have no idea where he got that information or really, what it meant, but it did not ease my anxiety. Much was weighted against Gaza despite my best efforts to remain “open” and “objective.” I was taken to the Marna House, which was then one of only two hotels in the area and, I was told, the best (I read: safest) place for foreigners to stay. It was managed by Alya al-Shawwa, who belonged to one of Gaza’s oldest and wealthiest families and who would become my dearest friend. Alya welcomed me but clearly viewed me with some suspicion. After all, why would an American be visiting Gaza? The implicit answer was obvious. And when she learned I was Jewish her concern (and my anxiety) grew. In those days prior to the first Palestinian uprising, one of the first questions I was often asked by Gazans (but not West Bankers) was “are you a Christian?” I never lied and told everyone who asked that I was a Jew. To my surprise, it was not fear or anger I typically encountered when people learned I was Jewish but shock, suspicion, some confusion and considerable curiosity. I took advantage of their curiosity and my somewhat unique status to
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begin a discussion of why I was there, explaining that I had come to Gaza to learn about its economy, people, society and history, and about military occupation and how it affects their lives. I thought it would take a long time to gain their trust but again I was wrong. Within one week of arriving in Gaza, I was immersed in local life in a manner I could not possibly have foreseen, taken from one end of the Strip to the other by people I barely knew (but whom Alya initially vetted), entering areas seldom (if ever) seen by foreigners, helped by people whose support and encouragement would have been inconceivable to me just days before. (Many of those same people would later risk their lives to help me collect data during the first Palestinian uprising.) I was invited into homes, both rich and poor, where no request was too great or question too burdensome. (The Israeli authorities also did nothing to interfere with my research.) Not only did my being a Jew cease to be a source of concern, it actually became an asset. Although I could not possibly know it at the time, that summer set the stage for the next two decades of my life. The injustice of the occupation and the inability of Palestinians to defend themselves against it affected me deeply. My research among them was not only a matter of scholarship—it went to the core of who I was, where I came from, the meaning of my Judaism, my identity as a child of Holocaust survivors, my relationship with Israel and the nature and purpose of my work. One of the most troubling and frightening aspects of the occupation during my initial encounter with it—and something that has only recently changed—was its mundane, prosaic nature. For Palestinians, occupation was the ordinary—a way of life that had to be lived defensively without recourse or appeal, without protection or choice, largely absent of accountability, predictability, rationality or control. Furthermore, the distortion of Palestinian life remained unquestioned by those beyond it, for whom the realities of occupation were wholly unknown. What was for Palestinians a narrative of crisis, of territorial dispossession and displacement, was for others an example of benign and legitimate control. It is this absence of context and its continued mystification that my research has sought to redress. In rereading the material selected for this book I realize that the underlying impulse of my work has always been toward society—
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women, children, men, families, neighborhoods, communities—and occupation’s destructive impact on them, a topic that has received far too little attention in the literature on the conflict. The selections as a whole reveal certain themes that clearly have society at its heart: the dehumanization of Palestinians and Israelis and its ravaging effects; the traumatization of children and the denial of youth; the etiology of violence in the Palestinian context and the radicalization of society (born of continued and strengthened Israeli domination, economic and social decline, institutional fragmentation, lack of political leadership and the erosion of political trust and the options that attend them); the relationship between economic incapacity, political economy, the emergence of political and social movements, social fracture, a weakening civil society, political violence and the (im)possibility of political reform; the loss of ideology and creativity within society and its consequences; the nature and processes of internal dissolution, especially the withering of the community and communal relations, and the transformation of structures into constituencies and its impact on political and social order. Other themes embrace the unchanged imperatives of Israeli control— to restrict and delimit the development of a Palestinian economy and create a template for continued dependency, weakness and control; and preclude the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state and dismember the Palestinian people and weaken if not destroy their national and cultural character—and their impact on an already weakened society, which struggles to remain whole and humane; the emergence of Palestinian political and social movements, notably the rise of the Islamic and Islamist movements and their role within Palestinian society, and the varied nature—political, social and economic—of their resistance; the consistent failure of the Palestinian leadership and its damaging effect on society, and the inevitable failure of the peace process and subsequent initiatives. Today, solutions to the conflict are framed by the values of political realism and not by those of history. Solutions of this sort—for example, the Oslo peace process, the American “road map” for peace, and Israel’s disengagement from Gaza—attempt to address “what is” rather than “why it is.” By so ignoring root causes, such ahistorical approaches have failed and will continue to fail. The works selected for this volume collectively, cumulatively and systematically build a
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context for understanding Palestinian life under Israeli occupation over time. This context is not widely known or understood, having escaped formulation and notice, and it explains, among other things, why peace has continually eluded. In this collection I not only chronicle Palestinian socioeconomic decline as seen largely, but not exclusively in Gaza, but predict this decline and many of its now-realized outcomes in a manner that consistently challenged accepted belief at the time. I say this at the risk of appearing arrogant—I claim no exceptional intellectual qualities or powers of prophecy. What I do claim is considerable experience living with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and observing the deleterious impact of Israeli occupation on them over nearly a generation. With this understanding, the ability to predict outcomes is largely a matter of basic humanity and common sense. One of the questions guiding my work is “how is society possible?”— a question posed by Georg Simmel and in so many different ways by earlier philosophers as well. This question is important because it directs our attention to the economic, political and communal networks and cultural values and norms that allow a people to rely on expected and accountable behaviors. People who live under occupation or other repressive forms of power experience the weakening of the societal foundation, for they cannot rely on what is normal, rational or predictable. The imposed structure may generate reactions that lead to social breakdown and reactive social movements. Hence, I ask “Why does society become distorted and how does this distortion take place? How can society be repaired?” A key objective of this collection, therefore, is not only to provide new answers to questions long posed but also to raise questions that have for too long remained unasked. The book is divided into five remaining parts, each of which contains selected articles chosen according to a specific theme, with the themes organized chronologically. Each part begins with an introductory essay summarizing the content of the articles and explaining the context within which they were written. Part I, “Learning from the Holocaust and the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict”, begins with a reflective essay that situates my personal history as a child of Holocaust survivors in the work I do, and how and why I came to do it. With this essay, written in 2002, I address, for the first time in my work, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians from a Jewish ethical perspective and argue that this
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tradition, so central to Jewish life, is becoming increasingly inaccessible. My review of Marc Ellis’s critically important writings expands on this theme. My decision to begin with the personal, something I had always omitted from my work and writing, represents a closing of the circle as it were. Part II follows with “Israel’s Military Occupation and the First Palestinian Intifada: The Nature of Israeli Control” and discusses the concept of de-development and the damaging ways in which it affected and shaped Palestinian economy and society. This is seen largely through the lens of the first Intifada (1987–93) and its truly damaging impact on Gaza’s economic and political structure, the individual and community, and civil society and women in particular. “Israeli Occupation and the Oslo Peace Process: De-development Accelerated” is the title of Part III, which examines the period of the Middle East peace process (1993–2000) and the ways in which Palestinian society and economy were changed by it. Contrary to accepted belief, the Oslo process did considerable damage to Palestinian life and introduced new and pernicious realities—economic, political and social—that set the stage for future and devastating Palestinian decline, effectively precluding any possibility for meaningful reform. This Part also looks critically at the role of the Islamic movement in Gaza, arguing for its variety and complexity, and further examines the important transformations that took place within the movement during the Oslo period. Part IV is titled “The Failure of ‘Peace’ and its Consequences: The Second Palestinian Intifada” (2000–) and posits the inevitability of Oslo’s failure. This is followed by a more detailed discussion of the ways in which the peace process (contrary to all prediction and expectation) further weakened and, in effect, undermined the Palestinian economy and reconfigured Palestinian social structure. Part V concludes the book by asking “Where Next?” and reflects on whether Israel’s highly praised disengagement from Gaza really represents a new possibility for peace. It is my wish that the pieces assembled here will provide some insight into the development of modern Palestine, its multiple and diverse dimensions, its socioeconomic and socio-political actuality, and above all, its dynamic and undefeated people.
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Part I Learning from the Holocaust and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict
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1 Introduction to Part I
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HE TWO PIECES CONTAINED IN Part I represent, in a certain sense, the
culmination of my work, for they explore ideas and questions that for almost two decades I was unwilling to write about but which emanated from, and deeply shaped, who I was and the nature and purpose of my work. It could not have been otherwise. For me there was a natural connection and intersection between my personal history as a child of Holocaust survivors and my work on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, a linkage that did not represent a departure from my Holocaust background as others have argued, but a logical and unbreakable extension of it. I should say that my unwillingness to examine these ideas in writing stemmed from a strong belief that my work should not be about me but about the issues I was researching and the questions I was trying to raise. But the time did come to look inward and write about it, and it began with an invitation from Professor Marc Ellis to give the second annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture at Baylor University in Texas in 2002. It was this lecture that became the first essay in Part I, and at its heart lies a plea, a counsel of dissent, that looks at the distortion of the Jewish ethical tradition and the particularization of Jewish conscience and moral sensibility by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The second essay is a review of three books by Marc Ellis—one of the most courageous and powerful Jewish religious thinkers of our time—in which some of the themes I examine in my own essay are more deeply explored, and new ones raised. Marc asks some desperately needed questions: What does it means to be Jewish and free after the Holocaust and within a Jewish state that is empowered? What is the 11
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meaning of memorialization without justice, and (Jewish) celebration in the context of (Palestinian) oppression? How does one affirm and remain faithful to a tradition that grows increasingly misshapen and alien? What are we as a people seeking: empowerment or renewal? Today—and here I borrow from my review of Marc’s work—renewal and injustice are silently joined, and in their joining Jews also are denied a normal life, something they have not yet found in Israel. As the British scholar Jacqueline Rose has said, exultation does not dispel fear. How then do we as a people move forward and create meaning? For some Jews this meaning is now found in a personal narrative that is slowly shifting from identification with a strong, militarized state to one that embraces a history of displacement and loss. Perhaps this is one way of dealing with our oppression of the Palestinians—by seeking engagement over disengagement, inclusion over exclusion. As both essays show, the ethic of dissent and its crucial importance in remaking a world gone wrong is a core tenet of Judaism and one by which my own family lived. For dissent is tied to justice and justice to dignity. Opposing harm—indeed, laying siege to it—was a profound part of who my mother and father were, how they defined themselves and how they reimagined the world. Yet, dissent is often considered a form of defection and betrayal, particularly in times of conflict when the impulse to silence and conformity is acute. This is no less true of the Jewish people than of any other people. Today, there is a war against dissent, a dangerous war that not only threatens what we think but how we construct our thoughts and who, in the end we become. Whether we are talking about the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, the war in Iraq or global terrorism, our right to oppose is being stigmatized and invalidated. Dissent therefore becomes equated with a lack of belief or commitment, with disloyalty or treason. At a 2003 conference at the University of California at Berkeley on media coverage of the Iraq war, journalists explained that one reason for their lack of critical reporting prior to the invasion was a fear of appearing unpatriotic. President Bush’s now-famous injunction less than ten days after the September 11 attacks—“either you are with us or with the terrorists” (which consciously or not takes from Jesus’ call, “anyone who is not with me is against me”) leaves us with no alternatives and perhaps more importantly delegitimizes those we may articulate. Under such
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a polarized scenario, where is the recourse to justice? This desire for “order at the cost of justice, [d]iscipline at the cost of dignity, [a]nd ascendancy at any price”1 creates a context of fear in which speaking one’s conscience becomes not only difficult but wrong. Yet, to insist on the legitimacy of criticism of unjust policies is at the core of dissent and of democracy; without such criticism, to quote Lear, lies madness. The legitimacy of dissent—and of Jewish dissent in particular—is perhaps nowhere more challenged than in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. To be Jewish and opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestine is still untenable for many Jews and certainly for the American Jewish establishment. We are called self-haters and heretics and viewed as aberrations and deformities. Yet, the tradition of Jewish dissent, of speaking with another, unclaimed voice is an old and revered one, having arisen in large part as a response to Zionism.2 A wonderful example comes from Bernard Lazare who, writing to Theodore Herzl in 1899, reproached him for ignoring the impoverished condition of Eastern European Jewry in his vision of a new Zionist nation: “We die from hiding our shames, from burying them in deep caves, instead of bringing them out into the pure light of day where the sun can cauterize and purify them . . . We must educate our nation by showing it what it is.”3 In a similar plea, Ahad Haam, the founding father of cultural Zionism, asks, “How do you make a nation pause for thought?”4 The answers of course are not simple or easy and certainly beyond the scope of this brief introduction but at their core rest some fundamental questions that both Marc and I feel compelled to ask: What have we as a people made from our suffering and perhaps more importantly, what are we to do with our fear? Are we locked into repeating our past while continuously denying it? As Jews in a post-Holocaust world empowered by a Jewish state, how do we as a people emerge from atrocity and abjection, strengthened and unafraid, something still unknown to us? How do we move beyond fear and omnipotence, beyond innocence and militarism, to envision something different, even if uncertain? How do we create a world where “affirmation is possible and . . . dissent is mandatory,”5 where our capacity to witness is restored and sanctioned, where we as a people refuse to be overcome by the darkness. It is here that I would like to share another story from my family, to describe a moment that has inspired all of my work and writing.
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My mother, Taube, and her sister, Frania, had just been liberated from the concentration camp by the Russian army. After having captured all the Nazi officials and guards who ran the camp, the Russian soldiers told the Jewish survivors that they could do whatever they wanted to their German persecutors. Many survivors, themselves emaciated and barely alive, immediately fell on the Germans, ravaging them. My mother and my aunt, standing just yards from the terrible scene unfolding in front of them, fell into each other’s arms weeping. My mother, who was the physically stronger of the two, embraced my aunt, holding her close and my aunt, who had difficulty standing, grabbed my mother as if she would never let go. She said to my mother, “We cannot do this. Our father and mother would say this is wrong. Even now, even after everything we have endured, we must seek justice, not revenge. There is no other way.” My mother, still crying, kissed her sister and the two of them, still one, turned and walked away. Marc Ellis asks, Can our identity as a people survive a life without barriers? Can we create a future beyond the past while holding onto remembrance? The following essays hopefully show why we cannot leave the world as it is.
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2 Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors*
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I WAS invited to reflect on my journey as a child of Holocaust survivors. This journey continues and shall continue until the day I die. Though I cannot possibly say everything, it seems especially poignant that I should be addressing this topic at a time when the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is descending so tragically into a moral abyss and when, for me at least, the very essence of Judaism, of what it means to be a Jew, seems to be descending with it. The Holocaust has been the defining feature of my life. It could not have been otherwise. I lost over a hundred members of my family and extended family in the Nazi ghettos and death camps in Poland— grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, a sibling not yet born—people about whom I have heard so much throughout my life, people I never knew. They lived in Poland in Jewish communities called shtetls. In thinking about what I wanted to say about this journey, I tried to remember my very first conscious encounter with the Holocaust. Although I cannot be certain, I think it was the first time I noticed the number the Nazis had imprinted on my father’s arm. To his oppressors, my father Abraham had no name, no history and no identity other than that blue-inked number, which I never wrote down. As a very young child of four or five, I remember asking my father why he had OME MONTHS AGO
* Originally published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 32, Number 1, Autumn 2002, pp. 5–12. 15
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that number on his arm. He answered by saying he once painted it on but then found it would not wash off, so he was left with it. My father was one of six children, and he was the only one in his family to survive the Holocaust. I know very little about his family because he could not speak about them without breaking down. I know a little about my paternal grandmother, after whom I am named, and even less about my father’s sisters and brother. I know only their names. It caused me such pain to see him suffer with his memories that I stopped asking him to share them. My father’s name was recognized in Holocaust circles because he was one of two known survivors of the death camp at Chelmno, in Poland, where 350,000 Jews were murdered, among them the majority of my family on my father’s and mother’s sides. They were taken there and gassed to death in January 1942. Through my father’s cousin I learned that there is now a plaque at the entrance to what is left of the Chelmno death camp with my father’s name on it—something I hope one day to see. My father also survived the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and because of it was called to testify at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961. My mother, Taube, was one of nine children—seven girls and two boys. Her father, Herschel, was a rabbi and shohet—a ritual slaughterer—and deeply loved and respected by all who knew him. Herschel was a learned man who had studied with some of the great rabbis of Poland. The stories both my mother and aunt have told me also indicate that he was a feminist of sorts, getting down on his hands and knees to help his wife or daughters scrub the floor, treating the women in his life with the same respect and reverence he gave the men. My grandmother, Miriam, whose name I also have, was a kind and gentle soul but the disciplinarian of the family since Herschel could never raise his voice to his children. My mother came from a deeply religious and loving family. My aunts and uncles were as devoted to their parents as they were to them. As a family they lived very modestly, but every Sabbath my grandfather would bring home a poor or homeless person who was seated at the head of the table to share the Sabbath meal. My mother and her sister Frania were the only two in their family to have survived the war. Everyone else perished, except for one other sister, Shoshana, who had emigrated to Palestine in 1936. My mother and Frania had managed to stay together throughout the war—seven
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years in the Pabanice and Lodz ghettos, followed by the Auschwitz and Halbstadt concentration camps. The only time in seven years they were separated was at Auschwitz. They were in a selection line, where Jews were lined up and their fate sealed by the Nazi doctor, Joseph Mengele, who alone would determine who would live and who would die. When my aunt had approached him, Mengele sent her to the right, to labor (a temporary reprieve). When my mother approached him, he sent her to the left, to death, which meant she would be gassed. Miraculously, my mother managed to sneak back into the selection line, and when she approached Mengele again, he sent her to labor. A defining moment in my life and journey as a child of survivors occurred even before I was born. It involved decisions taken by my mother and her sister, two very remarkable women, that would change their lives and mine. After the war ended, my aunt Frania desperately and understandably wanted to go to Palestine/Israel to join their sister who had been there for ten years. The creation of a Jewish state was imminent and Frania felt it was the only safe place for Jews after the Holocaust. My mother disagreed and adamantly refused to go. She told me so many times during my life that her decision not to live in Israel was based on a belief, learned and reinforced by her experiences during the war, that tolerance, compassion and justice cannot be practiced nor extended when one lives only among one’s own. “I could not live as a Jew among Jews alone,” she said. “For me, it wasn’t possible and it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to live as a Jew in a pluralist society, where my group remained important to me but where others were important to me, too.” Frania emigrated to Israel and my parents went to America. It was extremely painful for my mother to leave her sister but she felt she had no alternative. (They have, however, remained very close and have seen each other many times both here and in Israel.) I have always found my mother’s choice and the context from which it emanated remarkable. I grew up in a home where Judaism was defined and practiced not as a religion but as a system of ethics and culture. God was present but not central. My first language was Yiddish, which I still speak with my family. My home was filled with joy and optimism although punctuated at times by grief and loss. Israel and the notion of a
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Jewish homeland were very important to my parents. After all the remnants of our family were there. But unlike many of their friends, my parents were not uncritical of Israel, insofar as they felt they could be. Obedience to a state was not an ultimate Jewish value, not for them, not after the Holocaust. Judaism provided the context for Jewish life, for values and beliefs that were not dependent upon national boundaries, but transcended them. For my mother and father Judaism meant bearing witness, raging against injustice and forgoing silence. It meant compassion, tolerance and rescue. It meant, as Ammiel Alcalay has written, ensuring to the extent possible that the memories of the past do not become the memories of the future. These were the ultimate Jewish values. My parents were not saints; they had their faults and they made mistakes. But they cared profoundly about issues of justice and fairness, and they cared profoundly about people—all people, not just their own. The lessons of the Holocaust were always presented to me as both particular (that is, Jewish) and universal. Perhaps most importantly, they were presented as indivisible. To divide them would diminish the meaning of both. Looking back over my life, I realize that through their actions and words, my mother and father never tried to save me from selfknowledge; instead, they insisted that I confront what I did not know or understand. Noam Chomsky speaks of the “parameters of thinkable thought.” My mother and father constantly pushed those parameters as far as they could, which was not far enough for me, but they taught me how to push them and the importance of doing so. It was, perhaps, inevitable that I would follow a path that would lead me to the Arab–Israeli issue. I visited Israel many times while growing up. As a child, I found it a beautiful, romantic and peaceful place. As a teenager and young adult I began to feel certain contradictions that I could not fully explain but which centered on what seemed to be the almost complete absence in Israeli life and discourse of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, and even of the Holocaust itself. I would ask my aunt why these subjects were not discussed and why Israelis didn’t learn to speak Yiddish. My questions were often met with grim silence. Most painful to me was the denigration of the Holocaust and pre-state Jewish life by many of my Israeli friends. For them, those
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were times of shame when Jews were weak and passive, inferior and unworthy, deserving not of our respect but of our disdain. “We will never allow ourselves to be slaughtered again or go so willingly to our slaughter,” they would say. There was little need to understand those millions who perished or the lives they lived. There was even less need to honor them. Yet, at the same time, the Holocaust was used by the State as a defense against others, as a justification for political and military acts. I could not comprehend nor make sense of what I was hearing. I remember fearing for my aunt. In my confusion, I also remember profound anger. It was at that moment, perhaps, that I began thinking about the Palestinians and their conflict with the Jews. If so many among us could negate our own and so pervert the truth, why not with the Palestinians? Was there a link of some sort between the murdered Jews of Europe and the Palestinians? I did not know, but so my search began. The journey has been a painful one but among the most meaningful of my life. At my side, always, was my mother, constant in her support, although ambivalent and conflicted at times. My father had died a young man; I do not know what he would have thought but I have always felt his presence. My Israeli family opposed what I was doing and has always remained steadfast in their opposition. In fact, I have not spoken with them about my work in over fifteen years. Despite many visits to Israel during my youth, I first went to the West Bank and Gaza in the summer of 1985, two-and-a half-years before the first Palestinian uprising, to conduct fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation, which examined American economic assistance to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. My research focused on whether it was possible to promote economic development under conditions of military occupation. That summer changed my life because it was then that I came to understand and experience what occupation was and what it meant. I learned how occupation works, its impact on the economy, on daily life, and its grinding impact on people. I learned what it meant to have little control over one’s life and, more importantly, over the lives of one’s children. As with the Holocaust, I tried to remember my very first encounter with the occupation. One of my earliest encounters involved a group of Israeli soldiers, an old Palestinian man and his donkey. Standing on
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a street with some Palestinian friends, I noticed an elderly Palestinian walking down the street, leading his donkey. A small child of no more than three or four years, clearly his grandson, was with him. Some Israeli soldiers standing nearby went up to the old man and stopped him. One soldier went over to the donkey and pried open its mouth. “Old man,” he asked, “why are your donkey’s teeth so yellow? Why aren’t they white? Don’t you brush your donkey’s teeth?” The old Palestinian was mortified, the little boy visibly upset. The soldier repeated his question, yelling this time, while the other soldiers laughed. The child began to cry and the old man just stood there silently, humiliated. This scene repeated itself while a crowd gathered. The soldier then ordered the old man to stand behind the donkey and demanded that he kiss the animal’s behind. At first, the old man refused but as the soldier screamed at him and his grandson became hysterical, he bent down and did it. The soldiers laughed and walked away. They had achieved their goal: to humiliate him and those around him. We all stood there in silence, ashamed to look at each other, hearing nothing but the uncontrollable sobs of the little boy. The old man did not move for what seemed a very long time. He just stood there, demeaned and destroyed. I stood there, too, in stunned disbelief. I immediately thought of the stories my parents had told me of how Jews had been treated by the Nazis in the 1930s, before the ghettos and death camps, of how Jews would be forced to clean sidewalks with toothbrushes and have their beards cut off in public. What happened to the old man was absolutely equivalent in principle, intent and impact: to humiliate and dehumanize. In this instance, there was no difference between the German soldier and the Israeli one. Throughout that summer of 1985, I saw similar incidents: young Palestinian men being forced by Israeli soldiers to bark like dogs on their hands and knees or dance in the streets. In this critical respect, my first encounter with the occupation was the same as my first encounter with the Holocaust, with the number on my father’s arm. It spoke the same message: the denial of one’s humanity. It is important to understand the very real differences in volume, scale and horror between the Holocaust and the occupation and to be careful about comparing the two, but it is also important to recognize the parallels where they do exist. As a child of Holocaust survivors I always wanted to be able in some way to experience and feel some aspect of what my parents endured,
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which, of course, was impossible. I listened to their stories, always wanting more, and shared their tears. I often would ask myself what does sheer terror feel like? What does it look like? What does it mean to lose one’s whole family so horrifically and so immediately, or have an entire way of life extinguished so irrevocably? I would try to imagine myself in their place, but it was impossible. It was beyond my reach, too unfathomable. It was not until I lived with Palestinians under occupation that I found at least part of the answers to some of these questions. I was not searching for the answers; they were thrust upon me. I learned, for example, what sheer terror looked like from my friend Rabia, eighteen years old, who, frozen by fear and uncontrollable shaking, stood glued in the middle of a room we shared in a refugee camp, unable to move, while Israeli soldiers tried to break down the front door to our shelter. I experienced terror while watching Israeli soldiers beat a pregnant women in her belly because she flashed a V-sign at them, and I was too paralyzed by fear to help her. I could more concretely understand the meaning of loss and displacement when I watched grown men sob and women scream as Israeli Army bulldozers destroyed their home and everything in it because they built their house without a permit, which the Israeli authorities had refused to give them. It is perhaps in the concept of home and shelter that I find the most profound link between the Jews and the Palestinians and, perhaps, the most painful illustration of the meaning of occupation. I cannot begin to describe how horrible and obscene it is to watch the deliberate destruction of a family’s home while that family watches, powerless to stop it. For Jews as for Palestinians, a house represents far more than a roof over one’s head; it represents life itself. Speaking about the demolition of Palestinian homes, Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli historian and scholar, writes: It would be hard to overstate the symbolic value of a house to an individual for whom the culture of wandering and of becoming rooted to the land is so deeply engrained in tradition, for an individual whose national mythos is based on the tragedy of being uprooted from a stolen homeland. The arrival of a firstborn son and the building of a home are the central events in such an individual’s life because they symbolize continuity in time and physical space. And with the demolition of the individual’s home comes the destruction of the world.
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Israel’s occupation of Palestine is the crux of the problem between the two peoples and it will remain so until it ends. For the last 35 years, occupation has meant dislocation and dispersion; the separation of families; the denial of human, civil, legal, political and economic rights imposed by a system of military rule; the torture of thousands; the confiscation of tens of thousands of acres of land and the uprooting of tens of thousands of trees; the destruction of more than 7,000 Palestinian homes; the building of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands and the doubling of the settler population over the last ten years; first the undermining of the Palestinian economy and now its destruction; closure, curfew, geographic fragmentation, demographic isolation and collective punishment. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinians is not the moral equivalent of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. But it does not have to be. No, this is not genocide but it is repression, and it is brutal. And it has become frighteningly natural. Occupation is about the domination and dispossession of one people by another. It is about the destruction of their property and the destruction of their soul. Occupation aims, at its core, to deny Palestinians their humanity by denying them the right to determine their existence, to live normal lives in their own homes. Occupation is humiliation. It is despair and desperation. And just as there is no moral equivalence or symmetry between the Holocaust and the occupation, so there is no moral equivalence or symmetry between the occupier and the occupied, no matter how much we as Jews regard ourselves as victims. And it is from this context of deprivation and suffocation, now largely forgotten, that the horrific and despicable suicide bombings have emerged and taken the lives of more innocents. Why should innocent Israelis, among them my aunt and her grandchildren, pay the price of occupation? Like the settlements, razed homes and barricades that preceded them, the suicide bombers have not always been there. Memory in Judaism—like all memory—is dynamic, not static, embracing a multiplicity of voices and shunning the hegemony of one. But in the post-Holocaust world, Jewish memory has faltered—even failed—in one critical respect: it has excluded the reality of Palestinian suffering and Jewish culpability therein. As a people, we have been unable to link the creation of Israel with the displacement of the Palestinians. We have been unwilling to see, let alone remember, that
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finding our place meant the loss of theirs. Perhaps one reason for the ferocity of the conflict today is that Palestinians are insisting on their voice despite our continued and desperate efforts to subdue it. Within the Jewish community it has always been considered a form of heresy to compare Israeli actions or policies with those of the Nazis, and certainly one must be very careful in doing so. But what does it mean when Israeli soldiers paint identification numbers on Palestinian arms; when young Palestinian men and boys of a certain age are told through Israeli loudspeakers to gather in the town square; when Israeli soldiers openly admit to shooting Palestinian children for sport; when some of the Palestinian dead must be buried in mass graves while the bodies of others are left in city streets and camp alleyways because the army will not allow proper burial; when certain Israeli officials and Jewish intellectuals publicly call for the destruction of Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings, or for the transfer of the Palestinian population out of the West Bank and Gaza; when 46 per cent of the Israeli public favors such transfers and when transfer or expulsion becomes a legitimate part of popular discourse; when government officials speak of the “cleansing of the refugee camps”; and when a leading Israeli intellectual calls for hermetic separation between Israelis and Palestinians in the form of a structure like the Berlin Wall, caring not whether the Palestinians on the other side of the wall may starve to death as a result? What are we supposed to think when we hear this? What is my mother supposed to think? In the context of Jewish existence today, what does it mean to preserve the Jewish character of the State of Israel? Does it mean preserving a Jewish demographic majority through any means and continued Jewish domination of the Palestinian people and their land? What is the narrative that we as a people are creating, and what kind of voice are we seeking? What sort of meaning do we as Jews derive from the debasement and humiliation of Palestinians? What is at the center of our moral and ethical discourse? What is the source of our moral and spiritual legacy? What is the source of our redemption? Has the process of creating and rebuilding ended for us? I want to end this essay with a quote from Irena Klepfisz, a writer and child survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, whose father spirited her
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and her mother out of the ghetto and then himself died in the ghetto uprising: . . . I have concluded that one way to pay tribute to those we loved who struggled, resisted and died is to hold on to their vision and their fierce outrage at the destruction of the ordinary life of their people. It is this outrage we need to keep alive in our daily life and apply it to all situations, whether they involve Jews or non-Jews. It is this outrage we must use to fuel our actions and vision whenever we see any signs of the disruptions of common life: the hysteria of a mother grieving for the teenager who has been shot; a family stunned in front of a vandalized or demolished home; a family separated, displaced; arbitrary and unjust laws that demand the closing or opening of shops and schools; humiliation of a people whose culture is alien and deemed inferior; a people left homeless without citizenship; a people living under military rule. Because of our experience, we recognize these evils as obstacles to peace. At those moments of recognition, we remember the past, feel the outrage that inspired the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto and allow it to guide us in present struggles.1
For me, these words define the true meaning of Judaism and the lessons my parents sought to impart.
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3 Searching for the Covenant: A Response to the Works of Marc H. Ellis*
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I WAS A CHILD of five I attended a yeshiva, a Jewish parochial school. My parents were not religious people, but they were survivors of the Holocaust, and in the aftermath of Auschwitz they believed that a yeshiva was the best place for me to learn about Judaism and what it means to be a Jew. One day I brought home a magazine published by the school and in it was a fictional story set in a Nazi concentration camp. In this camp on this day, the story told, hundreds of Jews were about to be murdered. They were all starving and emaciated and listlessly stood in line before their final march into the gas chambers. As the Jews huddled together awaiting death, a miracle suddenly occurred: manna began to fall from the sky. The manna was everywhere and fell in great abundance, and the Jews ate voraciously. Once they had eaten and were no longer hungry, the doomed marched happily to their death, thanking God for his gift. I vividly remember sitting with my mother and father at our kitchen table as my father read the story, not knowing its intended message until the end. When he finished reading there was a moment of stunned silence, followed by fierce outrage. Both my parents became palpably upset, but it is my father’s pain I remember the most. Even at the age of five, I understood why. I was soon withdrawn from the yeshiva and sent to state, secular school. HEN
* Originally published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 71, Number 3, September 2003, pp. 667–70. 25
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With the Holocaust, the Jewish covenant with God as it had existed for thousands of years had been shattered and little if anything, including manna for the dying, could repair it. It is this broken covenant, the emergence of an unconscious God, and the search for a new covenant in a post-Holocaust world that are at the core of Marc Ellis’s remarkable and critically important work. In the books under review (and in others that are not), Ellis takes us on an extraordinary journey that many, perhaps most, Jews (and Christians) would never embark upon on their own. This journey begins with his own profoundly committed life and those people who influenced it, but it then expands into a religious, philosophical and political examination of Judaism and Jewish life (and Christianity and Christian life) after the Holocaust and following the creation of the State of Israel, two events of singular and defining importance in modern Jewish history. His journey is exilic—few among us would walk with him—and prophetic, often painful, sometimes wrenching, but so essential because Ellis forces questions on us that are seldom asked but which demand answers if Judaism and its ethical tradition are to survive and the covenant is to be restored. These questions are many; some are aching and the issues that they raise cannot all be addressed here. Yet, they emanate fundamentally from the changing nexus of Jewish identity in the twentieth century: from a people victimized by a Europe that was Christian to a people in control of their destiny—and that of others—in a state that is Jewish. For Ellis, the imperative is reflection, not celebration. At the heart of Ellis’s work is a concern with the moral end of Judaism and with the question, What does it mean to be Jewish and be free after Auschwitz and within a Jewish state that is empowered? With Israel, contemporary Jewish life has been framed by many realities, among them the struggle for rebirth after the Holocaust, remembrance of the Holocaust, and Jewish power and sovereignty. The latter, however, has a critical corollary: the displacement and oppression of the Palestinian people. Today, Jewish identity is linked, willingly or not, to Palestinian suffering, and this suffering is now an irrevocable part of our collective memory and an intimate part of our experience, together with the Holocaust and Israel. The question then arises, How are we to celebrate our Jewishness while others are being oppressed? Is the Jewish ethical tradition still available to us? We find ourselves living in a dissonant
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place—and which text will we use to end the dissonance and create a new way of life? In posing these questions, Ellis compels Jews to ask another one: Are we seeking empowerment or renewal? Today, renewal and injustice are silently joined, and in their joining Jews also are denied a normal life, something that they have never truly found in Israel, not yet. How, then, do we as a people move forward and how do we create meaning? For some Jews this meaning is now found in a personal narrative that is slowly shifting from identification with a strong, militarized state to one that embraces a history of displacement and loss. This documented trend is perhaps one way of dealing with the oppression of the Palestinians, of seeking engagement over disengagement, inclusion over exclusion. Ellis courageously argues that by placing the Holocaust only in the past, we are uncoupling Auschwitz from the future, making it directionless. Auschwitz cannot stand alone in a vacuum, as some Jewish theologians believe it should, for it did not occur in a vacuum. Continuity is essential; our past should no longer be used to insulate us from our present; the dead cannot shield us from the living. We dwell in memory and use that memory not to protest and restore but to resist and to grieve, as a form of separation and distance. Mourning the dead has itself become “a place of hiding rather than confrontation, a place of safety rather than of risk.”1 We continue to be blameless while causing suffering to others. Innocence is restored, and injustice continues. Are Jews thus guarding “a history that is violated even as it is invoked?”2 Irena Klepfisz, a child survivor, whom Ellis often cites, puts it this way: “Has Nazism become the sole norm by which Jews judge evil so that anything that is not its exact duplicate is considered by us morally acceptable? Is that what the Holocaust has done to Jewish moral sensibility?”3 This points to something the writer Daniel Singer once said: Auschwitz is both unique and comparable. Auschwitz is a warning, and it is a call for comparison. How are we to prevent future atrocities if we do not learn and apply the lessons of past ones? Ellis frames it thus: Do we choose to be among “those who [only] memorialize the dead in institutional and liturgical settings or those who recognize and accompany the victims created in the shadow of the Holocaust?”4 Memorialization without justice is hollow. Shall we as Jews continue to
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live in the shadows, or, by confronting the offences we have committed as a grieving people, shall we enter into the light? Ellis implores that we can no longer tolerate injustice as a way of peace. Only when “distance becomes proximity and separation becomes embrace”5 can peace prevail. Could this be the path to restoring the covenant? Indeed, he asks: Is the covenant present or absent in the face of Palestinian oppression? It follows that one of the greatest struggles articulated by Ellis is his search for meaning in a universe that has been violated and shattered in the past and also in the present. One way to derive such meaning is to remember those who died, not only to memorialize their deaths but to honor their lives by affirming the ordinary life of people—Jewish and Palestinian—and to do so by protesting its denial. The history of both peoples is broken; they inhabit a shared landscape defined by dislocation and death. For repair—tikkun—to take shape, Ellis calls for the creation of a “new ordinary”—still unresolved—that can only occur as a shared reality. We cannot, as he says, leave the world as it is. Hence, the fight to remember Jewish suffering is also tied to the fight to mitigate and then end Palestinian suffering. Given the destruction of Palestinian life by Jews, how could it be otherwise? And even if justice is achieved, Palestinian loss is “now a part of Jewish history that must also be remembered.”6 Ellis offers the following challenge: Can our identity as a people survive a life without barriers? Can we create a future beyond the past while embracing remembrance? As a Jew in a post-Holocaust world empowered by a Jewish state, Ellis is ultimately asking: How do we as a people finally defeat Hitler and rebuild our covenant with God? How do we emerge empowered and also victorious, something that still eludes us? For many Jews (and Christians), the answer lies in a strong and militarized Jewish state. For others, it is found in the very act of survival. For Marc Ellis—and for my parents—defeating Hitler and reclaiming the covenant means living a moral life; if we hate, then Hitler wins. They seek a world where once again “affirmation is possible and . . . dissent is mandatory,”7 where our capacity to witness is restored and embraced. This is what it means to be Jewish and to be free in a difficult and changing world. It is part of Ellis’s struggle to be faithful, for “the challenge is fidelity.”8 It should be part of our struggle and our challenge as well.
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Part II Israel’s Military Occupation and the First Palestinian Intifada: The Nature of Israeli Control
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4 Introduction to Part II
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N A 2005 CONFIDENTIAL REPORT on foreign assistance to the Palestinians,
which I am not at liberty to identify, the author states:
While the aid that Israel receives from the U.S. alone dwarfs the combined international assistance to the Palestinians, nobody can claim that the Occupied Territories have been neglected: from 1994–2000, annual donor disbursements averaged U.S.$500 million, and with the onset of the Intifada, this amount nearly doubled, topping out at around U.S.$1 billion in 2001 and 2002. In total, the international community provided over U.S.$9 billion to the Occupied Territories from 1993 to 2004.
Thus, despite high levels of aid since 1994 (soon after the peace process began)—among the highest in the world on a per capita basis—the Palestinian economy has not only failed to grow, it has contracted and declined rapidly and precipitously, leaving Gaza in particular one of the most impoverished, underdeveloped regions in the world. How did conditions get to this point? One cause of Palestinian decline no doubt lies in the corruption and ineptitude of the Palestinian Authority, its apex having been reached during the Oslo peace process. This has been well documented. However, a far more important and determinative cause of Palestine’s economic (and social) deterioration is Israel’s unbroken and unchallenged control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which did not end with the Oslo process as many believe, but was, in fact, secured by it (see Part III). Israel’s control of the Palestinian economy—which provides a critical lens into the nature of Israeli occupation—is of a peculiar kind. Although Israeli rule shares features with other military occupations and settler states, it is different in one critical respect: Israel never 31
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wanted Palestinians to interact with its own society and through such interaction to educate and “enlighten” them, nor did Israel seek to exploit Palestinians for economic gain although that did occur. Rather, Israel’s particular form of colonization integrated Palestinian resources and labor into Israel as a mechanism to hasten the full incorporation of the land and other economic resources into the Jewish state.1 The economic exploitation of Palestinians occurred for reasons and objectives that were primarily political (and ideological), not economic. Thus, Israeli control has been motivated not by labor integration, market dependency or physical infrastructure per se, but by the political imperatives of Jewish sovereignty—precluding the emergence of a Palestinian state and a supporting economic and institutional infrastructure—and the military force needed to achieve them. That is why, for example, the government of Israel never articulated a development plan for the Gaza Strip or West Bank, or why official Israeli investment in Palestinian industry and agriculture had always been negligible. It is also why international assistance to the Occupied Territories has, for at least three decades, failed to catalyze a process of economic development. More strikingly, the Israeli authorities have long used foreign aid—U.S. aid in particular—to further their political and economic objectives in the West Bank and Gaza in a manner that precluded needed economic reform and insured continued Palestinian dependence. It is also important to understand that despite some clear economic benefits that accrued to Palestinians as a result of their interaction with Israel (particularly during the first two decades of occupation), the political imperatives of Israeli policy have continually and deliberately blocked internal economic development through the structural and institutional fragmentation of the Palestinian economy, with damaging effects on society and its expression of cultural and political identity. That is, although it was possible to improve individual living standards and increase individual production levels, such indicators do not reflect the development of an indigenous socioeconomic base capable of sustained, diversified growth and development. The process of structural change that was clearly evident after 1967 was aberrant change, for it precluded the transformation of positive growth into long-term economic development. In fact, the very indicators Israel always used to measure economic success in Gaza and the West Bank—
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for example, increased per capita income, increased number of cars and refrigerators per home, increased number of workers in Israel—reveal the failure, not the success, of economic development. Furthermore, Israel’s political goals have arguably proven more damaging than those of other settler regimes because they have taken from the indigenous population its most critical economic resources, namely land, water and labor, and the capacity and potential for developing those resources. Not only are Palestinians exploited economically, they are deprived of their livelihood and developmental potential, national identity and sovereignty. The result is de-development—a process I define as the deliberate, systematic and progressive dismemberment of an indigenous economy by a dominant one, where economic—and by extension, societal— potential is not only distorted but denied. De-development therefore deprives an economy of the mechanisms to pursue rational structural transformation and prevents the emergence of any self-correcting measures. De-development is shaped and advanced by a range of policies, which are themselves a reflection of the ideological imperatives of the Zionist movement: expropriation and dispossession; integration and externalization, and deinstitutionalization. These policies have contributed to de-development by dispossessing Palestinians of critical economic resources or factors of production needed to create and sustain productive capacity, by creating extreme dependency on employment in Israel as a source of GNP growth, and by restricting the kind of indigenous institutional development that could lead to structural reform that is economic, social and political. Hence, over the long term, de-development even precludes the possibility of dependent (or distorted) development characteristic of other formerly colonized areas and its two primary features: the capacity—both economic and social—to produce; and the formation of vital and sustainable political and economic alliances between the dependent and dominant economies and their societies, and between the dependent society and the international system generally. In this way, de-development differs from underdevelopment since the latter allows for some form of economic development, albeit alienated, while the former does not. De-development ensures that there will be no economic base—even one that is malformed—to support an independent indigenous economy (and society). Another way to think
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about it is this: Whereas the effect of underdevelopment is to reorder economic relations into a less meaningful, less integrated and disfigured whole, the effect of de-development over the long term is to damage those relations so that no whole can, in fact, emerge. The arguable decimation of the current Palestinian economy into no more than a set of disconnected economic activities lends weight to this proposition. The de-development thesis, which I first introduced in an article (not included here because of its excessive length) in 19872 and which eight years later evolved into a book,3 provides the larger conceptual framework for examining Israel’s military occupation and the specificities of Israeli control and their impact on Palestinian society. As such, it also helps explain some of the factors leading to the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising. The purpose of Part II then is to examine the damaging impact of the first Intifada on Gaza’s de-developed socioeconomic structure and the ways in which it was compromised by Israeli policy, and unable to withstand the internal and external pressures imposed upon it. This examination is meant not only as an analysis of some key dynamics present in Gazan society during the period of the first uprising but as a way of understanding the context that was then being created for Gaza’s (and Palestine’s) continued and, I would argue, inevitable decline. The articles in Part II were researched and written during the period between 1988 and early 1994, spanning the birth and death of the first Palestinian uprising. The Intifada represented a critical turning point in Palestinian life and history in two respects. First, it demonstrated society’s capacity, albeit short-lived, for unified action and positive change characterized in part by inter-group coordination, new approaches to economic development, organized planning at the grass-roots level and expanding roles for women. In its early days, the Intifada witnessed a clear and rather unprecedented shift from individual to collective action within the Palestinian community with a pronounced sense of common and productive purpose. I was living in the Gaza Strip during the second year of the uprising and it was a time of stunning cohesion and popular mobilization, where the community acted as one and fought ardently against any attempt to divide it from within. Indeed, one of the Intifada’s greatest achievements was the consolidation and unification of social classes and political factions around common national goals.
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New authority structures emerged (and old ones were restructured) in which many family functions and personal loyalties were vested. These institutions emerged in response to the increasingly punitive nature of Israeli military law, and were designed to support and sustain the individual, the family and the community. They gave Palestinian society a critical and supplementary source of organization, accountability and protection, providing a range of services from the daily necessities of life to dispute mediation and proto-legal adjudication. Furthermore and now easy to forget, the uprising was also non-violent, despite the fact that Palestinians did possess arms. The decision to fight with stones and not guns was a conscious and deliberate one, an outcome and expression of community solidarity and popular commitment to end the occupation through non-violent means, decrease Palestinian dependency on Israel and encourage greater self-reliance, nationbuilding and national independence. The sense of possibility and hope were real, profound and palpable. Because of all this and despite certain spheres of internal dissent, the Palestinian community was, for a time, able to withstand those Israeli measures meant to subdue it. Early in the uprising these measures were primarily military. However, realizing the limitations of using a regular army against a civilian insurrection, the Israeli authorities eventually turned to the use of intense economic pressure, which Palestinian society could not withstand, given its own limited resources and extreme structural dependency on Israel. (That Palestinian society was able to remain intact and non-violent as long as it did was nothing short of remarkable.) The pressures imposed by the Israeli government and the Palestinian Unified National Command (the internal leadership of the Intifada)—and compounded by the vast economic losses of the Gulf War—had a devastating impact on Palestinian economy and society, and represents the second critical turning point of the uprising: the beginning of a process of internal breakdown that is today a characteristic feature of Palestinian life. Although the precise date when this began to occur is impossible to determine, its effects became more apparent around the time of the 1990 Gulf War with Israel’s early imposition of closure and increasingly so afterward, especially following the closure policy of March 1993, which had (and continues to have) a devastating economic impact.
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This internal fracture was then (and remains more acutely now) rooted in a combination of severe economic decline, continued dispossession, heightened oppression, gross insecurity, deteriorating living conditions (and the absence of political options that attend these realities), lack of leadership, and the loss of direction and purpose. The process of societal disability was then seen in the slow erosion of internal structures (and the roles and functions they performed), especially the political faction, whose loss became acute during the Oslo period. Indeed, as economic resources and political possibilities eroded, institutions of all kinds were regarded as the only source of power and influence within the community and became a principal battleground for factional rivalries, effectively eliminating the cooperation and mobilization that characterized the earlier days of the Intifada. Thus, what began as factional unity and political purpose early in the first uprising—sustained by new and readapted structures that shunned violence—evolved into factional struggle, where often virulent factional rivalries replaced directed collective action, with objectives that shifted from building Palestinian society to fighting over what was left within it. The creation of structures, once so prominent a feature of the uprising, therefore, gave way to the creation of constituencies. Rising factionalism was accompanied by the growing use of violence (without productive purpose), greater lawlessness, weakening of institutions (that is, the decline of effective institutions), escalating violence between Arab and Jew, and collective self-withdrawal of which childhood trauma was an increasingly prominent feature. The growing mental health problems of Gaza’s overwhelmingly young population in particular, reflected the steady weakening of the Palestinian family. The family’s socializing role began to diminish because it was, in effect, increasingly powerless to protect and provide for its members, especially its young. This powerlessness was deepened by the breakdown of those institutions that emerged during the Intifada to serve similar or supplementary roles to the family. It was at this time as well that large numbers of Palestinian families began to require food assistance in order not to go hungry—a common feature of life today, but then exceptional—and when individual cases of malnourishment appeared and stunned the population. In my research I was very concerned with women and children. The combined impact of the uprising and Israeli policy had a particularly
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harsh (and long-ignored) impact on both. The increasing pressures on the family compelled an examination of the changing role of the home, and women’s and children’s varying place within it. Already adverse living conditions deteriorated further during the Intifada, making it harder for women to care for their children, feed their families and live with dignity. My essay entitled “Black Milk” (1993) deals with the problems affecting women and its last paragraph captures the essence of the entire piece: Despite the existence of a Palestinian women’s movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, women in Gaza today need to be understood not by the degree of their feminist consciousness or by the socio-political agendas they espouse, but by the degree to which they are still able to imagine themselves. While social liberation is critical, it is not immediately relevant, not in Gaza, not right now. The issue is far more primal, far more gnawing. For now, it is not just a question of preserving dignity or defying humiliation within the home or outside of it. It is a question of whether a home exists at all, and if not, whether it can be created and preserved. Somehow women in Gaza must be helped to return to themselves; if not, there will be nothing left to liberate.4
Children also suffered greatly and silently and some of the most troubling dynamics now shaping the way young people are socialized appeared, with considerable shock, during the first Intifada. In 1993, I asked: How will such children—an entire generation—be resocialized, particularly when their identity has been based on what they have been denied? How will such children be made ready to redress the problems of a waning civil society . . . when they themselves have contributed to its demise? How can they rebuild their society when they have no real understanding of what it is that needs repair? This is the most critical problem facing Palestinian society in the future, and as far as Gaza is concerned, the future is already knocking at the front door.5
It is important to remember, and as the articles in Part II show, that the disorder and chaos seen today especially in Gaza and the terrible violence between Palestinian and Israeli, which are now considered “normal” and “given” by many observers, were once shocking and new. These dynamics, which now threaten social order and political resolution, and which loom so dangerously over both Arab and Jew, were at one time, and not that long ago, startling and unfamiliar, and
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ones which Palestinian society fought strenuously against while it was able. In 1993, I observed: “Consistent attacks on [Israeli] army units by Hamas activists are as new as the use of anti-tank missiles against [Palestinian] civilian homes by the Israeli army.”6 Palestinians feared the individualization of the Intifada and well understood its potential ramifications, especially the growing fragmentation of social and political groups and the resulting loss of unity. In rereading what I had written so long ago, I was struck by something a Palestinian man had said to me in 1991, “[I]n Gaza today,” he despaired, “there are many Fatehs.” This very same lament is heard today—verbatim—to describe the disrepair in Gaza. Particularly demoralizing to Palestinians in Gaza during the first Intifada was the emergence of violent confrontations between secular and Islamist groups, then a relatively new phenomenon. Myriad conversations at the time revealed a fear of implosion and vulnerability that has never really left Palestinians. It is easy to forget that once Palestinian society was orderly, functional, non-violent, hopeful and gentle. Part II and those that follow will show how (and why) the dynamics that broke the Intifada both internally and externally laid the groundwork for future failure and decline. What emerges then is the slow but steady erosion of Palestinian life and the growing disablement of civil society that occurred primarily from Israeli measures first meant to quell the uprising and later used as a form of control and restriction. In this regard, one sees a clear shift in national and societal objectives from liberation (early in the uprising) to protection (and the United States’ failure to provide it) and the use of violence (later on). Because protection had always been denied—a reality that has only grown more extreme with time—violence increasingly became an option. Thus, not only was the non-violent character of the uprising undermined, but the character of the Palestinian struggle for independence. It was Israeli policy that primarily (but not alone) created a template for continued decline and debilitation that would preclude Palestinian viability and sovereignty, making violence an inevitable part of Israeli–Palestinian relations and the way Palestinians were forced to live their lives. During the first uprising, Israel sought and expected acquiescence; instead it found that desperation brought violence, not appeasement, and this has not changed.
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Several themes take shape in Part II and run through the rest of the book: the erosion and denial of a normal and ordinary way of life; the continued struggle—not always successful—of Palestinian society to remain intact against internal dissolution and external pressure; the potential for increased radicalization and greater violence among Palestinians in the absence of meaningful political change; the need for protection as a way of averting violence; growing fear and vulnerability among Palestinians, and the retreat of the community. If one accepts that the conditions of Palestinian life as they had existed prior to the first Intifada have depreciated dramatically since—that the threshold for individual and communal existence has consistently been lowered—then the first Palestinian uprising can and should be viewed as the first step in the downward spiral that now engulfs Palestinian life.
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5 The Political Economy of Despair: Changing Political and Economic Realities in the Gaza Strip*
T
HE INTIFADA BEGAN ITS FOURTH year [1991] in the midst of changed
political and economic realities. Politically, the failure of the peace process and the crisis in the Gulf dramatically altered Palestinian attitudes, popular psychology and strategic thinking. Economically, loss of revenue from the Gulf States and the steady erosion of other economic and political options bode unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians; conditions have deteriorated to such a degree that hunger is now a growing problem in the Occupied Territories. With reference to the Gaza Strip in particular, the effect of the new political and economic realities represents not simply the continuation of negative trends, but a critical turning point in the uprising and in the nature of the Palestinian struggle for independence. Political Attitudes in the Gaza Strip: The Impact of the Gulf Crisis Although events in the Gulf have decisively influenced Palestinian political thinking, the most important factors shaping current attitudes in the Gaza Strip are the acute problems of Israel’s occupation, the total disaffection with the Arab world, the failure of the peace process, the suspension of the U.S.–PLO dialogue, and, perhaps most striking * Originally published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 20, Number 3, Spring 1991, pp. 58–69. 40
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of all, the complete loss of faith in the United States as a committed mediator of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. In the period following the PLO’s recognition of Israel and acceptance of a two-state solution, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip genuinely believed that political progress was possible primarily because of U.S. involvement. The establishment of the U.S.–PLO dialogue in December 1988 was perceived by many Gazans as an act of sincerity by the United States. In the 18 months that followed, however, popular faith in America’s resolve began to erode. Meanwhile, living conditions inside the Occupied Territories deteriorated rapidly as a direct result of Israeliimposed economic pressures, which the United States refused officially to condemn. Israel’s increasingly brutal suppression of the Intifada remained similarly unchallenged, as did the government’s political intransigence. Nonetheless, and despite mounting disillusionment and hostility, the popular and psychological consensus inside Gaza was to support U.S. participation and a peace process that was becoming increasingly moribund. However, the growing palpable sense of popular despair inside Gaza was (and continues to be) intensified by a sense of dispossession resulting from five clearly and uniformly articulated fears: the massive influx of Soviet immigrants, heightened Israeli settlement activity in East Jerusalem, the expansion of existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the political preponderance of the Israeli right wing, and violations of Islamic holy sites. From the perspective of the Occupied Territories, therefore, Palestinian compromise had consistently been punished by the United States, while Israeli intransigence had continually been rewarded. The critical event that finally disabused Gazans of their faith in America and confirmed their sense of betrayal was not the actual suspension of the dialogue between the United States and the PLO in the summer of 1990, but an event that preceded it: the American veto of a U.N. resolution calling for an observer force in the West Bank and Gaza after the killing by an Israeli reservist of seven Palestinian laborers in Rishon le Ziyon in May 1990. For the overwhelming majority of Gazans interviewed, it was only after the events in Rishon that they began seeking different paths to the establishment of their state, and new ways of filling the vacuum created by the “departure” of the United States. In August 1990, Iraq became that way.
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Vocal and widespread Palestinian support of Saddam Hussein was therefore not triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but by U.S. intervention in the region and by the double standards in the treatment of the Palestinian issue that were subsequently highlighted. Palestinians expressed outrage over America’s reaction to Saddam Hussein, and considered the U.S. troop arrival a denigrating and humiliating affront. The sense of personal pain was deeply felt among Gazans. Palestinians thus argued that their support for Iraq and its leader should be viewed within the context of U.S. military intervention and which countries supported foreign intervention. Indeed, there was an expressed fear in Gaza of recolonization by the West, and support for Iraq was in part the product of that fear. As a result of the changed political dynamics, the Palestinian issue is now considered secondary to the larger pan-Arab issue. Palestinians in Gaza believe that their conflict with Israel can and will be resolved only within the context of the Gulf crisis, of which many now consider it an integral part. As one prominent personality in Gaza stated, “the Palestinian–Israeli conflict is no longer a struggle over land, but a struggle over the survival of the Palestinian and Arab peoples.” Thus, Iraq is not only perceived as the sole deterrent and countervailing force to Israel and the United States, but as the only reliable political channel through which Palestinian objectives can be articulated and attained. Palestinians in Gaza further argue that military confrontation in the Gulf would strengthen the Arab and Palestinian national liberation movements, acting as a catalyst for positive change and triggering a “regional Intifada.” As they see it, they have nothing to lose by supporting Iraq. If Iraq were to win, they would undoubtedly be rewarded in some form although that form was not specified. If Iraq were to lose, the Arab coalition states contributing to its defeat at American hands would increasingly be placed in a precarious position at home, and would ask to be rewarded in such a way as to placate their own constituencies. One such reward, according to Gazans, would be the creation of a Palestinian state. It was thus that the Gulf crisis rekindled a popular hope that had been virtually extinguished after the Rishon killings. Another reason Gazans are commonly cited for their support of Iraq concerns attitudes towards the Arab Gulf States. Despite their considerable economic dependence on the Gulf, Palestinians
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overwhelmingly stated their belief that Gulf money had a corrupting influence on the Palestinian movement, widely viewed as a revolution that had become too rich. The popular perception is that oil money historically went to specific vested interests inside the Occupied Territories in an attempt to buy local support and keep the Palestinian conflict from spreading beyond Israel’s borders. For most, it is the perceived collusion of the Arab states against the Palestinian cause that has consistently undermined the realization of national aspirations. Economic Conditions inside the Gaza Strip: The Combined Impact of the Intifada and the Gulf Crisis1 Since the beginning of the Intifada, Gaza’s economy has suffered precipitous declines, directly attributable to the Israeli government’s long-standing economic policies and its punitive economic measures in response to the uprising. Economic measures demanded by the Palestinian leadership as part of its strategic initiative, and loss of revenue from the Gulf States have further damaged the Palestinian economy. The situation is not only critical but unprecedented: for the first time since 1967, hunger in the Occupied Territories is a problem of growing proportions, especially in Gaza. In the three years since the uprising began in December 1987, the gross national product (GNP) of the Gaza Strip has declined by at least 30 per cent. The fall in GNP resulted from four factors: • a 20–30 per cent decline in the value of output in all economic sectors except agriculture; • a significant reduction in the level of trade between Israel and the Occupied Territories (35 per cent decline in the value of Israeli exports); • a loss in income from work in Israel, and • a decline of at least 75 per cent in the level of remittances. Of particular significance for the Gaza Strip is the loss of income from work inside Israel, since well over half of Gaza’s labor force is dependent on it. Between 1988 and 1990, the average number of days worked in Israel declined by 33 to 50 per cent, while income earned by Gazans working in Israel is officially estimated to have fallen by
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at least 25 per cent in real terms.2 Expressed monetarily, this loss amounts to no less than $300 million. Furthermore, rising levels of intercommunal violence in recent months have created pressures inside Israel to separate the Palestinian and Israeli populations. One high-level Israeli official predicted that over time, the 120,000 Palestinians now working in Israel would be phased out.3 Indeed, in March of this year, Israeli officials indicated that a total of 10,000 Palestinian laborers, from the Gaza Strip and West Bank combined, were commuting daily to work inside Israel. In the last three years, per capita GNP among Gazans has declined from $1,700 to at most $1,200, and probably less. Initially, people were able to offset their losses by using their savings, but these have been seriously depleted. For an increasing number of Palestinians, net real income is estimated to have dropped by 40 to 50 per cent compared to pre-Intifada levels. Data collected through the end of 1989 suggest that personal income for many families in the Gaza Strip may have fallen by as much as 75 per cent of its 1987 level. In 1989, Israel’s Ministry of Defense estimated that per capita GNP in the Gaza Strip was approximately $650 by the end of 1988, representing a decline of over 60 per cent from 1987 levels.4 The serious reduction in the level of private income among Gazans has resulted in changing patterns of consumption, savings and investment. It is no longer a question, as at the beginning, of merely reducing consumption of luxury goods, but of dramatic reductions in the consumption of basic goods. Israeli authorities estimate the decline in the standard of living at a minimum of 30 per cent. Among the indicators of Gaza’s economic deterioration are: a doubling of child labor among Palestinian children 8–14 years of age, 75 per cent of whom come from the Gaza Strip; a 200 per cent increase in the number of children in UNRWA supplementary feeding programs, from 8,500 to 25,000; and an unprecedented increase in the number of Gaza refugees and non-refugees requiring emergency food relief, by 70,000 and 34,000 families respectively. (UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.) The crisis in the Gulf has had, and will continue to have, an immense impact on the Palestinian economy, particularly through the loss of remittances from Palestinians living in the Gulf and from the termination of direct aid from the Gulf States, notably Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
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In 1987, total remittances from the Gulf countries amounted to $250 million or 10 per cent of the territories’ GNP. However, given that the GNP of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip has declined by over 30 per cent, the proportional value of Gulf remittances has increased to at least 15 per cent, with Kuwait accounting for half. While remittances from some countries have ended completely, the value of those that continue, particularly from Kuwait, has diminished by over twothirds. Furthermore, the estimated $15–$20 billion in Palestinian savings amassed in Kuwaiti banks over the last four decades has virtually disappeared since the Kuwaiti dinar, valued at $3.50 before the invasion, was replaced with the far weaker Iraqi dinar, valued at $1.12.5 The expected return of 20,000–30,000 expatriates from the Gulf will further increase the economic burden by inflating the level of unemployment to a projected 40 per cent. As a result, the GNP of the Gaza Strip alone is predicted to fall by an additional 10 per cent over the next year. The economic crisis in Jordan will also directly affect the economies of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The 50 per cent decline in Jordan’s GNP will not only weaken the ability of the Jordanian market to absorb Palestinian exports, but will affect the value of the Jordanian dinar and its rate of exchange. Recently, tensions in the region have resulted in the closure of Jordan’s border with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, two important export markets for the Occupied Territories. As a result, the Gaza Strip is expected to lose 80 per cent of its market for citrus, its primary agricultural export. The population of the Gaza Strip is approaching a state of total economic exhaustion. As individuals become increasingly impoverished, their ability to withstand continued economic pressure will diminish, particularly in the absence of an acceptable political solution. As a 20-year-old man from Jabalya, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, said, “If we get to the political extreme, economic pressure will be the train that gets us there.” The potential for increased radicalization among Palestinians and for greater violence is real. Economic and political stalemate is resulting in changes in the Gaza Strip which threaten not only the non-violent character of the uprising, but the very nature of the Palestinian struggle for independence.
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The Impact of the Political and Economic Crisis on Social Organization The combination of acute political and economic pressure has had a dislocating effect on daily life in the Gaza Strip, with repercussions for a number of forms of social organization, including political groups, the Islamic fundamentalist movement and the family unit itself. Political Factionalism and Community Organization Without question, two of the most significant achievements of the Intifada were the consolidation and unification of social classes and political factions around common national objectives, and the creation of an institutional structure designed to support and sustain popular unity.6 Now, both appear to be breaking down. One indication of Gaza’s growing internal disunity is increased factionalization, both within political groups and between them. Intrafactional divisions are most evident within local Fateh cells, which indisputably commanded considerable, if not majority, support during the early days of the uprising. Today, the cohesion that once characterized the internal leadership has given way to infighting and competition. Thus, while it is still clear who represents Fateh inside the Gaza Strip, it is no longer clear who has the authority to speak for Fateh. Several local activists bemoaned the fact that “in Gaza today, there are many Fatehs.” Nor are intrafactional tensions restricted to the local leadership of a given political group. Increasingly, strains have appeared between the inside and outside leaderships of certain factions concerning the locus of political and organizational control. The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), for example, has been undergoing a struggle between those favoring control by the internal leadership, and those believing that control should reside with the DFLP’s external authority. This struggle created noticeable divisions within the organization, and seriously disrupted some of the social and economic activities it supported in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps the source of greatest demoralization for the people of Gaza is the interfactional fighting between the secular-nationalist groups and the Islamic fundamentalists, notably Hamas. Despite an agreement to
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coordinate activities in the interests of the Intifada, tensions between secular and religious factions have increased considerably in the last few months and have erupted into violent confrontations, a relatively new phenomenon in the Occupied Territories. One violent incident last summer (1990) between the Communists and Hamas in the Jabalya refugee camp was so painful to local residents that they physically intervened to stop it, an act virtually without precedent. Since socioeconomic and political activities and services in the Occupied Territories are organized along factional lines, the breakdown of authority both within and between the factions has affected delivery of such services in particular and social cohesion in general. Palestinians in Gaza frequently express their fear of complete social disorder. For them, this means the breakdown of the internal system of protolegal appeal, dispute mediation and social protection that emerged in response to the increasingly partisan and punitive nature of Israeli military law since the uprising. At a more mundane level, the weakening of internal institutional mechanisms affects the most basic functions of daily life such as grocery shopping, arranging a medical appointment, or simply locating someone. There is clear popular concern over the increasing “individualization” of the Intifada and the lessening of its collectivist orientation. As Gazans become more and more vulnerable, they fear the loss not only of their institutional anchors but of their moral anchors as well. Interestingly, certain areas or communities in the Gaza Strip appear somewhat immune to political factionalism. One of these is Rafah, Gaza’s third largest town. Located in the southern part of the Strip, Rafah has endured considerable hardships during the Intifada, and has been the site of many violent confrontations with the Israeli military. Its relative isolation from the rest of the Gaza territory, many believe, has given Rafah a political cohesion of its own. Rafah’s popular unity and more cohesive political and community organization can be attributed to the ideological strength of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the area and to the unity of its leadership base despite a widescale Israeli crackdown. Thus, while massive arrests of local activists in recent months contributed greatly to undermining the momentum of the uprising, the weakening of the movement’s structural underground has been at least partially offset by its absorption of prisoners released from Israeli jails. These
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men, entering an environment of limited economic opportunity, are in effect employed by the movement, both sustaining it and being sustained by it. The Role of Islamic Fundamentalism There are two groups of Islamic fundamentalists: Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) and al-Jihad al-Islami (the Islamic Jihad). Although both espouse the same objective—the creation of an Islamic state in Palestine—they disagree on how to achieve it. Of the two, Hamas has been a much stronger force inside the Gaza Strip, in part because the Israeli authorities effectively destroyed many Jihad cells and deported most of its leadership. A common misconception is that Hamas commands considerable, if not majority, support in the Gaza Strip. While it is true that the organization is stronger in Gaza than in the West Bank and that its influence has increased over the last three years, it remains a minority movement. In recent months, the Islamic Jihad appears to have reemerged in Gaza as a more vocal and possibly strengthened force, as manifested in part by its increased number of strike calls and their observance by the community. Unlike Hamas, the Islamic Jihad combines the ideological appeal of Islamic fundamentalism with an activist, confrontational and outcome-oriented tactical style. Its apparently growing appeal may be due not only to the confluence of political and economic pressures, but to a growing irritation with Hamas stemming from the latter’s political stand against Saddam Hussein (which it has since muted) and its continuing struggle against moral and behavioral impropriety (primarily directed at women) in the midst of political and economic collapse. While the Islamic Jihad does not concern itself with such aspects, Hamas activists angered many by patrolling the streets of Gaza searching for inappropriately attired women and dousing the offenders with vegetable dye in punishment. Thus, while Hamas’s strength and importance in Gaza has consistently been studied in relation to its secular-nationalist counterparts, this common analytic dichotomy might not be as relevant in the future as the relationship between Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Indeed, the recent spate of retaliatory violence against Israeli civilians by Hamas supporters—if in fact Hamas is responsible—may represent not only
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an attempt to increase popular support for the organization in its leadership struggle with the nationalist factions, but a response to the growing influence of the more militant and violent Islamic Jihad. One message, however, is clear: violence is becoming an increasingly viable option for the Palestinian community. The Role and Functioning of the Family The family is the Palestinian institution that has best withstood the dislocating effects of the occupation. Nonetheless, the intense pressures and considerable psychic stress arising from the Intifada have taken their toll on the family unit as well, particularly in terms of its authority structure and ability to provide order, discipline, security, and—perhaps most important—protection. The inability of parents to control their children at home (for instance, by preventing them from participating in dangerous activities) or to protect them from frequent violations of the home by security forces, are but two indicators of the family’s diminished capacity as a socializing agent. In a society where half the population is 14 years of age or younger, this is a problem with immense ramifications. Particular attention needs to be paid to women, especially from the lower socioeconomic classes, whose oppression stems both from external and internal forces. In the early stages of the uprising, women had made limited economic and political gains, including increased opportunities to leave the home setting for Intifada-related activities. With worsening conditions and increased disillusionment, these gains have for the most part been lost, especially in the more traditional and impoverished Gaza Strip. From an economic standpoint, outlets such as cooperatives created during the uprising for the participation of women outside the home have been weakened or eliminated. Politically, the pressures on women to relinquish their hard-won and limited freedoms in the public domain (which in most cases were no more than extensions of their traditional roles) and “return” exclusively to their homes have intensified with interfactional struggles, the increasing influence of Islamic fundamentalism, and the breakdown of institutional structures (such as the various popular and women’s committees). The fundamentalist movement has been particularly successful inside Gaza in exploiting the women’s issue to promote its own political agenda.
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Slogans exhorting women to remain in the home and dress modestly are now common in the Strip. Yet, when women return to the home they never truly left, they find themselves subjected to pressures and constraints that make it impossible for them to care for their families as they once could. A young mother from Beach camp in Gaza said, “For the first time, I feel that my home is also my prison.”7 The weakening of the family as a socializing agent is exacerbated by the breakdown of the institutions either formed or restructured during the Intifada, which served similar or supplementary roles. These included schools, the various popular committees, and so on. Many family functions and personal loyalties were vested in these new authority structures, thereby assuring their success. Now that they, too, are weakening under the impact of the new realities, a critical source of organization, accountability and control is likewise undermined. If violence does increase—and it appears that it will—it runs the risk of escalation and lack of direction in the absence of controlling mechanisms. Thus, a new and dangerous element of uncertainty has been introduced into the political and social equation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that must be addressed with considerable urgency. Changes in the Character of Popular Discourse The new political and economic realities discussed above are clearly reflected in the popular discourse, particularly as it pertains to three themes: expulsion, the goals of the Intifada, and the use of violence. The Threat of Expulsion Although the subject of expulsion is not new in the Occupied Territories, in the past it was treated as an abstraction and not cause for serious concern. However, with the beginning of the Gulf crisis, it became a common theme of everyday conversation. Palestinians profoundly fear that a war in the region would give the Israeli government the opportunity to proceed with forcible transfers while world and media attention are focused elsewhere. Fears arising from the war scenario were fed by other events. In the summer of 1990, for example, the Israeli government discussed a plan for the internal deportation of key Palestinian figures from their homes in East Jerusalem to certain
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areas inside Israel, such as Eilat in the south. While the problems of implementation are obvious, the significance of the plan lies in what it reveals about the official thinking behind its formulation. The January 1991 inclusion in the Israeli government of the far right Moledet party, which openly advocates expelling all Palestinians from the Occupied Territories, and the appointment of the party’s Knesset representative, Rehavin Zeevi, as minister without portfolio and a member of the Ministerial Committee on Defense and Security, will surely feed Palestinian fears. The possibility of expulsion is thus no longer discussed as a theoretical possibility, but in everyday conversation as part of the immediate Palestinian reality. People speculate on the possible circumstances under which transfer could take place, when it could take place, and what they would do if Israeli soldiers arrived to push them out. The overwhelming consensus seemed to be that dying in one’s land is preferable to living outside as refugees. Redefining the Goals of the Intifada When the Intifada began, the Palestinians hoped it would achieve four main goals: disengagement from Israel, greater self-reliance, an end to the occupation, and national independence. As a result of the changed reality of life in the Occupied Territories, however, these goals have been redefined, perhaps in an attempt to rationalize popular perceptions of what the Intifada is no longer capable of achieving. The new goals are now generally defined as the reestablishment of the Palestinian political agenda internationally, and the reaffirmation of Palestinian identity. Popular opinion inside Gaza now contends that the Intifada has achieved all that it practically can, and that continued progress toward peace and a two-state solution will have to be initiated externally, not internally. This shift in the psychological locus of control from the Occupied Territories to the outside, in effect to Iraq, has also been accompanied by a similar shift in the discourse on the uprising’s political objectives, from one emphasizing nation-building to one emphasizing the punishment of Israeli society and other perceived enemies of the Palestinian people. The present, therefore, is no longer conceived as part of an expanding future but as a finite end in itself. This change in attitude clearly derives from the profound despair and
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hopelessness of the population, and represents the loss of one of the Intifada’s greatest achievements. The Use of Violence The fear of expulsion and the internalized sense of defeat and frustration, which have entered popular discourse have resulted in a fundamental and qualitative change in the psychology of the people inside the Gaza Strip. Not surprisingly, therefore, attitudes toward the use of violence have also changed. Increasingly, violence is perceived as the only option available to Palestinians; as such, violence becomes acceptable and the consequences of using it are willingly incurred. Indicative of changing attitudes is an incident that occurred in the Gaza Strip in September 1990. An Israeli reservist returning to his unit accidentally drove into Bureij refugee camp rather than into the military encampment he was seeking several meters past the camp road. Within seconds of realizing his mistake, he attempted to back out, and in the process hit two Palestinian children, seriously injuring them. He immediately found himself surrounded by a large number of angry camp residents who then proceeded to pelt his car with stones and set it ablaze. The Israeli soldier died in his car, most likely burned alive. The brutality of the Israeli’s death has no precedent during the Intifada. Atypically, there were no attempts by Palestinian onlookers or participants to intervene to help the victim. Furthermore, all attempts by United Nations staff to defuse the situation were rebuffed by the camp residents, an intervention Palestinians normally welcome. People inside Bureij understood that there would be a high collective price to pay—and indeed there was in the form of mass arrests, demolitions of homes and businesses, and increased harassment by the army. In response to the Bureij incident, one resident of Gaza said, “It is better to die violently than to keep the status quo.” While people adamantly maintain that there is no possibility of returning to the status quo ante, there is no longer a feeling of moving forward either. The early momentum and sense of progress, which characterized the Intifada, especially in its first two years, has been all but lost. In Gaza, there is an extreme and desperate quality to popular thinking in that people now appear more willing to undertake actions that may cost them their lives even if they feel there is no tangible
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benefit to be derived from their sacrifice. Tragically, Palestinians may have reached the point where they feel that the only power still within their control is their ability to inflict pain. Conclusion The very changed environment of the Gaza Strip has another side to it: acute vulnerability. Palestinians feel totally abandoned, increasingly helpless, and very fearful. They are harassed by the army on a daily basis and have no institutional recourse or form of appeal. Daily life is impossibly oppressive and people genuinely despair of protection. Providing that protection may, under present circumstances, be the only way to arrest the move toward greater violence and allow people to regain some sense of normalcy. Protection, therefore, is both a moral and political imperative. Without it, Israeli–Palestinian reconciliation cannot occur.
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6 Black Milk: The Desperate Lives of Women in the Gaza Strip*
B
EFORE 1948 THE GAZA STRIP, a roughly rectangular coastal area on the eastern Mediterranean, 28 miles long, approximately 5 miles wide, and one-15th the size of the West Bank, had no territorial demarcations. It existed as part of the Gaza District, which spanned the entire southern half of Mandatory Palestine. The city of Gaza (and its environs) has fallen prey to a host of conquerors and occupiers over the centuries, beginning with the Egyptian pharaohs and ending with the Israeli Army. Gaza’s historical significance is tied directly to its strategic location. As the first junction on the ancient trade route known as the Via Maris or Sea Road, which ran from Egypt across the northern Sinai coast eastward, Gaza became an important center of trade and commerce, a city whose conquest unlocked the doors to the rest of Palestine. The declaration of Israeli statehood in May 1948 and the Arab–Israeli War that followed precipitated the birth of the Gaza Strip. As a result of the war, two-thirds of the former Gaza District became part of the new State of Israel. Gaza City and 13 other localities were incorporated into an entity known as the Gaza Strip, and placed under Egyptian military rule. Within days of its geographic determination, the Strip, which already had a population of 80,000 people, was besieged by 250,000 refugees fleeing the war inside Palestine. (The word “refugee” here is somewhat of a misnomer. A refugee is usually someone fleeing
* Originally published in The Women’s Review of Books, Special Summer Issue on “Writing Out of Crisis,” July 1993, pp. 13–15. 54
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to another country; in the Palestinian case, however, individuals fled to areas within their own country, making them displaced persons.) They entered an area few of them knew or had ever even seen. The Strip’s population tripled almost overnight, and the internal dynamics of the territory were altered forever. In 1967, as a result of the June war (the Six-Day War), the Strip came under Israeli military rule. Despite its tiny size, the Gaza Strip, population now 750,000, is an area of almost impenetrable complexity. Bordered by Israel on the north and east, Egypt on the south, and the Mediterranean Sea on the west, the Strip has remained hidden from the world outside. Half its residents are female. Gazans fall into a variety of cross-cutting, seemingly maze-like categories, which do as much to confound as to clarify. Broadly speaking, there are three historic social groups: urban, peasant and bedouin. The overwhelming majority of Gazans (99 per cent) are Sunni Muslim Arabs, with a tiny minority of Arab Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox. No one in the territory carries a passport; everyone is stateless, their nationality officially defined as “undetermined.” Approximately 65 per cent of Gaza’s residents, close to half a million people, are refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants, now entering their fifth generation of statelessness. Those not in camps (under 50 per cent) reside in local villages and towns. Women overwhelmingly define camp life. It is women who sleep with six or seven children in one room; who trudge daily through mud roads to local markets; who, for hours on end, collect water from dripping faucets after the main lines have been shut down, and who perpetually scrub shelters under constant assault by sand and dust. The men are cleaning streets in Tel Aviv and Ashkelon, spending their nights there in shacks illegally padlocked by their Israeli employers. The Gaza Strip and its Arab inhabitants are subject to a system of military law, one that is completely separate from Israeli civil law. All legal authority rests with the Strip’s military commander, who is empowered to make new laws and amend or annul existing ones. The legal system inside the Occupied Territories is self-contained, answerable to no official Israeli body. Palestinians have little recourse or form of appeal. There is no system of justice in Gaza and no pretense at any. Palestinians have no control over their own lives or, more important, over those of their children. The cumulative effect of the nearly 1,000
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military orders issued since 1967 inside the Gaza Strip alone has been to retard almost all economic and social development. For Palestinians, land dispossession is the key issue that distinguishes this occupation from its predecessors. The taking of land by the government is seen as a denial of Palestinian identity and and an attempt to erase the Palestinian past. In the last 25 years the Israeli government has directly confiscated, expropriated, or otherwise assumed control of at least 51 per cent of Gaza’s land, portions of which have been used to establish Jewish settlements. Although the problem of land is always presented in political terms, its impact on the home, the family and women is deeply and profoundly personal, shaping not only the way people live, but who they are and how they are defined. One can understand neither Gaza nor the condition of women in Gaza without understanding this. Some field notes (slightly edited) from a visit to a refugee camp illustrate what I mean. A woman in Shati camp, someone I did not know but who immediately recognized my foreign face, invited me to her home. Before I could thank her and accept, she took me by the arm, and in a forceful but familiar manner I had come to love, swept me through her door. She told me that 50 people live in her shelter, which didn’t seem large enough to accommodate ten. Upon entering, I was immediately introduced to the patriarch of the family, a worn but proud-looking man. He told me that he has five sons, all married, and 38 grandchildren. They all live in this home as custom dictates. The house was L-shaped and had five rooms off the main corridor. Each room, and I was shown every one, housed one family and was small, cramped with old furniture and bed linens. The air was cold and raw. The walls were rotting from water leaks and were covered with strips of paint that seemed beyond the point of peeling. One wall in every room was decorated with pictures of fashion models that had been torn out of a magazine, and with postcards and travel posters, which managed somehow to find their way into the camp. They were the only forms of personal indulgence I could see. Some rooms had large photographs of young boys and men, proudly hung at the highest point on the wall just where it meets the ceiling. Some were in jail; others had died . . . . The physical inadequacy of the
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house was riveting. Children swarmed everywhere. It was hard to move around unencumbered. The noise level was, for me, very oppressive. These two factors alone have contributed significantly to the many physical and mental problems, which have increased among the camp people, especially among women, since the Intifada. There is absolutely no privacy and no quiet. No time can be devoted to non-essential activities. There is no leisure. Women do not exist as individuals; they exist only in relationship to others and the functions they perform for them. There are no escapes at any level. What happens to a woman when she sleeps with 10 people in 1 room, or must feed 40 hungry children? Intimacy is not only precluded, it seems outrageously selfish. The grandfather said to me, “We have no money, that is why we must live like this.” However, I didn’t sense any shame in him. It wasn’t embarrassment he felt, but dejection. His daughters-in-law were much more expressive. They showed me every corner and crevice of the place, and seemed at times to push me into rooms as if to say, “See how we must live. This is the evidence. This is real. Take a good look.” Amazingly, they retained their sense of humor. Many jokes were made about luxurious living conditions, but through the giggles, insistent and tenacious hands kept grabbing me, gently pulling me into the same room, the same corner, the same crevice, for another look. Even the children understood the significance of my visit and designated themselves my personal ushers. I felt them all around me, urging me into the next viewing chamber. In 1989, Arab population density inside the Strip approached 9,000 people per square mile of available land. This surpasses the density levels of many major American cities. Levels within the refugee camps averaged 166,000 people per square mile, while population density among Israeli settlers in Gaza approached 80 people per square mile of available land. The Intifada, which in Arabic means to “shake off,” occurred in the twentieth year of Israeli rule. It was a response to the oppressive conditions of occupation, to the escalating dispossession and loss of control over the present, which threatened an already diminished future. Not surprisingly, the uprising began not in the West Bank, but in the more impoverished Gaza Strip, inside the Jabalya refugee camp. Jabalya is the largest of Gaza’s eight squalid, overcrowded camps, with
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65,000 men, women and children living on half a square mile of sand. Privately, some will admit that a woman threw the first stone. The uprising has changed things irrevocably and has precluded any return to the status quo ante. People, however, especially in Gaza, have paid an inordinately high price for their activism. Palestinians still have little to show for their sacrifices except greater suffering and more violence. Not only have the Israeli Army and Israeli law become more repressive, the internal unity expressed in the early days of the Intifada has been replaced with growing factionalism, internecine fighting and internal social fragmentation, the result of so much desperation and despair. Economic conditions have deteriorated so dramatically that there is no formal economy any more. Hunger is now a growing problem. The family unit has been weakened; the classroom has been barred. Children of all ages are traumatized; parents no longer exist as such. Gaza is a very different place today than it was just two years ago, let alone eight years ago when I first started working there. It is a society on the verge of imploding. And it is the women of Gaza who are paying a unique price. During my last, very depressing visit to the Gaza Strip in January of this year, a mother from one of the refugee camps I was visiting approached me as I was walking with some male acquaintances. I did not know her, but she took me by the arm as if we were intimate friends and said, “The milk from my breasts is no longer white. It is black. I have nothing left to feed my children but black milk. What good am I?” Her tone was quiet but desperate. I looked at her, tears welling in my eyes, and could not answer. She walked away as imperceptibly as she approached. The men with me seemed somewhat embarrassed by her words, and dismissed her as someone pitiable, perhaps a bit crazy. Yet, through her powerful use of metaphor, this woman, whom I had only known for a few seconds, captured the essence of the Gazan female condition. Women in Gaza have lost their men, their children, their sanctuary. Their husbands, sons and brothers have been deported, imprisoned or killed. Many of the men who remain are angry and feel emasculated. At unacceptably young ages their children have left home, and are no longer theirs to raise. Some children are in jail, some are in hiding, others are
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in the streets writing slogans on walls and throwing stones at the army. Women’s homes, literally and figuratively, have been destroyed. For the women I know or have interviewed as an academic and journalist, the greatest and most painful loss is their increasing inability to protect and nurture their children. This loss expresses itself in many ways, and I myself have been witness to some. A young woman, eight months pregnant, was beaten and kicked in her belly by several Israeli soldiers, who were punishing her for flashing a V-sign at them. A group of ten- to twelve-year-old boys and girls was fired upon directly by an army unit for taunting and throwing stones. Another army unit, while on foot patrol inside a refugee camp, came upon a small baby perched in the sand just outside the door to its home. Two or three soldiers surrounded the child and began kicking it as if it were an inanimate object, a football. The baby began screaming, the mother rushed out shrieking, and after a few more seconds of “play,” the soldiers relented and walked away, leaving the terrified child to its even more terrified mother. This was the most painful of my experiences in Gaza. Close to 70 per cent of the Gaza Strip population are 25 years of age and younger, and have known nothing but occupation. Just under 50 per cent are 14 years or less, and have spent their formative years within the uprising. The children of Gaza are psychologically damaged, some more than others. The death of a child, a brother or sister is no longer an extraordinary event in Gaza. Injured and maimed children are increasingly common as well. This is a society devoid of childhood and family. During the course of the uprising, children have left home for underground committees and illegal employment, and have been forced from the classroom by the army. The loss of home and school, two critical sources of socialization, has been devastating. Children are increasingly incapable of conceptualizing authority in traditional terms, since their parents and teachers, unable to protect them from constant mistreatment and danger, have ceased to exist as authority figures. Authority is the enemy, the army, the state; it is organically evil. Law and order do not exist in Gaza in concept or practice, and therefore children have no boundaries, no markers to distinguish good behavior from bad. Children are fearful in Gaza; they are also feared. How will such children, an entire generation, be resocialized, particularly when their identity has been based on what they’ve been
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denied and on what their families could not provide? How can the mothers of these children nourish them when they have nothing left to give them but black milk? What can their fathers do when they are in jail or cannot earn enough money to feed their families? Despite the existence of a Palestinian women’s movement in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, women in Gaza today need to be understood not by the degree of their feminist consciousness or by the socio-political agendas they espouse, but by the degree to which they are still able to imagine themselves. While social liberation is critical, it is not immediately relevant, not in Gaza, not right now. The issue is far more primal, far more gnawing. For now, it is not just a question of preserving dignity or defying humiliation within the home or outside of it. It is a question of whether a home exists at all, and if not, whether it can be created and preserved. Somehow women in Gaza must be helped to return to themselves; if not, there will be nothing left to liberate.
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7 Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration*
I
MARCH 1993, IN response to some of the highest levels of violence since the uprising began, which left 28 Palestinians and 15 Israelis dead in that month alone, Prime Minister Rabin sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip, barring 120,000 Palestinians from their jobs inside the Green Line, and announced that Israel would have to become far less dependent on Palestinian labor in the future. While these actions are not without precedent, they often follow attacks against Jews within Israel proper, attacks which momentarily sear the political status quo, and which are almost always committed by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, themselves the object of uninterrupted abuse. Gaza and its people have long been identified with the violent side of Arab anti-Zionism, and the last few months have proven no exception. Yet, the violence associated with the Gaza Strip, particularly since the start of the uprising, has always been tolerable to Israelis as long as it was confined to the territory itself. Somehow, Gaza would be dealt with: Arab workers would continue to fill their jobs in Israel, and everything would return to “normal.” The conditions of life in the Gaza Strip, which allowed and sustained this “business as usual” mindset among Israelis are rapidly changing. Gaza is a very different place today from what it was just one year ago, let alone eight years ago when I first began working there. Old rules and traditional expectations no longer apply. New dynamics now N LATE
* Originally published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 22, Number 4, Summer 1993, pp. 20–31. 61
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characterize life inside the territory, dynamics that threaten to destroy not only the uprising in its most productive forms, but certain aspects of society itself. The most obvious change is the greater lawlessness and higher scale of violence committed by Arabs against Jews and by Jews against Arabs on both sides of the Green Line, a recent trend, which is expected only to grow worse if prospects for a political resolution continue to dim. (Consistent attacks on army units by Hamas activists are as new as the use of anti-tank missiles against civilian homes by the Israeli military.) Less apparent but more ominous is the increasing disablement and approaching breakdown of civil society in Gaza, a product of widening societal divisions and internal fragmentation never before seen inside the territory. A Changing Context Before elaborating on the adverse changes taking place in the Gaza Strip, it is necessary to understand something of the context that produced them. In Gaza, this context is undeniably and primarily economic. In the five years since the Intifada began, the GNP of the Gaza Strip is estimated to have fallen by 30–50 per cent. But although the uprising imposed considerable economic burdens, it was the Gulf War that dealt the local economy its greatest—some would say final—blow. The impact of the war was devastating for the Palestinian economy as a whole, but particularly for the more impoverished economy of the Gaza Strip where such external sources of revenue constituted at least 50 per cent of GNP. In April 1991, the loss of remittances and other direct aid to the West Bank and Gaza from the Gulf countries coupled with the loss of exports already amounted to $350 million, not including the costs of loss of work inside Israel since early 1991. Losses to the PLO in the form of direct aid from Gulf sources, furthermore, have been put at $480 million, part of which would have been funneled into the Occupied Territories. At one time, in fact, Saudi Arabia’s contributions to the PLO were equivalent to 10 per cent of the GDP of the West Bank and Gaza combined.1 The steady closure of the Israeli market to Palestinian labor has proved extremely damaging for the Gaza economy, given the inordinate dependence of its labor force on employment inside Israel. Prior to the crisis in the Gulf, between 45,000 and 50,000 Gazans, supporting
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close to 250,000 people, were working in Israel, this figure itself representing a decline from over 70,000 before the uprising. In the last two years, only 25,000–30,000 workers from Gaza entered Israel daily, which represented a loss of at least 20,000 jobs that were not created domestically. (Of course, the situation deteriorated even further with the March closure.) Unemployment soared to at least 40 per cent in the Gaza Strip, personal income fell dramatically, and savings were increasingly exhausted. In the fall of 1992, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza advertised twelve positions and received over 11,000 applications.2 Moreover, unemployment levels in the Gaza Strip and West Bank are expected to increase even further in 1993 since the construction sector in Israel, the largest sectoral employer of Palestinian labor, is expected to contract significantly. Finally, the two-week curfew imposed on the Gaza Strip after the December 1992 deportations is estimated to have cost the economy $1,810,000 per day.3 One indicator of the economic changes taking place inside Gaza is the number of families who have required food assistance in the last two years so as not to go hungry. By June 1991, the UNRWA, whose sole responsibility is to the refugee community, was feeding 120,000 families in the Gaza Strip and 165,000 families in the West Bank, both refugee and non-refugee. The number of families receiving food aid since the Gulf War is all the more startling when compared with those families receiving food aid prior to the uprising and just prior to the Gulf War itself: 7,471 in 1986, 9,137 in 1988, and 9,838 in June 1990.4 Thus, between June 1990 and June 1991, the number of families in the Gaza Strip receiving food assistance from the UNRWA increased from 9,838 to 120,000, or elevenfold. Since the Gulf crisis, the situation in Gaza has become critical. Hunger is a growing problem, especially among children, and malnourishment is sometimes visible as one walks along Gaza’s streets. Faces appear hollow and lifeless. Teachers in UNRWA schools report that the majority of their students eat only one meal per day and that meal is often no more than bread with some crushed pepper or thyme added for flavor.5 Cheese, once a staple of the local diet, is now too expensive for most people, and meat has vanished from the tables of all but the very rich. Doctors are treating more cases of malnourishment and diseases related to malnourishment among young children than at any point
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since the occupation began. To make matters worse, the closure of the Occupied Territories in March caused food prices to plummet. Despite this, purchases of basic foodstuffs have declined by more than 50 per cent. The closure cost the economy of both territories approximately $2.5 million per day. (As a result of these changes and an economic structure that was underdeveloped and weak to begin with, the formal sector of the economy has declined and the informal and unregulated sector has grown quite rapidly.) The immense economic pressures imposed upon the Gaza Strip become even more acute in light of Gaza’s extremely high population growth rate of 4 per cent per annum. Last year, the refugee community alone, which comprises 73 per cent of the total population, grew at a rate of 7.3 per cent, giving the territory one of the highest population densities in the world. In 1992, according to conservative estimates, density levels exceeded 9,300 people per square mile when measured in terms of lands available for use by the Arab population. Density levels among the Jewish settler community in the Gaza Strip, by contrast, averaged 115 people per square mile of available land. The combination of severe economic erosion, gross insecurity, rapidly deteriorating living conditions and continued political inaction has produced a state of extreme psychological exhaustion among the people. People almost uniformly spoke of the Intifada in the past tense, particularly when referring to its ability to bring meaningful change at the political level and structural change at the economic level. The deportation of 415 Palestinians, an action that Gazans view as the first of future, large-scale population transfers, reinforced popular perceptions of the Intifada’s political demise and their final abandonment by the world community. The political slogans that once catalyzed the population into unquestioned collective action are now beyond the capacity or the willingness of the people to enforce. Within this context, local attitudes toward the Middle East peace talks were not only dismissive but outwardly hostile. The profound sense of hopelessness among people is only equalled if not exceeded by a sense of utter humiliation, despair and betrayal. Another manifestation of this psychological exhaustion is a change that under other circumstances would have been hailed as positive: a relaxation in the strict dress codes for women that characterized life in the Gaza Strip from the earliest days of the uprising. While most
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women continue to dress conservatively, the author noted on a visit in January 1993 that a growing minority is no longer wearing the hijab, or head cover. This would have been unthinkable just a short time ago: indeed, the author once had stones thrown at her for not covering her head in public. Young adult women were also seen in jeans—unheard of in Gaza—and one was seen wearing black lace leggings under a short skirt. One reason for this change is that the Hamas activists who vigorously enforced these codes in the past have turned their attention from internal social reform to military attacks against the Israeli Army. In their struggle for leadership of the Islamic movement in Gaza and indeed for leadership of the nationalist movement, Hamas also recognized the political costs of insulting women for wearing nail polish in public (an incident once witnessed by the author) at a time when the husbands and brothers of these women were losing their livelihood and ability to feed their families. But above and beyond Hamas’s change in tactics, such political symbols as the hijab no longer seem important. Quite simply, people no longer see the point. As one individual put it, “The price of our struggle is now too high, especially since we have very little to show for it except greater suffering.” Gaza is without leaders. People grieve the loss of their local leadership and feel misled by those in Tunis [where Arafat presided over a Palestinian government in exile]. There is, in Gaza, a profound sense of finality, of having nowhere left to go and nowhere else to look. The goals of the Intifada—ending the occupation through nonviolent means, creating a Palestinian state in the territories, decreasing economic dependency on Israel, and reordering society—are now considered unattainable in the short term and, many believe, in the long term as well. The psychological effect is best characterized as a kind of collective self-withdrawal. Unable to achieve what is now regarded only in the abstract, political factions in Gaza have begun to fight over control of those few remaining resources that are perceived to exist, resources which are primarily institutional. Virulent factional rivalries are replacing directed collective effort at many levels; internal fragmentation and the unmaking of civil society are the tragic result.
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Internal Fragmentation and the Waning of Civil Society The Fight Over Institutions The internal fractures taking root in the Gaza Strip are characterized by changes at a variety of levels, but none more pronounced than the institutional. Institutions are perhaps the only remaining resource in Gaza with any semblance of power or influence within the community, and as such have become the new political battleground. Institutions across a variety of sectors have been affected: health and educational organizations, professional associations, trade unions and a variety of other organized social groups. Two main trends have emerged: scrambling for control over existing institutions, and competition over the creation of new ones. Acquiring control over established institutions is increasingly achieved through intimidation and coercion. There are already many examples of how a given faction will approach the head of an institution and demand that certain of its members be hired. Refusal to do so has sometimes resulted in personal threats to the organizational head and his or her family, as well as property damage to the targeted institution. In other cases, local elections of officers and board members have been fixed either through intimidation or bribery. The director of one prominent and highly respected health institution in Gaza, who asked not to be identified, was approached by a political faction, which demanded that he hire several of its members. Threats were used against him and his family, and he gave in. As a result, he is now forced to pay salaries for a number of untrained, unproductive individuals, depleting funds needed for the delivery of the services he is there to provide. The director of an educational training institute, a personal friend of the author, was similarly approached but refused to be coerced. He told of constant threats against himself and his family, and consistent violations of his institution in the form of physical trespasses by factional members. He was not certain how much longer he could withstand the pressure stating, “It is one thing to fight the occupier, it is quite another to fight your own people.” Like seven other nationalist figures interviewed, he said he would like to leave the Gaza Strip if only he could find a way. A senior official at the UNRWA in Gaza further reported that he had been hoping to devolve control over the UNRWA hospital in the
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Bureij refugee camp to local authorities, but decided not to do so “because there is no longer any group left which represents the interests of the community as a whole.”6 He similarly stated that despite the availability of funds for the development of several UNRWA youth centers, once an important focus of social activity in the Gaza Strip, these centers have ceased to be supported because of the factional infighting that surrounds them. Another very visible demonstration of how factionalism has retarded community development concerns the Gaza municipality, which has all but ceased to function as a result of internecine rivalries and budget cuts. For the first time ever, sewage can be seen running down the streets of Rimal, Gaza City’s wealthiest neighborhood, and garbage is now a prominent feature of the urban landscape. The sense of physical decay is pervasive. The March closure intensified the factional struggle over institutions since the desperation to find employment was that much greater. Competition over the establishment of new institutions has become particularly intense in the Gaza Strip. There has been a veritable mushrooming of institutions with no apparent purpose other than a political one. Permission must be obtained from Tunis for each institution established, which has only fanned the factional fires. Increasingly, institutions are set up as political entities and only afterward are their practical purposes considered. Once formed, each institution tries to funnel as much money as possible through itself, thereby decreasing the possibilities for cooperation that emerged in the first two years of the uprising. Funds are solicited not only from the PLO and its factional leaders, but from an unprecedented number of foreign donors now working in the Occupied Territories. Indeed, the increasing availability of foreign monies, made possible by the initiation of the Middle East peace talks, has intensified factional rivalries and the scramble to establish a local power base through greater institutional control. These dynamics bespeak objectives and outcomes that are very damaging for the community and the future development of civil society in particular. Objectives are shifting from building Palestinian society to fighting over what is left of it. As institutions become increasingly aligned with individual factions, their decisions become motivated by political rather than professional considerations. Controlling resources has become more important than how those resources are used.
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Moreover, privileges are created that will not be easily relinquished, especially in an environment of escalating poverty. The result is a severe lack of coordination among institutions and no assigning of priorities to needs according to any commonly defined criteria. In the absence of an effective leadership and authority structure, one group is pitted against another, disorder increasingly prevails, and political interests are being pursued at the cost of some of the Intifada’s greatest achievements: community cohesion, societal introspection and personal self-criticism, a leadership versed in the ways of gradualism and negotiation, intergroup coordination, expanding roles for women, new approaches to economic development, improved production capabilities and service delivery, organized planning at the grass-roots level, and the perceived need for standards, rigor and accountability. The creation of structures, once a prominent feature of the uprising, is steadily giving way to the creation of constituencies in institutional guise. The Role of Foreign Assistance Increasingly, institutions and individuals involved in political and economic life are finding it difficult to remain nonaligned. In a less direct way, this applies to a growing number of foreign donors as well. With the start of the peace talks, development assistance for the West Bank and Gaza grew significantly, particularly from the European Economic Community (EEC). At present there are 120 foreign private voluntary organizations (PVOs) working in the Occupied Territories with more money at their disposal than ever before. Perhaps ironically, foreign assistance, which is nominally intended to strengthen Palestinian society, is, in its own way, contributing to the divisions slowly undermining it. Prior to 1991, at least, foreign assistance agencies carefully avoided working with politically active groups, or any organization known to be aligned with a given political faction. Now, in an approach that constitutes a major change in orientation, more and more foreign agencies are concentrating only on those groups that are politically active. When asked why this is so, funders explain that if monies are to be expended and projects implemented in the present environment of the Occupied Territories, there is no alternative but to work with political groupings, the only indigenous entities with the kind of power needed to get project work
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done. One aid official went so far as to admit that in order to implement his program, he has sometimes had to choose between political work and practical work, and in the process has had to give funds to all factions so as not to alienate any of them. This, of course, does little to eliminate the problems associated with political factionalism and much to aggravate them. In this regard, the official Israeli attitude has also changed quite dramatically. Whereas in the recent past, the military authorities would never have approved any cooperation between politically active Palestinian institutions and foreign donors, such collaboration is now supported. There appear to be two reasons for this. First, the many internal fissures created and reinforced by greater inter-group fighting seriously weaken popular cohesion, making it easier for the occupier to rule a rebellious population. Second and perhaps most important, given the very desperate economic situation inside the Gaza Strip, the more foreign assistance made available, the better. The configuration of actors and objectives that emerges is quite troubling, particularly with regard to the promotion of economic development in areas as complex as the Gaza Strip and West Bank. For a growing number of Palestinian organizations, for example, the aim is to acquire as much control as possible over foreign monies in the competition for local power, and to exclude other indigenous groups in the process. For foreign donors and their implementing agencies, the objective is to gain access to the growing pie of funds now available and to spend them as quickly as possible in order to obtain more, often without regard to the true long-term development needs of the area. For the Israeli authorities, the goal is to promote the creation of jobs in the short term in order to alleviate severe economic problems and temporarily appease a hostile population. They, too, remain completely oblivious and obstructive of long-term developmental requirements. The approach to development work is dangerously myopic. The much heralded construction of a $20 million UNRWA hospital in Khan Younis, for example, is expected to generate many urgently needed jobs in Gaza. The project is being funded by the EEC and received relatively quick approval from the authorities. Yet, aside from the problems that may arise from factional competition over who will be employed by the project, some UNRWA officials admit that they do not know who will staff the hospital once it is completed, given the acute shortage of
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doctors and nurses in the Gaza Strip. This is only one of many expected problems, another being funding for recurrent costs. The Growing West Bank–Gaza Chasm Another aspect of the tearing-apart of Palestinian society is the reemerging animosity and psychological divide between the populations of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Historically, West Bankers have always looked down upon Gazans as their poor and backward cousins. This condescension was deeply felt in Gaza, and the source of considerable friction between both areas throughout the occupation. During the early years of the Intifada, these differences were submerged, but in light of changing economic and political conditions that have left Gaza far weaker, more impoverished and more oppressed, old differences have reemerged with a vengeance. West Bankers do not conceal the fact that they regard the Gaza Strip as their protectorate, and this offends Gazans greatly. Indeed, whatever their factional affiliation, Gazans uniformly see themselves as oppressed by their West Bank counterparts. These feelings are in part based on very real problems tied to the discriminatory allocation of resources and to who will control them. Foreign assistance enters the Gaza Strip through Jerusalem, where economic and financial decisions affecting the Strip are usually made. Given their weaker experience with institutional development, Gazans have had and continue to have comparatively limited input into decisions affecting their community and its unique problems— problems West Bankers have made little effort to understand. Gazans not only resent the unwillingness of Jerusalem to cede full control over allocated resources, but are consistently frustrated by the inequitable distribution of those resources given Gaza’s more extreme needs. Among development practitioners in the Strip, one hears constant and derogatory references to the “Jerusalem Triangle,” an area consisting of Jerusalem, Ramallah and Beit Hanina, where power is seen to be concentrated. One sad and troubling example of existing tensions was the closure of the Gaza branch of an Arab research institution this past winter. This research institution, headquartered in East Jerusalem, opened a branch in Gaza City in 1990. Several months ago, the Gaza office applied
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to the military government for a permit that would have allowed it to be legally registered as a branch of the parent institution, thereby enabling it to receive funds directly. Upon learning of this application, the Jerusalem office telephoned the military governor of the Gaza Strip asking him to refuse the permit. The governor, who subsequently told officials of the Gaza branch that he never before received such a request from a Palestinian organization, denied the permit, and the Gaza office has been closed ever since.7 The Traumatization of the Young Perhaps the most telling and frightening indicator of Gaza’s growing fragmentation and imminent breakdown is the traumatization of its youth. Close to 70 per cent of the Gaza Strip population is 25 years of age and younger, and have known nothing but occupation. Just under 50 per cent are 14 years or less, and have spent their formative years during the uprising. The children of Gaza are psychologically damaged, some beyond repair; others, while scarred, are more resilient. All are affected. The death of a child, a brother or sister is no longer an extraordinary event; injured and maimed children are increasingly common as well. Gaza is a society devoid of childhood. Children have left the home and the classroom, two critical sources of socialization, and the impact has been devastating. A local attorney, who is also an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks, conducted a series of interviews with children between the ages of 9 and 15. Their answers to his questions reveal not only the loss of youth, but suggest the high price Palestinian society will be forced to pay because of it. One question asked of ten 9-year-old boys and girls was, “Do you know what a cinema is?” Only one child, a boy, knew the answer, and described a cinema as “a big room with a big television in it.” Thirty 15-year-old boys were asked, “What does authority mean?” All answered that “authority means the enemy.” When told, “But authority can mean your teacher as well,” several of them replied, “You mean our teacher is a collaborator?” “Do you have authority at home?” was another question. “Yes,” they replied, “the authorities have entered our home many times.” Children in the Gaza Strip are increasingly incapable of conceptualizing authority in traditional terms since parents and teachers, unable
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to protect the young from constant abuse and threat, have ceased to exist as authority figures. Authority is now the enemy and it is inherently evil. Law and order do not exist in Gaza, in concept or in practice, and therefore children have no boundaries and no markers for distinguishing good behavior from bad. Children are fearful in Gaza, but they are also feared. How will such children—an entire generation—be resocialized, particularly when their identity has been based on what they have been denied? How will such children be made ready to redress the problems of a waning civil society, for example, when they themselves have contributed to its demise? How can they rebuild their society when they have no real understanding of what it is that needs repair? This is the most critical problem facing Palestinian society into the future, and as far as Gaza is concerned, the future is already knocking at the front door. The Shifting Position of Hamas If there is a group that has benefited, at least in the short term, from the widening schisms and factional hegemonies within Gazan society, it is the Islamic Resistance Movement or Hamas. The success of Hamas in this regard has far less to do with its ideological or political appeal, which is arguably quite limited in Gaza,8 than with its singular ability to act and be seen as a counter-hegemonic force, and as the group most able to provide critically needed services and organize community activities. Hamas runs the best social service network in the Gaza Strip. It has been instrumental in the formation of “account committees” or “zakat committees” to which all Muslims are supposed to donate 7 per cent of their income. These monies are in turn disbursed to the poor and needy. Unlike other political factions in the Strip, Hamas clearly understands that under present conditions influence on the ground is first gained through social work, then through religious work, and only in the end through political work. Structured and well-organized, Hamas is trusted by the poor (Gaza’s overwhelming majority) to deliver on its promises, and is perceived to be far less corrupt and subject to patronage than its secular, nationalist counterparts, especially Fateh. Indeed, it is not only Palestinians who regard Hamas in this way, but a growing
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number of foreign assistance providers as well. Some senior officials at the UNRWA in Gaza acknowledged that Hamas is the only faction they trust to distribute UNRWA food donations to the people. There are two groups which appear to be the focus of Hamas’s social and economic activities: the youth and the merchant class. At a time when other political factions have given up working with Gaza’s many youth clubs, Hamas remains active and is attempting to build a power base from within these clubs and within other youthcentered organizations, a very farsighted strategy. Similarly, Hamas is increasingly working with local merchants. Many commercial connections are made in the mosques, which Hamas totally controls; at the time of this research, the organization was considering the initiation of a loan program for small businesses. Indeed, the financial strength of Hamas has grown in both relative and absolute terms over the last three to four years. While funding to other factions has decreased with the precipitous drop in direct aid to the PLO, funding to Hamas has not. According to local sources, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have contributed $30 million since the Gulf War, and Iran, a new donor, has given $13 million.9 However, it is not clear whether these funds come from the governments themselves or from private sources. The secret of Hamas’s growing appeal, however, lies primarily in the fact that, unlike other political factions, it understands the importance of effective institutions. And it is this understanding that is allowing the movement slowly but steadily to build a core constituency among various sectors of Gazan society. The Future A friend of the author, reflecting on the upsurge in Arab violence against Jews, lamented, “What is happening to us that we can do such viscerally violent things?” The answer to her question requires a kind of reflection of which people in the Gaza Strip are rapidly becoming incapable. Time is running out in Gaza. For some, it has already run out. Perhaps the costliest mistake that Israel, the United States and other actors involved in the Middle East peace process could make is to assume that desperation of the kind found in Gaza will in some nottoo-distant future bring appeasement, that Palestinians will reach a
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breaking point and finally relent. They will not. In the absence of a viable solution, there will be greater violence and greater insecurity. The gravity of the current situation demands not just an immediate response but a meaningful one. Whatever its form, the answer must involve a major change in the status quo. In the interim, political and security arrangements must be found that would allow the Israeli Army to withdraw, an absolute precondition, and the Palestinians to establish a governing authority with real power. Anything short of this will only fuel the dynamics of disintegration currently underway in the Gaza Strip. If the Middle East peace talks are to have any hope of success, they must be considered credible by all the actors involved. Despite early optimism, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip consider the talks not just unproductive, but counterproductive insofar as they create the illusion of hope when in fact none exists. Gazans, for the most part, were against returning to the talks in April 1993 because Palestinian participation in their eyes only served to legitimize an illegitimate process. If the peace talks are to regain their credibility and achieve a modicum of success, a fundamental rethinking of their terms of reference is needed; the present terms have not only forced Palestinians into a weak position comparatively, but have confined them to this weakened position absolutely. A critical component is, of course, the role of the United States, which, to say the least, is not seen as sincere or fair. If change is to come, it will only be with the as yet unrealized full participation of the United States. The escalating violence between Arab and Jew has led to calls inside Israel for ending Israeli rule over the Gaza Strip, for disposing of the Strip once and for all, independent of any comprehensive solution for the Occupied Territories as a whole. Under present conditions, nothing would be more damaging or destructive for Palestinians in Gaza (and, by extension, for their counterparts in the West Bank, and for Jews in Israel). Dumping the Gaza Strip as a quick, final-step solution (in any case highly unlikely) is certainly not the answer; relinquishing control over the Gaza Strip as the first stage in a comprehensive, multistage process of withdrawal and state formation might be. Indeed, addressed in this way, policies first implemented in the much smaller Gaza Strip could establish important precedents such as the withdrawal of the army, the provision of appropriate security arrangements, the
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dismantling of Israeli settlements or their conversion to Palestinian use, and the institutionalization of an indigenous governing structure. Such possibilities, however, become more theoretical and more unlikely each day. The situation in Gaza is grim. The light at the end of the tunnel, which many once claimed to see, is no longer visible. The greatest danger facing the Gaza Strip is not explosion, but implosion. If that happens, nothing will be visible but smoke.
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Part III Israeli Occupation and the Oslo Peace Process: De-development Accelerated
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8 Introduction to Part III
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7 CONCLUDED BY ARGUING that the terms of reference of the 1991 Madrid peace process not only forced Palestinians into a weak position comparatively but confined them to this weakened position absolutely and indefinitely. Hence, if such talks were to be considered credible their terms of reference would have to be changed. As Part III will argue, the Oslo agreements and the “peace” process to which they gave rise—which effectively replaced the faltering Madrid talks—changed little. Far from redressing the gross imbalances and power asymmetries in the Palestinian–Israeli relationship, the Oslo peace process insured their continued existence. In fact, a key feature of the Oslo period was Israel’s unchallenged and strengthened domination of Palestinian life, which was a direct outcome of the peace agreements. As such, Oslo failed to improve or strengthen the Palestinian position relatively or absolutely and in fact worsened this position to the point where an acceptable and meaningful compromise became politically— and physically—impossible. It will be shown that Israel’s “generous” offer to the Palestinians at the 2000 Camp David Summit—which a majority of Israelis (and others) still maintain—was not generous at all but reflected the grossly diminished realities imposed upon the Palestinian community during the seven-year-long peace process. Throughout, American fairness proved elusive. Part III contains more articles than any other and this is deliberate. For it aims to show that the Oslo period (1993–2000) was crucial for deepening and institutionalizing the dynamics of decline that preceded and would follow from it. The peace process produced greater hardship for Palestinians (despite the removal of certain economic HAPTER
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restrictions and transient periods of improvement), introducing new dynamics such as closure, territorial fragmentation, the dissection of the Palestinian community into isolated and disconnected enclaves, and the establishment of a non-democratic governing authority that led to a marked deterioration in economic and political conditions, further compromising Palestinian aspirations and the possibility of national renewal. The existence of an agreement presupposes a capacity to implement it. This capacity, whether economic, political or social, was weakened among Palestinians, ultimately destroyed by the terms of the peace agreements and the realities they created. This is perhaps best seen within the economic sphere and the imposition of closure policy, still largely unknown and consistently misunderstood. Although closure was first introduced before the start of the Oslo process, it was pursued vigorously as a policy measure during, and in tandem with, the peace process. Closure—which seals off the Occupied Territories from Israel, external markets and each other, and restricts the movement of people, labor and goods—proved to be the single most damaging measure shaping local economic conditions during the Oslo period. Among its most pernicious effects were the fragmentation and isolation of Palestinian land and people resulting in the demographic separation of the West Bank and Gaza and the weakening of relations between the Palestinian labor market and Israel. This in turn led to rising levels of unemployment and the overall diminution of economic activity, growing impoverishment and the increased need for relief-based activities, and emerging patterns of economic autarky. Under these circumstances not only did Palestinian economic life contract but the prospects for sustained economic development were eclipsed and would remain nonexistent as long as closure continued. (Closure was first introduced in 1991 but imposed as a permanent measure in 1993 and has never been lifted since although its intensity has been subject to change.) The economic reality of the West Bank and Gaza after 1993 was further shaped by the policy parameters of the Oslo Accords and the Paris Economic Protocol, which collectively defined a legal framework for Palestinian economic activity and Palestine’s economic relations with Israel. Three critical features of this framework deserve mention: the retention of Israeli military law and many of its economic restrictions
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(during the interim phase of the peace process), Israel’s full control over key factors of production (including land, water, labor and capital), and Israel’s unchallenged control over external borders and the perimeters of Palestinian areas. Hence, the key structures of occupation remained intact throughout the peace process despite the creation of some new but limited economic possibilities (particularly regarding the use of foreign assistance). In this way, the legal framework defining economic activity during the Oslo period did not contradict but in fact complemented the use of closure policy and the restrictions defining it. As a result, the economy became more—not less—vulnerable, accelerating the dedevelopment process. Furthermore, the Oslo agreements did not lessen the dependency of the Palestinian economy on Israel as predicted by other analysts at the time but just the opposite. Through the prolonged closure of the Gaza Strip and West Bank and a variety of new economic measures designed to mitigate the effects of a declining economy, the Israeli government did not attempt to institutionalize a separation of the Occupied Territories and Israel, mitigating Palestinian dependency, but was pursuing a restructured form of integration. This integration sought deepened ties between the Israeli and Palestinian economies and had nothing to do with the creation of national sovereignty as some observers initially argued, and everything to do with insuring Israeli state control over Palestinian resources in the event of unforeseen and unwanted political outcomes. This was illustrated most clearly in the early implementation of the Gaza–Jericho plan, which allowed Israel to extricate itself from Gaza on terms that did not challenge Israel’s control of land, water and settlements or compel Israel to deal with the issue of Palestinian sovereignty, some features of which similarly characterized Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza. Thus, a critical and defining dynamic of the Oslo period—as clear then as it is now—was Israel’s continued rejection and preclusion of indigenous Arab control over key economic resources for reasons that were largely political, that is, preventing the emergence of a functional Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, itself an expression of Israel’s continued unwillingness to withdraw to pre-1967 borders and “return” Palestinian lands. Rather, Oslo’s terms dictated a best-case scenario—never fully realized—of dependent growth linked to and mediated by Israel.
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The role of foreign aid, particularly U.S. aid, provides an excellent illustration of the policy constraints and structural parameters imposed by Oslo. In the early days of the peace process the donor community sincerely believed that the occupation would end and that a new political framework was being created for advancing Palestinian economic development in a manner that would depart from the past. In 1993, 25 foreign governments pledged $2.1 billion in assistance over five years to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. Of this, the United States alone pledged 25 per cent of the total or $500 million. Yet during the first three years of Oslo, considered the apex of the peace process, socioeconomic conditions declined and the prospects for developmental reform dimmed despite the elimination of some key economic restrictions and massive infusions of foreign aid. (In fact, economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza were worse after Oslo than a decade before it.) This seeming contradiction is explained by the fact that the structures of occupation remained unchanged and defining. As stated earlier, not only did Israeli occupation policy remain intact, the government introduced new measures such as closure that deepened and cemented its control over Palestinians. A key factor facilitating Israel’s strengthened occupation was donor unwillingness, led notably by the United States, to politically and publicly challenge Israeli policies that were detrimental to, or a violation of, the peace process. (Palestinian Authority (PA) violations of the Oslo agreements were more easily confronted although not always effectively.) Instead, donors, not wishing to appear unsupportive of “peace” or critical of Israel—and after having already invested considerable amounts of capital in the process—adopted an approach of mitigating the damaging effects of Israeli policy in order to keep the peace process (or the appearance of one) alive. Economic reform, which meant going beyond Oslo’s boundaries and creating needed structural linkages instead of working around those that were imposed, was no longer an objective if it ever really was. In the case of the United States, the political imperatives of economic assistance proved even more damaging. According to a senior State Department official at the time, U.S. aid to the Palestinians was clearly conceived as part of a peace-making process in which “Israel’s security will always take precedence over the Palestinian economy.”1 Centralized in the State Department and
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supervised by Dennis Ross, the coordinator of the Middle East peace process during the Clinton administration, the U.S. program was guided principally by political considerations that aimed to preserve Israeli interests and insure Israeli control, and not by the need to promote desperately needed Palestinian structural reform, undermining the growth and development the United States was purportedly there to promote. An important feature of many donor programs, especially the U.S. one, was the absence of any longer-term planning or developmental framework within which to formulate assistance programs and projects, a feature that characterized PA initiatives as well. Without such a framework entire sectors of activity were ruled out, precluding the kind of integrated approach to economic change upon which sustainable growth ultimately depends. Hence, capitalizing “change” is not the same as institutionalizing it. Although the political status quo had, in many respects, remained unaltered during Oslo, it did change dramatically in others. Critically, the Oslo agreements formalized and institutionalized the loss and fragmentation of Palestinian land according to Israeli intentions, a process that has continued since, arguably culminating in Israel’s unilateral imposition of the Gaza disengagement plan (see Part V). The contraction of Palestine’s territorial base has profound political implications, and during the Oslo period was accompanied by, and itself contributed to, the further distortion and incapacitation of Palestinian political structure and discourse. As some of the articles in Part III show, particularly the one on civil society, the changes to Palestinian political life were striking: increasing divisiveness between and within political factions and the loss of their political (mobilizing) and social (mediatory) roles at a time of acute socioeconomic distress (this being a reflection, in Gaza especially, of escalating internal fracture; the virtual elimination of factional-based politics—then unprecedented—and the loss of an ideational system as a mobilizing political force); the rise of the Islamists, notably Hamas, the one political group for whom ideology remained an organizing factor, and the emergence of an authoritarian governing structure dominated by Yasir Arafat’s Fateh party, which monopolized the means of struggle and negotiation, forcing out other political (factional) actors. With these changes, which of course were tied to a weakening economy, there were others that proved equally if not more damaging especially to Palestinian society. The weakening of factions meant the
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fragmentation (and sometimes, loss) of those institutions associated with them, a hallmark feature of the Oslo period notably in Gaza. Institutional decline, accelerated by the virtual loss of an organizing political structure and the break down of political order, was also characterized by the severing, in many cases, of the political/institutional leadership from its grass-roots constituency, resulting from the need to professionalize according to the standards and criteria of donor agencies. And, despite the considerable amounts of foreign monies invested, many institutions failed, unable to overcome the internal structural deficiencies imposed by their own political leadership and the external structural constraints imposed by the Israeli occupation. Hence, during the Oslo period, the structures of the past were now firmly supplanted by the constituencies of the present, reducing, and in some cases eliminating the possibility for creating viable institutions. Under this scenario, individual organizations and persons benefited at the expense of systemic change. Given the growing political vacuum and diminishing quality of life among Gazans especially, factions were increasingly judged by their ability to respond to individual and community needs. Perhaps the only faction then doing so was Hamas, which understood the importance of effective institutions able to deliver vitally needed services qualitatively and consistently. Although Hamas initially emerged as a political force, its strength derived from its social base to which it remained closely tied. It was during the Oslo period and not before that Hamas became a serious political actor in Palestinian life. The success of the Islamists had little to do with their ideological or political appeal (although a core constituency did support them on that basis) and more to do with their almost singular ability to act and be seen as an institutional force resisting the occupation (when other political factions were engaged in fighting each other) and providing desperately needed support to a population increasingly rejected by its own leadership. Islamic organizations also understood the importance of treating people with dignity, which they seemed able to do when others could not, a fact whose importance should not be underestimated. Indeed, one of the greatest failures of the Palestinian leadership during the Oslo period was its abandonment and denigration of its own people, that is, the failure, indeed unwillingness, to mobilize and empower people toward common goals of national reconstruction
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and political independence. Instead the PA sought to demobilize and disempower its constituency in order to control them. The distortion of political and economic life had other more onerous social consequences, among them the continued loss of social control. This was most strikingly seen in the weakening of critical support structures such as the family and the school, key agents of socialization and authority. One outcome was the militarization of society as more and more young men would join the PA’s security services, which was one of few job opportunities available and the one institution—perhaps the only one—able to provide protection, power and status within Gazan society at the time. Another related outcome was the emergence of gang violence, a phenomenon that was decidedly social, not political. Unable to empower themselves in society, people would seek to empower themselves in the street often in opposition to the authority structure, which was increasingly regarded as corrupt and collaborationist. This phenomenon has only grown worse today. Part of this transmogrification involved a reversion to a friendly or familial group, usually the tribe, for protection, security, stability, predictability and accountability, so lacking in society during this period. Given the virtual destruction of a nationalist agenda by the Palestinian leadership and the diminishing conditions of life imposed by Israel’s occupation, the reversion to tribe also provided Palestinians with a sense of identity and belonging, albeit particular rather than universal in orientation. The terms of trust in Gazan society remained restricted and private in nature, and the public good lingered, undefined. In a context so devoid of political and economic possibility, where power and bureaucracy, not philosophy, defined societal behavior, Palestinian resiliency eroded. This erosion was characterized by many features: a profound sense of betrayal among people (regarding the behavior of the Palestinian leadership); the continued receding of collective or participatory behavior (and the perceived importance of such behavior) in favor of the clan or tribe; the waning of the community as a economic and social actor; the growing inability to act (as opposed to react) other than through violence given the corruption and breakdown of institutional, political, legal, governmental and other kinds of channels, and the end, in effect, of a political or intellectual agenda within Palestinian society. Popular resistance weakened as
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people became increasingly confused about who or what should be resisted. So marred, resistance degenerated into violence not only against the occupation but against the population. By the end of the peace process—indeed, because of it—the social, economic, political and geographical terrain of Palestine had been dramatically altered and disfigured. During its life, the Oslo process created a reality where basic needs came to supercede political activism, economic growth, national identity, collective consciousness and popular resistance, features long characteristic of Palestinian life. The continued denial of human dignity and opportunity by both Israel and their own leadership left Palestinians searching for order over freedom, predictability over sovereignty, accountability over identity, survival over democracy. With the 2000 Camp David Summit, which attempted to solidify Palestine’s disfigured reality into a political resolution of the conflict, any sense of possibility and forward momentum was finally extinguished and the second Palestinian uprising began. Writing in 1996 on civil society in Gaza (see Chapter 11), I observed: Gazans greatly fear the imposition of another oppressive regime—this time Palestinian. Many increasingly see a connection between emerging Palestinian authoritarianism and Israel’s security-led interpretation of autonomy. Gazans say they will resist. But how? What mechanisms of social and political mediation, other than violence, do Gazans really have at their disposal? Put differently, what does it mean to be an autonomous, socially engaged person in Gaza today, in an environment characterized by continuing occupation, waning security, warring factions, a moribund economy, diminishing water and land, a traumatized population, and an uneducated generation of children? Tragically for Gaza, the possibility of civil unrest appears greater than the capacity of civil society to address it.2
The works assembled in Part III try to explain why.
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9 “The Seed of Chaos, and of Night”: the Gaza Strip after the Oslo Agreement*
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GAZA ARE NUMB, beyond despair. Their disengagement derives not from their suffering but from their sense of betrayal. The momentary exultation that followed the signing of the peace agreement last September has given way to a deadening paralysis. The rosy terms in which the agreement is debated in the West are alien in Gaza, almost surreal. In Gaza, there is no peace, no peace process, no prospect of peace. What there is is a pervasive sense of loss, of a past diminished and a future marred, of achievements undermined and destroyed, of a society teetering between submission and revolt, a moving backward in time and thought. This regression is characterized by a number of features: the disintegration of political life and purpose, social corrosion and fragmentation, and economic decay. EOPLE IN
The Disintegration of Political Order That politics has become irrelevant and even despised in Gaza is perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the extent of internal decline and institutional fragmentation. For Gazans, the political and personal selves have always been indivisible, particularly for the majority refugee community. Political discourse defined social * Originally published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 23, Number 3, Spring 1994, pp. 85–98. 87
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discourse, and it was vibrant. The erosion of political order began over a year ago with growing inter- and intrafactional rivalries over control of increasingly scarce resources, a situation exacerbated by the unprecedented level of economic desperation created by Israel’s closure of the Occupied Territories, imposed in March 1993 and still in effect. By the time the agreement was signed, conditions in the Gaza Strip were already grim. The initial response to the Israeli–PLO peace accord among most Gazans was euphoric. Few had read the Declaration of Principles (DOP), but the expected withdrawal was likened to Israel’s forced evacuation of the Gaza Strip in 1957. Popular expectations were well defined and limited: withdrawal of the army from urban areas, release of political prisoners, lifting of the nightly curfew, ending the closure, and the return of laborers to their jobs in Israel. When no such changes were forthcoming, people began scrutinizing the accord itself and found it seriously lacking. The Palestinian leadership’s inability to deliver changes considered minimal and imperative not only deeply discredited the agreement and the leadership, but, more importantly, implanted a feeling of irreversibility that has left the population defeated, vulnerable and fearful. People saw their leadership embracing an accord they believed to be leading nowhere, yet were unable to resist its damaging if not distorting effects on societal relations. Perhaps for the first time, Gazans feel that they cannot rely on anybody for support or direction, including their own authorities. The substantial loss of confidence in the Palestinian leadership has been intensified by the behavior of its officials outside and inside the Gaza Strip. The question of appointments in particular has caused fracture and alienation. Aside from the resentments caused by the absence of local involvement in the decision-making process and the fact that the appointments are imposed by yet another external authority, it is the choice of appointees that has given rise to the greatest bitterness, even rage. At the benign end of the spectrum are appointments of traditional, old-guard types no longer seen as representative of the collective interest. Such appointments (that of Dr. Zacharia al-Agha as head of Fateh in Gaza is the most prominent example) are at the expense of Gaza’s younger Fateh activists, who enjoy substantial grassroots support and who are seen as having paid their dues through
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long years in prison. Many believe that Arafat’s aim in making such appointments—beyond the loyalty factor—is to marginalize Fateh’s younger political leadership so as to diminish the challenge they inevitably present. At the more pernicious end of the spectrum is Arafat’s appointment of individuals who lack credibility or legitimacy within the community, who are distrusted and hated, and, in some instances, even perceived as collaborators. These individuals have been flown to Tunis [seat of the Palestinian government in exile] and returned to Gaza with titles, authority, money and protection. In the case of one such appointee, widely perceived as a collaborator, three political factions in Gaza— Fateh, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Palestine People’s Party (the former Communist Party)—issued a joint pamphlet condemning the appointment. The appointee retaliated by issuing his own pamphlet, claiming, correctly, that he had the support of Yasir Arafat. That was the end of the matter, but anger in the street over what is seen as protection of corrupt individuals by Arafat and certain ranks of Fateh has not subsided. The comments about the appointments by a well-known and highly respected activist can be taken as representative of the feeling among the younger echelons of Fateh: “Such behavior is inconsistent with what we learned from the leadership all these years. If he [Arafat] is doing this from Tunis, what will happen when he comes to Gaza?” Fateh, which is still the largest faction in the Gaza Strip, is increasingly seen as a reactionary force promoting social discord, not harmony. Disaffection, disorganization and fracture within Fateh’s ranks in Gaza are rife; there is great confusion as to who is in charge. Indeed, the internal breakdown of Fateh appears to be the dominant and defining dynamic in Gaza, one that seems to supersede even the traditional tensions between Fateh and Hamas. Adding to the confusion is a pattern of simultaneous and conflicting appointments from PLO authorities in Tunis, Amman and Cairo, in which several individuals or committees will be assigned to the same post or task. More often than not, in the absence of official clarification (which is seldom forthcoming), none of the appointees will relinquish his or her position or attempt to work collectively, so the job for which the appointments were made remains undone.
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The outside PLO leadership is also blamed for having prevented the establishment of a local coordinating body comprising factional representatives to deal with irresponsible behavior on the part of factional members. According to one prominent nationalist in Gaza, “The PLO does not want to see a coordinated leadership here, no matter how much damage the community suffers.” Indicative of the prevailing mood with regard to the PLO is the fact that people attribute negative developments not to confusion or disorganization within PLO ranks but to deliberate design with nefarious intent. Thus, the rapid erosion of consensus within Fateh fuels speculation among some prominent party members that Arafat is deliberately trying to destroy the party from within so that he may later reconstitute it in a form more acceptable to himself. Similarly, the overlapping or multiple appointments problem is seen by some as a deliberate attempt on the part of the leadership to divide and conquer the Gaza Strip. The fact that the 13-member committee appointed by Arafat to administer the Gaza Strip includes both well-respected nationalists capable of garnering community support and more doubtful types is seen as being designed to keep people off balance. The situation has reached a point where even individuals considered credible by the community have become partially suspect because of their association with the PLO. At the more strictly local level, factional rivalries and tensions, partly fueled by the September agreement, which changed the political ground on which the factions operate, continue. Of the seven factions operating in Gaza, Fateh, the People’s Party, and Fida (the Palestine Democratic Union, which broke away from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)), support the agreement. Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and the DFLP oppose it. Interfactionally, tensions have been greatest between Fateh and Hamas, followed by those between Fateh and the PFLP. Increasingly, the opposition has tried to position itself as the authentic representative of the people up against Fateh, the organ of authority,1 but has been hurt by its consistent failure to offer real strategic alternatives. Interestingly, tensions between factions these days seldom develop into violence: the more enlightened factional leadership knows that such fighting, once started, could easily spin out of control.2
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Intrafactionally, the local branches of the PFLP and Hamas have reportedly both developed differences with their “parent” organizations in Damascus and Amman, respectively. Although both parties remain in the opposition, their differences with their outside leaderships turn on the issue of their party’s role in a future Palestinian government— whether it will be part of it or work outside the system. At the time of this research, the PFLP in Gaza had not yet committed itself either way, while the PFLP in Damascus opposes any form of participation. Hamas in Gaza has sent conflicting signals: as a party, it rejects any future authority under the terms of the Gaza–Jericho plan, but some individual representatives indicate a willingness to work in opposition from within the government.3 It may be that Hamas will continue to oppose the agreement at a political level, but will not prevent its supporters from taking part at a practical level. Both parties appear to be angling for some role in the government. With the agreement, factional hostilities have become more divisive: now there is something tangible to fight about. But despite the promise of a new political and economic order, factional issues are less about politics or economics per se than about power and authority. Factional conflicts are no longer ideological but wars for position. A consequence of the declining ideological content is that personal disputes, proliferating against a background of societal breakdown and dislocation, often mushroom into factional conflicts if the hostile parties are aligned with a particular political group.4 An exception is Hamas, for which an ideational system continues to be a mobilizing force. It is undoubtedly for this reason that of all the factions Hamas is experiencing the least degree of political and organizational fission, Fateh is experiencing the most.5 Apart from Hamas, however, debate within the factions in Gaza is largely about power, not philosophy. Although there are always individuals for whom political belief remains primary, and although factions are fragmented along old–young, prisoner–non-prisoner, and indigenous Gazan–refugee divides, the dominant trend is bureaucratic. As such, factions, especially Fateh, have scrambled to increase their membership, emphasizing quantity not quality. Increasingly, factions have become offices, not forums for debating nationalist objectives. Liberation and self-determination have given way to job titles and bank accounts. Struggle has been replaced by squabble.
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The popular disdain and even disgust for political organization, then, is hardly surprising. Politics has become irrelevant because it no longer is seen as serving any purpose—political, economic, social or humanitarian. Factions no longer play an organizing or catalytic role: they are no longer able to mobilize the population as they did during the Intifada; they are increasingly incapable of mediating disputes, and indeed often contribute to them. In a society where institutional recourse has largely been precluded, the loss of the faction’s mediatory structure at a time of acute social stress and economic hardship is particularly serious; Fateh, especially, played an important role in insuring social order through mediating class and other social contradictions, and its inability to do so now has added to the sense of panic and disorder.6 Given Gaza’s political vacuum, the death of political discourse and the extreme conditions of life, factions are now judged almost entirely on their ability to respond to personal and community needs. Once again, the only political organization effectively doing so is Hamas, which continue through the strongest and best-organized social service network in the Gaza Strip to provide food, clothing, health services, and money to needy families irrespective of political affiliation.7 It is ironic that in the wake of the agreement (and arguably because of it) Gazans remain skeptical that a legitimate political authority giving authentic voice to national interests can emerge. It is equally ironic that in the post-agreement period, they widely perceive the nationalist program to be defeated, at least for the short term. With the leadership discredited and political purpose despoiled, national interests have given way to basic survival needs: food, jobs, public order and security. There is no space for a political and intellectual agenda anymore. Indeed, many people openly wish to return to the days before the Intifada. Also gone is the notion of resistance, which has lost its philosophical and strategic anchor as an act of political will. In the current period, it has grown increasingly unclear whom or what should be resisted. Moreover, people no longer have the capacity to resist; they are at ground zero. So disfigured, resistance has degenerated into violence not against the occupation but against the population. This phenomenon is not political but social in origin and form, and is the direct outgrowth of Gaza’s escalating internal dissolution.
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Social Corrosion and Institutional Fragmentation There is a fine line between political and social disintegration, the former greatly influencing and accelerating the latter. The reluctance, not to say refusal, of factional leaders in the Gaza Strip to discipline their cadres for the irresponsible and criminal acts that have increased in the current environment (including personal attacks, extortion and threatened forcible takeovers of projects and institutions) contributes to the sense of breakdown. Such problems are most pronounced within Fateh and the PFLP, although recently the local PFLP leadership did begin denouncing arbitrary behavior by its members. The profound disillusionment with the Palestinian leadership and sense of hopelessness concerning the possibility of political reform have certainly contributed to the psychological paralysis currently prevailing in Gaza. The erosion of trust in the political hierarchy against the background of continuing suffering has greatly accelerated, particularly among the young, who have long been unable to conceptualize authority in positive terms. Critical traditional sources of authority such as the home or school broke down under the enormous pressures of the uprising and have yet to recover. Distrust of authority, associated in the minds of the youth with the occupier (and hence seen as evil and unreformable), has now been extended to the Palestinian leadership as well. This distrust is manifested in the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the political and military wings of factions, the former usually dominated by the older guard, the latter by the younger. The principal military wings are the Hawks (Fateh), the Red Eagles (PFLP), and the ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade (Hamas). The Hawks are split into two opposing groups, a split apparently incited by splits within Fateh in Tunis. With ideological commitment gone, the political and military wings have little in common but their desire for control. In fact, the so-called military wings of factions have become little more than gangs, with the Fateh Hawks the most disorganized and gang-like, the Hamas ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam the least. (Indeed, ‘Izz alDin al-Qassam remains comparatively well organized and effective, still engaging in direct and sometimes successful attacks against the Israeli military and thus still hunted by the authorities in a way the Hawks are not.) Collectively, the groups are known as mutaradin—individuals
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wanted by the Israeli authorities: most carry guns, and by definition anyone carrying a gun is “wanted.” They have no defined leaders because they have no organizational structure. The factional connection is loose, often nominal, and individual members will sometimes switch factional affiliations depending on how they are treated. The situation was very different a few years ago. During the uprising the mutaradin were an integral part of the political and social system, reflecting its values and espousing its goals. Few carried guns. Grounded in society that supported their activities and was committed to their defense, they were ideologically motivated, engaged in a struggle against the occupation. Today the gangs of “wanted” are for the most part not motivated by nationalist concerns, nor do they especially support the nationalist struggle. Many have no history of political activism. In effect, they are “children of the Intifada,” disaffected young men from 15 to 25 years old with no jobs, no hopes for the future, often little education: in the absence of socializing institutions and learning environments, children in Gaza see the mutaradin as an expression of political power and seek to emulate them. Those who join do so not to fight for political causes but to gain social prestige. As one mutarad said, “It’s much better to be among the group than a victim of the group.” They can no longer empower themselves in society, so they empower themselves on the street. Since the agreement, the number of mutaradin has mushroomed, drawing on the pool of approximately 200,000 Gazans between the ages of 10 and 20 years. Typical of the kind of summary justice the mutaradin dispense—and illustrative of their pretension to mediate social and land problems—a group of Fateh Hawks in Rafah ordered a Bedouin family to turn their house over to a family of refugees. The Bedouin refused and a gunfight ensued. In the end, the Fateh Hawks demolished the house. The author was frequently told of the immense relief people felt when they saw the Israeli Army at their door and not the mutaradin. The mutaradin are a social, not political, phenomenon, a function of the continuing erosion of social control. The change they have undergone is illustrative of the fragmentation of Gazan society and the overall loss of hope. Indeed, Gaza’s most profound problem is loss of the sense of what is possible and the will to achieve it. People no longer act, they react. There is a pronounced turning inward, a narrowing
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of focus on self and family. The sense of dissolution was poignantly captured by a young man from Rafah refugee camp, a former laborer in Israel, when he said, “There is nothing left inside us. We are only shapes.” The loss of hope and self that this statement reflects defines personal and collective reality in the Gaza Strip. A former leader of the PFLP in Gaza explained: In supporting the agreement, people were not supporting a political solution but were trying to find a way out of their social and personal quagmire. They had approached the end of their lives. They could not control their children. Parents had no answers for their children’s questions: “Why should we study? What for?” Parents could do nothing to convince their children to normalize their lives. They saw them descend into chaos and they could do nothing . . . During the Intifada, people worked hard in every realm to fight the occupation. Their achievements are all gone . . . During the Intifada, no one could function normally. Today we still can’t function normally. All our support structures have been destroyed. People feel that the political leadership does not understand or does not care . . . We have lost the political battle. Our expectations are low. Right now, we do not want a state; we want to get rid of the army so we can become human beings again. We are fed up with being nothing. We want our dignity . . . We are close to the point of no return. The agreement postponed reaching that point for a moment; then it accelerated it . . . .8
Is there a point beyond which a society cannot heal itself? In Gaza, the loss of support structures—the family, the school, the political faction, the community—coupled with gross economic and personal insecurity have weakened the basis of social cohesion and altered personal reference points. Social relations of all kinds—between parents and children, husbands and wives, siblings,9 teachers and students, employers and employees, neighbors, friends—have been damaged. At the same time, other divisions (young–old, rich–poor, refugee– indigenous, camp–noncamp, Bedouin–refugee, south Gazan–north Gazan) have emerged, further dividing an already atomizing society. Collective and participatory behavior has no perceived purpose. In essence, the community has ceased to function. It has withdrawn. The result is not only increased lawlessness and disregard for the rule of law as expressed in the problem of the mutaradin, but the steady disintegration of civil society itself.
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Economic Decay: The Effects of Cumulative Stagnation Despite the agreement, the closure of the Gaza Strip has remained in effect. In June 1993, Prime Minister Rabin indicated that separation of the Arab and Jewish populations through closure had succeeded in ending violent attacks by Palestinians against Israelis and was therefore being extended. A detailed discussion of the closure’s economic impact is beyond the scope of this report and has been analyzed elsewhere,10 but certain trends are important to note. One is the unprecedented number of permanently unemployed Gazans. Gaza’s current labor force stands at 140,000, close to 70 per cent of whom worked in Israel prior to the Intifada. On the eve of the closure, this number had fallen to 23 per cent and by January 1994 to a mere 11 per cent.11 That same month, the Israeli military government withdrew work permits from an additional 1,500 Gazans, supporters of the PFLP and Hamas and their relatives. Gaza’s weakened domestic economy has been unable to compensate for these losses: in early 1994, approximately 8,500 people were employed in local industry12 and 14,000 in local agriculture.13 Figures for the construction and service sectors could not be obtained, but in 1991 officially stood at 6,600 and 36,700 people respectively: it would be optimistic to assume these figures remained unchanged. In 1992, only 28 per cent of Gazan men had full-time work14 and between October and December 1993, underemployment was approaching 38 per cent among Gaza’s male laborers.15 In fact, of those who have managed to find work domestically, many were earning subsistence wages in the informal sector. A semi-skilled construction worker, for example, earned as much as $71 per day in Israel. In Gaza, the same worker earns $14. Since the agreement was signed, the Gazan economy has been in recession. Living standards have been forced down. Average wage levels have dropped to the point where people eat fewer and less nutritious meals, even though basic food prices have also dropped. The following vignette describes Gaza’s economic descent: Like many Palestinians here [in Gaza], Sarsak is being forced down an economic ladder. Only a few months ago he made a living driving his car to the West Bank every day and selling children’s clothes sewn in Gaza. Then, when Israel closed off the Gaza Strip and West Bank, he sold the car and
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tried to make a living inside the Strip, selling melons off the back of the cart drawn by [a] white donkey. Now he’s taking another step down, trying to sell the donkey for a high price and buy an old weaker donkey for less and use the proceeds to buy food for his family.16
Indebtedness is on the rise, even though Palestinians soon after the closure reduced their consumption to basic necessities (thus seriously restricting the potential for economic growth). By the end of May 1993, local merchants reported massive increases in the number of people buying goods on credit: an average increase of 203 per cent in Dayr al-Balah camp, 350 per cent in Jabalya camp, 337 per cent in Rafah camp, and 325 per cent in Khan Younis camp.17 Surveys conducted in the Gaza Strip between June and September 1993 show that credit use since then has peaked, in some areas returning to pre-closure levels, not because of any improvement in the situation but because many store owners now refuse to extend credit to the unemployed. Israel responded to the crisis engendered by the closure in two ways: it allowed a very small number of workers back into Israel, and it created a local works program to provide short-term relief to workers who had lost their jobs in Israel. The program employed between 8,000 and 9,000 people—most in street cleaning at $9 per day—on a 15-day rotational basis. But it deteriorated to the point that in some areas funds were disbursed simply upon presentation of names, sometimes along factional lines, with no work being done at all. When the Civil Administration canceled the works program in October and November 1993, people staged sit-ins at the Gaza municipality and the Civil Administration’s public works department in Gaza City.18 Among the visible signs of economic deterioration are the electricity cuts from nonpayment of bills in the poorer areas of the Strip: the number of blackened homes in the early evening is striking, and some of the poorest have reverted to using open fires. There is also a noticeable increase in the number of donkeys on Gaza’s streets—cars have become too costly for many to maintain. Some 1,000 new licenses for donkey carts were issued in Gaza in the first five months of 1993, compared to 700 for all of 1992.19 Palestinians who drove workers into Israel earned on average $50 per day; a donkey cart brings them $11 per day.20 The informalization of the economy has social ramifications as well. As one nationalist figure explained, “When you think the donkey is important, when he is essential to your livelihood, then you do not
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care about cleaning your yard or your home of the donkey’s mess. You care about the donkey. Food is more important than a clean house.” The closure has become the status quo. A slower rate of economic deterioration is now seen as economic improvement. The very poor are demobilized and immobilized, inaccessible to economic measurement. The underemployed and unemployed constitute the majority of the impoverished. The employed, particularly those at the middle level, are terrified of ending up like their neighbors. A Note on the Behavior of International Donors The vast amounts of money pledged for development in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have generated a flurry of activity among the donor community, centering on identifying and prioritizing areas in need, identifying implementing agencies and Palestinian counterparts, and coordinating the myriad actors involved. The task is a daunting one to say the least. For many foreign donors that worked in Gaza in the past, the agreement has required an almost total reversal in their program strategies. Formerly, only institutions engaged in social and economic work were funded, whereas any contact with political groups was assiduously avoided; today, political organizations “on the peace train” are actively encouraged and receive direct programmatic support.21 The result has been a strong tendency among donors to fund mainstream Fateh institutions over institutional bodies affiliated with the political opposition and the nonaligned movement, these last categories including a large percentage of indigenous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). These new patterns raise a number of issues. First, if political affiliation is a key criterion of assistance, then development per se is subordinated to using such assistance as a means of promoting a specific kind of political order: development is not necessarily precluded but democratic practice is. Second, the funding of a party’s political, economic and social infrastructure prior to elections could predetermine future events in a way that not only favors the chosen party, but the political and economic interests of the donor governments themselves. Thus, the donors, intentionally or otherwise, are playing on the contradictions between political parties in the Gaza Strip, fanning existing tensions and fueling the fragmentation process. Third, if opposition groups are
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excluded from the funding calculus, then a significant segment of the Palestinian population will be cut off from the development process. One Palestinian development expert concluded, “this will push the opposition into a corner. They will seek assistance from countries like Iran and Libya and there will be more violence as the difference between the haves and have-nots grows bigger.” Palestinian leaders, professionals and development experts expressed particular concern over the policies of the European Union (the EU— formerly the European Economic Community). Under pressure from Fateh, the European Union agreed to terminate its direct funding of Palestinian NGOs in favor of a process that requires NGOs to apply for EU funding through PLO/Fateh-based institutions, that is, the higher councils. Several Palestinian NGOs interviewed expressed outrage at the EU’s action since it has enabled Fateh to cut them off from a critical source of funding. Many are currently experiencing financial crises as a result.22 This move is particularly ironic since it was the European Community that years ago first insisted on establishing direct bilateral relations with indigenous NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the exclusion of any official Israeli role. Historically, the NGOs are where Palestinian civil society has been strong and Fateh representation weak. These professional organizations, largely affiliated with leftist political parties, have used development as a key mechanism of political mobilization. They are part of a massbased grass-roots movement that did not include Fateh. Although they have suffered from various problems, their modes of decision-making and policy formulation are internally democratic, and they encourage open dialogue and discussion, and open agendas.23 They have been particularly active in health care, education and agriculture, and their services have been crucial. The question remains whether the new Palestinian Authority will view the NGO community as a critical resource to be embraced or a threat to be destroyed.24 Israeli Occupation: Lest We Forget Gaza’s internal problems have diverted attention from the occupation, but the occupation continues as before. Curfews continue to be imposed, schools continue to be closed, homes to be demolished, houses, schools, businesses and mosques to be raided, and land to be confiscated.25
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Live ammunition is being used with greater frequency. The number of deaths and injuries is as high as it was before the agreement, and a higher proportion of children are being killed. Between September 13, 1993 and December 30, 1993, 30 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were killed by Israeli forces. Over 1,100 Palestinians, including 500 children, were injured, nearly half with live ammunition.26 Israeli troop presence in the Gaza Strip has been increased to one of the highest levels since the beginning of the Intifada.27 Not only has basic occupation policy remained unchanged since the signing of the Israeli–PLO agreement, the military government has introduced several new policies that have fueled Gaza’s own disintegration. Two months after the agreement was signed, guns—M16s, Kalashnikovs, and other small arms—began to appear in large quantities in the Gaza Strip, easily obtainable though costing three to four times retail value.28 Some of these arms were from preexisting supplies now being tapped, but interviews with mutaradin revealed the existence of a well-structured arms trade across the Israeli border wherein Gazans sell drugs to dealers inside Israel and then use the money to purchase guns that are then smuggled back into the Gaza Strip. A lesser trade exists across Gaza’s border with Egypt. That this could occur without at least the tacit support or knowledge of the military government is inconceivable. Some drug/arms dealers in Gaza reported visits by the Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence service, inquiring about arms sales but making no arrests.29 In another interesting policy change, the authorities are allowing the Palestinian opposition a more visible profile (even while continuing to target the opposition groups with military attacks and punitive economic measures). In December, for example, the authorities in an unprecedented move allowed the PFLP to openly celebrate the anniversary of its founding; such events have always been considered illegal and have always been held in secret. The PFLP invited all factions to speak and invitations were issued to U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff. This was probably the first time invitations were issued to a public political event in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the occupation. Representatives of the PFLP and DFLP who only recently had been sitting in prison were now appearing on both Arabic- and Hebrew-language Israeli television. Also, the IDF gave journalists greater access to Sheikh Yasin, the recognized leader of Hamas in
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Gaza who is still in jail [he was later assassinated by Israel in March 2004]. More interviews with him appeared in the Arabic press than had been seen in some time.30 Speculation concerning Israeli motivation in both these phenomena— the apparent ignoring of gunrunning and the new permissiveness regarding the Palestinian opposition—reaches the same conclusion. A Gaza made more chaotic and violent through proliferating arms would be even more difficult for Arafat to control, whereas a bolstered opposition would further undermine the authority of Arafat and his supporters. In short, both policies are seen as aimed at weakening Arafat—not completely, but just enough to ensure his dependence, politically and militarily, on Israel. The effect on his bargaining position, under this line of reasoning, would be obvious. A Conclusion Gazans have entered a new stage in their struggle against Israeli occupation, moving from rage to hope to fear. The structures of the past dissolved into the constituencies of the present. Now these constituencies are also ravaged; the specter of anarchy looms. The promise of the peace agreement proved illusory for Gaza; the break down of leadership initiated a process of social distortion and collective withdrawal. The massacre in Hebron tragically underscores the sense of abandonment, vulnerability and disconnectedness that so deeply penetrates personal and communal reality in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, with its pervasive insecurity, political dysfunction, and social and economic incapacitation, people are searching for order as much as for freedom, probably more so. Their immediate struggle is social, not political. It seeks predictability not sovereignty; accountability not identity. The capacity to destroy society is always greater than the capacity to build it. If peace is to come to Gaza, it must have a foundation to rest upon. At present, that foundation is shattered. It will take a great deal more than the Gaza–Jericho plan to change that.
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10 Separation or Integration?: Closure and the Economic Future of the Gaza Strip Revisited*
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HE MUCH-HAILED SEPTEMBER 1993 agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) calls for a form of self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho as a possible first step to a resolution of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. The plan has generated a great deal of excitement, particularly since it has the official support of both sides. Those Israelis who support the initiative are tantalized by the prospect of a real peace while their Palestinian counterparts hope for the creation of a sovereign state. Yet, the Gaza–Jericho plan comes at a time, perhaps not surprisingly, of unprecedented and rapid economic, social, political and institutional disintegration in the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s societal debilitation is due, in large part, to Israel’s repressive occupation and, most recently, to a prolonged economic closure of the Occupied Territories that began in March 1993. The closure has brought an already weakened Palestinian economy to the point of almost total collapse. The provision of basic relief, long restricted to a small minority of people in the West Bank and Gaza, is now the concern of a growing majority. Production has given way to survival, unity to fragmentation. Conditions are most acute and most dangerous in the more bereft Gaza Strip, where malnourishment, unemployment and violence have become characteristic features of daily life.
* Originally published in The Middle East Journal, Volume 48, Number 1, Winter 1994, pp. 11–30. 102
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The rapid deterioration on the ground brings into stark relief the extreme disparity between the political pact secretly agreed to in Oslo and its actual implementation. The agreement may contain the possibility for change but it did not emerge in response to, nor was it informed by, the abysmal reality of life on the ground. Only time will determine whether this difference can be bridged. Furthermore, and perhaps most important, despite Israeli proposals calling for Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip, an old idea reconstituted by the Israeli government in the Gaza–Jericho plan, recent Israeli measures and policy changes in the Occupied Territories seem inconsistent with a commitment to real self-rule and, by extension, to any form of political sovereignty. These measures and policy changes clearly promote the greater integration of the Israeli and Palestinian economies and the deepening dependence of the latter on the former. In fact, the Israeli conception of autonomy in the Occupied Territories contains very specific economic arrangements that clearly preclude the establishment of an independent Palestinian economy or any radical alteration of its structure. This article argues that through the current prolonged closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and a variety of new economic measures designed to mitigate the effects of a decaying economy, the Israeli government has not attempted to institutionalize a separation of the Occupied Territories and Israel as is commonly thought, but has pursued a restructured form of integration. The clearest example of this is found in the Gaza Strip, where new integrative ties are in the process of being established. The 1993 closure and the policy changes surrounding it must be understood not only in terms of their economic impact in the short and medium term but as possible indicators of Israel’s political intentions in the long term. These intentions have little, if anything, to do with an independent Palestinian state and everything to do with insuring Israeli state control over Palestinian land and water, which greater integration secures. Moreover, by allowing Israel to extricate itself from Gaza on terms that do not challenge Israeli control of land, water and settlements there or force Israel to deal with the issue of Palestinian sovereignty, the Gaza–Jericho plan provides a protective guise for the deepened integration the state is pursuing.
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The March Closure: Its Economic Impact On March 30, 1993, in response to some of the highest levels of Arab– Jewish violence since the Intifada began in December 1987, the Israeli government sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip, barring 140,000 Palestinians from their jobs inside Israel. While closures are not new in the Occupied Territories, none have lasted as long as this particular one and none have imposed the same degree of hardship. The economic damage incurred by the Palestinian economy since March 1993 has no precedent under Israeli occupation: for the first time there is a large and growing segment of people in the Occupied Territories who are permanently unemployed, and a structural shift in the economy from one based on cash to one based on credit. In order to understand the closure’s effect it is first necessary to understand the context in which it occurred and of which it is a part. This context was established long before March 1993 and is the primary reason for the devastating impact of the closure itself. In this sense the closure accelerated rather than initiated the current crisis, especially in Gaza. Between December 1987 and January 1991, the Palestinian economy came under considerable pressure as a result of measures imposed by the Israeli government and the Palestinian Unified National Command in response to the uprising. In that period the per capita gross national product (GNP) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip fell by 30–35 per cent.1 The fall in GNP resulted from a serious decline in the value of output across sectors, a pronounced fall in trading levels between the Occupied Territories and Israel, a loss of jobs in the Israeli market, and a precipitous decline in the level of remittances.2 In particular, for Gaza, where restrictions on the movement of workers were far greater than in the West Bank, the number of Gazans working in Israel declined from 80,000 before the Intifada to 56,000, or just under one-half of Gaza’s total labor force of 120,000, just prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.3 The income earned by those laborers accounted for 40 per cent of GNP and 70 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).4 The loss of income from work inside Israel was dramatic, representing almost $300 million.5 Moreover, net real income in the Gaza Strip was estimated to have dropped by 40 to 50 per cent from pre-Intifada levels. By early 1991, Palestinians
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had already suffered a serious drop in private income that produced changing patterns of consumption, savings and investment. The crisis in the Gulf had a devastating impact on economic conditions. The loss of remittance income from Palestinians living in that area, and the termination of direct aid from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia especially, dealt the Palestinian economy its most serious blow, especially when combined with the continued loss of work in Israel. In 1989, total remittances emanating from the Gulf equaled at least $170 million while direct aid amounted to $140 million.6 By April 1991, the loss of remittances and other direct aid, in addition to the loss of exports, already amounted to $350 million.7 Direct aid from the Gulf States to the PLO amounting to $480 million was also terminated, monies that were in part sent to the Occupied Territories. The PLO also lost an additional $62.5 million in PLO taxes and donations from Palestinians living in Kuwait and other Arab countries.8 The termination of Saudi assistance was especially significant because Saudi Arabia’s contributions to the PLO had equaled 10 per cent of the Occupied Territories’ GDP.9 The rapid erosion of PLO revenue has had a devastating impact on local institutions in particular, and has resulted in their breakdown and closure across several sectors. The steady sealing of the Israeli market to Arab labor, especially since the start of the Gulf crisis, proved most damaging for the Gaza economy, given its inordinate dependence on employment inside Israel. Within a few months of the Gulf War, the number of Gazans working in Israel fell from 56,000 to 25,000, a loss of 31,000 jobs that could not be replaced domestically. Within one year of the war, the number of Gazans working in Israel had risen only to 30,000.10 The impact of this loss was severe, particularly in light of the 10,000 males who exit the school system and enter the job market in Gaza each year. Unemployment rose to 40 per cent, personal income plunged, and savings eroded. Indeed, dependence on Israel deepened when external resources from the Gulf States and the PLO ended. A critical factor affecting local economic conditions in Gaza during this period was a series of closures and curfews imposed by the authorities that restricted the movement of people and goods. In May–July 1992, for example, the Gaza Strip was closed for five weeks. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimated that losses from wages alone reached $500,000 per day
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between May 24 and July 5, when workers were allowed to return to Israel.11 Furthermore, during this time farmers were unable to sell their vegetables in the West Bank, an important market for Gaza, and the resulting surplus caused a precipitous fall in local vegetable prices. Additional restrictions on the export of Gazan produce to Israel were announced by the Ministry of Agriculture, although Israeli farmers had unlimited access to Gazan markets.12 Commercial strikes called two to three times per month by Palestinians, moreover, aggravated an increasingly desperate situation. One indicator of the economic changes taking place in the Occupied Territories during the post-Gulf War period was the number of families who required food assistance in order to avoid absolute hunger. By June 1991, the UNRWA was feeding an unprecedented 120,000 refugee and non-refugee families in the Gaza Strip—almost the entire population— and 165,000 families in the West Bank. During 1992, the UNRWA distributed an additional 430,000 family food parcels in Gaza and 119,000 in the West Bank to communities with emergent need.13 The degeneration of economic conditions took a dramatic turn for the worse in the fall of 1992 under the newly installed Labour-led government of Yitzhak Rabin. The security situation, after a period of uncertain improvement, began to deteriorate rapidly in September. Between December 1992 and March 1993, 57 Palestinians, among them 17 children under the age of 16 years, were killed in Gaza by the Israeli Army, and 400 children were shot with live ammunition.14 Closures were imposed on the Gaza Strip for three days in September, for 19 days in December—for ten of those days Israel also imposed a curfew after the deportation to Lebanon of 415 alleged Palestinian members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)—and for six days in early March. For December alone, the UNRWA estimated that Gazans working in Israel lost income amounting to at least $13 million, while those with jobs in Gaza (including those in the transportation sector) lost a total of $8 million. Agricultural export losses incurred an additional $3 million, bringing total losses for the month of December alone to $24 million.15 In late fall 1992, the UNRWA in Gaza advertised eight jobs for garbage collectors and received 11,655 applications, a number one and one-half times Gaza’s industrial workforce and close to 10 per cent of its total labor force.16 In January 1993, hunger was clearly a
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growing problem in the Gaza Strip, especially among children. UNRWA teachers reported that more and more of their students were eating only one meal per day, a meal that typically consisted of bread and spices only.17 Doctors similarly reported treating more illnesses related to malnourishment among young children than at any time since 1967. Hence, economic conditions in Gaza prior to the imposition of the closure already had resulted in a situation of extreme urgency. The closure has separated the Occupied Territories into four distinct and relatively isolated areas: the north West Bank, the south West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. At least 56 military roadblocks were established along the “Green Line”—27 in Gaza, and 29 in the West Bank.18 Besides being cut off from each other, all four regions of the Occupied Territories are cut off from Israel as well. Residents require special Israeli civil administration permits to leave one area for another. The geographic segmentation of the territories, coupled with severe prohibitions on entry into Israel, have proved ruinous for the Palestinian economy, with the labor force enduring the greatest damage. Prior to the closure, 30,000 Gazans—25 per cent of the total labor force—were commuting to work in Israel. The income generated by these workers accounted for 50 per cent of Gaza’s GNP.19 Prior to the Rabin government’s decision to allow some workers back into Israel in May 1993, Gaza faced an “unnatural slow-onset disaster likely to spiral out of control, possibly resulting in the total disruption of people’s lives.”20 By mid-May 1993, 26,000 construction and agriculture workers from the Gaza Strip and West Bank combined received permits from the Israeli authorities, but only 15,500 actually worked, a drop of 88 per cent in two months.21 Toward the end of July, 17,000 Gazans (up from 15,000 a month before), or 14 per cent of Gaza’s total labor force, and around 25,000 West Bankers, 12.5 per cent of the total West Bank labor force (31 per cent of the total preclosure workforce), had received work permits and were entering Israel on a daily basis; illegal workers, whose numbers are unknown, were also entering Israel with the cooperation of Israeli employers.22 In September, there were 20,000 Gazans working in Israel. Unemployment stood at 55 per cent in Gaza and between 35–45 per cent in the West Bank. Underemployment, furthermore, is prevalent among adult men in Gaza.23 Despite the reduction in the number of Gazan laborers entering Israel, work inside Israel remained Gaza’s single most important source
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of income. The United Nations estimated that in order to reduce unemployment in Gaza by just one-half would require at least $500 million in sustainable investment.24 Barring workers from jobs in Israel created a new cadre of permanently unemployed people and resulted in an absolute loss of income to their families at a time when personal savings and other residual resources had been virtually depleted. According to the UNRWA, in the first two months of the closure, the West Bank was losing $2 million per day in wages alone and the Gaza Strip $750,000. Monthly, this equals $50 million and $19 million respectively, or the equivalent of what the UNRWA spends in wages in the West Bank in one year and in Gaza in eight months. The loss of wage income and the accompanying decline in disposable income resulted in a significant loss of purchasing power and local demand for consumer and processed products. The Gaza Strip, which lost more than two working months out of the first five months of 1993, experienced a major drop in food purchases, a dramatic fall in the volume of consumption within a very short period of time, and extremely significant changes in food consumption patterns. Overall food purchases, except for essential commodities, declined by 50 to 70 per cent and sales of red meat by 70 to 90 per cent.25 One month into the closure, the UNRWA was planning four emergency food distributions in the Gaza Strip, one every two months, for 90,000 refugee families and 30,000 non-refugee families for a total of 480,000 family rations.26 One emergency distribution was carried out in the West Bank for 39,000 households with the possibility of three more distributions to 50,000 households should the closure be prolonged.27 Requests from refugees and non-refugees alike for food, cash aid and employment exceeded the agency’s capacity to provide them. The director of the UNRWA in Gaza reported that the community was, in a forceful manner never seen before, demanding the reinstatement of the General Ration Program (GRP), which was originally designed to provide food assistance on a regular basis. Abolished in part because of expense, the GRP was replaced by another emergency food program that assisted specific camps and localities under prolonged curfews and closures. In addition to ad hoc food distributions, the UNRWA also provided basic food rations, clothing and economic support to 90,000 refugees who were registered as special hardship cases in the West Bank and
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Gaza.28 In June, moreover, the civil administration reported that of the 10,000 families it was supporting with monthly food rations and cash assistance, 800 families were newly impoverished since the beginning of the closure.29 Three months into the closure, the diet of many Palestinian families, especially those in the refugee camps, consisted of bread, lentils and rice. According to vegetable merchants, people who came to the market mostly bought only a tiny proportion of what would have been a normal purchase before the closure. Under such conditions, a prolonged closure is having a deleterious impact on health conditions, particularly among children under three who, as a result of malnutrition, face the risk of growth retardation and death.30 By May, less than two months into the closure, 250 families—1,500 people—in the Qarara village area of the Gaza Strip could no longer provide food for themselves and had to rely entirely on communal aid. Representing 15 per cent of the total population of the area, these families had been wholly dependent upon family members working in Israel.31 Although some workers have been allowed to return to work and economic activity has increased relatively speaking, monthly losses remain high. In July 1993, the Gaza economy suffered a loss of $8.1 million, and in November 1993 losses equaled $6.3 million.32 At best, the rate of economic deterioration has slowed. Ezra Sadan, former director general of the Israeli Finance Ministry and advisor to the government on economic policy in the Occupied Territories, stated that “severance of the economies means immediate poverty for [the Palestinians], deep poverty, no hope for development.”33 Sadan predicted that a closure would result in a 50 per cent drop in Gaza’s per capita GNP, from $1,200 to $600, a level found among the poorest nations of the Third World.34 The loss of purchasing power brought about dramatic declines in the production of manufactured goods for local markets. As a result, local wage rates have fallen—by as much as 30 per cent in some sectors35—and domestic employment has diminished. In the first two months of the closure, the primary, if not only, sources of purchasing power in the Gaza Strip were the monthly salaries of UNRWA and civil administration employees. That is, the largest sector providing income within the local economy was the public sector. These salaries amounted to $5 million per month, a small sum when compared to a
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monthly loss of $19 million.36 Given future restrictions on the number of workers allowed into Israel, the public sector will remain a primary source of income for the local economy. Blanket export restrictions imposed at the time of the closure created agricultural surpluses local markets could not possibly absorb. The elimination of export markets combined with declining purchasing power caused food prices to plummet between 50 and 90 per cent. In the Gaza Strip, northern West Bank and Jordan Valley, the price of fruit and vegetables fell by 70 to 90 per cent.37 Within two weeks of the closure, the price of Gaza tomatoes, for example, had dropped by 65 per cent, cucumbers by 81 per cent and squash by 91 per cent.38 Israeli imported foodstuffs, however, doubled in price due to higher transportation costs. That purchasing power remained very weak at a time when food prices had plunged and surplus food stocks increased underlines the extremity of the situation. Moreover, the unprecedented loss of export markets in Israel, the West Bank and overseas undoubtedly will affect the structure of local production, especially in Gaza, since many production processes require a minimum market size if they are to achieve economies of scale required to operate with a modicum of profit.39 Consequently, a growing number of retail and wholesale establishments can be expected to go out of business. Gaza’s smaller subcontractors working for the Israeli textile industry reported a complete halt in production since the closure prevented them from purchasing raw materials inside Israel. Gaza merchants reported incidents of price gouging by Israeli buyers seeking to take advantage of the restricted access to Israel and increased economic hardship of the closure to force Gaza subcontractors to sell at prices below those for which they had originally contracted. Those larger subcontractors who were not affected by the closure became the object of daily tax raids conducted by Israeli officials at Erez, on the Gaza–Israel border, where subcontractors exchange goods with their Israeli buyers. After wages earned in Israel, citrus production is the most important source of income for the Gaza Strip. By the end of May, the peaking citrus sector was in crisis because of official measures that resulted in serious shipping delays. Specifically, the civil administration issued export permits to Jordan valid for one week only. Long security checks at the Allenby Bridge on the West Bank–Jordan border exceeded the length of the permit. Trucks carrying Gaza produce, therefore, were
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caught in the West Bank with expired permits, which prevented them from crossing. Consequently, there were not enough trucks available to transport all citrus exports. In fact, the number of trucks available to Gaza producers on a daily basis fell from 100 to 25. The largest packing house in Gaza was crating 15,000 cartons of oranges per day, but had only enough trucks to ship 4,200 cartons. Once packed, these oranges remain of export quality for only five days.40 At the end of May, there were a hundred West Bank and Gaza trucks—25 per cent of the entire fleet normally allowed to cross the bridge—being detained by the Israeli authorities. As a result, between 25,000 and 30,000 tons of Valencia oranges, Gaza’s main cash crop, remained unpicked and left to rot—close to four times the normal amount left on trees during May. Farmers reported that between the closure and the delays in shipping, the price paid for Valencia oranges dropped from $140 per ton in May 1992 to $80 per ton in May 1993, a decline of 43 per cent. Producers of lower-quality oranges used in Israeli juice factories were paid 50 per cent less in 1993 ($55 per ton) than in 1992 ($110 per ton), while exporters, faced with spiraling shipping costs, reported a drop of 8 per cent in the price of their oranges in Amman markets.41 Vegetable farmers in Gaza also experienced major price decreases. Between 1992 and 1993, the price of 15 kilos of tomatoes fell from NIS (New Israeli Shekel) ten ($3.70) to NIS one (.37). Yet, in order to break even, tomato farmers must earn NIS eight ($3.00). With massive debt and lack of capital, farmers are unlikely to plant next season.42 The precipitous loss in income coupled with eroding savings, rising unemployment and declining wage rates has produced an acute shortage of cash. This in turn has resulted in a pattern of asset liquidation and a partial return to a barter economy that is most pronounced in the Gaza Strip. Jewelers in Gaza reported that within the first month of the closure, the resale of gold jewelry, an important source of savings, increased from three or four sales per month to as many as five and six transactions per day. Television sets, radios, VCRs and other appliances, in addition to secondhand cars, were also being sold on a wide scale in order to generate cash.43 Cash is needed not only to buy food but to pay electricity and water bills. Increasingly, people are unable to pay for essential services. The Jabalya municipality in Gaza estimates that as a result of the
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closure 60 per cent of the population are now unable to make utility payments. In response, the Israeli authorities are employing various coercive means to insure payment, including military night raids on households in arrears. For those individuals owing more than NIS 400 ($148), identity cards are routinely confiscated. Failure to pay a bill that results in the confiscation of an identity card now constitutes a security offense. Many people, fearing intimidation by the military, are liquidating what little savings they held in reserve in order to pay municipal, utility and tax bills. Payment of bills and taxes has long been a requirement for Gazans wishing to obtain a magnetic identity card, itself a requirement for work in Israel. Since the closure, however, the magnetic ID card is also required to qualify for the job creation programs established by the civil administration inside Gaza. The conversion of assets to cash, itself a finite process, has been accompanied by the extensive use of credit for the purchase of basic food items. Retailers report that in Gaza’s refugee camps demand for food on credit has grown by between 200 per cent and 350 per cent.44 Typically, poorer households obtain lines of credit from small retailers, who in turn must obtain credit lines from their suppliers. Small retail food outlets are, by virtue of their size and position within the economy, ill-equipped to support rising credit demand especially in a contracting economic environment. Should the closure continue, however, demand for credit will continue to rise, especially in Gaza, which is slowly shifting from a cash-based to a credit/debt-based economy. The crisis point will be reached when residual private savings are totally exhausted and credit lines are no longer available from retail outlets or their suppliers. In review, the closure has created two new problems for the Gaza Strip economy: an unprecedented number of permanently unemployed individuals and a growing dependence on credit combined with new levels of indebtedness. For Gaza, the income shortage has produced widespread food shortages. These conditions, coupled with Gaza’s neartotal dependence on Israel for income generation, make the possibility of separation from Israel highly unlikely. To the contrary, not only has the closure deepened Palestinian dependence on Israel over the long term, it has allowed Israel to begin restructuring economic relations with the Occupied Territories along new integrative lines.
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Official Israeli Responses Short-Term Policy The Israeli government has responded to the current crisis in two ways: by allowing a significantly reduced number of workers back into Israel, and by creating local employment in the Occupied Territories. The former is tempered by a commitment not to return to preclosure levels of Arab labor in Israel, thereby increasing pressure on the latter. Yet, the job creation schemes of the civil administration are decidedly ad hoc in nature, occuring outside any context of integrated planning. They recall the job creation schemes developed by the UNRWA in the 1950s that also were designed to provide short-term relief rather than long-term development. In the Gaza Strip and West Bank, workers, who must be 25 years of age, married, and in possession of a magnetic ID card, are engaged in sweeping sidewalks—often moving sand from one side of the street to another—street and beach cleaning, sign painting, whitewashing and ditch digging. A large number of laborers are unemployed university graduates. By the end of July, 8,700 workers in Gaza and 7,500 workers in the West Bank were employed largely as street cleaners and painters.45 Workers are paid a daily wage of NIS 25 ($9), half of what they earned in Israel, and are usually employed for no more than 15 days at a time. The works program of the civil administration originally included a “development” component that aimed to improve local infrastructure over the longer term. Yet, planning for this program appears to be similarly makeshift, ad hoc, and peripatetic. In an attempt to create jobs, for example, the civil administration has told West Bank and Gaza Strip municipalities to resubmit those infrastructure projects rejected over the last 15 years—without accounting for conditions that have changed dramatically over that period. In response, the Gaza municipality proposed a road-paving project in and near Shati refugee camp. Yet, if this project were approved the roads would have to be dug up next year so that the UNRWA could proceed with its plan to lay sewage pipes.46 The failure to define and address current infrastructural needs according to rational development-based criteria is underlined by the failure of the civil administration to coordinate its activities
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with other relevant agencies (such as the UNRWA), another obstacle to effective development planning. Despite its request to municipalities for infrastructural projects, however, the civil administration temporarily cancelled plans for a sewage project in Nablus because it would require long periods of planning. The Jabalya municipality reported that the civil administration offered the municipality additional funding for its infrastructure projects on the condition that it stop using machinery, such as bulldozers, and start using manual labor.47 Monies allocated for these projects come from the Israeli state budget, but, according to Labour Minister Ora Namir, they do not represent increases in the budgets of the civil administration; instead, they are advances on what the government anticipates Palestinians will pay in taxes.48 In May 1993, the Israeli press published budgetary allocations for “development, infrastructure and job creation” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip of NIS 400–490 million ($148–181 million). Yet, in June, the head of the civil administration in Gaza indicated that the NIS 330 million ($122 million) already allocated to the Gaza Strip at the beginning of the year would run out by August. He also stated that if the effects of the closure were to be eased, at least the same amount would be needed again, clearly indicating that allocations for the Occupied Territories in the amounts described above will be grossly inadequate.49 Indeed, assuming the rate of lost income from wages earned in Israel remains constant at the July 1993 level of $46 million per month, then the highest proposed allocation of $181 million will be exhausted in four months. Moreover, when compared with the NIS 1.2 billion ($440 million) collected in taxes from Palestinians working in Israel in 1992, budgetary allocations seem strikingly low.50 Although the implementation of the civil administration’s employment scheme and the return of some workers to jobs in Israel have slowed the rate of economic deterioration, the situation remains grim. The positive effects of allowing some laborers to return to work in Israel, the most important factor mitigating the current crisis, are waning in light of forced layoffs by Palestinian enterprises. Indeed, income earned in Israel and in local work schemes has not strengthened purchasing power to the point of producing the demand needed to generate jobs locally. The virtual termination of PLO funds is another critical factor contributing
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to Gaza’s economic demise. Not surprisingly, daily demands on the UNRWA for relief and employment continue unabated. Longer-Term Policy The closure and official responses to it did not occur in a vacuum, but are part of a longer-term policy that emerged in the aftermath of the Gulf War, took formal shape with the initiation of the Middle East peace process in Madrid in 1991, and culminated in the Israeli–PLO accord. The economic dislocations created in the Gaza Strip by the Gulf crisis were severe and the need to address them was certainly not lost on Israeli authorities. The start of the peace process in 1991 provided the government with a dual and somewhat paradoxical opportunity. On the one hand, it provided the authorities with the chance to capitalize politically on the implementation of needed economic reforms in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. On the other hand, it forced the government, arguably for the first time since 1967, to articulate a specific economic policy for the Occupied Territories, something it always had been loath to do. At its conceptual level, Israel’s economic policy for the territories was clearly based on a specific political arrangement, autonomy or self-rule, and on a specific economic arrangement, unity. In an official briefing on the subject of the economy of the territories, Danny Gillerman, president of the Federation of the Israeli Chambers of Commerce, stated, “Our stand is that the desirable model as far as autonomy is concerned is one entity—the territories and Israel—we see no possibility and no sense in creating any borders or customs post . . . .”51 Within this political framework, the main policy goal is economic revitalization through job creation and increased investment. In 1992, a new economic strategy for the Occupied Territories was slowly being implemented, a strategy devised by Ezra Sadan in his now-famous report commissioned by the Ministry of Defense in 1990. This strategy, first developed for the more impoverished Gaza Strip, is based first and foremost on “trade, particularly free trade with and through Israel,”52 and the expanded production of exportable goods. Given Gaza’s devastating experience during the Gulf War when it was separated from its markets, it is clear that “[w]ithout free trade, there is no real
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economic subsistence in Gaza—and it is of no consequence whether one likes it or not.”53 Free trade underlies the development of certain kinds of industries such as electrical appliances, and industrialized agriculture, such as horticulture, that seek to exploit Gaza’s comparative advantage— labor—and compensate for its lack of natural resources—water and land. Given Gaza’s level of economic dependence on Israel, the difference in the magnitude of their economies,54 and the underdeveloped and distorted character of Gaza’s economic structure, Sadan argues that economic development in Gaza must logically, and of necessity, occur as a “branch plant” economy to Israel. For example, when referring to the future development of “industrialized” farms and the production of exportables such as tomatoes and strawberries, Sadan states that “Palestinian marketing reaching to the gates of the lucrative export markets in the West is [now] limited in scope. But, the services of large forwarding facilities, established marketing channels and the option of brand names provided by several firms in Israel guarantee an immediate access to the export markets.”55 Sadan calls on the government to consider subsidies, loan-guarantees, credit, and foreign-trade insurance “as legitimate tools to overcome the limited capacity of the [Palestinian] markets,”56 in addition to the liberalization and elimination of various military restrictions on economic transactions across the Green Line. Indeed, in 1992 the government abolished certain protectionist practices militating against industrial development in the Occupied Territories. In discussing the development of a sardine canning branch in Gaza, long prohibited by the authorities due to fears of competition, Sadan further argues: A significant part of the value that would be added with the increasing industrial activity in the Gaza Strip would accrue in Israel, almost certainly in the Tel-Aviv area and the center . . . [the] finding presented here points up the fact that development of the canned sardine branch in the Gaza Strip would create competition with Israeli producers of canned sardines, but it turns out that this would be competition between the Israeli product and a new product that is half Gazan and half Israeli (in terms of value added).57
Moreover, “the Gazan manufacturer is likely . . . to import various inputs—the most important being tin cans—from Israel. If he does not do that, he will have to import those cans from Europe . . . In the
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second case, the [Gazan] plant would have to market the entire output of the finished product outside Israel; under those circumstances, it is doubtful if it could stay in business very long.”58 Clearly, the terms of Gaza’s restructured relationship with Israel are designed not only to serve Israeli interests, but are designed to do so primarily. Gaza will no doubt reap certain new economic benefits under Sadan’s scheme, but on terms that, once again, are not its own or necessarily in its own best interests. The cost to local economic development will be as high as it has always been. The Gazan economy will remain tightly linked to Israel’s: dependent, auxiliary and vulnerable to closure. The development of an independent economic base will remain an impossibility. This will be true under any political arrangement, including the Gaza–Jericho plan, that does not give Palestinians full decision-making control over their own resources, especially land and water, and free and independent access to external markets. Sadan maintains that Gaza has no alternative but to maintain an economic relationship with Israel. He is correct. The issue, however, is not whether or not structural ties between a Palestinian and Israeli economy should exist, but the terms on which those ties are based. For example, despite the fact that more than half the strawberries exported by Agrexco, Israel’s agricultural export cooperative, originate in Gaza, Gaza cannot export its strawberries under its own brand name. Sadan explains that Gazans do not export under their own brand name because marketing channels of the sort Israel possesses require an economy much larger than Gaza’s: “You can’t just sell strawberries. You need an assortment [of fruits and vegetables].”59 Although this point is arguable, it begs the question, “What of another alternative, namely the expansion of Gaza’s economy to the point where it could develop its own direct marketing channels, independent of Israel’s?” For Palestinians, the issue is not parity in size but parity in decision-making and equality of control. Moreover, the administrative, bureaucratic and security delays and higher transportation costs incurred by Palestinians engaged in direct export make the Agrexco option far more attractive. The use of an Israeli middleman avoids many costly hassles and is, in effect, a form of extra-legal coercion. In April 1993, the agriculture department of the civil administration in Gaza reportedly approved a near-100 per cent increase in the production of carnations—from 57 dunums in 1992 to 107 dunums
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in 1993—one of several horticultural projects proposed by Sadan. (In 1991, for the first time, the civil administration allowed 50 dunums of land to be transferred to carnation production, the exclusive domain of Israeli flower growers.) In a measure virtually unprecedented for Palestinian farmers, the Israeli government promised subsidies of between NIS 4000 ($1,481) and NIS 4,500 ($1,667) per dunum. (One dunum is approximately 1,000 square meters or 10,760 square feet.) In addition, there were plans to expand the production of strawberries, zucchini, potatoes and tomatoes. Production also would be supported through Israeli government subsidies, the opening of Israeli and foreign markets, and guaranteed crop purchases, similarly unprecedented for Palestinians. All produce was to be purchased by Israeli agents for sale in Israel or export through Agrexco.60 Although the carnation crop has been successful, Palestinians have suffered considerable losses due to the terms of the arrangement imposed on them by Israel. First, Palestinians can only grow those varieties of carnations for which they are given seedlings by Israeli sources. Second, Palestinians can only market their carnations through Agrexco, but it is Agrexco that determines which flowers get sold. Those flowers that are not considered marketable must be taken as a loss by Palestinian farmers, because Agrexco will not return them for local sale.61 It should also be noted that flower growing has no history as a productive enterprise in Gaza. Furthermore, it is a water-intensive activity and, therefore, highly inappropriate for Gaza given its serious water shortage. Carnation production is, however, labor-intensive and provides Israel with a cheap labor input for the production of an important export commodity. The Sadan Report recommended a variety of other measures that are also being implemented in the Gaza Strip. With some policy modifications—such as removing certain protectionist barriers in industry—these measures are designed within specific structural parameters that essentially aim to do no more than their predecessors did: improve the standard of living through job creation and enhanced income earning without any fundamental alterations in the structure of the local economy that could promote the development of an independent economic base. Some of these measures include the following: personal income tax reform, encouraging capital investment by locals and foreigners, promoting the opening of new factories,
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expanding existing financial services and establishing new banks, encouraging exports, and creating industrial parks.62 Income tax reforms were designed to extend Israel’s taxation system into Gaza, ostensibly to simplify tax law. These reforms, however, not only facilitate integration by imposing the same tax structure on Gaza, but do little to decrease the Gazan tax burden. For example, the number of tax brackets was reduced from eleven to five, and the highest tax rate was reduced from 55 per cent to 48 per cent. A “minimum wage” was also set but is something of a misnomer. It does not refer to a guaranteed minimum wage paid to Palestinians, but a minimum possible living wage established by the government for purposes of taxation. This wage, which Gazans refer to as a “life tax” (dariba alhaya), was established because Gaza businesses, historically subject to heavy tax burdens, have avoided the use of daily receipts. Consequently, it is difficult to determine how much any one person earns in a year. Government finance experts set the “minimum wage” at NIS 1,000 ($370) per month, which automatically places the taxpayer in the third tax bracket where the real tax rate is 48 per cent. Interestingly, the civil administration pays its most senior Palestinian employees a monthly wage of NIS 700 ($259), in contradiction of its own finance experts.63 Another measure enacted in 1991–92, the Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments, provides income and property tax exemption for new factories and for expansions of existing factories for the first three years a profit is registered. Palestinians claim that this reform is not as significant as it might appear since the depreciation of industrial machinery, a major income tax deduction, was always deductible. Labor costs that exceed 45 per cent of product cost per unit, however, are not deductible at all, nor are transportation costs that exceed 1 per cent of cost per unit. Late payment of income tax, moreover, is subject to the imposition of interest rates comparable to what commercial banks would pay.64 Foreigners—read diaspora Palestinians—willing to invest a minimum of $100,000 in the West Bank or Gaza will be allowed to reside there for two years and then gain permanent residency. In effect, they are purchasing family reunification. Since the tax system is cited by Palestinian businessmen as the primary obstacle to local investment, few locals and foreigners have sought to take advantage of existing reforms. In April, the investment
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office of the civil administration in Gaza reported that of the 67 projects (totalling at least $27 million) approved and issued permits for local and foreign investment under the new law, only two were operational.65 Proposed projects include the manufacture or production of furniture, tiles, textiles, agricultural equipment, nylon stockings, olive processing, pasta, ice cream, yoghurt, vegetable shortening and cartons. The authorities have also simplified procedures for the approval of licenses to establish new factories. In 1992, seventy new factories were given licenses to open in the West Bank and ninety to open in Gaza.66 No data, however, were provided on whether any of these factories were operational. Moreover, the establishment of new factories in and of itself is not necessarily healthy nor encouraging of economic development. The risk of failure is great in the absence of market and feasibility studies, integrated planning, free trade, fair competition, financial services, physical infrastructure, legal protections, indigenous control and a stable environment free of constant security violations. The Israeli government is encouraging the establishment of new banks and the expansion of existing ones. The Bank of Jordan has been given approval to open in the West Bank while the Cairo-Amman Bank and the Bank of Palestine have been given permission to open additional branches. The Bank of Palestine, however, can only open branches in the Gaza Strip. Although the author has no data on the terms involved, the issue, insofar as economic development is concerned, is not the number of banks but what services they are allowed to provide. Long-standing constraints on the banking and credit system in the Occupied Territories include prohibitions on the use of hard currency, prohibitions on the provision of large-scale loans, restrictions on the level of assets held, restrictions on investment, and opprobrious interest rates on borrowing. If these constraints, among others, are not eliminated, the number of new banks and bank branches will be wholly irrelevant. Exports of agricultural and industrial products from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Israel, via Israel to Europe, and to Jordan are being more actively supported by the Israeli government as well. While these trading channels are well established, trade is often encumbered and difficult. In order to facilitate exports, the government has reduced the fees for trucks crossing into Jordan by more than 75 per cent for agricultural goods and by more than 60 per cent for industrial goods.67
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In a series of interviews with citrus producers and their accountants conducted in March 1993, however, researchers working for an international nongovernmental organization found: The requirements imposed by security, taxation, licenses and permits continue to reduce the margin in which agricultural exports might remain profitable. Producers continue to pay a 12.5 NIS per ton tax as well as income taxes ranging between $2 per ton on citrus destined for juice factories in Israel, $4 per ton on citrus for export to Jordan and $5 per ton on citrus exports to Europe. Producers exporting to Jordan report a reduction in bridge tolls of 38% (from 350 NIS in 1992 to 217 NIS in 1993). However, the security check—which usually lasts seven days— continues to make export to Jordan problematic. The security inspection for goods on export to Europe costs an average of $3 per ton with the producer paying a required 700 NIS per day for police protection of the inspectors. In 1993, low market prices in Europe and high export costs kept most producers from exporting to Europe.68
Agricultural producers in Gaza further assert that Israeli exporters are given unfair trading advantages through subsidies. For example, for a Gazan farmer to obtain one ton of export-quality Valencia oranges for Europe requires the harvesting and sorting of three tons. This one ton of exportable produce costs him at least $15 since Palestinians must pay an income tax of $5 per ton harvested. His Israeli counterpart, however, receives a subsidy of $20 per ton harvested.69 The Israeli government is financing the establishment of five new industrial parks—three in Gaza and two in the West Bank—that include infrastructural services such as water, electricity and sewage.70 As of August 1993, those in Gaza had not been completed. As designed, the zones and their potential impact are limited by several factors. First, most of the land on which the zones are being built is government rather than private land. Palestinian investors prefer buying private land since it is a more secure investment. Indeed, while the Israeli government is discussing autonomy, the civil administration is leasing land for 49 years, indicating an intention to remain in the area for at least another 50. Second, industrial zones are often established on fertile agricultural lands, a blow to local agriculture, despite the availability of barren lands.71 Third, the impact of industrial zones on economic development is directly tied to the growth of municipal domains, which has been severely constrained by military law.
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Conclusion Israeli policy in the Gaza Strip and West Bank has been and continues to be defined by what it does not allow rather than by what it does. What it does not allow is real indigenous control over key economic resources needed for the establishment of an independent Palestinian economy. What it does allow is a form of dependent economic growth linked to and mediated by Israel. Israeli proposals calling for self-rule in the Occupied Territories, therefore, envision an economic future for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that is essentially no different from their economic past. The Gaza–Jericho plan with its promise of limited autonomy in the Gaza Strip does not alter the structural asymmetries between Palestinians and Israelis; it reshapes and reinforces them. The economic fundamentals of occupation remain unchanged. Under the terms of the plan, the Israeli government will transfer political control over Gaza to the PLO. Israel, however, has not renounced its claim to the Occupied Territories. Its rejection of Palestinian sovereignty and refusal to transfer decision-making authority over land, zoning and water strongly indicate that it will not cede substantial economic control to Palestinians. In the absence of a sovereign Palestinian state, for example, Israel remains responsible for all international agreements. Palestinian access to external markets, therefore, will have to be negotiated with Israel. Furthermore, of the $600 million in economic aid allocated to the Gaza Strip over the next year, approximately one-half is earmarked for housing loans. Loan amounts of this size cannot be disbursed without a proper banking structure, whose development the Israeli government has prohibited for the last 25 years. Under the plan’s terms, a new banking structure can only be established in negotiations with Israel. This combination of “political divorce and economic marriage”72 will not change the underlying relationship between occupier and occupied, only its form. Many have stated that economic reform must be implemented quickly or the momentum for peace will be lost. Over the long term, however, what is most important for the transformation of Palestinian society and hence, for sustainable peace, is not the number of reforms actually implemented but the terms on which they are implemented. That is, will Gaza have free access to markets or will Israel use free markets to control Gaza? With the Gaza–Jericho accord one hopes it will be the former but fears it will be the latter.
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11 Civil Society in the Gaza Strip: Obstacles to Social Reconstruction*
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in the Arab world has emerged as a central issue in contemporary Arab intellectual discourse, catalyzed as much by the crisis and collapse of the Soviet and Eastern European states as by the strength of their popular, oppositional civil social movements. The absence or weakness of Arab civil society is now seen as one cause of the contemporary crisis in Arab politics and its contributing factors: the absence of democracy, the lack of political change and participation, continued economic underdevelopment and social malaise, and the persistence of human rights violations.1 While the concept of civil society does carry arguable explanatory weight, its significance for Arab society lies fundamentally in why it is so intensely debated: it represents an attempt on the part of the Arab citizen to deal with the issues of political repression and personal oppression. Perhaps nowhere, at present, is this attempt more pronounced than in the Gaza Strip. This is so because of the very unprecedented political, economic, and social possibilities created by the Israeli–PLO agreement on interim self-government arrangements. Contemporary Western views on civil society and its relation to the state are informed by two intellectual and political perspectives: liberal pluralism and Marxism. The liberal pluralist model is based on representative democracy as the ideal form of government and on capitalism and the market system as the desired form of economic HE PROBLEM OF CIVIL SOCIETY
* Originally published in Augustus Richard Norton (ed.), Civil Society in the Middle East, Volume II, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995, pp. 221–58. 123
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organization. Within this framework, civil society is understood to be independent of the state but not necessarily opposed to it, and is assigned primacy as the realm of economic relations organized by the marketplace. The state is seen as neutral and representative, responding to the common good and to pressures from political groups. Consequently, the state acts as a “referee” between the competitive and conflicting demands of different groups.2 The Marxist model, particularly as articulated by Antonio Gramsci, gives primacy to civil society over the state and sees civil society as a “weapon against capitalism not an accommodation to it.”3 In this model, the state’s role is to impose ideological and cultural hegemony as a way of creating consensus and acceptance among the dominated. Civil society, by contrast, constitutes the sphere of the exploited, where the struggle against state domination must be waged. In Gramsci’s formulation, civil society consists of those private institutions, including the family, political parties and labor unions, that can wage such a struggle. These institutions can be used by the exploited and dominated classes to build a “counter-hegemony” against state control. In this sense, civil society plays an oppositional and mobilizational role.4 The definition of civil society used in this project borrows largely from the liberal pluralist model, which is the dominant of the two in discourse on the subject, and incorporates some new concepts as well.5 First, civil society occupies a distinct realm, beyond the family and just short of the state.6 It constitutes associations, clubs, guilds, unions, political parties, interest groups and social institutions, including religious organizations, that play a mediating role between state and citizen. Civil society is an arena of potential freedom and “uncoerced human association”7 composed of autonomous organizations of citizens engaged in voluntary association.8 It is a society where law prevails, binding state and citizen equally, protecting the latter from the arbitrary and unjust use of power by the former.9 Second, civil society refers to qualities of civility and tolerance, an attitude and pattern of conduct, without which societal conflict would prevail. Third, the existence of civil society carries with it the idea of a political community and an implied sense of citizenship, a shared identity with attendant rights and responsibilities. This definition of civil society also implies certain assumptions about the nature of that society. First, civil society presupposes the existence
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of a state and a state of limited powers, powers that are used in part to protect the pluralism of civil society and its necessary liberties.10 It also assumes that the state or government is bound by law and that the law is designed to protect civil liberties and citizen rights, and keep conflict in check. In this way, civil society and the state are legally obligated to respect the rights of the other.11 Second, civil society regards pluralism as a “primary good,” extolling difference and diversity.12 Third, civil society assumes the acceptance of a common set of values, an ethical vision of social life that guides and informs societal behavior, insuring a high degree of order.13 Fourth, civil society assumes the likelihood of living a normal, ordinary life, what Michael Walzer refers to as “speaking in prose.”14 None of these models, however, really applies to the Gaza Strip. There are several reasons for this. The most important is that civil society assumes the existence of a state, limited in scope and bound by law, of which it is an integral part. The role of civil society is either to insure the democratic nature of the state or hold the state accountable for its offenses. In Gaza, this was never possible because there has never been a state (or national government), not even a repressive one. (The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) performed some of the functions of a state-in-exile with identifiable impact on different local formations in Gaza, but this was a far cry from a traditional state. Although the national authority was embodied in these local forms, it was forced to remain outside the territory. As such, it could not operate publicly with national institutions inside. Program planning and implementation could only take place indirectly, by subterfuge, and often in a fragmented and uncoordinated manner.)15 Civil society also assumes the existence, valuation and protection of individual rights, something that has never existed in Gaza. Instead, Gaza has been subject to an occupation authority whose primary concern has been maintaining military, political and economic control over the population not extending its civil, political, or economic rights. In fact, this authority has done everything in its power to eliminate those rights. Hence, many of the relational networks found in states, notably those based on citizenship, do not exist in Gaza. The laws that bind state and citizen and the expectations that arise from this are simply unknown.
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Under this scenario those groups or civil formations that emerged in Gaza did so in opposition to an alien authority—first Egypt (1948–67) and then Israel (beginning in 1967). Opposition was not aimed at making the authority accountable in order to mitigate its power, reform its behavior, or make it more democratic. Rather, opposition constituted a form of resistance against an illegitimate power. The agenda was survival not democracy. Because of this, in part, the civil formations that arose in the Gaza Strip have been continuously plagued by a host of problems including political factionalism, tribalism, classism and parochialism. Indeed, although their common alliance against an alien power enabled them, momentarily, to transcend the local boundaries and solidarities of family or clan, Gaza’s oppositional-associational forces could not, beyond their shared vision of ending the occupation, really differentiate among tasks and purposes, or articulate a common program for social or political development let alone one that could further a process of liberalization. While the Intifada seemed to defy this problematique, in the end, it failed largely because of it. With the formal implementation of the Israeli–PLO peace process, the situation in Gaza became worse not better. As structured, the agreement is not about increasing Palestinian rights but about insuring Israeli control. The terms of the agreement seriously limit the power of the new Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and give Israel final control over all Palestinian legislation. Israeli military law remains the law of the land—only seventy out of the thousand military orders imposed in the Gaza Strip since 1967 will be abrogated—and the PNA is totally powerless to challenge that. In fact, 105 new military orders have been published in the Occupied Territories since the beginning of peace negotiations in addition to those that have been enforced but not published.16 To what extent, therefore, will the PNA be able to foster democratic institutions or institutionalize democratic practices (assuming, of course, that it is inclined to do so) to which the Israeli authorities are opposed? Consequently, Gazans must now deal with a new nonstate authority that, in effect, is subject to the constraints of the “old” one. Which authority should be opposed and what form should this opposition take? Is the emergence of civil society in Gaza now more remote than ever?
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There are other factors thwarting the development of civil society in Gaza. Unlike the West Bank, for example, Gaza is a society that has had painfully little experience with institutional development. This, combined with a majority refugee population that was rural, traditional, poor and non-indigenous (having fled into Gaza in 1948), shaped a political culture that consistently used violence not debate to mediate conflict and political action. Gaza’s political culture and its historically repressive political environment have also effectively precluded the development of autonomous institutions—political, economic or social—that could potentially challenge a state or occupation authority in any meaningful and sustainable way. Furthermore, Gaza’s rural and traditional culture, itself shaped by the refugee presence, has always relied on local solidarities and has always valued ethnic and cultural homogeneity as a defense against social dissolution. Little value is assigned to pluralism or diversity in social organization. If things look so dismal in Gaza, then why ponder over civil society? Despite the many factors shaping and delimiting the evolution of civil formations in Gaza, associational life does exist in the Gaza Strip and it has persisted against considerable odds. The models of civil society described above, while not directly applicable to the Gaza case study, do provide an important framework within which to view the evolution of associational forms and the behavior of social forces in the Gaza Strip, and identify their strengths and weaknesses, particularly as it regards the prospects for building and consolidating a civil society. The remainder of this chapter will be divided as follows: an overview of associational life in the Gaza Strip will first be provided followed by a discussion of the problems restricting its development, as well as the impact of these problems on the emergence of civil society in Gaza. The essay will conclude by investigating the possibilities for civil society in the Gaza Strip in light of changing political realities. Associational Life in the Gaza Strip Gaza–West Bank Differences Associational life in the Gaza Strip is circumscribed even by West Bank standards and the reason is, in part, a function of the many important differences between the two territories. Most studies on the Occupied
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Territories focus on the West Bank because of its greater historical and political significance. The far smaller and more isolated Gaza Strip is often appended to discussions of the West Bank because it was occupied by Israel at the same time. Though commonly overlooked, the differences between the two regions are significant and they have markedly influenced the development of civil society in each area. One obvious distinction is geographic. The West Bank is fifteen times larger than the Gaza Strip, and borders another Arab state, Jordan, giving it access to a wider region. Gaza’s greater isolation has made it more difficult for its population to interact with other parts of the Arab world. Furthermore, because of its religious significance for Christians, Jews and Muslims, the West Bank also has been continually exposed to foreigners, giving it a sophistication not found in Gaza, whose borders are crossed primarily by its own workforce. Although the West Bank population is almost twice that of Gaza’s, Gaza, with its much more limited land area, has a population density almost nine times that of the West Bank. Gaza also has far more refugees, and more who live in camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Furthermore, Gaza’s refugees comprise a much larger percentage of the total population—70 per cent as opposed to 20 per cent in the West Bank—solidifying its decidedly traditional character as explained below. There are also important differences in social structure and political culture. Gaza’s majority refugee population is not indigenous to the Strip and was never fully integrated or economically absorbed into the territory. Gaza’s small size and limited resources consistently precluded this. As a result, class realignments in the post-1948 period were superimposed with traumatic effect. The only way the refugees could respond to their profound dislocation was by turning inward, clinging to traditional forms of social organization and authority relations. The persistence of traditional structures precluded the introduction of new forms of social and political organization and thereby prevented the emergence of an effective indigenous leadership capable of articulating the refugees’ needs and interfacing with Gaza’s non-refugee population. In the West Bank, by contrast, a majority of residents are indigenous. After 1948, many Palestinians fled to the West Bank. Those who later left for other Arab countries, notably Jordan, were socially
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and economically integrated. Those refugees who remained were either absorbed into West Bank cities and towns or settled in camps. Because the West Bank was formally incorporated into the Kingdom of Jordan, West Bankers were able to maintain their historical ties with the Arab world. Gaza’s refugees, however, never regained the familial and economic ties severed in 1948. Hence, the economic and social integration experienced in the West Bank never occurred in Gaza. Differences in social structure between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank were deepened and sustained by very different political histories prior to 1967. The Gaza Strip under Egypt and the West Bank under Jordan experienced very different patterns of political development. Gaza, for example, was never formally incorporated or annexed by the Egyptian government. For better or worse, the Egyptians did little to foster an alternative national identity among Palestinians, and consistently emphasized the temporary political status of the Gaza Strip, a status that they argued could only be reversed with the total liberation of Palestine. Despite this policy, Egypt actively suppressed political activity in Gaza, prohibiting the development of an independent political movement. As a result, the Gaza Strip never developed a distinct, well-defined and institutionalized political sector. The government also refused most forms of participatory politics and appointed all Palestinian officials. Consequently, Gazans never developed distinct political institutions or their own representative political leadership. The West Bank’s political development under Jordan was quite different. Jordan annexed the West Bank, and despite the many political restrictions imposed, gave Palestinians citizenship and allowed West Bankers to participate in national and local government. Palestinians in the West Bank held administrative positions in the government bureaucracy and in the Jordanian parliament. A differentiated political sector developed, supported in good part by a strong middle class, where a variety of interests (not just elite interests) were represented. Unlike Gaza, a political leadership evolved that was not restricted to one small, non-representative class. Gazans and West Bankers, therefore, experienced different forms of political socialization. Uniquely, Palestinians in the West Bank were exposed to institutionalized politics, where disagreements were often mediated through organized structures that valued the role of
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discussion in resolving disputes. Political parties constituted a forum not a weapon as they often have in Gaza. In this way, West Bankers were provided with alternatives to violence that Gazans never had, and received political skills and institutional mechanisms Gazans never acquired. Not surprisingly, Israel has always exercised much tighter control over the Gaza Strip and has more often relied on brute military repression, particularly against Gaza’s refugees, to impose policy. In the West Bank, by contrast, more indirect and less violent forms of co-optation have been used to control the population. An Historical Context There is no doubt that associational life in the Gaza Strip (and the West Bank) arose in response to the absence of a legitimate national authority, and to conditions of occupation and deprivation. Associations provided a range of services the occupying authority would not, and supplemented those that were inadequate. Not only did associations provide a safety net for the population, they provided a means of political resistance as well. Prior to 1948, institutional development in Palestine was largely a response to immediate need, not to any strategy of social development. Associational life in Gaza, unlike the West Bank, was very confined. The area’s agrarian economy, for example, effectively precluded the emergence of a large labor union movement. The rural and relatively isolated nature of the Gaza region and the traditional nature of its inhabitants similarly inhibited the development of social organizations capable of providing services beyond the narrow confines of family or clan. Only one charitable society and one cooperative society were formed during this time. Women’s societies, an area of clear activity elsewhere in the country, were nonexistent in Gaza. The small number of professionals among Gaza’s population—by the end of World War II, Gaza town contained only eight physicians, eight lawyers and two engineers17—also precluded the formation of professional associations although a lawyers’ union was organized. The period between 1948 and 1967 was characterized by the dislocation and dispersion of the Palestinian people and the collapse of the national movement. In 1948, with the establishment of the State of Israel and the start of the first Arab–Israeli war, the Gaza Strip was
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incorporated and placed under Egyptian military control. The Strip was flooded by 250,000 Palestinians fleeing the war, tripling Gaza’s prewar population almost overnight. Political tensions and economic conditions were acute and remained so for many years. The Egyptian government imposed many repressive measures, including a near-total ban on the formation and registration of political parties and on all local organizations (particularly by refugees), including professional and labor unions. The restrictive nature of Egyptian policy did little to improve Gaza’s paltry experience with associational forms. Only a handful of organizations were established and they were carefully contained. Not surprisingly, most were rooted in nationalist politics although overtly political groups remained underground. Gaza’s preexisting lawyers’ union, for example, was allowed to function but under numerous constraints that included limitations on membership. In 1954, the Union of UNRWA teachers was established but disbanded a year later when its permit was revoked.18 No other professional unions emerged. Similarly, in December 1959, several branches of the Palestine National Union (PNU), one political party, were established throughout the Gaza Strip; one year later, however, elections to the PNU in Gaza were held for the first and last time. In 1962, a legislative council was established but it had limited powers and half its members were appointed. In 1963, the Palestine Student Organization, associated with underground political activism, was permitted to hold a conference in Gaza town. Gaza’s experience with labor and trade unions was similarly weak. In 1964, several Gazan workers, inspired by the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in that same year, formed an executive committee of the General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW), which later became the Palestine Trade Union Federation (PTUF), a PLO umbrella organization.19 By this time, Gaza had only seven unions with a membership base of no more than a few hundred. (Between 1964 and 1967, they all joined the GUPW.) In 1965, by contrast, the West Bank had forty unions with 20,000 members.20 In that same year, Gaza’s only chamber of commerce was formed as well. Also, only six charitable organizations were established in the Strip by 1967, a tiny fraction of the 68 established in the West Bank by that same time.21 Clearly, the level of institutional development in the Strip was weak even by the West Bank’s limited standards.
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Key Associational Forms Since 1967 With the June 1967 war, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank fell under Israeli military occupation. An Israeli military government was immediately established in the Gaza Strip and it assumed total control over all aspects of Palestinian life. All executive, judicial and legislative powers were concentrated in the Israeli military commander, who enjoyed complete autonomy. During Israeli rule, associational life in the Gaza Strip expanded largely in response to official policies that aimed, increasingly, to expropriate and dispossess Palestinians of their political patrimony and economic resources. In this regard, the imposition of military law introduced myriad political, economic, social and legal restrictions that had a profound impact on the development of all organizational types, especially in the more troubled and impoverished Strip. Furthermore, unlike the West Bank, where Jordanian political influence and financial assistance22 continued to play a significant and mobilizing role after 1967, the Gaza Strip, cut off from Egypt, was far more dependent upon the Israeli regime for services and assistance.23 Moreover, the PLO,24 fearing political competition from the Hashemite kingdom, directed much, if not most, of its substantial political and economic resources to the West Bank, not Gaza. Consequently, the disparities between the two territories grew as did the quality of their associational life. Since 1967, a variety of organizations and institutions have been established in the Gaza Strip with two aims: to provide services to the community and to substitute for the absent national government. Many also pledged their allegiance to the PLO. All have been subject to Israeli government control and interference (that is, monitoring activities, approving internal decisions, controlling access to external funds, permitting the registration of new societies). Some of Gaza’s associational forms have been quasi-governmental such as municipal and village councils—Gaza’s Legislative Council was abolished in 1967—and others, nongovernmental. The latter have included charitable organizations (among which are educational institutions), cooperatives, labor and professional unions, a chamber of commerce, and massbased voluntary organizations, notably women’s work committees. Political parties were banned in 1967 as was all nationalist political activity despite persistent underground organizing. Consequently,
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nongovernmental organizations (as outlined below) provided the only outlets for organized Palestinian activity after 1967 and as such, are the most representative of associational life in Gaza. Islamist organizations played a more prominent role after 1987 and will be discussed in a later section. By April 1994, there were approximately 114 registered and unregistered (nongovernmental) organizations in the Gaza Strip (compared with 734 in the West Bank).25 They varied widely in operational capacity but all were functioning organizations. Close to 51 per cent were charitable societies providing educational, health, medical and social welfare services; 24 per cent were women’s groups and women’s work committees; 10 per cent were cooperatives of various kinds; 9 per cent were professional societies (as opposed to professional unions which were banned by the Israeli authorities), and 6 per cent were labor unions. However, close to half of the 114 organizations were established between 1992 and 1994 in response to rapidly deteriorating economic and political conditions resulting from the Gulf War and heightened Israeli repression. Thus, it is not unreasonable to say that in the first 25 years of Israeli rule, no more than 60 organizations formally existed in the Gaza Strip. The majority of charitable organizations in Gaza emerged after 1968 and are concentrated in Gaza City. They are among the oldest organizations in the territory. Traditionally, they have been led and run by members of the upper classes, but not exclusively so. The largest and most dominant, the Benevolent Society, is run by one of Gaza’s oldest and wealthiest families, the al-Shawwa family. Charitable organizations are largely involved in social work, providing a range of services for the blind, orphaned, mentally and physically handicapped, poor, elderly and youth. Some provide services exclusively for women.26 Charitable associations also run private educational institutions at the preschool, nursery and kindergarten levels and provide vocational training and adult education classes as well. Furthermore, given their long history in some cases, charitable societies are more fully institutionalized with some understanding of procedures, accountability and cooperation. Seen as politically nonthreatening by the military authorities, charitable associations were allowed to operate relatively unencumbered. During the Intifada, especially, they not only provided certain specialized services free
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of charge, but sometimes offered refuge to people fleeing the army. Typically, societies are nonaligned organizations although some are known to have political affiliations. The women’s work committees in Gaza, like those in the West Bank, were part of the mass-based initiative that emerged in the mid-1970s in response to a decline in the services offered by the occupying authority, increased restrictions on institutional activity, and heightened political activity in the Palestinian national movement.27 They represented an attempt (replicated in the areas of health and agriculture) by different (competing) factions of the PLO (largely the left) to mobilize the Palestinian people, particularly the poor and neglected, and gain a foothold in grass-roots work. Women’s committees, like other voluntary grass-roots organizations, have used development as a prime mechanism of political mobilization. Women’s committees, like charitable societies, have a tradition of community service but with a more activist, consciousness-raising component aimed at educating poor women about their rights and social status. Unlike charitable societies, these committees seek to empower women socially and politically. Despite factional affiliation, however, committee membership cuts across social class, religion and profession. The activist orientation of the women’s committees demands, in essence, that women be treated more civilly by their own society. This has threatened Gaza’s traditional social elements, including the older political elite. It’s one thing to teach sewing, it’s quite another to advocate equal rights. Empowerment in this form has also threatened the control of the occupying authority by mobilizing women to challenge occupation law. Its response, like that of Gazan society, was to become more repressive. Indeed, throughout the 1980s, several women activists, heads of committees, were imprisoned by the Israeli government, placed under house arrest, and subjected to a range of punitive measures on an ongoing basis. Hence, it has always been harder to mobilize women in Gaza than in the West Bank. Prior to the Intifada, in fact, only six hundred Gazan women were organized into committees.28 The work of the women’s committees in Gaza has been marked. By 1993, there were 23 committees (compared to 35 in the West Bank) working in most of the Strip’s major towns and refugee camps, and in several remote villages. Their activities included employment and income
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generation through small-scale projects (sometimes as production cooperatives) in embroidery, sewing, wood painting, food processing, weaving and knitting; eradicating illiteracy through literacy training and other educational courses; providing basic health and medical education training through courses in nutrition, first-aid and basic medical skills; providing kindergarten and daycare services, and enhancing cultural awareness by organizing lectures, exhibitions and bazaars, and by celebrating national events.29 During the Intifada, women’s committees became instrumental and worked in conjunction with other social organizations to provide a range of critically needed services. Although they have suffered from a variety of problems, their modes of decisionmaking and policy formulation are internally democratic, and they encourage open dialogue and open agendas.30 As such, they are a critical resource for associational development in Gaza. Cooperatives have a weak history in Gaza but they are an institutionalized presence. Between 1967 and 1994, for example, only ten cooperatives were established largely for the production and marketing of agricultural products (compared to more than three hundred agricultural and non-agricultural cooperatives in the West Bank). Gaza’s poor record in this area is due primarily to Israeli restrictions banning the formation of new cooperatives and impeding the operation of existing ones. However, in 1991, when the Israeli government lifted some of its restrictions, Gaza Strip cooperatives enjoyed an unprecedented growth spurt. Four of Gaza’s primary agricultural cooperatives increased their membership significantly, in some cases doubling it and in another, increasing it fivefold. In 1991, the Gaza Women’s Cooperative was founded, and is the first of its kind in Gaza.31 One year later, it claimed a membership of 127 people who were engaged in marketing a variety of products in local shops.32 Indeed, the dramatic growth in cooperative membership in the Gaza Strip should be understood as a reflection of the very limited institutional options available to the local community for economic and civic participation outside the family, tribe and political faction. Furthermore, although the actual number of cooperatives is small and the number of organized participants tiny, cooperatives, like charitable societies, have a comparatively strong history of institutionalized practice and provide a potential template for the development of associational forms.
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Professional associations also have a negligible record in the Gaza Strip but a persistent one. At present, there are ten such associations but only three, the Gaza Bar Association, the Arab Medical Society and the Engineers Association, have a definable presence and history. Israeli policy banned the establishment of professional unions so a number of professional groups organized themselves as local societies, for which Israeli approval had to be obtained. Despite the small number of professional groups, their poor financial resources and lack of formal authority, their significance as associational formations lies, in part, in their ability to remain operational in an environment consistently positioned against them. Like professional associations elsewhere, Gaza’s have attempted to introduce and apply professional standards within the community and secure financial assistance and employment for their members. Although they have met with only moderate degrees of success, they have persisted and their membership has remained relatively constant. However, given the Strip’s highly politicized and restrictive environment, professional societies are one of few forums where factional politics can be played out. Internal elections—a rare example of democratic practice in Gaza—are political events where contending parties vie for control. Yet, party competition does not arise out of a desire to articulate political concerns, address political problems, or inculcate political ideas but out of a desire to use associational life to serve narrow factional interests (see below). Rather than fill the void created by the absence of proper political parties, professional societies have been used by these parties as a means of control, sometimes impeding the societies’ own ability to function. Another important associational form in the Gaza Strip is the chamber of commerce. Gaza’s oldest, and until 1993, only chamber was established in 1965. In 1969, when elections for the chamber’s administrative council were due, they were suspended by the Israeli military governor. Members who had left or died, therefore, could not be replaced. It was not until 1992, a quarter of a century later, that Israel allowed elections to be held. Despite this and other restrictions, the chamber of commerce has performed certain tasks that facilitated Gaza’s small commercial sector: coordinating exports of agricultural and industrial goods to Jordan, assisting local businesses in the importation and marketing of certain products, channeling
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information between the military government and commercial bodies, and conducting research on topics related to business and trade. During the Intifada, the authorities further restricted many of the chamber’s most important duties, notably research, planning and data collection, seriously undermining its operational viability. More than any other sector of associational life in the Gaza Strip, the trade union movement suffered draconian restrictions under occupation. The Israeli authorities have always feared trade unions because of their potential to become channels for nationalist expression. Unlike the West Bank, where unions have enjoyed some activity, in Gaza, they have been moribund. Israeli restrictions banning all union activity during the first two decades of occupation contributed largely to the movement’s morbidity. In 1979, Gaza’s seven unions were allowed to reopen but were prohibited from holding elections or recruiting new members (only pre-1967 members could be enrolled) without prior permission from the Israeli Army. By 1985, less than five hundred people or 1 per cent of all workers employed in Gaza, belonged to the Gaza Trade Union Federation.33 It was not until 1987 that Gaza’s trade union movement experienced a small, albeit temporary revival. This was due to the willingness among activists from different political factions, some of whom were released in the May 1985 prisoner exchange, to work together to rejuvenate the movement. In February and April of 1987, two unions, one dominated by the Communists and the other by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), respectively defied Israel’s military ban and held elections. The army responded with threats and violence but was unable to stop the momentum that had been created. Nonetheless, serious political differences soon arose between the pro-Communist and pro-PFLP activists, eliminating the cooperation that had made the two watershed elections possible. In December 1987, the Intifada broke out. Gaza’s severely weakened union movement, incapable of playing any supportive role in helping to sustain the uprising, ultimately disappeared from view. Associational life in the Gaza Strip possesses certain strengths: an identifiable albeit limited (and recent) history with institutionalized and democratic practice and collaborative and voluntary work. That this history evolved and was sustained in a hostile environment where constant restrictions were imposed on the development of civil
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formations, particularly on the development of Palestinian national institutions, suggests a critical capacity to resist and persist. Whether the mode of behavior that produced this capacity can be changed from being defensive and shielding to being embracing and not adverse to risk and experimentation will, in good part, determine the future development of civil society in Gaza. Problems Affecting the Development of Associational Life and Civil Society Despite the achievements of associational life in Gaza, imposed restrictions have been formidable, defining, and need to be understood not only in terms of the practical obstacles they have created for the development of civil formations but also in terms of the attitudes and modes of thinking to which they have given rise. The project of nurturing civil society in Gaza must take account of the social psychology (or political culture) that is the legacy of Gaza’s tragic history. There are three key factors restricting the development of civil institutions in the Gaza Strip: Israeli occupation policy, Palestinian political culture, and the peculiarities of Gaza’s experience of political development. Only the most important points relevant to these factors will be examined. Israeli Occupation Policy and the Negation of Institutional Development Israeli military rule in the Gaza Strip has been guided by the need to control the Palestinian population and destroy its national identity, which it has attempted to do through the imposition of a repressive state apparatus. The distinguishing feature of Israeli occupation and one reason it has been so fiercely opposed by Palestinians is its continued expropriation of Palestinian land. As such, the Israeli authority quickly established itself as illegitimate and unreformable in the eyes of the population, and could never command any popular support for the status quo it eventually imposed. From the beginning of Israeli rule, therefore, a serious split occurred between authority and society in Gaza, precluding any shared space between them, an essential component of civil society. The few attempts
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at creating such a shared space (that is, support for specific families and groups with pro-Jordanian leanings, or the village league system34) were seen by the people as traitorous and collaborationist and they failed. The authority was an adversary and was obeyed only because it was powerful and feared. Consequently, Gaza has lacked a legitimate public sphere where civility, or what Edward Shils calls “concern for the good of the entire society,”35 was seldom if ever visible, let alone practiced. In response, Gazans withdrew to the private sphere, to the family and the clan, arguably the only Palestinian institutions that, prior to the Intifada, successfully withstood the dislocating effects of the occupation. This withdrawal was most pronounced among refugees. As such, the family provided a key form of identity, as well as the security, stability, predictability and accountability that were otherwise lacking in society. Yet, even the family was not truly autonomous because of its extreme dependence on the occupier and other foreign agencies for economic support. Gazans also turned to political institutions that challenged the tribe as an organizing and mediatory formation; however, political groups were underground and clandestine and subject to the greatest repression. Israeli military law is based on the limitation and denial of rights be they individual or community, social, economic, financial, political, legal, or civil. Both the occupier and the occupied understand this. It is one of few understandings they share. Hence, under such conditions and with few if any resources at their disposal, civil formations in Gaza could not constitute enclaves of independence and democracy as is required in civil society, but only enclaves of resistance. This resistance, in turn, was based on an ethos of survival. The imperative was to remain steadfast against occupation, to resist all attempts by the occupier to dispossess, expropriate and destroy, and helping (not empowering) society to preserve what it could. Both the PLO and a host of Arab and non-Arab donors financially supported the survivalist approach. However, while the survivalist-resistance mode sustained Palestinian identity, it was largely incapable of creating institutional alternatives to a repressive authority on the one hand, and to the family on the other. Therefore, efforts to articulate a political, economic, or social program beyond survival and resistance, as Palestinian grass-roots institutions and mass-based organizations attempted to do in the 1980s, met with
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limited success, especially in Gaza, their achievements notwithstanding. By devoting their total energy to fighting the occupation, Palestinians effectively suppressed all forms of debate on other aspects of their existence, including their cultural life and social development. While the Intifada and its early successes in the sphere of organizational work and institution-building constituted a new, more activist phase in the Palestinian struggle against Israeli rule and a new attempt to reduce Palestinian dependence on the Israeli infrastructure, the uprising failed in its objectives not only because Israel was strong, but because the Palestinians were weak. Among other problems, they lacked defined and concrete goals and a coherent strategy that could look beyond expelling the occupier. More importantly, Palestinians lacked the institutional base required to carry out and sustain the sort of societal change they were seeking. Civil society is about institutions, values and civility. It requires a distinctive and differentiated set of institutions able to perform a range of tasks that will insure its autonomy and vibrancy. And it is precisely in the area of Palestinian institutional development that Israeli policy has been deliberately and wholly damaging. The military authorities have consistently tried to repress any form of organized activity in Palestinian society. Official restrictions have had a particularly deleterious impact on institutional development in the Gaza Strip. These restrictions have made it difficult for institutions of all kinds to function, let alone function with any degree of autonomy, beyond the reach of the occupier. Restrictions are codified in military law and have been invoked by the government to justify a variety of measures: refusing to register institutions (notably economic institutions), deposing institutional leadership, prohibiting elections, restricting membership, outlawing entire classes of institutions, blocking funding, and appropriating and destroying institutional property.36 Any institution, furthermore, could be closed by military order for any reason at any time. Israeli policy also controlled even the most mundane aspects of institutional life. Institutions, for example, had to obtain permission to hold a meeting if it was to consist of three persons or more. Permissions and licenses were also required for any new program or activity, for physical expansion and for personnel changes. Often, official permission was denied or left unanswered, forcing Palestinians
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to act without Israeli approval, thereby increasing their vulnerability to government interference.37 One example of institutional decline in Gaza is municipal government. Prior to 1967, Gaza’s four municipalities had authority over a variety of areas including planning, zoning, granting building permits, water usage and allocation, electricity usage and allocation, sewage disposal, public markets, public transportation, public health institutions, budget, expenditure of public funds, and town property and its supervision. Since 1967 and until the initial phase of the formal implementation of autonomy in May 1994, the legislative and executive powers of the municipalities had been assumed almost entirely by the Israeli military government, seriously eroding municipal power and subjecting municipal function to the approval of the Israeli authorities. Typically, municipalities had to obtain approval for their budgets, for changes in their by-laws, and for zoning, planning and licensing decisions. Building permits were also subject to Israeli approval as was the purchase of spare parts for electrical generators. It was not unusual for the military government to withhold financial support and deny licenses and permits. Moreover, municipal plans approved by the authorities were subject to nullification by military decree at any time. Often, official decision-making was balanced against the priorities of Israeli settlement activity in the Strip. Military law also suspended municipal elections, last held in Gaza in 1946. Mayors and municipal councils were all appointed by the Israeli authorities. In 1982, Gaza’s Mayor al-Shawwa and the municipal council were fired when they refused to cooperate with the newly installed civil administration. For the next twelve years, the Gaza municipality was under the direct control of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, removing what buffer existed between residents and the military government. Understandably, therefore, Gazans never had any civic attachments to public institutions nor could they possibly identify with them, even those staffed largely by Palestinians (this also includes government hospitals and schools, and UNRWA facilities) because they were perceived as part of the authority structure, alien and foreign, and operating in the interests and at the behest of the occupier. Civic life was further constricted since Palestinian civil servants were prohibited from working with their counterparts in the private sector, let alone in Israel, a restriction that applied to all areas of endeavor. In this way, the
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Israeli military authorities aimed not only to restrict participation in the running of public affairs but to retard the development of indigenous national institutions that could fill the resulting void. Over the long term, institutional growth depended on factors over which Palestinians have never had any control: land, zoning and water to establish needed physical infrastructure; development of an economic and legal infrastructure supportive of institutional growth across sectors, and educational, training and research programs needed to produce a qualified cadre of managers and administrators. While this situation created enormous difficulties for Palestinians and provided Israel with mechanisms through which to control Palestinian society, it also and perhaps most importantly destroyed the ability of Palestinians “to implement plans, coordinate the development of their communities, and establish or maintain civic institutions required for eventual self government.”38 Hence, in Gaza, there were, in effect, no “intermediate” institutions to occupy the political space between family and authority; that is, none that could mediate between the two. Indeed, any attempt to do so would have been seen by Palestinians as illegitimate. By legally restricting the development of institutions and the skills and attitudes needed to sustain and expand them, Israeli policy contributed directly to the weakening of civil society in Gaza. Palestinian Political Culture and the Development of Local Institutions Institutional development among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories has been dominated and obstructed by factionalism and tribalism.39 The factional component refers to the political affiliation of a given faction (that is, Fateh, the PFLP, Hamas) while the tribal component refers to family affiliation or loyalty (that is, al-Shawwa, ‘Abu Middain, ‘Abu Rahme). (The former is by far the more pronounced of the two and will be given emphasis.) There is also a third factor that is relevant for this discussion: locale (that is, Gaza, Jerusalem, Hebron). The factional basis of indigenous formations has a relatively long history and is most visible in the development of mass-based and grass-roots voluntary organizations over a decade ago. The various services offered by these organizations originated with the desire to
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win the Palestinian “street.” However, what followed, over time, was a mushrooming of institutions—health clinics, schools, nurseries, women’s cooperatives—organized along factional lines, that were competing, uncoordinated and operationally isolated. In the health sector, for example, different factions would set up their own clinics. Services were unnecessarily and wastefully duplicated, and their quality varied greatly from one political group to another, depending upon their funding as well as the competence of officials. The situation evolved into one where professional services were being used politically to serve internal factional interests. Although it is difficult to obtain documented material on which clinics were the most successful, popular consensus is that those health clinics run by the Communist Party and the Islamists were the best in terms of their ability to deliver quality services efficiently and consistently. In Gaza, the factional component assumed onerous dimensions in the period following the end of the Gulf War. Economic conditions became acute—hunger was a growing problem— and the prospects for a political settlement of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict appeared dim. As economic resources and political possibilities evaporated in Gaza, institutions were seen as the only source of power or influence within the community, and as such became a primary political battleground for factional rivals. Unlike the West Bank, where political activists have more avenues of expression and therefore more room to maneuver outside the framework of political formations, in the more geographically isolated Gaza, activists are far more confined in movement and restricted in choice. Factional power plays affected institutions across a variety of sectors: health and educational organizations, professional associations, trade unions and charitable societies. Factions fought to control existing institutions and competed over the creation of new ones. Acquiring control over established institutions was often achieved through intimidation and coercion. Typically, a given faction would approach the head of an institution and demand employment for factional members. If such demands were refused, personal threats to the organizational head and his or her family would sometimes ensue. In some instances, factions would damage property belonging to the targeted institution. In other cases, local elections of officers and board members were fixed, either through intimidation or bribery. In one of many examples, the director of one prominent and highly
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respected health institution in Gaza (who may not be identified) was approached by a political group, which demanded that he hire several of its members. Personal threats were used to coerce him. As a result, he was forced to pay salaries to a number of untrained, unproductive individuals, in turn reducing the level of institutional services he could then provide. The Israeli-imposed closure of the Gaza Strip in March 1993 further intensified the political struggle over institutions since the level of economic desperation and the concomitant need to find employment were that much greater. Despite the formal implementation of limited self-rule, however, Prime Minister Rabin stated publicly that the March closure will remain the basic reality during the interim period. Prior to the Oslo Accords, competition over the establishment of new institutions became intense and resulted in a mushrooming of institutions with very limited service capacities. With PLO permission, factions scrambled to establish new institutions with no apparent purpose other than a political one. Once formed, each institution would compete, often viciously, over funding, destroying whatever vestige of cooperation remained from the earlier days of the uprising. Funds were solicited not only from the PLO and its factional leaders, but from an unprecedented number of foreign donors anxious to work in the Occupied Territories. Not wishing to alienate any one political camp or appear biased, donors would sometimes give funds to all factions regardless of institutional viability. No doubt, the increasing availability of foreign monies intensified factional rivalries and the scramble to establish a local power base through greater institutional control. This points to the fact that capitalizing certain kinds of activities is not the same as institutionalizing them. The dynamics described do not bode well for the future development of civil society. Emerging objectives have shifted from building Palestinian society to controlling what is left within it. As institutions become more and more aligned with individual factions, their decisions become motivated by considerations that are political not professional. The result is a near-total lack of institutional coordination and no prioritization of needs according to any commonly defined criteria. The fact that Fateh is now the dominant party in the new Palestinian government has not changed the problem but has reinforced it (see below). The continued segmentation of institutional activities along
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political lines reduces the possibility for creating viable institutions and civil formations.40 All too often, individual institutions and persons benefit at the expense of systemic change. In this way, associational life can represent not the realization but the erosion of civil society. If there is a group which has benefited from the widening schisms and factional hegemonies within Gazan society, it is the Islamic Resistance Movement or Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyyah). The success of the Islamists has little to do with their ideological or political appeal, which is arguably quite limited and generally rejected in Gaza, and far more to do with their singular ability to act and be seen as the singular force able to resist the occupation and provide critically needed services and organize community activities in a way no other group has. Despite the formal implementation of limited self-rule and the political domination of Fateh, the social influence of the Islamists on the street remains seemingly unchallenged. Hamas has a strong history of social service work and has developed the institutional network to support that work. The Islamists were the ones to establish zakat (alms) committees throughout the Strip, to which every Muslim is expected to donate a certain percentage of personal income for the poor and needy (this is becoming increasingly difficult as more and more Gazans suffer economic hardship). In addition, Islamic charitable societies have been established in some of Gaza’s refugee camps; there is one Islamic school, and at least two institutions dedicated to the study of the Qur’an. One of Gaza’s two institutions of higher learning, Gaza Islamic University, is run by Hamas. While Islamist organizations are limited in number compared with other institutional categories, they are structured, well-organized and often more highly institutionalized than some of their secular counterparts. Their ability to deliver services is therefore greater. Hence, the Islamists are trusted by the poor, Gaza’s overwhelming majority, to keep their promises and are perceived to be less corrupt and subject to patronage than their secular, nationalist counterparts, especially Fateh. The degree to which Islamists and their institutions are socially and politically incorporated and integrated into Gaza’s associational infrastructure will in large part shape the character and development of its civil society. Hamas has continued to work with two important groups in Gazan society, other factions effectively abandoned: the youth and the merchant
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class. At a time when other political factions gave up working with Gaza’s many youth clubs, Hamas remained active and successfully built a power base from within these clubs and within other youth-centered organizations. Indeed, the Islamists worked at building and sustaining institutions at a time when other groups were doing just the opposite. Given the fact that almost 70 per cent of Gaza’s population is 24 years old and younger, the Islamist initiative has not gone unnoticed.41 The same institution-building approach was also attempted with local merchants. Many commercial connections are made in Gaza’s mosques, which Hamas totally controls. At one point, the Islamists were trying to initiate a credit program for small businesses although it is unclear how successful it has been. One reason for the appeal of the Islamists is that unlike other political groups, they seem to understand the importance of viable institutions, that is, institutions that can deliver services well and consistently. And, it is this understanding that has allowed the movement to methodically build a social base among various sectors of Gazan society.42 Another important cultural component of Palestinian society affecting the development of civil formations is the geographic or parochial one. Many of the societal differences between the West Bank and Gaza Strip and their relevance for associational life in each area have already been described. What has not been discussed, however, is the relations between the two societies, and how they affect the quality of Gaza’s civil formations. Historically, West Bankers and Gazans have suffered from a clear psychological divide. The former have always looked down upon the latter as their poor and unsophisticated cousins. This condescension has been felt in Gaza and has been the source of ongoing dislike between the two populations. During the early years of the Intifada, these differences were submerged, but in light of economic and political conditions that have left Gaza far more impoverished and oppressed, and the center of political attention, old differences have reemerged. West Bank–Gaza tensions are pronounced over the control and allocation of financial resources. Foreign assistance enters the Gaza Strip through Jerusalem, where economic and financial decisions affecting the Strip have traditionally been made. Given their weaker experience with institutional development, Gazans have had and continue to have comparatively limited input into decisions affecting
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their community and its very unique problems—problems West Bankers have made decidedly little effort to understand. Gazans not only resent Jerusalem’s unwillingness to cede full control over allocated resources, but are consistently frustrated by the discriminatory allocation of those resources given Gaza’s more extreme need.43 Hence, it has not been possible to speak of cooperation or integration with West Bank institutions, and the resulting isolation of activity has had a direct impact on institutional development in Gaza. One example of existing tensions was the closure in 1992 of the Gaza branch of an Arab research institution headquartered in East Jerusalem. The problems began when the Gaza office applied to the military government for a permit allowing it to be legally registered as a branch of the parent institution. This change in status would have enabled the Gaza office to receive funds directly rather than via its Jerusalem parent. After learning of this application, the parent office telephoned Gaza’s military governor asking him to refuse the permit, a request the governor was surprised to receive. The governor denied the permit, and the Gaza office remained closed for nearly two years.44 This example, although atypical, raises questions about the quality of associational life and the construction of a civil and tolerant Palestinian society. The Gazan Experience and the Growth of Civil Formations The development of civil formations in Gaza also reflects the way Gazans view their social, economic, political and natural environment. The cultural constructs that shape and inform the Gazan world-view are among the most intractable problems affecting institution-building and the consolidation of a civil society in the Gaza Strip, because they are attitudinal and psychological and therefore much harder to change. These problems are commonly overlooked because they are considered difficult and embarrassing, but they are critical. Gazans (and West Bankers) have a long tradition of hating foreign rule. Authority and the law are both defined in negative, often pernicious, terms since they are associated with repression not freedom. Authority and law are neither trusted nor respected; they are there to be defied. Not only do they lack legitimacy, they cannot acquire it. Hence, Gazans instinctively oppose authority and law and try in whatever ways possible to subvert them. In the early years of Israel’s occupation this
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subversion took the form of political violence. Between 1969 and 1971, the Gaza Strip was the setting for many violent military confrontations between Palestinian guerrilla fighters and the Israeli Army. In 1971, the Israeli Defense Forces, under the command of Ariel Sharon, entered Gaza and extinguished all military resistance. Given the absence of other mediatory institutional mechanisms in Gaza, subversion of the system assumed more personal and social dimensions. This is reflected in local attitudes and norms. Perhaps the most troubling and widespread is an ingrained norm of seeking to get away with as much as possible by doing as little as possible. (Fortyfive years of welfare assistance from international donors have only aggravated the problem.) Indeed, if the system is aligned against your interests and well-being, there is no reason to support it and every reason to subvert it. This attitude has been exacerbated by Gaza’s overall impoverishment, continued degradation and greater repression. What has resulted is an apprehensive and distrustful world-view that is fueled by the fact that no one in Gaza has any control over one’s own destiny. People have lived with and internalized a constant sense of crisis and unpredictability in social life and this had produced a kind of undemocratic logic and distorted belief system. One need only look at cultural attitudes toward work to illustrate this point. In Gaza, honest and hard work has seldom been rewarded, has typically achieved little, and has resulted in continued hardship and dependence. Accountability and responsibility in the work process are rare; indeed, within the legal framework of the occupation, they have no real value. Consistent with this mode of thinking, therefore, is an association between achievement and dis-honesty. In an environment so positioned against one, the reasoning goes, wealth or professional success can only occur through deceit and cunning not through solid, sustained effort. As a society, Gazans have never been given any real practical or psychological rights of ownership. Little has belonged to them or has been theirs to manage or control in their own self-defined interest. As the occupied, therefore, Gazans have not been taught to assume responsibility, think creatively, or make decisions. The only exception to this is the family. Allegiance and loyalty, therefore, have remained with traditional institutions. Gaza’s essentially “unmediated traditionalism,”45 to borrow from Daniel Bell, has translated into a
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preference for informal over formal networks, for horizontal ties over vertical client–patron relationships.46 Civil selfhood, therefore, is identified with and oriented to particular-collectivist not universalistindividual definitions of authority. The terms of trust in Gazan society are restricted and private in nature. This problem has rooted itself in, and is one reason for, Gaza’s very weak historical experience with institutional development. Given the norms of Gazan society as described, there is little precedent for, and some would argue, bias against, inter- and intra-group cooperation and coordination. While this problem is not specific to the Gaza Strip, it is most acute there. Many, perhaps most, institutions in Gaza are one-person operations that work in relative isolation, much like the family unit. They depend on and are dominated by one individual who tends, more often than not, to be autocratic and individualistic. The strength of the person directing the institution can depend on a variety of factors: personal integrity, political credibility, fundraising acumen, sheer strength of character and political savvy, or the readiness to take initiative. Group decision-making and collective accountability and control are rare despite the existence of administrative boards and oversight committees. Thus, “in the absence of well-experienced, profound and historic institutional thought, the dominant institutional approach suffers from variation in performance, ability, level of democracy, control, planning, and transfer of responsibility, through training of other possible leaders.”47 For the institution, as for society, the intersection of private interest and public good remain undefined. The Gaza Strip After Oslo: Civility and Tolerance Under Attack48 The early euphoria in Gaza that surrounded the announcement of the September 1993 Israeli–PLO agreement in Oslo was short-lived. The subsequent failure of the Palestinian leadership to address Gaza’s most urgent problems quickly dashed the popular expectations created by the agreement and forced a general reassessment of the peace accord, which many in Gaza found wanting. Gazans saw the PLO leadership embracing an accord they believed to be leading nowhere. People felt abandoned by their own authorities, directionless, and without support. This popular loss of faith in the Palestinian leadership was exacerbated by its behavior inside the Gaza Strip. The PLO began
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pursuing policies that intensified Gaza’s already serious problem with political factionalism and institutional fragmentation. These policies included the appointment of traditional old-guard types who were no longer seen to represent Gaza’s collective interest, itself an attempt to marginalize Fateh’s younger and far less quiescent political activists; the personal appointment by Yasir Arafat of individuals perceived by the community as collaborators with the military authorities; simultaneous and conflicting appointments of different individuals to the same position or task which created tensions and conflicts within the community, and PLO opposition to attempts at self-organization within Gaza, especially to the formation of an organized local leadership. These policies were supported by some in Fateh, Arafat’s party and Gaza’s largest political faction, and rejected by many others as well as by other political factions. This not only produced dissension, disorganization and fracture within Fateh’s ranks, but a perception within the community that these negative developments were deliberately designed by the Palestinian leadership to confuse people and keep them off guard, an approach of divide and conquer. The situation deteriorated so badly that even individuals considered credible by the community became suspect because of their association with the PLO. Tensions and rivalries between factions also increased as a result of the September agreement which changed the political ground on which factions operated. Four out of Gaza’s seven factions opposed the agreement from the beginning: Hamas, the Jihad Islamiyyah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Interfactionally, tensions have been greatest between Fateh and Hamas, although there has been little violence between them. Increasingly, the opposition has tried to position itself as the authentic representative of the people, opposing Fateh, defined as the organ of authority and Israel’s policeman. Intrafactionally, the PFLP and Hamas reported differences with their parent organizations in Damascus and Amman respectively over the party’s role in the future Palestinian government. Will they participate as part of the system or stand outside it? Notwithstanding its oppositional rhetoric, it appears that Hamas is angling for some position within the government.
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With the self-rule agreement, factional hostilities have become more divisive since now there is something tangible (that is, money, position, power) to fight about. Despite the promise of new political and economic orders, factional issues are about power and authority. Factional conflicts are no longer ideological wars of position. They are wars for position. Debate within factions in Gaza is largely about power, not philosophy. Perhaps the only exception is Hamas for whom an ideational system continues to be a mobilizing force. This is one reason why Hamas has experienced the least degree of internal fission and Fateh the most. Hence, factions no longer play an organizing or catalytic role nor are they able to mobilize the population as they did during the Intifada. They are increasingly unable to mediate disputes and they often contribute to them. In a society where institutional recourse has largely been precluded, the loss of an important mediational form at a time of acute social stress and economic hardship is very serious. Given Gaza’s political vacuum and diminishing quality of life, factions are judged largely on their ability to respond to personal and community needs. The only political organization effectively doing so is Hamas, which continues through the best organized social service network in the Gaza Strip to provide many urgently needed services. Since the agreement, perhaps because of it, Gazans question whether a legitimate political authority giving authentic voice to national interests and immediate needs can in fact emerge. People and their institutions also have less commitment to resist, especially since it has grown increasingly unclear who or what should be resisted. So disfigured, resistance has degenerated into violence not against the occupation but against the population. This phenomenon is not political but social in origin and form, and is the direct outgrowth of Gaza’s escalating internal dissolution. Political and social disintegration are closely interrelated—one often follows the other—and share similar causes: gross economic and personal insecurity, and political disengagement. In this respect, Gaza is no exception. The breakdown of political order is one illustration of Gaza’s problem with institutional fragmentation; the breakdown of social order is another. The latter is characterized, in particular, by the loss of critical support structures as seen in the breakdown of the family and school as critical agents of socialization and authority, the
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erosion of social controls provided by the family in particular, and new social divisions, most pronounced between the refugee and nonrefugee communities. The impact has been greatest on Gaza’s young, the overwhelming majority of the population. As a result of many years of uprising, Gazan youth are, to varying degrees of severity, psychologically traumatized. In a 1990 study on children in Gaza, the Gaza Community Mental Health Center (GCMHC) reported that 60 per cent were continuously hyperactive, 22 per cent querulous, 38 per cent easily provoked, 62 per cent fearful of Israeli soldiers, 30 per cent experienced bed-wetting, and 38 per cent preferred to be alone.49 The “children of the stones,” as the Intifada’s youngest activists were called, are not made of stones.50 Children in Gaza long ago left home and school for the streets and prisons of the Intifada. Parents and teachers, unable to protect children from abuse and themselves victims, ceased to exist as authority figures. Indeed, another GCMHC study found that during the Intifada, 85 per cent of Gaza’s children had their homes raided by the Israeli Army, 42 per cent had been beaten, and 55 per cent had witnessed the beating of their fathers.51 In such a context, authority is the oppressor, inherently evil and unchangeable. How will such children—an entire generation—be resocialized, particularly when their identity has been based on what they have been denied? How will they be made ready to redress the problems of a waning civil society when they themselves have contributed to its demise? How can they rebuild their society when they have no real understanding of what it is that needs repair?52 Given the political disorder of the post-agreement period, moreover, this distrust of authority, long restricted to the occupier, has now been extended to the Palestinian leadership as well. One manifestation of this distrust is the division between the political and military wings of factions. The former is usually the domain of the older guard, the latter the domain of the younger. With no shared ideological commitment, these two groups have increasingly little in common except their desire for control. The so-called military wings of factions are, in effect, groups of disaffected young men ranging in age from 15 to 25 years with no jobs, no hope, and often little education. Many have no history of political activism while others are known as mutaradin, the “wanted”, that is, individuals wanted by the Israeli authorities. Many if not most carry guns and as soon as
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one does, he becomes a mutarad, a “wanted” person. All are aligned with factions, albeit nominally, and sometimes individuals will switch factional affiliations depending on how they are treated. They have no defined leaders because they have no organizational structure. They are gangs. The role of the mutaradin has changed in the last two years. During the uprising, the “wanted” existed as an integral part of the political and social system since they reflected its values and espoused its goals. Their role was clear and purposeful and grounded in a society that supported their activities and was committed to their defense The mutaradin were political actors, not gang members. Few carried guns. Their objectives were ideological not personal, and they were engaged in a struggle against the occupation, not against the community. (Indeed, given the constant exigencies of daily life in Gaza, it is amazing that society was able to hold its children in check for as long as it did.) At present, however, the gangs of “wanted” are not motivated by nationalist concerns nor do they especially support the nationalist struggle. Those who join do so not to fight political causes but to gain social prestige. Thus, their activities derive from an internal struggle for control and social standing. Having no popular base of support, the mutaradin can no longer empower themselves in society, so they empower themselves on the street. This phenomenon also can be found in wealthy countries with highly developed civil societies. The reasons for it are similar to those found in Gaza: the breakdown of the family and the failure to provide economic opportunity. In the absence of socializing institutions and learning environments, furthermore, children in Gaza see these gangs as an expression of political power and emulate them. The emergence and growing dominance of the gang phenomenon is a function of the continuing erosion of social control and the institutional fragmentation this reflects. The new Palestinian police force in Gaza has incorporated some gang members and attempted to disarm others but the problem and the reasons for it remain. Political and tribal loyalties continue to be seriously fragmented, weakening the basis of social cohesion in Gaza as never before. The confusion is worse confounded by the continued weakness of traditional support structures—the family, the school,53 the political faction, the community—and the emergence of new social divisions (that is, refugee–indigenous, camp–noncamp)
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that further divide an already atomizing society. The solution, therefore, does not lie in punishing the gangs or in trying to disband them but in addressing the underlying social disintegration that has fueled their formation. The sense of social fracture in Gaza is palpable. Despite a respite from terrorization by the Israeli Army and a return to a more normal life, there is a pronounced turning inward among Gazans, a narrowing of focus on self and family, a circumscription of thought and action. Collective and participatory behavior have little perceived purpose. In essence, the community has withered and withdrawn. The result is not only increased lawlessness and disregard for the rule of law as expressed in the problem of the mutaradin, but the steady decomposition, if not of civil society, of the civil part of society. The Possibility of a More Civil Society in Gaza: A Summary of Key Outcomes The distinguishing feature of civil formations in the Gaza Strip is their opposition to authority and the extant system. Opposition was the basis of their unity and unity the basis of their resistance. The logic of confrontation with a powerful adversary produced defiance but also dependence. Defiance allowed Gaza’s civil formations to persist in an extremely hostile environment and enabled them to maintain a national identity and gain some limited experience with institutionalized practice and collaborative effort. Dependence, however, precluded any autonomous or independent role for local institutional formations. This dependence resulted not only from Israeli-imposed restrictions on institutional development (and on the organization of any intellectual or popular movement), but from the suppression of debate in Palestinian cultural life and social development, an act necessitated by the dominant imperative of fighting the occupation. In this way, people were never free from the validating claims of the community. Strong tribal identities thwarted the emergence of legal, economic and moral identities upon which civil society is envisioned. The role of the individual to the extent he or she existed remained firmly embedded within communal, mostly primordial structures that were also weakened over time. Beyond resisting the occupation, there was no truly shared ideology. As such, Gaza’s civil formations could never
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really develop into transformative institutions, that is, institutions that could command and sustain traditional allegiances and use them to challenge the system of occupation. The mass-based organizations and popular grass-roots committees that were so critical to the uprising in its earlier days were the closest approximation, but under the immense pressures of the occupation and the societal deficiencies described, their transformative efforts were largely unsustainable. Typically, Gaza’s civil structures were small, particularistic, and local in orientation. Great concessions were made to rationality, accountability and pluralism. Few cross-cutting institutions evolved; rather, many institutions assumed a factional face. Moreover, as a political alternative failed to emerge in the wake of a waning Intifada, and economic conditions became acute, factions became oppositional to each other. The lack of cooperation between different groups, as well as Gaza’s socialized propensity to use violence as a form of political mediation, precluded the elaboration of mechanisms of conflict resolution so necessary in civil society. Instead, there was a proliferation of competing and factionalized institutions that did not evolve into formal organizations (structures) but into political strongholds (constituencies). Hence, political organization did not further national identity but deepened existing tribal divisions through ideological polarization.54 Resistance, the connective tissue of Gaza’s civil formations, began to dissolve as well. Gazan society ceased to be the connected sum of its parts but instead became the disconnected parts of that sum. Perhaps the most stunning aspect of society in the Gaza Strip today is the absence of a generalized social trust, a key feature of a functioning civil society. There is little in Gaza that concretizes trust. The weakening of society’s most respected institutions such as the family and the political organization has deepened the problem immeasurably. The beginning of limited self-rule has not changed it. Tragically, after six years of the uprising and the implementation of partial autonomy, the terms of solidarity and mutuality in Gazan society remain unchanged: they continue to be based on a hatred and distrust of authority. The patterns of behavior Gazans learned—to be dependent, subversive, suspicious and weak—have not appreciably changed. (That is, in part, why the peace agreement with Israel and Israel’s recognition of the PLO were initially greeted with such euphoria. They were seen as the
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result of Palestinian assertiveness.) Legitimacy, itself based on civil attachments to the central institutions of a society, still cannot find its root in authority or law. In the social maelstrom that is the Gaza Strip, legitimacy is increasingly derived from the ability to address basic needs. Gaza’s bread riots in July 1994 indicate that here, too, there is continuing failure at the national level. Conclusion: Future Prospects for Civil Society in the Gaza Strip: A Changed Context? Gaza has become an unfriendly society. Its unfriendliness is a product of its internal disorder and inability to correct it. One of the greatest problems facing civil society in Gaza is recreating and maintaining solidarity among disparate social actors, that is, defining the terms for citizenship in the social sense. The beginning of limited self-rule and the establishment of a Palestinian National Authority in the Gaza Strip and Jericho are seen by many as the first and necessary step toward Gaza’s social reconstruction. Perhaps it is. However, the legal context of self-rule and the behavior of the PNA suggest otherwise. The former, as defined by the terms of the agreement signed in Cairo on May 4, 1994, is designed to retain the status quo of occupation. For example, according to these terms, Israeli military law will remain in effect during the interim period and the autonomous areas will remain under the control of the occupation regime.55 Furthermore, the Palestinian Authority has no real power to change the law since Israel retains a veto over all Palestinian legislation.56 Hence, the occupation continues; only its form has changed, and the PNA is there, in effect, to manage it. Under such conditions, what form should resistance assume? Chairman Arafat’s (and hence, the PNA’s) commitment to democratic practice and civil liberties is similarly questionable, given his tactic of fostering divisiveness in order to insure his own indispensibility and thereby secure total control. One illustration of this tactic was Arafat’s unilateral decision in the summer of 1994 to overturn Gaza’s provisional municipal council that enjoyed the support of all political factions, including the Islamists. In its place, he appointed a council more acceptable to himself. Concomitantly, Arafat removed Mansour al-Shawwa, his appointee for mayor of Gaza (al-Shawwa had spent one
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year building the cross-factional support for the municipal council), and appointed Mr. al-Shawwa’s first cousin as the new mayor. This has also created divisive tensions and damaged relations within the al-Shawwa family. The Palestinian National Authority has also engaged in other less publicized but equally troubling policies. Perhaps the most egregious are threats to Palestinian academics, professionals and activists in the Occupied Territories and in the United States who have been openly critical of Mr. Arafat. These threats began soon after the Oslo agreement was signed.57 In the summer of 1994, Arafat also dismissed Nasser Youssef, his appointed chief of security. Prior to Arafat’s return to Gaza, Youssef, a professional soldier, successfully restored some semblance of order and security to the autonomous areas, particularly by disarming the mutaradin. His actions won clear popular approval and he was greatly respected. Arafat apparently objected to Youssef’s policy of disarming people, and, threatened by his growing popularity, removed Youssef from his post.58 Other illustrations of Arafat’s control tactics include: his decision in the summer of 1994 to close the Al-Nahar newspaper, a pro-Jordanian publication popular in the Occupied Territories (when the editor refused, a group of masked men—the mutaradin, perhaps—visited the newspaper’s Jerusalem office and ordered it closed);59 and the subsequent banning of a prominent West Bank Palestinian journalist after he organized a petition urging Arafat to lift the ban on Al-Nahar. The following November, Arafat also canceled the results of the first Fateh elections in the West Bank, held in Ramallah to elect a regional Fateh leadership, when all his candidates were defeated by members of the Fateh opposition. Predicting continued defeat, Arafat ordered the cancellation of similar elections in other cities and towns of the West Bank. Similarly, Arafat is playing on the very pronounced divisions and tensions that now exist between Gaza’s refugee and indigenous communities. After decades of disparity and discrimination, the refugees feel that they are entitled to greater reward than their indigenous counterparts who are seen not to have suffered as deeply or as consistently. This is one of the most ominous social divisions emerging in Gaza. Unlike the West Bank, where there is a strong middle class and many established wealthy families from which to draw
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political support, in Gaza, there is the predominant refugee population, Gaza’s largest social class. As such, they constitute an important source of support and a perceived political lever against future competitors, particularly the Islamists. Arafat has made his bias clear by appointing refugees to a number of important political positions. Furthermore, Arafat has attempted to undermine the autonomy of Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) by pressuring funders such as the European Union to channel all NGO financing through PNA or Fateh-based institutions. This pressure began before September 1993 and has continued since. In effect, this has allowed Fateh to cut off critically needed funding to a variety of NGOs, including the very important Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, which is experiencing a financial crisis as a result. Hence, is there any reason to believe that a Palestinian government will make itself more accessible to the sometime involvement of the people, as a legitimate state authority is expected to do in its relations with civil society? Perhaps more importantly, within the structure and terms of the autonomy agreement, how much freedom does the PNA actually have to do what is needed to build a genuine Palestinian civil society, assuming of course that it is trying to do so? For their part, Gazans must confront and address other challenges if they are to make their society more civil. They must acknowledge their own dependency on the outside world and their self-indulgent image of themselves as victim. They must confront their own cycle of violence and oppression, their lack of law abidingness, their conflict between secular and religious identity, and the erosion of their national identity. They must deal with the fact that authoritarian and oppressive disciplines continue to be practiced within the family, the community and institutions, including political institutions. They must address an intellectual life that is weak and a cultural life that is poor. They must confront the continued oppression of their women.60 Indeed, if the highly prized pluralism of civil society exists in Gaza, it is the plurality of oppressions. In Gaza it is still not possible to live an ordinary life, a feature of Walzer’s civil society, or to recognize that the good life is in the details, as he suggests.61 To do so presupposes an ethical vision of social life upon which ordinary lives and prosaic details can be built. In Gaza, this vision is blurred. Even now, in the post-Oslo period, people are still
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unsure of what they see or whether they want to see it. When Arafat entered Gaza for the first time in almost three decades, many of the people who had lined the streets to cheer him later claimed never to have seen him. There were even rumors that Abu Jihad, the slain PLO leader, was still alive. This behavior, while strange, is an expression of society’s profound desperation and panic. What it signifies is that Gazans are fearful of relinquishing their symbols for a flesh-and-blood reality with which they are ill-equipped to deal. Gazans greatly fear the imposition of another repressive regime—this time Palestinian. Many increasingly see a connection between emerging Palestinian authoritarianism and Israel’s security-led interpretation of autonomy.62 Gazans say they will resist. But how? What mechanisms of social and political mediation, other than violence, do Gazans really have at their disposal? Put differently, what does it mean to be an autonomous, socially engaged person in Gaza today, in an environment characterized by continuing occupation, waning security, warring factions, a moribund economy, diminishing water and land, a traumatized population and an uneducated generation of children? Tragically for Gaza, the possibility of civil unrest appears greater than the capacity of civil society to address it.
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12 Beyond Hamas: Islamic Activism in the Gaza Strip*
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HE DANGERS ARISING OUT OF Islamic “fundamentalism” in the Gaza Strip and West Bank are there for everyone to see: suicide bombings, the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers, and a commitment to continue armed struggle against Israeli occupation despite the signing of the Oslo Accord. This “fundamentalist terrorism”1 as Amos Perlmutter calls it, has led to the idea that Islam and the West are somehow irreconcilably opposed to each other, resulting in what Samuel Huntington refers to as the “clash of civilizations,” two airtight, homogeneous entities lacking permeability, diversity, or nuance. Nothing could be more misleading or wrong. In the Gaza Strip, where the Islamic movement is over four decades old, Islamic activism is varied and complex, with a long tradition of social and charitable work in the Palestinian community that long pre-dates the emergence of political Islam. Throughout, the work of the Islamic movement has been implemented through Islamic institutions engaged in the provision of social and economic services. Among the best known are the zakat (almsgiving) committees to which every Muslim is obligated to contribute; the revenues they collect are spent on a range of social services for the needy. The awqaf (religious endowments), another wellestablished Islamic institution, account for 10 per cent of all real estate in the Gaza Strip including hundreds of shops, apartments and public buildings, which are rented out. In addition, the awqaf own 2,000
* Originally published in Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, Volume 2, Number 1, Fall 1995, pp. 1–39. 160
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acres of agricultural land, portions of which are leased to farmers, and employ many people ranging from preachers to grave diggers.2 These Islamic institutions are among the oldest, best structured, and most effective in the territory, promoting moderation and stability, not violence and disorder. They need to be distinguished from Islamic political and military organizations such as the often-mentioned Hamas (itself more diverse than portrayed). Despite the disproportionate attention paid to the rise of political and militant Islam among Palestinians, the strength of the Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip does not now reside in the work of Islamic political and military institutions but in the work of their social and economic counterparts.3 Given Gaza’s rapidly diminishing economy and fractured civil society, Islamic social service and community development work have assumed new significance in the post-Oslo period. Hamas may arguably be the Islamic movement’s least important arm, especially now. The power of Islamic militants and the threat of a radical Islamic takeover in Gaza been consistently and grotesquely exaggerated by Western governments and media; political Islam and its military wing in particular have never been less popular than they are today.4 Islamic social and economic institutions, however, are now under serious threat. In the 18 months since Yasir Arafat came to power, he has been under considerable pressure from Israel and the United States to deal with radical Islamic groups, notably Hamas, the largest of the Islamic political factions in Gaza. To respond, his strategy seems to have been to divide the political from the military wings of Hamas; weaken and possibly co-opt the political wing and eradicate the military wing, and attack and undermine those Islamic institutions, including universities and charitable societies, that he regards as sources of radicalism.5 This last component represents an official change in policy; earlier Arafat practiced almost total noninterference in the affairs of Islamic social and economic organizations.6 Unlike attacks against the political and military leadership of the Islamic movement by the Palestinian Authority, which growing numbers of Gazans no longer oppose, an attack against mainstream Islamic social and economic institutions will not be easily tolerated. Popular opposition to such state-sponsored attacks could be widespread, fueled by those who either depend upon the services the Islamic movement provides or who perceive their work as crucial. Most critically, given the
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religious nature of Islamic institutions, any move against them will be perceived as an attack against Islam itself. The mass base of the Islamic movement in Gaza, as opposed to its political and military leadership, is neither ideological nor radical. If Arafat’s policy is implemented, however, the results could lead to greater fragmentation and disunity. The consistent representation of all members and supporters of Gaza’s Islamic movement as radical militants and of Islamism as monolithically subversive and terroristic is a serious and dangerous distortion of reality. In Gaza, as elsewhere in the Arab world, the relationship between Islamic institutions in the social-economic sphere and the politicalmilitary sphere is not nearly as routine or ineluctable as believed. Despite certain cross-cutting ties of membership and affiliation between the two, there are important differences among those individuals who belong to the Islamic movement, especially with regard to the work they do, the clientele they serve, and the beliefs they hold. Can an automatic and unqualified political role be attributed to Islamic societies in Gaza as part of a feared Islamic design for seizing political power as argued by Israel, and more recently by the United States (for example, President Clinton’s executive order making it illegal to donate to Hamas and “its” charities)? Upon closer examination, preliminary research strongly suggests the following: Islamic societies and social service institutions in the Gaza Strip are forces of order and stability that shun dramatic change; they are less dogmatically “Islamic” than is often assumed (this is particularly true of “Islamic” businesses), and their clientele are people who belong to very different social classes with a wide range of political outlooks who have never acted collectively in support of radical Islam. Finally, since the end of the Palestinian Intifada, and in the course of the social and economic disintegration that has followed the implementation of the September 1993 Oslo Accord, the balance of power between the institutional forces of political and social Islam appear to have slowly shifted in favor of the latter, particularly at the grass-roots level where the majority of people interact with the movement and where need is most acute. Features of the Palestinian Islamic Movement “Islamism” is generally defined as the political expression of the Islamic movement. An Islamist is usually defined as a devout Muslim who seeks
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the establishment of an Islamic state, a political and social order based upon the Qur’an (that is, the shari’a) and the Sunnah, that makes no distinction between religion and state (din wa-dawlah).7 Here, however, we will use “Islamism” to describe an Islamic movement that is not only political but social and economic as well, and an Islamist as anyone belonging to such an Islamic institution. Contrary to Western notions of a universal Islamic conspiracy, or an Islamic Comintern as it were, Islamism is not a monolithic phenomenon but is very much context-specific. Its particular manifestations are socially rooted, shaped by historical forces and political conditions that produce differing approaches to political reform, socioeconomic change and religious practice. Palestinian Islamism shares some characteristics with Islamic movements elsewhere in the Third World in that it arose in response to a specific set of socioeconomic and political conditions generated by nearly three decades of Israeli military occupation that has left the Gaza Strip economically impoverished and de-developed,8 and socially and politically fragmented.9 The resulting dislocations have produced frustrated hopes, low achievement, personal alienation and continued powerlessness. The consistent inability to challenge, let alone defeat, the occupiers, even during the Intifada, led to calls among a disillusioned segment for religio-cultural authenticity (that is, religion as politics), for a strategy of turning social defeat into moral victory,10 where inclusion was guaranteed and control assured. Unlike other Islamic movements that have emerged in the postcolonial, post-independent state, Palestinian Islamism evolved in the absence of a sovereign Palestinian entity. The “transition from ummah to State,”11 difficult and forced though it was for the modern nations of the Arab world, has not yet occurred at all in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The hegemonic system imposed by Israel did not disappear with the implementation of limited self-rule, an amorphous and constrained political arrangement to say the least, and the installation of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip. Diminished expectations and unfulfilled promises continue to shape attitudes in Gazan society in the post-Oslo period, but these attitudes appear to be fueled by some altogether new realities that may have important implications for the role and appeal of the Islamic movement overall. First, while the existence of an independent national state does not in itself guarantee democratic practice and the possibility
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of political inclusion, it is a necessary precondition for them. Yet, for growing numbers in Gaza, the possibility of establishing a national state and the institutions required to support it seems as remote as ever since the new order in Gaza appears so painfully similar to the old one. The sense of shock and betrayal among people is palpable. Second, before the implementation of the Oslo Accord, the distinction between the ruler and the ruled, between the occupier and those occupied, was clear to everyone. After Oslo, the distinction became blurred. To which category does the Palestinian Authority belong? To Israel, it remains among the ruled; to Palestinians, it is another ruler. In this context, who or what is being opposed? What forms should (and can) this opposition take? Third, the political culture of Gaza is characterized by the striking absence of nationalist ideology, a reality without precedent. The Palestinian Authority is increasingly seen as corrupt and inefficient, and its interests as lying in securing political control at the cost of national liberation.12 In the absence of a unifying secular political ideology, nationalism has lost much of its meaning and possibly some of its appeal. It is no longer measured by support for Palestinian selfdetermination or statehood, but for an expanding security apparatus and patronage structure with little political legitimacy. By contrast, support for Islam (but not necessarily for political Islam, which also suffers from weakening political legitimacy despite its oppositional stance) is support for family, community, morality and order. This is extremely important in a situation of acute economic deprivation, social fragmentation and psychological confusion. Fourth, with the beginning of limited autonomy, new (sub)-categories of exclusion have been introduced into the Palestinian community for the first time. As long as Israel ruled directly over Gaza, almost everyone in the Palestinian community was the victim of exclusion. Today, under the security system and patronage structure created by Yasir Arafat, some Palestinian groups greatly and clearly benefit over others. The excluded comprise not only Islamists but many people who depend upon them for support, people with no access to the system’s resources because they are poor and demobilized. Gaza’s everwidening social divisions attest to the exclusionary process, which is most keenly felt at the individual and community level, where Islamic institutions operate.
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In the Gaza Strip, the key Islamic groups are the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun), the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) or Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad al-Islami),13 which collectively represent Islamic social, economic, political and military institutions.14 The political revival of Islamic forces in the Gaza Strip and West Bank began with the Intifada and the organization of Hamas, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Before that, the Brotherhood, whose formal inauguration in Palestine took place in Jerusalem in October 1945, dominated the Palestinian Islamic movement. Although the Brotherhood did have a clear political position vis-à-vis the Palestine question, its activities were mainly dedicated to advancing Islamic socio-morality rather than political reform.15 Between 1948 and 1967, the Brotherhood in Gaza and the West Bank, linked to their parent organizations in Egypt and Jordan respectively, promoted their social and religious agenda through a growing but decentralized network of charitable associations, religious schools, youth and sports clubs, nursery schools and kindergartens. After the 1967 Arab–Israeli war and the start of Israeli occupation, the Brotherhood continued to pursue its program of Islamic resocialization despite a changed political environment in which active resistance and national liberation were the dominant trends.16 The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in the nationalist resistance movement limited its development as a popular force, despite the importance of its social programs. The Brothers were not part of the armed struggle against the occupation that peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this cost them many supporters, who joined the secular nationalist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its largest faction, Fateh, instead.17 In the course of the 1970s, however, three events occurred that strengthened the Brotherhood’s position in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. First, in 1973, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, a Muslim Brother who later became a dominant figure in Hamas, established the Islamic Center (al-Mujamma‘ al-Islami) in Gaza, which centralized and coordinated the activities of all Brotherhood organizations and institutions.18 Second, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood underwent a structural reorganization in which the Gaza, West Bank and Jordanian branches were merged into a single entity based in Jordan.19 Third, the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, coupled with the PLO’s continued failure to end the occupation, renewed
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popular interest in the Islamic movement, which the Brotherhood exploited through heightened political attacks against the forces of secular nationalism.20 The Brotherhood’s anti-PLO stance allowed it to operate relatively unencumbered by the Israeli authorities, who were trying to eliminate those Palestinian organizations involved in armed resistance. This enabled the Brotherhood to expand its institutional and organizational network and continue its work at the grass-roots level. With funds from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the Islamic movement built orphanages, health clinics and libraries, which further strengthened its impressive social service infrastructure. The Brotherhood was also able to spread its influence through its increasing control of the awqaf and the mosque; by 1986, the Ikhwan controlled 40 per cent of Gaza’s mosques.21 The lack of involvement of the Muslim Brothers in fighting an increasingly repressive occupation frustrated many of its members. Some left it altogether and in 1980 formed the Islamic Jihad, under the influence of militant Islamic groups that had formed in the ranks of the Egyptian Brotherhood in the mid-1970s.22 The founders of the Islamic Jihad, like their counterparts in the Brotherhood, believed in reforming society according to Islamic principles and in establishing an Islamic state, but rejected the notion that the Islamicization of society must precede political action. To the contrary, the Islamic Jihad advocated armed struggle against the occupier as its first priority. The Islamic Jihad is an elite military strike force comprised of several cells; it has sought to remain small and underground, and therefore difficult to infiltrate.23 Unlike the Brotherhood, it is not interested in building visible institutions and a broad popular base of support, for to do so would constrain its operational capabilities.24 During the 1980s, the Islamic Jihad conducted many spectacular military operations, some in conjunction with Fateh, in Gaza and the West Bank.25 It was never as large or influential as the Muslim Brotherhood, but the Jihad contributed greatly to the psychological preparation for the uprising,26 though Israel’s successful campaign against Jihad cells led to declining political influence in the territories. The outbreak of the Intifada was a turning point. It became very clear that the Muslim Brotherhood could no longer avoid direct political involvement in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict if it was to maintain and expand its mass base. The strength of the secular nationalist
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forces and the growing popularity of the tiny but more militant Jihad threatened to marginalize the Brotherhood and rob it of what little political legitimacy it had. The leadership therefore had to find a way of participating in the uprising without placing at risk the vast social infrastructure it had worked for four decades to create. The result was the formation of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.27 Hamas played an active role in the Intifada and for a time challenged the PLO as a viable political and military force, second to Fateh, with the power to win local elections, call strikes, organize demonstrations and conduct armed actions. Its filial link to the Muslim Brotherhood not only gave the parent organization the legitimacy it needed to operate in a dramatically changed political context, but it invited and attracted supporters who were not Brotherhood members.28 This allowed Hamas to emerge as a political entity and build a following that did not necessarily have the Islamicization of society as its first priority. The movement’s goals, a nationalist position couched in the Islamic idioms, are identified in the Hamas charter, a political manifesto strong in racist polemics and weak in strategic vision. These goals involve fighting and uprooting the occupier through jihad and establishing an Islamic state in Palestine. Not surprisingly, the charter pays far less attention to the Brotherhood’s reformist aims despite the fact that Hamas members in Gaza spent a great deal of time during the early years of the Intifada trying to impose Islamic moral codes on a less than receptive population. Yet, unlike other Islamic political movements, Hamas has consistently demonstrated a greater political pragmatism and flexibility that is often achieved by taking contradictory positions on specific issues, such as its willingness to participate in legislative elections. However, this has allowed Hamas to keep political channels open and widen the political space in which it operates.29 Hamas’s organizational structure is somewhat complex.30 It has a political wing with its own bureaucracy of offices and divisions, and a military wing, the ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The political wing has a reputation for greater moderation than the military, and has participated with some early success in local elections in professional associations, chambers of commerce, student organizations and labor unions. During 1991 and 1992, for example, Hamas captured between one-third and one-half of all votes cast in various local elections in the Occupied Territories.31 Certain Hamas leaders, including Sheikh
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Yasin, have also mentioned the possibility of Hamas’s participation in elections for the Palestinian Council. However, the transition from opposition to accommodation will not be smooth. The Qassam Brigades, who still conduct armed attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets, are radical, militant and highly indoctrinated. They are extremely small in number, no more than a hundred members divided into five or six cells, and are believed to operate independently not only of the political wing32 but of one another. They are subject to no authority except a senior military chief. Since its inception, Hamas has lost many of its political and military cadres through deportation, imprisonment and execution, and this has weakened the organization. In response to the Tel Aviv bus bombing in October 1994, for example, Israel arrested at least 1,500 Hamas activists, followed some months later by a Palestinian Authority crackdown in which several Hamas leaders and 500 Hamas supporters were imprisoned (including Mahmud al-Zahar, Sheikh Ahmad Babar and Sheikh Salama al-Safadi). The July and August 1995 suicide bombings led to the arrest of at least thirty military cadres.33 Hamas’s popularity and strength have been the subject of intense debate and speculation, and, in the final analysis, are impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy in the absence of free elections. What is clear is that Hamas has become a barometer of political discontent, a “nationalist alternative”34 whose popularity (and strength vis-à-vis Fateh) has waxed and waned depending upon political circumstances. When the 1991 Madrid peace talks seemed to falter, for example, public opinion began to favor Hamas. With the signing of the Oslo Accord and the popular expectations that accompanied it, support for Hamas declined rapidly,35 and two years later is still low.36 What also is clear is that Hamas’s legitimacy has been the product of “nationalist activity, and not of a greater receptiveness among a more militant and desperate Palestinian generation to their religious message.”37 Since the Intifada, Hamas has dominated the Islamic movement in the Occupied Territories, overshadowing the Muslim Brotherhood. The relationship between them now is considered by many Arab, Israeli and American observers to be close, diminishing whatever organizational or ideological distinctions may once have existed. Muslim Brotherhood social service institutions are therefore seen to be ipso facto Hamas-
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controlled institutions, which Hamas uses for proselytizing and recruitment. Many officials of Islamic social service organizations reject this supposition. Typical of the predominant view is a description by an Israeli Defense Forces spokesman: Hamas is an organization composed of several interdependent levels. The popular-social base is maintained materially by the charity committees and ideologically through instruction, propaganda and incitement delivered in the mosques and other institutions through leaflets. This base is the source of recruitment of members into the units which engage in riots and popular violence. Those who distinguish themselves in riots and popular violence sooner or later find their way into the military apparatus, which carries out brutal and violent attacks against Israelis and Palestinians alike. [Hamas supporters] enjoy the moral and economic backing of the preachers in the mosques, the directors of Hamas-affiliated institutions, and the charity committees.38
The New York Times made a similar argument: [I]n the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Palestinian-controlled Gaza, Hamas has another face. Hamas-run schools offer free classes and Hamasrun clinics charge as little as $1 for private visits to a doctor . . . Hamas . . . uses schools . . . to spread the gospel about their jihad, or holy war, and to recruit young suicide bombers with the lure of martyrdom . . . [C]ritics contend that the distinction between Hamas terror and Hamas good works is dubious. Charity . . . helps raise the political stature of a group that promotes terror. And once the money reaches the Middle East, dollars are dollars.39
There can be no question that Hamas works within the framework of Islamic institutions in the Gaza Strip, and that there are certain direct links between Hamas and many of the social and economic institutions created by the Brotherhood. However, it is far more questionable whether an automatic and inevitable link exists between Hamas and Islamic social and economic institutions, whether those links are inherently subversive, or whether such institutions promote radicalism and violence as is commonly assumed. The Post-Oslo Context There are a multitude of Islamic social and economic institutions in the Gaza Strip. In order to understand their role and importance, it is first necessary to understand something about the context in
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which they operate. The most urgent problem facing the Gaza Strip is unemployment, which now approaches 60 per cent. Between December 1987 and April 1995, the number of Gazans working in Israel fell from 80,000–100,000 to no more than 10,000.40 By August 1995, the number of workers had increased slightly, to 16,000. However, in June 1995, the Israeli Defense Forces announced that Palestinian men aged 28–30 would no longer be allowed to work in Israel.41 The resulting decline in employment and economic damage are due to a series of Israeli measures that began during the Intifada, but today the single most damaging Israeli measure is the border closing: since September 1993, Israel has imposed eleven closures on the Gaza Strip, totally eliminating the movement of labor and goods for 200 of the 450 days since the Oslo agreement was signed.42 In the last two years, 20,000 Gazan jobs in Israel were eliminated, costing Gaza’s economy at least $25 million per month in wages and related services, a loss that cannot be recreated domestically. When calculated according to 1987 employment levels, the monthly loss is almost $44 million in wages alone. Gaza’s per capita GNP is now $750, half its 1987 level, and well below the average for all less-developed countries (83 per cent of the world’s population), which stands at $950. Around 12 per cent of Gaza’s population, approximately 102,000 people, now depend on some form of welfare assistance without which they would be destitute. Of this number, 40 per cent or 40,000 people have been newly impoverished since the Oslo agreement was signed. While the Gaza Strip has always been poor, basic survival was seldom a problem. This is now changing as the number of families who cannot adequately feed their children rises daily. In May 1995, for example, a hundred babies in Gaza City and Jabalya refugee camp were suffering from marasmus, an extreme form of malnutrition.43 In Ansar 3, the detention center in the Negev Desert, prisoners smuggle food out to their relatives during family visits.44 This unprecedented hardship has few immediate solutions. Salaries earned in Israel and through employment in the Palestinian Authority are among the few available options. In March 1995, the authority employed close to 40,000 people; nearly half were police and security officials. By August 1995, the number increased to almost 50,000, a marked contrast to the 5,000 formerly employed by the Israeli civil administration. While government salaries are critical to the local economy, their impact on
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it, like that of the wages earned by Gazan workers in Israel, is largely non-productive, and the salaries are often not enough to live on. Furthermore, the costs of running the Palestinian bureaucracy are financed largely by the international donor community, an external and increasingly tenuous source. Some of this donor money goes to support Arafat’s expanding patronage base (in May 1995, for example, he reportedly received $18 million for this purpose), which is difficult to justify when seen against unprecedented unemployment and growing levels of hunger. For some time, Gazan society has been deteriorating, a result of unabated economic dissolution and political repression.45 The erosion of critical support structures such as the extended family, the school, and the political faction, and the traumatization of the society, particularly the young, after six years of the Intifada have weakened and damaged social relations. The emergence of new social divisions and the decline in collective and participatory behavior are seen in the lack of community consensus and the withering away of community action.46 These fractures have only grown worse under limited selfrule. Despite some welcome changes in personal safety and freedom of expression, the arrival of the Palestinian Authority has further impinged upon Gaza’s already troubled civil society by introducing some new dynamics: militarism, institutional disempowerment and increasing alienation and confusion among the population. That Gaza has been associated with violence is indisputable. That this violence is a direct outgrowth of economic decline and social fracture is equally indisputable. The growing number of suicide bombings, an entirely new phenomenon in the Gaza Strip, is perhaps the most horrifying indication of a weakening social order, but others are the rise in domestic violence47 and in the use of firearms. The Palestinian Authority has attempted to control violence by installing a military court system with no independent judiciary or separation of powers and through the overwhelming presence of police and security forces throughout the Gaza Strip. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the militarization trend is the growing and increasingly rapid absorption of Gazan youth—some 500 young men per month—into two wings of the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus. Gaza’s population is overwhelmingly young (70 per cent
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of the population is 24 years of age and younger). By absorbing young men into the security structure, the Palestinian administration is not only asserting control, but creating dependency by providing muchneeded employment for an increasingly vulnerable population. Recruits are also given power, status and identity, something whose importance should not be underestimated in Gaza’s traumatized society. Indeed, there are few role models in Gaza today as visible and powerful as the policeman or the security agent. The process of building the Palestinian governmental bureaucracy and security apparatus has produced patterns with direct implications for local institutional development, historically a weak sector in Gaza. These patterns include low professional standards and poor oversight; the concentration of authority in the person of Yasir Arafat, and the micromanagement of ministries and departments; the proliferation of political appointees to professional positions and the proliferation of positions within ministerial departments, and a crisis-management mode of operation. This has resulted in a weak regulatory system and the virtual absence of organized and reliable systems for the delivery of services. Other implications for institutional development are similarly disturbing. First, given that power is centralized in the president, there is very little real authority among civil servants in any area. Consequently, people are not being trained to make decisions, a problem Palestinians experienced under Israeli rule as well. The only known exception is the security apparatus, to which some independent control has been assigned. Second, there is increasing concern among some local institutional heads that the Palestinian Authority will use their institutions as a channel through which to deliver its system of patronage. Local institutions will then be forced to employ political appointees, which would seriously erode their viability. Third, the Palestinian secret police have already infiltrated certain associations, limiting organizational autonomy. Fourth, the Palestinian Authority has grown increasingly hostile to Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), historically the backbone of economic development and service delivery in the Occupied Territories. In fact, it is currently planning to introduce new NGO legislation based on the Egyptian model that greatly restricts NGO work.48
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The trend toward militarization and the weakening of institutions reflects a breakdown in social relations and in the values that define them. As a result, norms are changing and popular confusion is growing. This dynamic has two manifestations: official disregard and disrespect for the mores and values of Gazan society, and the imposition of new codes of conduct unacceptable to the population. Palestinian officials not only treat Gazans in disrespectful and humiliating ways but behave in a socially unacceptable and highly offensive fashion that is not easily tolerated by Gaza’s very conservative society.49 More and more Gazans attribute to the Palestinian Authority corrupting and perverse changes in the norms and values by which society is increasingly forced to function. The required use of bribes for the delivery of basic services such as filing health insurance claims, applying for government jobs, or obtaining travel permits is an example. Another is the traffic in stolen vehicles, now accepted and widespread. In fact, stolen vehicles, which bear purple and pink license plates, are even driven by many Palestinian officials. People do not know where they are heading on a personal and national level and the resulting alienation is palpable. There is a gradual feeling that the national dream has ended, something Palestinians have never before contemplated. The confusion is compounded by contradictory messages from the Palestinian leadership calling for peace on the one hand and war on the other, which they failed to acknowledge, let alone address. These messages are totally removed from people’s reality, failing to acknowledge, let alone address, the dissolution that is so acutely felt at the personal level. These factors have inflamed tensions between insiders and outsiders, which appears to be the dominant social divide, superseding all others. The disintegration of Gaza’s political order, another critical problem, preceded the Oslo Accord; it was the result of growing inter- and intrafactional competition over increasingly scarce resources. The March 1993 border closing, the first of Israel’s many closures of the Gaza Strip, exacerbated an already acute economic situation, fueling political rivalries and factional tensions. In light of the PLO’s continuing failure to end the occupation, the secular political factions lost their ideational anchors. Consequently, politics, once a central feature of life in Gaza, became largely irrelevant, devoid of any meaning or purpose. Secular nationalist factions could no longer organize and mobilize
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people into action as they had during the Intifada, or mediate class disputes and other social contradictions as they had throughout the occupation. The loss of a mediatory structure at a time of acute social and economic distress significantly weakened the social order. The implementation of the Oslo agreement has done little to reinvigorate the political process. On the contrary, the emergence, in effect, of a Palestinian police state and one-party system opposed to dissent has marked the end of any viable political dialectic capable of commanding and sustaining popular support at the political level. The smaller secular factions have ceased to function, leaving Fateh and Hamas the primary players. Hamas’s political vision is also of limited utility and appeal: the establishment of an Islamic state in Palestine is as irrelevant to, and removed from, popular needs and aspirations as is the presence of 19,000 Palestinian security agents throughout the Gaza Strip. The terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians perpetrated by the Qassam Brigades are tremendously unpopular in Gaza because they accomplish nothing politically and impose greater suffering economically.50 Hence, political life in Gaza is characterized far less by conflicts between Fateh and Hamas over competing political ideologies, as is commonly portrayed, than by the lack of any political ideology whatsoever, let alone one that is shared. The resulting void is filled by bureaucratic power plays, sporadic violence and rising social tensions. Gaza’s political crisis of legitimacy is perhaps only exceeded by an ideological crisis over the social agenda. Where in Gaza can legitimacy as well as coherence, accountability and clarity be found? Increasingly, legitimacy is derived from the organizational or institutional ability to respond to personal and community needs in a manner that preserves social order rather than diminishes it. In this regard, Islamic institutions play a critical role. Characteristics and Services of Islamic Institutions Long before the formation of Hamas, the Ikhwan established a vast social service network in Gaza consisting of charitable and welfare associations, orphanages, nursery schools, kindergartens, religious schools and associations, health clinics, libraries, sports clubs, youth clubs and women’s centers. In the last decade, these institutions have
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continued to grow. Long experience, religious commitment and continued funding have allowed them to become some of the best structured and most effective service-delivery institutions in the Gaza Strip. They are numerous and varied, but their work can best be typified in the programs of the largest members. In the social sector, these institutions include the al-Salah Association, the Islamic Society, the Islamic Committees and the Women’s Islamic Association.51 A common focus are children, especially orphans, and families, especially the families of collaborators (see below). There are between 7,000 and 10,000 orphaned children in the Gaza Strip who receive support from various Islamic associations. Through their many committees and organizational branches in the refugee camps, villages, and towns in the Strip, the Islamic movement is able to identify girls and boys who otherwise might not come to their attention. Orphans include those children who have no parents at all or, in some cases, no father. Typically, individual cases take between 24 hours and two months to review; once approved, an orphaned child will receive 100 new Israeli shekels (NIS) ($33) per month through the age of 16 years. In one Islamic association, checks for NIS 100 were drawn on Israel’s Mercantile Discount Bank.52 Hence, Islamic associations are spending between $2,772,000 and $3,960,000 annually on orphan support. Clothes and basic school supplies (for example, notebooks and pens) are also provided. When needed, food rations are supplied as well. Social workers make periodic follow-up visits to children and become part of their lives. Some Islamic charities have established programs through which overseas sponsors and needy children are connected. Such community outreach is a feature of Islamic social programs that contributes mightily to building trust with the poor. Similar services are provided for approximately 5,000 of Gaza’s neediest families who are ranked and helped according to need. Typically, these include families of martyrs, families of prisoners, families with no breadwinner, and widows. An especially important and more recent focus of Islamic social programs are the wives and children of men killed for collaborating with the Israeli military authorities. Collaborators are reviled by Palestinian society, and many have been killed by Palestinian factions, including Hamas, and their families ostracized. Islamic charities have made a concerted effort to reintegrate these “collaborator” women
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and children into society, not only through the provision of basic relief but by incorporating them into other Islamic-sponsored activities in which the larger community participates. In this way, they are slowly “relegitimized.” Islamic committees work in each of the Gaza Strip’s eight refugee camps, where approximately 35 per cent of the population lives. Each committee has several branches within individual camps and there is some intercamp coordination between committees. In Nuseirat camp, for example, where an estimated 40,000 people live, the Islamic committee has five branches, each with a staff of ten, typically consisting of a director who is a teacher, as well as an administrator, a social worker, a secretary, an accountant and teachers. The Islamic committee runs five kindergartens for 1,200 boys and girls who attend school from 8 to 11 in the morning in classes of 35 to 40 children. Three of the five kindergartens are housed in mosques. The curriculum, which is standardized across all camps, consists of reading and writing in Arabic and English, religion, and recitations from the Qur’an. Any child, regardless of the political beliefs of his or her family, may attend (when the author asked about this the director just laughed). Each family is charged an annual fee of NIS 120 ($40) per child, NIS 170 ($57) with transportation. These fees, which pay for staff and teacher salaries, and toys, are high for impoverished camp residents, but people seem willing to pay them since the kindergartens have a reputation for quality and discipline that others do not. This is also true of the many nurseries, kindergartens and daycare centers run by Islamic organizations outside the camp system to which different social classes, including the wealthy, send their children. Parents interviewed (none devout Muslims) clearly indicated their preference for an Islamic curriculum and the moral teachings of Islam. The parents in Nuseirat camp have requested two more Islamic-run kindergartens be established, while the kindergartens run by the secular political factions in Nuseirat were forced to close due to low enrollments. At present, only one other kindergarten is run by the government. Another reason for the popularity of committee kindergartens may be that parents are involved in the educational process: mothers meet monthly to voice concerns and parents are asked to evaluate teacher performance. When asked by the author how the Islamic committee could improve its educational services to the community, one mother,
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a young woman whose face and body were entirely veiled, responded, “We desperately need daycare facilities. There is one in [the village] of Zaweida but that is not nearly enough. We need toys that will cognitively challenge young children, and we need more computers. We only have one. If our children are going to compete in the 21st century, they must be computer literate.” Job openings for kindergarten teachers are advertised in mosques. Applicants, usually women, must have a high school education and some teacher training. They are interviewed and selected by a committee of professionals. Another feature of committee services is free remedial tutoring after school hours. In Nuseirat camp, one hundred children, in grades 5 through 12, receive tutoring in math and English. Tutors, who are usually but not exclusively camp residents, are teachers in government and UNRWA schools, who volunteer their time to the committee. Some are devout Muslims, some are not. There are no preconditions for volunteering other than qualification and interest. A limited number of Islamic associations both inside and outside the refugee camps also provide computer courses to boys and girls for a nominal fee. Additionally, teenage boys and young men are offered extra-curricular sports (for example, soccer, table tennis) usually in or through the mosques, which include prayer and religious instruction as well. At the time of the author’s visit to Nuseirat camp, a sports center was being built above one mosque. The carpenters, masons and painters working on the center were all volunteers from the camp. Committee staff and volunteers also visit prisoners, the families of martyrs, and the sick on a regular basis. There is a program for blood donation in which teenagers and young adults are encouraged to be donors, and another for the dispensing of free medications to those in need. Islamic charities and associations as a whole run a number of health clinics open to the general public in which free medical care is given to widows and orphans, and comparatively low-cost services to others. The al-Salah Association has also arranged for children with Intifada-related injuries to be treated in France, Germany and the United Kingdom with funds from foreign donors. The Islamic committee in Nuseirat, like its counterparts in other camps, has a number of women’s groups associated with it, and engage in a range of activities centering on the family and women’s
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roles. Programs focus on counseling and training. Typically, camp women are visited in their homes by other women, and are taught about proper health care and nutrition, and counseled in the problems of adolescence. Among the very poor, wives and mothers are taught techniques of better household management such as the recycling of clothing among children, cost-effective food preparation and basic household maintenance. These programs are staffed almost entirely by female volunteers who first learn about them in the mosque, from other participants. The mothers of children in Islamic kindergartens are also invited to become volunteers, and all who accept are given appropriate training. As of March 1995, there were three hundred women volunteers in Nuseirat camp working through the Islamic women’s committees. With this number of volunteers, it is not unreasonable to assume that the Islamic committee may be providing services to almost every household in Nuseirat camp.53 Other women’s associations combine training with religious instruction. The Women’s Islamic Association in Gaza City, for example, offers courses in skills such as knitting, sewing and secretarial work that women can use to earn some income and help their families. A six-month sewing course costs NIS 120 ($40) and a four-month knitting course costs NIS 100 ($33). The poor are exempted from tuition costs. Fees partially cover teacher salaries and other running costs. Between 8 and 25 women participate in the sewing classes and 12 to 15 in the knitting; all come from the poor and lower classes. Women bring their own materials and keep whatever they produce. Sometimes exhibits are held where trainees can sell their goods. Close to four hundred women have participated in various courses in recent years. Activities for men are kept totally separate to secure the reputation and safety of the women. In Gaza’s very traditional and conservative society, the presence or absence of men can alone determine whether a woman will receive vocational training or not. Participants, who must be literate, come from nearby areas and surrounding refugee camps. The director of one branch insisted that market studies are made before courses are offered so that women are trained in areas for which there is sufficient demand. To this end, computer courses are being planned as well. An essential and mandatory part of the program is instruction in Islamic culture, philosophy, law and religion. Qur’anic verses must be memorized, and students must pass an examination in the Qur’an in
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order to graduate. Two classes per week are devoted to these subjects, the purpose of which is to educate women in proper Islamic behavior and the running of an Islamic home. Islamic economic institutions seem to be a relatively new phenomenon in the Gaza Strip. Those willing to be interviewed for a study of them ran small to medium investment companies and small retail businesses (for example, selling clothing, housewares, electrical appliances and groceries).54 The companies are corporatist-like entities engaged primarily in investment. According to company officials, their programs are designed to create new opportunities for profit maximization beyond those currently available in Gaza’s constrained (and un-Islamic) economy, and to channel these opportunities to lower socioeconomic groups who otherwise could not have access to them. Islamic investment companies, like small retailers, practice certain Islamic rules of business. They do not engage in any transactions involving interest, and they set aside a percentage of their profits for zakat. Prayers are held at work, and proper Islamic attire is worn. Beyond these visible expressions of piety, however, Islamic businesses are commercial enterprises and free-market adherents. Islamic investment companies, like their secular counterparts, are often involved in the purchase and sale of land and real estate, a risky but currently profitable endeavor in Gaza City. Profits are not guaranteed and losses may occur although no company has claimed any loss. Some said they broke even, while others boasted profits of between 29 to 43 per cent annually over the last two years, profits that can only occur in a volatile and speculative market. One company, a well-known Islamic enterprise, has four partners (one of whom is Christian). When asked whether women could become partners, one director said they could if they were professionally qualified and observed the shari’a. There are also 16 full- and parttime employees. In 1993, the company started with a working capital of $320,000, to which all the partners contributed; two years later, the working capital had grown to $1.6 million. The minimum investment is $1,000 and the maximum $60,000. The average investment is $3,000– 5,000, so there are many small investors. According to company officials, the majority of small investments come from women, who typically sell their gold jewelry (their only asset in most cases) for cash to invest. These women generally are
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between 25 and 35 years of age and come from the poor, lower and middle classes. Eighty per cent of investors live in Gaza City and the remainder live throughout the Strip, including villages. Most learn about the company through word of mouth, although some learn of it through advertisements in Islamic publications. Anyone can invest, although women are targeted as investors because they have few other opportunities and are eager to have money to spend on their families. Over the last two years, as land and real estate markets soared, the majority of clients have reinvested their earnings. Yet, several company officials stated they were not as interested in expansion as they were in consolidation. The Role of Islamic Social and Economic Institutions A common assumption made about all these Islamic social and economic institutions in Gaza is that they are funded by Hamas and used as vehicles of propaganda and recruitment, but representatives from both sets of institutions emphatically denied any financial or political link with radical Islam, though several openly said they would vote for Hamas if there were elections. Typical funding sources for social institutions seem to be religious, not political, and include Islamic societies and associations in Israel, the United States and Europe. Several officials of service organizations evinced irritation over the contention that they were supported by Hamas and used as channels of political and military recruitment. One individual rhetorically and somewhat angrily asked, “Is every Catholic charity in Ireland funded by the IRA?” Islamic businessmen insisted their capital derived from private and commercial sources, not political or necessarily religious ones. Whether or not Hamas is the funding source for Islamic social and economic institutions cannot be known with absolute certainty, but is also not the point. Far more important are the services provided by these organizations and the grass-roots development to which they contribute, especially in light of Gaza’s internal decay. In the social and economic context of Gaza today, the importance of Islamic social institutions lies in their almost singular focus on the Arab family.55 The Palestinian family has suffered immeasurably under the combined economic impact of the Intifada, the Gulf War and Israeli closures.
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Intra- and interfamily relations have been weakened and damaged, particularly by the growing inability of parents to support and protect their children. In their work with orphans, young people, the families of collaborators, women, widows and the poor generally, Islamic social, and to a lesser extent, economic institutions are dealing with these problems at the individual, family and community levels. In so doing, they are returning some control to the people by making it possible for them better to care for themselves and their children. Despite their limitations, Islamic institutions are well-structured, disciplined and experienced, and have effective systems in place for identifying needs and establishing priorities, and for developing programs to address them. Given the bureaucratic disorder and corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the lack of control among institutions, including Palestinian NGOs, the ability of Islamic institutions to deliver basic services reliably, quickly and equitably, and to create new, albeit limited, economic opportunities, stands out. In a context where popular expectations have risen, but the needs of the majority remain unmet, the ability to respond to disenfranchised social classes is not only recognized, but forms, perhaps, the only basis around which to build consensus and mobilize action at the grass-roots level. The danger, of course, is that this occurs in a separate sphere, isolated from all other spheres including the state. By working within a religious and cultural framework in which social practices and moral values are defined, organized and protected, Islamic social and economic institutions are restoring a sense of intimacy and assurance to Palestinians they long ago lost. This is especially important in a context where public discourse, as articulated by the Palestinian Authority, has become offensive, meaningless and devalued. The authority has given public space a distinctly bureaucratic patina; the Islamists have imparted a moralist hue.56 In so doing, the Islamists are responding to a sense of marginalization and exclusion that is not political, the Palestinian Authority’s stated focus, but social, economic and psychological. In this way, people are given a personal stake. Thus, Islam, always an important component of personal identity,57 becomes a religio-cultural or religio-social arena in which the family and the community can express and sustain themselves, and build consensus (much as the church does in rural America), and in which Gaza’s
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decaying social order can be addressed. This attention to community building and to the protection of a community value system, so desperately needed in Gaza, is supported by an extensive Islamic service infrastructure from which different social classes in Gaza benefit. A particular strength of Islamic institutions, especially in the postOslo period, comes from the clarity and consistency of their message. Arafat’s message is fluctuating and contradictory, and hardly relevant to the difficulties of everyday life; the Islamic message is clear, unchanging and attainable: a moral and ordered life can be created and sustained through Islam. The importance of this fact should not be underestimated in a social and economic order as fractured as Gaza’s. Although the Islamic message is itself limited and problematic, but no more so, it seems, than that of any other local actors, in the short term, it offers something both intimate and social, and does so in a way that is tangible, practical and reproducible. The Islamists, like the Palestinian Authority, understand the importance of working with Gazan youth. Their strength, however, lies in the ways in which they do so. The official approach is primarily to absorb young men into the security apparatus, a source of employment and identity. Islamic programs, by contrast, do not provide employment per se but a religious and cultural framework for community development and, to a lesser extent, economic inclusion, in which young people can participate and to which they can belong. The resulting sense of personal identification is marked, grounded in civic work and community associations, as an infrastructure of cooperation as it were, not in political power plays and bureaucratic positioning. Perhaps this is why the rate of volunteerism—itself astounding amid such widespread impoverishment—is so high. Islamic institutions are not generating employment but creating a workplace. They are providing structures of normality and stability, increasingly rare in Gazan society, where gradualism is possible, and accountability and trust are perceived to be high. In post-Oslo Gaza, there is no question that Islamic societies are increasingly providing an alternative organizational network to that of the Palestinian Authority. Islamic social and economic institutions continue to focus on areas of growing need left unaddressed by the Israeli occupation and the current Palestinian administration. The frustration over unfulfilled promises that people tolerated under direct
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Israeli rule because of low expectations becomes intolerable under the Palestinian Authority because expectations have changed. Hence, the Islamic role of “alternative provider” becomes that much more significant. Furthermore, because they work at the grass-roots level, where they are able to build personal and communal ties based on religio-cultural identification, Islamic institutions are creating, in effect, a cultural private sector58 that is familiar (in an environment that is increasingly unfamiliar) and safe to Palestinians. Islamic institutions do also suffer from clear limitations, however, despite their defined and active presence in the social and economic spheres. Beyond immediate service delivery, they have no social or economic vision or prescriptions, so there are limits on what they can do and how far they can plan or see. Their lack of vision, no worse, it seems, than that of the Palestinian Authority, is rooted in the fact that Islam has no specific theory of state, economics, or institutional management and hence no framework for organizing and planning social, economic and political activities over the long term.59 Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood “did not produce a modern applied theory for economic and social organizations, or a comprehensive educational approach, which led the people in charge of such agencies to revert to borrowing . . . .”60 This borrowing in turn was characterized by a peculiar mixture of Arab hostility toward Western values and by what Malcolm Kerr refers to as Islam’s “passive, uneasy [and] ineffectual acceptance of European institutions and social practices.”61 In a similar vein, Francois Burgat and William Dowell in their study of Islamic movements in North Africa, define Islamism as the “recourse to the vocabulary of Islam, used in the post-colonial period to express within the state, or more often against it, an alternative political program that uses the heritage of the West as a foil, but allows nevertheless the reappropriation of its principal references.”62 As a result, Islamic institutions may be able to mediate social contradictions but they cannot resolve them. Yet, given the loss of the secular political faction and its mediatory role in Gaza, Islamic groups may be well positioned, at least at present, to partially fill this crucial void. If there is no applied theory for social and economic organizations in Islam, in what sense are Islamic institutions Islamic? What are the features that define them as such? Can these features be used by the forces of radical Islam for recruitment and support? Can an automatic
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political (and subversive) role, therefore, be attributed to Islamic social and economic institutions? Islamic social institutions share certain characteristics of “Islamicness” and reiterate certain common themes, such as the segregation of the sexes, appropriate Islamic dress for men and women, religious instruction and Qur’anic memorization, prayer, attaching services to mosques, contributing to zakat, proselytizing an Islamic way of life, and working with the family. Therefore, is it not reasonable to assume that the Islamism of certain social programs emanates from Islamic practice rather than an Islamic theory of social (or political) change? It is not ideology per se that makes Islamic institutions Islamic but certain visible patterns of behavior. Institutions, furthermore, are only as powerful as the clients who use them. In Gaza, Islamic social service institutions attract people from different social classes, but the majority appear to be from the poor and lower socioeconomic groups. They use Islamic-based services not because they support Hamas or radical Islam but because they need the services, and perhaps because they seek an identity, intimacy and anchor that Islam is able to provide. While there is no doubt that some clients are Hamas supporters or members, there is also no doubt that others are not. What these clients have in common is not a shared political ideology but a shared culture and religion, and perhaps a shared frustration with, or hostility toward, the Palestinian Authority. But these factors alone are not enough to encourage united or sustained action in support of political or radical Islam. Furthermore, although Islam contains within it a tradition of revolt, Islamic social institutions do not appear engaged in revolutionary behavior. If anything, they seem to spurn dramatic change, preferring instead to work piecemeal in the community, rebuilding the status quo rather than destroying it, by providing a range of services through an Islamic institutional conduit and by strengthening the family through religious and cultural practice. If anything, Islamic social institutions are socially reactionary rather than politically radical, encouraging moderation and order, not violence and instability. Moreover, it should be remembered that Palestinians generally are not, nor have they ever been, religious fundamentalists. It is not a religious state they want but a secular national state.
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Another factor militating against common political action in support of radical Islam or any political movement for that matter, is the continued atomization of Gazan society and the many social divisions that characterize it. These divisions are powerful and can be found within (and between) social classes, including the poor; they run along a number of lines such as refugee–non-refugee, north–south, old–young, urban–rural and camp resident–noncamp resident. Add to this the immense economic hardships and political pressures that keep people focused on their own basic needs to the virtual exclusion of any social concern, and the potential for collective action in any realm appears dim indeed. In the economic sphere, Islamic institutions also emphasize certain Islamic practices in their so-called quest to Islamicize the economy, and hence society. These practices include eliminating the use of interest in all dealings, prohibiting usury, deducting a certain percentage of profits for zakat, and improving the distribution (as well as the production) of wealth.63 They also involve holding prayers at work and dressing in proper Islamic attire. Beyond these basic tenets of Islamic law and their associated symbols, however, Islamic businesses appear to be motivated by the same commercial interests as any other business (even if that means having non-Muslim partners) and demonstrate a similar commitment to private sector development. In this regard, several relevant questions emerge that require further research. First, do the owners of Islamic economic enterprises belong to an emerging native commercial bourgeoisie or to the Islamic movement? That is, are “Islamic” businessmen traditional capitalists seeking the legitimizing symbols of Islam, or Islamic activists who are genuinely trying to reform the economy according to Islamic law? Do Islamic economic institutions, therefore, represent a rising local capitalism with an Islamic coloring or the economic wing of an Islamic political movement?64 The available data strongly suggest the former, particularly in the absence of any organizing theory of Islamic economy. Hence, the Islamism of certain economic institutions may be tied more to the Islamic identity of institutional owners, managers and staff rather than to any ideological or intellectual program of Islamic economic reform. Within such a framework, material interests will more often than not conflict with ideological interests and consequently override them.
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Second, how similar or divergent (if not contradictory) are the class interests of the owners and clientele of Islamic economic institutions? What is the basis for bringing these social classes together? Are they joined by their mutual support for political Islam or by shared economic interests that are expressed symbolically in a common Islamic idiom? Again, the available data point strongly to the latter, further limiting a political, let alone, subversive role for Islamic economic institutions. The Relationship Between Hamas and Islamic Institutions That a relationship exists between Islamic social and economic institutions and their political counterparts is undeniable. Yet, the nature of this relationship is not necessarily as automatic, or evil, as portrayed. The relationship between Islamic socioeconomic and political institutions can be understood largely in terms of membership or support. Typically, the Islamic social and economic institutions are considered Hamas institutions because members of management or staff may be Hamas sympathizers providing moral or financial support to Hamas’s political wing.65 While this is true of some institutions, it is not true of others. Consequently, logic maintains, institutional clients automatically become linked to Hamas and constitute a base of support for political Islam. As a result, Islamic social institutions become recruiting centers for the Hamas’s military wing. There is, however, little hard evidence to support any of these allegations. In fact, it is extremely unlikely that the Qassam Brigades use social service institutions for recruitment, since militants are few, highly decentralized, secretive and traditionally recruit from within (that is, relatives from the clans of existing members). Where there is a link it may be far less important than assumed because Islamic social and economic institutions serve very different purposes and perform very different functions than Islamic political and military institutions and have pronounced differences in agenda, philosophy and method. The political and military wings of Hamas have a nationalist, not an Islamic, agenda. Hamas’s political platform has no substantive or discernable Islamic program. Political Islam is political. Radical Islam is militant. Neither has a social or cultural (and hence, moral) agenda. Islamic social institutions, by contrast, have a moral message (religion as morality rather than religion as
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politics). The basis of their appeal has little, if anything, to do with the establishment of a religious state in Palestine or military actions against Israeli civilians. Islamic social institutions operate in a moral domain of family and community seldom traversed by political and military institutions. The Islamic social movement in Gaza long preceded its political counterpart and will, in all likelihood, long outlive it. Seen in this way, Islamic social institutions are the spinal cord of the Islamic movement; they sustain their political counterparts and not the other way around. The overall disintegration of Gaza’s political sector, which has virtually eliminated meaningful political discourse and action, and an apparent recent shift in strategy within Hamas’s political wing from active confrontation with Israel and the Palestinian Authority to safeguarding Islamic social institutions,66 may be indicative of Hamas’s political retreat and consequent decline. Hamas’s military institutions are the subject of considerable controversy, and it is here that some of the most pronounced distinctions between them and Islamic social institutions can be found. While signs of general religiosity and of sympathy for the Islamic cause can be found among most Gazans regardless of social class, militant political Islamists represent a tiny and much more circumscribed group. Usually young men from poor families, militant Islamists are distinguished most markedly by their philosophy and method. They are highly ideologized individuals who are guided by a doctrine of nihilism and martyrdom. They are responsible for the spate of horrific suicide bombings in Israel that, in part, were catalyzed by the February 1994 Hebron massacre in which thirty Palestinians were gunned down in a mosque by an Israeli settler. Suicide attackers are people who have abandoned all hope, for whom this world has nothing to offer, and who have nothing to lose. Islamic militarists aim to inflict pain, not end it.67 The philosophy of Islamic social service institutions and their clients is very different. Their doctrine is one of service to individuals and the community; their purpose, to plant and nurture the seeds of a future. They are oriented toward life not death. Similarly, the discourse of militant Islamists is utopian while that of “social” Islamists is practical, pragmatic and increasingly technocratic. Because of this, Islamic social institutions now appear to have a greater capacity for mobilizing people than their military or political counterparts.
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Islamists must also be differentiated according to methods. The methods of militant Islam are confrontational: violence against a designated enemy. The methods of the Islamic social movement are nonconfrontational, shaped by the need to create possibilities, not destroy them. Conclusion The Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip is not unified, homogeneous, or monolithic. It varies in its institutions, in the people who run them, and in the people who use them. Institutions differ in their agenda, philosophy and method. The greatest distinction appears to lie between socioeconomic and military institutions. Islamic institutions also appear to differ in their “Islamicness,” with economic institutions appearing the least faithful to Islam. What seems to define social and economic institutions as Islamic, the practice and propagation of Islamic laws and ideas, is not enough to mobilize people in support of political or radical Islam, particularly because the social function of Islam differs for different people. Such support becomes even less likely in the absence of Islamic theoretical frameworks within which to plan action and implement reforms. No defined or automatic political role can be attributed to Islamic social and economic institutions, nor are their links with political institutions, where they exist, inherently subversive. While Hamas may overshadow Islamic social organizations, it is not necessarily a stronger or more sustainable organization over the long term since its political base of support is eroding. The shift in Hamas’s strategy from the political to the social realm may reflect its declining political status as well as the central importance of Islamic social institutions. While many Palestinians, perhaps the majority, reject the political theology associated with political and militant Islam, the Islamic movement is playing an increasingly important social role in Gaza. It has among the most effective institutions in the Strip, providing badly needed services and responding to the social and economic problems surrounding them. They constitute forces of moderation within the Islamic movement, which has great political significance. If Islamic institutions are weakened or destroyed, not only will a serious social and economic void be created in an already weakened and fractured
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society, but the people who use institutional services, the mass base of the Islamic movement, will most likely be radicalized. The West, in demonizing Hamas and, by extension, all parts of the Islamic movement in Gaza, is committing a potentially fatal error. Instead of focusing on the forces of radical Islam and lumping all Islamic groupings together, the Western powers should differentiate between radical and moderate (and productive) Islamic forces and actively assist the latter. Islam can be a stabilizing force in societal development, and the West should emphasize the moderate elements, preventing their radical counterparts from defining the Islamic agenda.68 The fundamental problem in Gaza, as in many other places, is that the majority of people are disenfranchised and poor, having no power, access, or future. Radical Islam emerged not because people were opposed to developmental change but because they were unable to attain it. There is considerable fear in the West that, as economic and social problems increase among Palestinians, the Islamic movement will become more radicalized. While this possibility cannot be ruled out, it is far more likely that society generally, not the Islamic movement specifically, will become more radical. For the problem in Gaza is not the Islamic movement but the decaying social, economic and political order that remains. Of all the problems facing Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip today, Hamas is low on the list. In Gaza, the ruling elite that refuses to guarantee civil liberties or human rights and that refuses to create legitimate channels for political dissent and for other organized social forces is at the core of the problem. The argument is often made that Islamists are authoritarian since they seek to control the culture and lifestyle of individual citizens.69 In the new Palestinian entity, this argument is equally applicable to secular forces. Gaza, like the Middle East generally, “await[s] the emergence of democratic secularists as much as [it] await[s] the emergence of democratic Islamists if the democratization process is to be successful.”70 Can the Islamic movement do better than the Palestinian Authority over the long term? Probably not, but in Gaza at present, they are doing no worse and, in certain respects, are doing better. The key question in Gaza, as elsewhere in the Arab world, is not whether Arab society will be religious or secular but whether people will eat, develop and progress. In all these respects, Islamic institutions have a critical
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role to play, especially now. Although Islamic social and economic institutions suffer from their own limitations and are unable to offer a solution for the socioeconomic crisis around them, they provide for critical needs that remain unmet and do so effectively. They are an inextricable and important part of the local equation in Gaza and ways must be found to incorporate them. Any attempt to undermine or eliminate them will fail.
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13 The Crisis Within: The Struggle for Palestinian Society*
“How can I tell my children that I do not have enough money to buy them proper food? What am I supposed to do? Where am I supposed to go? This is not peace. This is war but I cannot fight. With what? For what?”
T
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by a father of eight children who lives in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. His despair and sense of defeat reflect the feelings of many Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. The years since the signing of the Oslo agreements in 1993 and 1995 arguably have been the most painful for Palestinians and the most damaging politically and economically. Palestinians find themselves as far away as they ever have been from realizing their future and the impact of this realization has been devastating. The consistent failure of the “peace process” to address, let alone, reverse, personal and collective decline also has taken its toll on Palestinian society and has done so in some new and disturbing ways. These emerging social changes are not only structural but psychological. There is an undeniable anomie among people, an erosion of spirit and being that has numbed expectation and ridiculed possibility. The Oslo process has altered Palestinian society in some dramatic ways. Perhaps the most stunning and emblematic of these changes is the seeming transformation of political activism—for decades so essential * Originally published in Critique: Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East, Number 17, Fall 2000, pp. 5–30. The version reprinted here has been slightly edited. 191
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to the way Palestinians lived and organized themselves—into popular resignation. This internal “migration” has been accompanied by other equally troubling changes such as the shift from the community and the notion of the greater good toward the individual and their own personal survival. Since the peace process began, Palestinians have become disempowered as a political collective able to articulate and pursue a nationalist agenda and as social actors able to support their families and the institutions upon which they rely. This (double) disempowerment, which is altogether new in recent Palestinian experience, is felt and expressed as weakness, and it is this weakness that slowly and steadily has been tearing at the fabric of Palestinian society. The reasons underlying these changes have to do with the betrayal of the Oslo peace process. This betrayal is expressed most starkly in Israel’s continued and strengthened domination of Palestinian life (a direct outcome of the Oslo agreements), the dissection of the Palestinian community into isolated and disconnected enclaves, and the institutionalization of a Palestinian Authority (PA) that has shown itself to be repressive and corrupt. Without doubt, the continued de-development of the Palestinian sector is very much a function of the terms that shape the Oslo process. For these terms do not alter the structural relationship between occupier and occupied but rather reinforce it. Indeed, Oslo removed the Palestinian–Israeli conflict from the realm of international law where Palestinians had more equal weight to that of bilateral negotiations between two actors of grossly unequal power. These asymmetries have insured that the interim agreement, now coming to an end, and the final agreement, currently in the process of being worked out, reflect Israeli strength and Palestinian weakness and not the application of universal justice. In this way, the peace process not only has maintained the extant (im)balance of power but has legalized and sanctioned it. There is no precedent for this before Oslo. The injury done to the Palestinian people is real and it continues, but there is also a struggle among them to reclaim a center and resist the disorder that has been imposed on them. This essay will explore some of the changes occurring in Palestinian society and in so doing, will raise far more questions than answers. The answers are still elusive and will continue to be so until the conflict in all its dimensions is resolved.
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There are many ways to view and assess the changes to Palestinian society, but this essay will discuss only some of them. It is but one, incomplete, attempt at understanding a process that still is evolving. The Dissolution of Political Life The hegemonic system imposed by Israel during 26 years of direct rule did not disappear with the implementation of the peace process but was maintained, with certain modifications, via the new Palestinian regime. (The Israeli government remains the final arbiter of Palestinian life, but now its rule is mediated in good part by the new PA.) Prior to 1994, the Israeli military government banned and criminalized all forms of political activity and organizing no matter how benign. Hanging a map of Palestine in one’s home was deemed a criminal act for which one could be prosecuted and jailed. With the arrival of the PA, Palestinians expected such egregious rules to be eliminated and many, of course, were. What they did not expect was the institutionalization of a political order that was as repressive as the one it had replaced. The current debilitation of political life has antecedents in the period (1992–93) that preceded the Oslo Accord. During that time, Palestinians were in a state of political confusion, given the PLO’s continuing failure to end the occupation, and under immense pressure due in large part to the enormous costs—economic, political and psychological—incurred by six years of the Intifada and the Gulf War. Political rivalries and factional tensions became acute, particularly as political and economic resources became scarce, a dynamic that was intensified by the March 1993 economic blockade. The secular political factions lost their ideational anchors, and factional debates centered more on power and less on philosophy. Consequently, politics, once so central to Palestinian life, became increasingly irrelevant, without purpose or function: “Secular nationalist factions could no longer organize and mobilize people into action as they had during the Intifada, or mediate class disputes and other social contradictions as they had throughout the occupation. The loss of a mediatory social structure at a time of acute social and economic distress significantly weakened the social order.”1 The Oslo process and the installation of the PA have done little to reform the political order or reinstate a political process. To the
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contrary, the emergence, in effect, of an authoritarian state and oneparty system actively opposed to any manner of dissent has marked the end, at least for now, of any viable political dialectic at the popular level. The smaller secular factions no longer can function as political actors, leaving Fateh, Yasir Arafat’s party, and Hamas, the Islamic alternative, the primary players. Yet, Fateh increasingly has been discredited by the corrupt behavior of its leading officials and by the internecine conflict within the party itself. The religious message of Hamas provides solace to some but the majority of Palestinians still reject an Islamic state. Yet, it is important to understand that given the political vacuum in which it operates, Hamas remains, at present, the only organized political opposition to the current regime and could attract greater support on this basis. Thus, political life among Palestinians is no longer characterized by competing ideologies vying for dominance but by the lack of any political ideology whatsoever, let alone one that is shared. The Decline of Ideology and the Waning of Ideas During the post-Oslo period, Palestinian political culture has been characterized by the striking absence of nationalist ideology, a condition that has not existed for several decades. There is a feeling, perhaps an acceptance, that the national dream has ended, something Palestinians never have contemplated before. Now, the interests of the Palestinian leadership lie in securing political control at the cost of national liberation and the ideals that have shaped it. This disaffirmation of the Palestinian cause, which continues to impinge on an already troubled civil society, is expressed in many ways. One is the growing militarization of society as seen in the overwhelming presence of police, military and security personnel in Palestinian lives. Almost half of all governmental employees perform some sort of security function. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this trend is the steady absorption of young people into the PA’s security structure, a pattern designed not only to assert control and create dependency but to contain potential adversaries. Another expression of official disdain is the disempowerment of institutions as seen in the concentration of power in Arafat, the proliferation of political appointees to professional positions, and the proliferation of positions within ministerial departments. It has
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become clear that allegiance to Arafat rather than technocratic skill is the primary qualification for power, status and identity. Moreover, Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), historically the backbone of local development, are under growing pressure from the PA. According to a new law passed in the summer of 1999, individuals applying for a license to operate an NGO must first be investigated and approved by the Palestinian intelligence services. Thus, pluralism has ceded to statism, bureaucratism and authoritarianism. This trend, coupled with the absence of a unifying secular political ideology, has denuded nationalism of much of its meaning. Within the context created by Oslo and shaped by the PA, nationalism no longer is measured by support for Palestinian selfdetermination and political rights, but by support for an expanding security apparatus and patronage structure with little political legitimacy. This begs the question, “What sort of activity is politics in Palestine today?” Bereft of dream and purpose, political activity seeks the restoration of order but the denial of liberty. And it does so with the approbation and palpable support of the Israeli and U.S. governments (there are five CIA stations in the West Bank alone). With the beginning of the peace process, furthermore, new (sub-) categories of exclusion have been introduced into the Palestinian community for the first time. During direct Israeli rule, everyone in the Palestinian community was the victim of exclusion. Under the security system and patronage structure created by Arafat since 1994, new economic and elite classes have emerged with privileges and rights visibly denied all others. Those excluded are the majority poor who arguably have no more access to the system’s resources than they did before Oslo. Palestine’s widening social divisions attest to the exclusionary process, and it is the tensions between the locals and those who came from outside—the “Tunisians”—which constitute the dominant and most fractious social divide. There is no equality before the law and perhaps, more alarming, no pretense of any. The Palestinian regime has come to be identified with coercion and tyranny. Much has been written about the corruption of the PA (see below) and its disregard for human rights and the rule of law. This disregard has many objective manifestations, including arbitrary arrest, imprisonment without trial, torture, execution of dissidents, censorship of the press, repression of union activity, silencing of free speech and
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public debate, suppression of dissent and most forms of opposition, restrictions on assembly and so on. It is not only an alternative source of power that the leadership fears but an alternative source of thought. Such behavior on the part of the leadership increasingly is regarded not only as a form of betrayal but of complicity with the Israeli occupation and its policies of separation and isolation. This is a reality Palestinians never envisioned: “We are, perhaps for the first time in our recent history, a people without any anchor—national, political, ideological, economic, social, and even familial. There is nothing to congeal around. We are eroding from within, brutalized by the Israelis and now by our own leaders. No one ever expected this.”2 With the initiation of the peace process, Palestinians not only hoped for the establishment of their own sovereign state, but for a state that is democratic and inclusive. The realization that this would not occur led at first to a sense of shock and confusion among people, followed in time by alienation and resignation. Increasingly, popular despair has become rooted not as much in the existence or nonexistence of a national state but in the government’s withdrawal from democratic practice and the seeming impossibility of political reform. In the words of a Palestinian academic: One is always hearing about a sovereign state but there is no discourse around the source and nature of this sovereignty. What should be the proper relationship between the ruler and the ruled or the proper distribution of power? Who is the sovereign and who decides? What is a free or representative institution? What is a good act? I believe our leadership would consider such talk heresy so, for now, it is not discussed even by us [the intellectual class] because the Authority has made it clear what happens to people who ask such questions. But when does it become too late to reflect upon the answers?3
Palestinians know that a state will come but many increasingly fear the kind of state it will be. The waning of ideology is, at its root, the loss of ideas and the philosophy of ideas. This loss is far more dangerous to a society, especially one as young as Palestine’s, than the character of the regime to which it is subject. For without ideas or the freedom or capacity to articulate them, there is little around which a society can center itself. Within such a scenario, meaningful change becomes difficult if not altogether impossible. According to a Palestinian activist, “Perhaps the
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greatest damage done to us by Oslo is the weakening of our national and popular resolve and the loss of purpose that accompanies it. There are few positives left to motivate us as a people. We have lost faith in all ideologies. In fact, we laugh at them because they have become so irrelevant. What will happen to a society where no one can think beyond their own immediate survival and well being?”4 And, in the words of another, “The Israelis and the PA are foolish if they think that separation is possible. We are well beyond that. They can no longer divide, only entomb.”5 This de-centering of Palestinian society has deprived it of much of its dynamism. Social attention has, of necessity, turned away from longer-term issues to the temporary and transient. This not only has resulted in a “decline in the body politic” and in the “retreat from exuberant free thought”6 but in a certain turning-away from history itself because there is no space or will or reason to engage it. “Our history has become windowless,” said a young father of five children. “How can I think of the past when I am so consumed by the present. The past means nothing to our leaders who fill their pockets; why should it mean anything more to me whose pockets are empty?”7 In a context so politically attenuated and devoid of meaning and purpose, historical memory withdraws and recedes and with it, the notion of a collective identity. The aim of politics is no longer to mythologize popular memory but to numb it. In so doing, perhaps, the Palestinian leadership hopes to sway its population into accepting political solutions that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. The Reemergence of Tribalism The vulgarization of political life points to another lesson with great import for Palestinian society: it is not only what the state does that is critical but also what it makes people do. The trend toward militarization and the weakening of institutions described above reflect a breakdown in social relations and the values that define them. This breakdown has a more striking feature—the dissolution of moral values. This breakdown is tied directly to two dynamics imposed by the PA: official disregard and disrespect for the mores and values of
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Palestinian society, and the imposition of unethical codes of conduct by which the population increasingly is forced to function. Since their arrival, the PA and the people who represent it have treated the local community in disrespectful and humiliating ways, engaging in behavior that is socially unacceptable and highly offensive to many Palestinians, especially those in the more conservative Gaza Strip. More and more people, furthermore, attribute to the PA corrupting and perverse changes in the norms and values that increasingly characterize Palestinian society. The required use of bribes for the delivery of basic services, the use of coercion in economic transactions and the open traffic in stolen vehicles are but three illustrations of moral decline: During the Intifada the ways in which we must now behave would have been haram. We fought so hard against it then. The Intifada was not only a political battle against the occupation, it was a moral struggle to create a better society. But now, we have no choice. What are we supposed to do? If we don’t pay a bribe, we don’t get a phone, a license, health insurance, or a job. Those who try to be “good” are lost. People see how the PA cheats and extorts and becomes rich. Why should the poor guy from a refugee camp with many mouths to feed do any better? What is the point in trying to do the right thing when the only reward for doing so is more suffering? The longer-term implications are, of course, frightening but who has time to worry about them when one’s children are hungry?8
The perceived lack of public choice reflects the absence of a contractarian ethic between the state and its citizens, and this situation increasingly has alienated people from the PA. This rising alienation coupled with unabated economic distress (discussed below) have produced a turning inward among people, especially the poor who are the most vulnerable. (These features are likewise responsible for increasing rates of domestic violence, sexual abuse and divorce.) Yet, it is not only the poor who are receding from the future into the past. It is also the “educated, politically progressive and intellectually talented who are giving up . . . and, in many cases, abandoning the state before it can be declared.”9 This withdrawal from larger society also reflects a waning of affiliation with broader (nongovernmental) social institutions—a critical problem for the young—toward more particularistic, tribal forms of organization where the disenfranchised are more likely to find security, identity and a sense of belonging. In the Gaza Strip, for example, there has been a significant increase in inter-clan violence since
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1998, a phenomenon that has remained dormant, at least on a wider community level, for over two decades. Clan violence has become so widespread that a special unit exists within the Palestinian security services to deal with it.10 According to Dr. Eyad El Sarraj, this behavior is “reinforced by the PA’s reliance on clan politics to rule: in order to get a government job, one has to be from a big clan or belong to Fateh, the ruling party. Moreover, in an environment where security forces function above the law, even ignoring decisions of the High Court of Justice, individuals have little choice but to rely on their families for protection.”11 In Gaza, furthermore, poorly paid police officers and security agents often serve as hired thugs in feuds between the rich and politically powerful. A similar phenomenon exists in the West Bank as well. Again, given the dysfunctional nature of the justice system, people with either street or economic power, have begun to form their own personal militias that they use to exact justice, however defined; impose punishment for real or perceived offenses, and offer protection. These militias are not based on any political or religious affiliation but typically are comprised of young men who are either friends or relatives of the individual in charge of them. They are, in effect, gangs. The heads of these militias span all socioeconomic classes from wealthy individuals to poorer ones. Fortunately or not, in some circumstances these groups are quite effective, offering mechanisms of appeal and protection not available officially. In one incident, a young woman, who is a friend of mine, was threatened repeatedly by her brother with death if she did not relinquish her share of a family inheritance to him. She consistently refused and this resulted in a series of physical assaults and a near-death beating by her brother. At one point, the brother hired a hit man to kill her. At the urging of her friends, she first appealed to official organs such as the police and the courts. Despite the fact that this woman had been violently abused by her brother, the court dismissed all charges against him, stating that theirs is a domestic matter and outside the court’s jurisdiction. She therefore felt she had no alternative but to seek the help of a friend who could protect her. His “men” visited the brother at work, beat him, and put a gun to his head threatening him with death if he ever harmed his sister again. “Your sister is now our sister,” they told the brother, who immediately stopped all threats against her.
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Of course, the danger is that the brother seeks out or forms a militia of his own and a local warfare ensues. This has not happened but it is only a matter of time before it does. There are many such examples and they are increasing. There is a painful irony in the fact that with the establishment of the PA and the implementation of the peace process, the use of traditional, non-formal mechanisms of law enforcement, justice and accountability has reemerged in Palestinian society, and they show few signs of abating. This social dynamic, which reflects an atomization of social relations, suggests that the notion of a collective identity is beginning to weaken and with it a shared basis of coalition building that extends beyond the particularistic level. This kind of social regression, if allowed to widen, will not be reversed easily and will exact enormous social costs. One only needs to look at Lebanon to understand how. Such emerging social patterns are strikingly similar to those seen at the economic level, where the development of an integrated economy incrementally is giving way to the formation of localized economic units. In the economy as in society, the whole slowly is ceding to its parts, and insularity and introversion increasingly define group behavior. Economic Decline and the Diminution of Productivity The period since the start of the peace process in September 1993 has been a time of increasing and virtually unabated economic distress for the majority of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.12 Arguably, there has never been a time since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967 when the Palestinian economy has been so weak and its people so vulnerable. In fact, when measured against advances made by other states in the region, the economy of the West Bank and Gaza is weaker now than it was 33 years ago. Palestinians have no guaranteed economy. There is little reality of economic opportunity, growth, or development, a tragic irony given the enormous expectations of economic prosperity that accompanied the early days of the peace agreement. The economic reality of the post-Oslo period is defined by two fundamental facts: the continuation of preexisting structures of dependency and underdevelopment and the absence of economic transformation, and the introduction of new structures, notably closure,
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that have further attenuated an already diminished economic base. Economic conditions during the post-Oslo period have been shaped by two actors: the State of Israel, which is primary, and the PA. Israeli Policies and the Continued Denial of Natural Associations During the post-Oslo period, the economic fundamentals of occupation have remained unchanged. Under Oslo’s terms, Israel retains full control over the Palestinian economy, which means authority over key factors of production—land, water, labor and capital—and complete control over external (and in the West Bank, also, internal) borders. Furthermore, Israel has continued to engage, almost wholly unchallenged, in practices that further dispossess Palestinians of their lands, their homes and their livelihood. Now as before, Palestinians have little recourse against Israeli actions but unlike the past, such actions are presently defined as the price of peace rather than as a reason for conflict. Within this construct, legitimacy for Palestinians no longer is derived from a moral or just cause but from the willingness to concede to terms that are largely Israeli. One of the most damaging of these terms is closure, the defining feature of the Palestinian economy during the post-Oslo period. In a dramatic reversal of historical trends, for example, closure has eliminated almost entirely movement between the West Bank and Gaza, effectively isolating the two territories from each other with virtually no demographic or commercial interaction between them. There are many stories of how Palestinians living in one territory have, for years, been unable to obtain the necessary Israeli permits to visit family members and friends living in the other territory. And, the distances between separated families are very small, measured only in the tens of miles. A young man, a worker from Gaza, defined the problem simply and poignantly: “I used to dream about having my own country. Now I dream about getting out of the Gaza Strip.”13 According to Amnesty International, by December 1999, the Oslo agreements had also created 227 separate areas in the West Bank under the full or partial control of the PA. The overwhelming majority of these areas—199 to be exact— are less than two square kilometers in size.14 Most importantly, Israel controls the territory in-between these enclaves, effectively turning them into Bantustans.
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Closure also has severely curtailed economic activity between the territories—notably Gaza—and Israel, which has been extremely injurious to the Palestinian economy, given its longstanding historical dependence on the Israeli market for employment and trade. Furthermore, by severely restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem, the closure has divided the West Bank’s northern and southern regions, whose key road connections pass through Jerusalem. Since East Jerusalem always has been the commercial heart of the West Bank, the closure has devastated the city’s Arab economy as well. In recent years, less than 4 per cent of all Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have had permission to enter Jerusalem. In fact, the physical bifurcation of the West Bank is so pronounced that families living in the north do not want their children to marry people from the south because they fear being separated from their children for years.15 Closure’s deleterious impact has been felt in different ways. Perhaps the most immediate and dramatic have been the high and fluctuating unemployment rates and declining income levels among Palestinian workers in Israel (with few compensating options elsewhere). Between 1992 and 1996, the unemployment rate among Gazans and West Bankers rose more than ninefold from 3 per cent to 28 per cent. The highest levels have occurred during total closures when all labor movement is totally prohibited. Following the total closure of March– April 1996, for example, 66 per cent of the Palestinian labor force was either unemployed or severely underemployed. As the closure was eased, unemployment levels decreased but still remained high, standing at 10–20 per cent in the West Bank and 18–30 per cent in the Gaza Strip between 1997 and 1999. The costs from closure to an already weakened economy are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. More recent (2000) figures indicate a striking 25 per cent unemployment rate among Gazans—among the highest in the world— and a 10 per cent rate among West Bankers. Nonetheless, dependence upon Israel still remains high and unmitigated. The common scene of Gazan laborers standing on the streets of Jaffa seeking day work is a clear illustration of unemployment, the uncertainties surrounding it, and the personal humiliation that accompanies it. Unemployment rates, furthermore, can change quickly and dramatically at any time, depending upon the intensity of the closure and other Israeli measures. Hence, without real structural reform, decreasing levels of
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unemployment are at best only temporary and, in effect, meaningless over the long term. Closure’s impact is also expressed in reduced Palestinian trade levels (where imports vastly exceed exports), and the changing character of domestic production toward more traditional activities and lower production levels. In trade as in labor, Israeli policy is defining. Closure policies have dramatically obstructed trade and have vitiated the longer-term, positive effects of any trading arrangement. Old trading patterns have been preserved, for example, Israel’s dominance as a trading partner, the one-way trade structure (that denies Palestinian producers free access to Israeli markets while their Israeli counterparts have unlimited access to Palestinian markets), and constrained access to international markets. But new patterns also have been introduced, such as the separation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank markets, historically important economic outlets, and the receding of the Israeli market as a repository for Palestinian exports. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to detail the problems of trade in the post-Oslo16 period, certain points are essential to note. First, closure imposes considerable uncertainty on economic transactions because the delivery of finished goods and vital inputs cannot be guaranteed. Unable to assure reliably the delivery of its products, the Palestinian market has become less attractive to Israeli merchants who increasingly have turned their attention to more stable markets elsewhere in the Arab world. Without the assured delivery of raw materials and other needed inputs, Palestinian producers suffer the added insult of increased (and often, prohibitive) production costs in addition to a declining percentage share of their primary market in Israel. Second, since there are few ways to compensate for the percentage loss of the Israeli market, Palestinian businessmen increasingly have been confined to their own local markets, forcing them toward greater insularity. Similarly, given the costs and risks of doing business under closure, some agricultural producers also have returned to lower value but less perishable and more market-secure crops, which are being produced for domestic consumption rather than export. If such patterns continue, Palestinian economic activity will turn increasingly toward a more insulated, traditional and circumscribed base. Rising poverty rates among Palestinians is another painful expression of closure’s effect. Indeed, the growing impoverishment of the population
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since 1993 is a stark and painful description of economic life post-Oslo. Since the imposition of closure, the Palestinian economy has been unable to grow or sustain the population, resulting in increased poverty (more recent growth indicators suggest an easing of hardship but not the kind of economic reform that is needed). In the last few years per capita income has fallen from $2,000 to $1,600 in the West Bank and from $1,200 to $900 in the Gaza Strip. This contrasts sharply with a level of $17,000 in Israel. The number of poor living below the poverty line (defined as a household with two adults and four children with a yearly consumption of less than $2 per day), comprised 20 per cent of the total population in 2000, a small decrease from almost 25 per cent in 1997. Of the total impoverished, the majority live in the poorer Gaza Strip, constituting nearly one-third of Gaza’s total population. Furthermore, 25 per cent of all Palestinian children live in poverty. If those people living near or just above the poverty line also are included in the number of poor, then the percentage of impoverished, especially in Gaza, would rise dramatically and undoubtedly would include the majority of people living in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian family has responded to economic distress in a number of ways. One is an increase in child labor rates, particularly among children 12–16 years of age. In 1999, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics found that 74 per cent of working children under 18 years of age were not enrolled in school and 73 per cent worked in excess of 35 hours per week. Given that children below 18 years make up just over 53 per cent of the population, the long-term social implications of an increasingly uneducated population are staggering. Another household response to rising economic pressure has been changing consumption patterns. People are spending a greater percentage of their income on food and less on other items such as education and health. Families are borrowing more and incurring greater debt, using and depleting their savings, and selling personal possessions such as jewelry and appliances for the purpose of maintaining family consumption levels. The growing impoverishment of Palestinians is visible in a manner not before known. Beggars—mostly women and children—are seen in far greater numbers on the streets of Palestine. Child peddlers, some as young as five or six years, are everywhere. In Gaza, women and children often travel in large groups, begging
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cash or food from institutions and private homes.17 As long as closure remains a structural reality, Israel’s control of Palestinian life is assured no matter what legal agreements are reached.18 PA Policies and the Distortion of Economic Exchange The PA also has played a damaging role in shaping the current economic environment. Despite some achievements in establishing a functional tax and banking system and various successes with infrastructural development, the PA has failed to create a more level playing field that offers its people greater economic access and protection against abuse, two features that characterized Palestinian economic relations during direct Israeli rule. Instead, the PA itself has become abusive. Looked at in the aggregate, the legal environment created by the PA is defined by a weak and unresponsive legislature and judiciary. Their impotence derives, in good part, from their inability to enforce their decisions, especially those that attempt to limit the power of the executive. The most notable example of this is Arafat’s long-standing refusal to sign the Basic Law, passed by the Legislative Council in 1998, which would give the state a working constitution. This lack of accountability, transparency and recourse is, in practice, a form of lawlessness that has frightened potential investors and undermined the development of the private sector, which is crucial to long-term development and economic reform. But this may not be an accident. In the words of a Palestinian economist: The last thing the Authority wants is a viable economy and economic development where people benefit and other sources of power emerge. This sort of economic empowerment would inevitably lead to political empowerment and this terrifies Arafat and his hand-selected elites. He wants to keep people weak and dependent upon him and his patronage. A strong private sector as it should exist is enormously threatening to him. This is how he rules. Power is more important to him than economic or political reform. But, of course, Arafat and his inner circle have benefited through direct economic collusion with Israel. They have become rich at our expense and will continue to do so as long as they can. And when they can take no more, they will leave.19
The PA has embraced a form of economic management that is protectionist and corrupt. One example of this is the government’s
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heavy-handed presence in the market through state-dominated monopolies personally controlled by individuals high in the PA bureaucracy who work in collaboration with Israeli suppliers. The PA at one time had established at least 13 and, according to the U.S. State Department, as many as 25 monopolies in the Gaza Strip over the import of such commodities as flour, sugar, oil, frozen meats, cigarettes, live animals, cement, aggregate, steel, wood, tobacco and petroleum. In 1998–99, some monopolies apparently were disbanded. However, the PA continues to grant such rights for various commodity imports, and recently awarded long-term monopolies on various utilities. In 1997, there was an attempt by some Palestinian officials, reportedly put down by Arafat himself, to establish a monopoly over the acquisition of work permits by Palestinian laborers.20 Monopolistic practices obstruct fair and free competition and lead to price-fixing, which is especially injurious to the majority of people. Price-fixing inflates the cost of the most basic food commodity, making it even more difficult for people to meet their essential food needs.21 Yet, the PA earns hundreds of millions of dollars per year from these monopolies according to U.S. State Department figures. This revenue effectively constitutes a transfer of income from poorer economic groups to a new political class with considerable economic power that uses these profits to subsidize the PA bureaucracy and, by all accounts, for personal gain as well. These individuals (led by Mohammed Rashid, Arafat’s chief economic advisor, and Colonel Mohammed Dahlan, head of the Gaza Preventive Security Forces) are under the direct control of the executive himself.22 This new elite is a post-Oslo phenomenon. With Arafat, they decide who should be allowed to invest in Palestine, under what terms, and in which sectors. They exercise tight control over foreign investment and credit sources and now control protected areas of the economy such as energy and construction, and do so in alliance with specific privatesector interests (who are thus appeased) and with external actors, namely former Israeli military or security officials who previously worked in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.23 The new political class also profits from the status quo (that is, closure), and therefore sees little benefit in altering it. Indeed, the PA not once has made an international or political issue of the Israeli closure policy despite many public statements criticizing it. There are
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some possible economic reasons for this. Under closure, for example, the wage rates of those Palestinian workers confined to the Gaza Strip and West Bank remain low, enabling the PA to employ people cheaply and thereby maintain its system of patronage and dependence. A more striking example of how the PA takes advantage of the closure policy lies in the following account: [In 1996 when the worst total closures were imposed,] the Israeli government agreed to ease the closure at Sufa, a crossing point near the Rafah border, where industrial goods and raw materials often enter[ed] the Gaza Strip. In particular, Gazan importers of gravel were anxious to increase their inventory and it was through Sufa that these importers had been able to avoid the gravel monopoly established at Erez, the main entryway into the Gaza Strip. However, since those individuals in charge of the gravel monopoly at Erez had no control over the Sufa crossing, the Palestinian Authority kept Sufa closed for an additional two weeks until monopolistic control could be imposed there as well. The price of gravel . . . increased from $15 per metric ton to $30 per metric ton from January to July.24
In another example, a successful Palestinian-American businessman, Mahmoud al-Farra, built a modern, state-of-the-art flour mill near Khan Younis in Gaza. Given the economics of the situation, he was unable to compete with cheaper-priced Israeli flour imports and asked the PA to restrict such imports. Given the mill’s revenue potential, Mohammed Rashid wanted to acquire a controlling interest and oust al-Farra. Through a member of his “group,” Abu Ali Shaheen, Minister of Supply, Rashid guaranteed the continued flow of cheaper Israeli imports, which made it financially impossible for al-Farra to run the mill. Rashid was then “allowed” to buy 47 per cent of the mill. Imports of Israeli flour to Gaza stopped the day after Rashid took over the mill and flour prices skyrocketed about 20 per cent overnight. Some time later, Rashid persuaded Mohammed Sabawi, who owned the swing block of shares in the mill, to support Rashid’s attempt to oust al-Farra. Rashid made numerous allegations of corruption and mismanagement on al-Farra’s part but nothing was ever brought to trial. With Sabawi’s shares, Rashid was successful in deposing al-Farra and today the CEO is Ali Shaath, who runs the Gaza seaport as well.25 The other two flour mills in Gaza and the West Bank purchase wheat “in coordination” with Rashid’s mill. The use of state coercion was frighteningly visible during the summer of 1999 when Gaza’s merchant class, particularly gold merchants,
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came under a form of attack by the PA. Arafat’s cousin, Musa Arafat, who heads military intelligence, embarked on what amounted to be a program of kidnapping some of the heads of Gaza’s most prominent merchant families and holding them for ransom. Besides extorting vast sums of money from the families of these men, these attacks clearly were meant to threaten the local merchant class and demonstrate the price of nonconformity. Although these attacks have stopped, they could not have occurred without the approval of Yasir Arafat, and clearly are accepted as legitimate state policy. In this regard, there should be no surprise in the recent disclosure by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that employees of the Palestinian security services and the PA were found to be frequenting an Israeli casino located in the Gush Qatif Settlement Block in Gaza. The casino is administered by a settler named Amos who is well known for his continuous attacks against Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area near the settlement enclave.26 The PA also is guilty of widespread corruption. In 2000, under pressure from the international donor community, the PA published a report that divulged the existence of a multimillion-dollar slush fund and the misallocation of $530 million. The latter amount was diverted from the Palestinian Treasury in 1998 and 1999 to the Palestinian Commercial Services Company (PCSC), an enterprise wholly owned by the PA (but it is unlikely that these disclosures reveal the full extent of the PA’s dealings). These monies came from tax revenues collected by the Israeli government on Palestinian exports and were transferred by Israel into an account under Arafat’s control and administered by Mohammed Rashid through the PCSC. Although a certain percentage of these monies were used to cover the PA’s operating expenses, the bulk was used elsewhere. Indeed, the PCSC had $345 million in assets, which included $292 million in equity holdings in 34 companies, the largest of which (30 per cent) was in the Oasis Casino in Jericho and valued at $60 million. Other holdings include luxury hotels, the government monopoly on cement, the Palestinian telephone and telecommunications company, and alFarra’s flour mill, now valued at over $4 million. In 1999, the PCSC had a net profit of $77 million including $18 million from cement sales.27 These figures stand in stunning contrast to the fact that at least 20 per cent of Palestinians live in poverty and much of the remaining majority do not live appreciably better.
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Is Palestine a producing society? The combined impact on the Palestinian economy of Israeli and PA policies has been deleterious. The injury done not only speaks to the substance of economic exchange but to the rules of the exchange itself. These rules, whether written in Tel Aviv or Gaza, clearly show that the principles guiding the management of economic activity are not designed to encourage productive capacities but to thwart them. The Palestinian people also lack laws to promote public prosperity or prevent injury. There are few viable redistributive mechanisms and many of those that do exist are ethically indefensible. Transgressors are not punished but rewarded and they emanate from within the highest levels of the state itself, be it Israeli or Palestinian. In so perverse an environment, economic activity increasingly becomes the domain of buyers not producers, and is shaped by the demands of the moment not by the potentialities of the future. Critical Dynamics of a Changing Social Order: Some Concluding Thoughts The political and economic vacuum created by the peace process has been filled by heightened restrictions, widening corruption and growing bureaucratization, resulting in rising social discord and periodic violence. Israel maintains total control of Palestine and Palestinian life and will continue to do so after the final agreement is implemented. The PA colludes in this control by imposing its own as the agreed-upon cost of its survival. As a result, people have a weakened sense of where they are, or will be, on a personal and collective level and this loss of way has become numbing after so many years of unabated decline. A young Palestinian man cautions, “Don’t think you are really seeing us . . . We are just a picture. Inside everything is empty.”28 The operation of Palestinian society is characterized, at least in part, by disorderly social structures including government, the law and the market, and also, perhaps, by a weakened growth of knowledge. Increasingly, the social condition of order is being defined by negative rather than by neutral rules, absent of sympathy and consent and the larger social and political connections that nurture them. New
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social types have emerged, slowly changing the dominant reference group from positive to negative. All this is occurring within an eroding economy and growing impoverishment. Palestinians appear to have few defenses against these changes other than a withdrawal into the tribe or religion, or into the self, where silence is refuge,29 resulting in what Fawaz Turki has called “a splintered social being.”30 Yet, no situation is totally without hope. Among Palestinians, hope still resides in the individual. It lies in the dignity of the refugee mother who raises ten children in three rooms and who struggles to educate each one of them. And it is seen in the work of individual teachers who, at great personal risk, attempt to challenge old ideas by introducing new ones, and who push their students toward excellence rather than power. Hope also lives in those civil society institutions that are attempting to resist the breakdown of key social connections and thereby maintain a moral center. They include a range of grass-roots organizations, religious and secular, working to rebuild local communities through the provision of educational, health and other social services. There are also human rights organizations that continue—under growing danger to themselves—to document and protest violations by the Israeli government and the PA. In addition, some organized professional groups demand redress of grievance through collective actions. For example, Palestinian teachers from across the West Bank carried out a strike for a sustained period of time in 2000 at enormous personal cost to the strikers and despite constant—and eventually realized—threats of retaliation by the PA. Finally, there is the widening movement around the issue of a Palestinian right of return that has begun to mobilize people successfully at the grass-roots level. Perhaps it is this success that tragically led to an arson attack against the Ibdaa Cultural Center in the Dheisheh camp where refugee children in the West Bank were in daily computer contact with their counterparts elsewhere in the world. That these groups remain vital to the Palestinian social fabric is unquestioned. But alone they cannot resist the assault. What kind of society is Palestine? Who is the citizen and what are his duties? What are the principal claims of the social order? What is mutual and shared within society? What is the nature of the struggle among Palestinians today and where will it lead?
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Palestinian society incrementally is losing its equilibrium. Those principles that allow a society to maintain a center, balance and order have been violated. What is absolute and essential in Palestinian society, as in all others, is the importance of human development, which must incorporate a sense of possibility and the freedom to act upon it. The tragic alternative to this weighs heavily and looms large.
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Part IV The Failure of “Peace” and its Consequences: The Second Palestinian Intifada
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14 Introduction to Part IV
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HAT O SLO PROVED DAMAGING TO Palestinian life is an understatement. Despite certain cosmetic improvements that gave the illusion of positive change, the Palestinian position had been seriously undermined by Israel’s expanding occupation, for example, the rapid growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the continued and widened confiscations of Arab land and their division into isolated cantons, and the unwillingness of the United States and the European Union to openly challenge it. The further collusion of the Palestinian Authority only fueled Palestine’s internal dissolution. There was a palpable sense of betrayal among Palestinians during this time, a pronounced feeling of desperation and rage at what, to them, was their deception by external powers and their own leadership. It was within this context that the second Palestinian uprising, the Al Aqsa Intifada, erupted in September 2000 following the failure of the Camp David talks, which attempted, through diplomacy, to formalize the losses imposed by Oslo. Although the uprising was directed primarily at Israel, it was also a revolt against the Fateh-dominated Palestinian Authority and its failure to establish viable state institutions, and engage in a process of national reform and reconstruction and democratic practice. This is why, in part, Yasir Arafat conceded to and exploited the militarization of the uprising, which fueled the violence and the consequences attending it. The political and economic vacuum created by the peace process, filled during the Oslo years by growing restrictions, widening corruption and growing bureaucratization, has since been filled by violence, uncertainty and political paralysis. The articles in Part IV were written during the period of the second uprising and examine not only the inevitability of Oslo’s failure but the
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damaging impact of this failure on Palestinian life. The peace process brought not promise but disaster to Palestinians and this is clearly seen in the dramatic changes to their economy and society. The Oslo process created and imposed some critical precedents—since incorporated into new “peace” plans (see Chapter 18 on the Gaza Disengagement Plan)— that further precluded a workable Palestinian state, demonstrating Israel’s continued unwillingness to relinquish control of Palestinian lands, return to pre-1967 borders, and meaningfully end the occupation. These precedents include: 1) The rejection of international law in favor of bilateral negotiations between two very unequal actors, one possessing great power and the other possessing virtually none at all. Although the PA was assigned responsibility for various sectors of activity under Oslo, ultimate authority over the territories—and the power to impose it— remained entirely with Israel. Further, by agreeing to official Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the PA, ipso facto, accepted both the existence and legitimacy of Israeli occupation. 2) A “land for peace” formula that left the amount of land returned unclear. Israel made no commitment to return to the June 4, 1967 borders, that is, withdraw from the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. Negotiations came down to a question of how much land Israel, backed by the U.S., was willing to give up. When Yasir Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles (DOP) and the subsequent interim agreements, he, in effect, affirmed the Israeli position, which has prevailed and is reflected in all of the Oslo Accords, none of which acknowledge Israeli occupation or Palestinian national rights. It is worth noting that between 30–40 per cent of the Gaza Strip (for example, settlements, military bases, bypass roads security and buffer zones) remained under direct Israeli military control during Oslo. 3) The fragmentation and isolation of Palestinian lands, especially in the West Bank, and with it, the institutionalization and formalization of territorial non-contiguity as a characteristic feature of a future Palestinian state. With Oslo and the division of Palestinian lands into areas a, b and c, the need arose to delineate Palestinian from non-Palestinian areas and checkpoints were increasingly used to
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surround the former. It is vital to understand that although the absolute area under full or partial Palestinian control had increased during Oslo, these areas were non-contiguous and remained isolated cantons separated by areas under the control of Israel, allowing the occupation to remain in a powerful form. In this way, the contest over territory during Oslo gave rise to a policy of separation with certain features that were altogether new: not only did Israel seek to insure the demographic and political separation of Palestinians and Israelis, but also sought to separate and isolate Palestinians from each other and from their land, thereby containing (as opposed to expelling) the Palestinian demographic threat. 4) The final precedent was the relegation of core issues such as borders, refugees, Jerusalem and settlements to a later (end) phase of negotiations, that is, the Camp David summit. In the interim, Israel established key facts on the ground, which severely compromised negotiations, for example, the expropriation (with the PA’s approval) of at least 70,000 acres of Palestinian land, the doubling of the settler population, the construction and expansion of settlements and a vast network—250 miles—of bypass roads that not only connected Israeli settlements to each other but to Israel as well. Hence, despite dramatic changes in the Israeli position at Camp David in July 2000, Prime Minister Barak’s offer to the Palestinians was anything but generous. At best, it would have left Palestinians with an edifice of autonomy in geographic non-contiguous areas and little more, a reality they could not accept.1 The Uprising Not long after the uprising began, a friend of mine living in Ramallah described the core impulse beneath the revolt: We are not going to go quietly. We are not going to let Israel continue to inflict its violence or impose its dictat unopposed or with impunity. If they elect to use lethal force against us, our dead bodies, and the gut sympathy and outrage they provoke will help draw the world’s attention to our plight, help impress upon Israelis the costs and risks of denying us our right to live as full citizens of an adequately sovereign . . . state. Then perhaps we
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can win the political solution that we have so far failed to gain through peaceful means.2
These words not only reflect the logic of the Intifada but the way in which Palestinians, by then, had been compromised—indeed laid bare— politically by the Oslo process. It further persuaded Israelis of the need to separate from the Palestinians, resulting in the imposition of more comprehensive external and internal closures, especially in Gaza. Political erosion was accompanied by, and itself mirrored, the continued disempowerment of Palestinian civil society. If one begins with the first Intifada, the chaos of today represents nearly 20 years during which (a) the education system as a socializer and organizer of young people all but collapsed (7,500 new teachers and 4,700 classrooms are needed immediately in Gaza just to bring its education system up to the level of the West Bank); (b) the health care system deteriorated due to the fragmentation and forced decentralization of services imposed by closure and the Bantustanization of the West Bank (to maintain present levels of health care in Gaza alone, 425 additional physicians, 520 additional nurses and 465 new hospital beds will be needed by 20103); (c) a whole generation of Palestinians grew up knowing nothing but violence and unpredictability; (d) de-development accelerated exponentially as a result of closure and other restrictive economic measures; (e) an entire population was traumatized and desensitized by brutality—the brutality of the occupation, the brutality of the PA and its security forces and its appalling governance, and the brutality of poverty and hopelessness; (f) traditional family structures and sources of authority broke down, complicated by conflicts resulting from population pressure, and finally, (g) governance systems failed to fill the void left by disappearing traditional structures of adjudication, rule of law and conflict resolution. These factors, among others, have produced many pernicious outcomes and have aggravated preexisting ones including the lack of public order and collective responsibility, popular alienation from politics and the abstraction of the nationalist cause, reversion to tribal forms of political and social organization and increasing clan warfare (and even less legitimacy for tottering governmental structures), and an increasingly traumatized and poorly educated and socialized generation of children who lack respect for authority and the law, and who have little experience with restraint or self-discipline.4
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Thus, Palestinian identity, already reduced and narrowed by decades of occupation and violence, was further violated during Oslo by the reality of separation and the geographic boundaries used to impose it, severing the collective into physically and demographically isolated and dysfunctional parts.5 The current uprising has only deepened the problem, finding perhaps its most acute expression in greater political fragmentation and violence. Political fracture is characterized in part by the virtual loss of the PA as a political institution or governing authority able to care for or protect its population against abuse, a position not dissimilar from the one it held during the Oslo period when the PA consistently failed to defend its people against the most damaging policies of the occupation regime and sometimes collaborated in them. The Palestinian regime came to be synonymous with corruption and tyranny—hamiha haramiha (its protector is its thief)6, sacrificing Palestinian national goals, indeed Palestine itself, for personal gain (a dynamic that ultimately led to Fateh’s stunning 2006 electoral defeat). Because of this, the Intifada has produced the severe disruption of existing political arrangements as seen in three very important political dynamics, which now powerfully define the Palestinian political landscape: (1) the fragmentation of the Palestinian national movement, notably Fateh, among the older PLO elite (who refused to democratize and enfranchise their younger counterparts), middle-aged cadres who grew up under occupation and belong (or once belonged) either to the PA security services or the Palestinian Legislative Council (fundamentally anti-PA), and a younger generation who were born during the first uprising and have known little but violence and armed conflict; (2) a change in the domestic balance of power with the dramatic ascendancy of the Islamists, and (3) the proliferation of militias, which are associated largely with the younger generation and with Fateh. Hence, it was the failure of the peace process coupled with the PA’s (and Arafat’s) inability and unwillingness to provide leadership before and since the uprising that dramatically undermined the PA’s legitimacy. The very real institutional breakdown of the Palestinian Authority—resulting from Israeli attacks against it and from its own dysfunction and malfeasance—created a political vacuum, which has been filled by a variety of armed groups from the middle and younger cadres who became (and some argue, still are) the new sources of
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legitimacy. They are an autonomous-cum-independent force within the Palestinian national movement with an agenda that diverges from that of the National Authority. Unlike the PA, which had continually sought accommodation with Israel and the United States, the middle and younger guards advocated armed confrontation with Israel as the only way to end the occupation (before reaching accommodation) and, I might add, insure their dominance in the post-Intifada era, a struggle that was painfully played out during the preparation for the January 2006 parliamentary elections. Whether any of this will change under the newly installed Hamas-run government (2006) remains to be seen. The decision to use arms against the occupation arose not only in response to the moribund and self-defeating political and diplomatic process that increasingly was Oslo but to the very real measures taken by the Israeli government during the uprising. In 2002 especially, Palestinians were subjected to the large-scale destruction of their institutions, both governmental and civic, resulting from Israel’s violent five-week incursion into the West Bank that began at the end of March 2002 and almost daily incursions into parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since then, particularly Israel’s reoccupation of most West Bank cities in June 2002. And as the political analyst Graham Usher pointed out, when Sharon’s military strategy moved from military attacks to reoccupation, the Palestinian resistance went from guerilla warfare in the West Bank and Gaza to suicide bombings in Israel. Indeed, the strategic embrace of military force initially led the younger guard into an alliance with the Islamists and other opposition forces, perhaps to preclude the formation of a parallel Islamist leadership (which nonetheless emerged), institutions and strike forces of the kind that arose during the first Intifada. The growing strength and dominance of the Islamists since the start of the uprising, culminating in their 2006 election victory, represents a dramatic shift from their greatly weakened political role in the years just prior to the Intifada. For example, before the uprising, poll after poll revealed that popular disappointment with the nationalists did not translate into support for the Islamists as people remained on the political sidelines. My own research with the Islamists during this period similarly revealed a striking absence of political discourse and
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action, and a clear shift within the movement towards social activities in the face of political defeat. The Intifada and the failure of the Palestinian leadership (and Palestinian organizations) to translate popular resilience into strategized resistance brought about the first significant change in the domestic balance of power since 1995–96 when popular support for Arafat and the Oslo process was high. Desertion of the nationalists subsequently translated into support for the Islamists. By July 2001, the Islamists increased their support by 80 per cent, rising to 27 per cent. If other opposition groups are added, support for the opposition stood at 31 per cent, surpassing the mainstream Fateh and its allies at 30 per cent. This trend has only strengthened over time particularly in light of the growing anarchy and functional bankruptcy within the Palestinian Authority. Based on the 2005 municipal election results in the West Bank and Gaza, the Islamists won significant victories, leaving them in control of municipalities where over one million Palestinians live. With the January 2006 legislative elections, Hamas—to the surprise of many, including Hamas—gained a majority share of power and authority, a stark reflection of popular outrage at Fateh and its corruption, and its total failure over the last decade to achieve anything meaningful for Palestinians. In light of the internal disarray currently gripping Gaza—which some argue is being deliberately provoked by influential (older) Fateh members who do not want to see a real change in the political status quo (which the January elections in fact brought) and the loss of power and wealth that would attend it—it is safe to say that the unity of vision and action that guided the first uprising has been completely extinguished. At best, there appear to be tactics, absent of strategy and long-range thinking, spurring greater political fragmentation. No actor, including the PA, has espoused a political program guiding its actions or a political strategy for moving forward. What is clear is that political groups of all sorts are mobilized around a decidedly negative agenda—the need to exact revenge—rather than around a positive agenda of reconstruction and rehabilitation. Some observers posit this may change with the ascent of the Islamists to power, especially at the local level. Yet, even in those areas where Hamas
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has won municipal power, they, too, have done little to articulate an economic strategy forward. Hence since the uprising, the nature of Palestinian resistance and political praxis has been defined by armed factions rather than by civic institutions and the tragic but logical outcome of this strategy is being played out in Gaza and large parts of the West Bank today. Fateh, for example, aimed to restore its past legitimacy as a national liberation movement through the militarization of the Intifada and not through the incorporation and mobilization of Palestinian civil society, which has been largely marginalized and weakened. While it is beyond the scope of this introduction to enter into a detailed discussion of this political phenomenon, the militarization of society and the pernicious political divisions it has produced have contributed to terrible political fracture within the nationalist forces—notably Fateh—and between Fateh and the Islamists, a struggle that remains very much alive. (In fact, Hamas’s only real post-election option is to try to address internal fracture and polarization by resuming a national dialogue and articulating a governmental program to which Fateh could agree. Without it, the Hamas-run government will most likely fall.) Add to this the decimation by Israel of the authority’s infrastructure, particularly its security forces, and the result has been greater lawlessness, chaos and insecurity, particularly in the continued absence of an effective leadership and institutional (political, legal, or civil) body or bodies capable of addressing these problems. One dangerous phenomenon—seen during the civil war in Lebanon—is the rapid growth of militias. In the absence of credible government, these militias have become very powerful actors. Their leaders have vested interests in maintaining their power and in eliminating other loci of authority (as in a real government). They also resonate strongly in a society where tribal feelings and needs for group affiliations are deeply felt at the cultural level. With a militia, even if one’s family has no social status, an individual can still belong to a powerful tribe with all the privileges and protections therein. Because both the PA and Palestinian society find themselves gripped by such profound paralysis, Israel’s continued attacks have brought Palestinians to a breaking point, which in large part explains the internal chaos and Islamist success.
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The Impact of 9/117 A brief examination of the impact of 9/11 on the character of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict generally and on Palestinians politics specifically is warranted because excepting Afghanistan, the impact of September 11 upon domestic politics has nowhere been quite as visible and dramatic as in Palestine. Yet, the main effect of 9/11 in Palestine has been to reinforce and accelerate preexisting trends brought into being by or as a result of the uprising, rather than to create, determine or reverse them. Not less important than examining how 9/11 has impacted Palestinian politics, is the question of why it has been able to do so. Here again, one must turn to the uprising for clarification. Almost immediately in this respect, one is confronted by the crisis of Palestinian leadership. With its inability to determine and enforce a clear strategy for managing the confrontation with Israel, the leadership proved simply unable to properly understand and deal coherently with the new geopolitical realities. President Bush’s war on terrorism mandated that the Palestinian problem be solved, despite his administration’s seeming ambivalence toward it. Having failed to solve the problem politically and reach a settlement fully congruent with Israeli terms, which was tried under Oslo, and faced with continued Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, the U.S. government gave Prime Minister Sharon the green light to subdue the Palestinians militarily and defeat them outright through the elimination of the PA, that is, security forces and government institutions (in a more recent strategic version of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon), the physical isolation of Arafat, the destruction of the Palestinian economy, the destruction of Palestinian civic institutions (development organizations and professional associations) and physical infrastructure, continued Israeli settlement expansion and expropriation of Arab land, prolonged curfews, comprehensive and long-term closures, home demolitions and political assassinations. Israel’s 2002 reoccupation of most West Bank towns and the reinstatement of Israel’s civil administration, followed three years later by the Gaza Disengagement Plan are perhaps the clearest indicators of Israel’s determination to alter if not destroy preexisting Israeli–Palestinian agreements and maintain Israeli control over Palestinians and their land especially in the West Bank.8
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Since 9/11, Israeli actions against Palestinians have been cast by Israel as part of the war against terror, which critically removed the Palestinian struggle against occupation from its political context. The political denuding of the Palestinian struggle in this way has enabled Israel to attack Palestinians in whatever ways it chose with little if any accountability. It has also enabled Israel to undermine or destroy those attempts aimed at achieving ceasefires or restarting negotiations. After 9/11, the absence of a political process (combined with dramatic socioeconomic declines) gave rise to certain political realities that have had a pronounced impact on the Palestinian political arena, among them: • The growing international isolation of the Palestinian leadership and the formalization of Sharon’s eliminationist agenda, which stated that Israel is “at war” with the PA in the conventional sense and will therefore seek military victory, vowing to overpower the Palestinians prior to any resumption of negotiations; • The apparent unwillingness of the U.S. to pursue seriously a political resolution of the conflict; • Sharon’s eradication of the concept of territory under full Palestinian security control and the reactivation of direct Israeli rule, especially in the West Bank; • The absence of a national liberation movement among Palestinians that could create institutions to support a strategy of national resistance and reconstruction; • The total rejection by Palestinians of security arrangements and piecemeal interim arrangements; • The continued absence of a clear hierarchy and chain of command within the PA; • The strengthening of armed and cross-factional militias—the young guard—that seeks political power through intensified militia warfare; • The rise to real power of the radical Islamists; • The increasing decentralization and fragmentation of Palestinian politics; • The creeping establishment of a new political stage with no Palestinian Authority, continued colonial military occupation and the organization of long-term resistance led by young,
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underground, armed, refugee-based militias that may be more democratic but definitely more extreme and religiously oriented (the overwhelming victory of Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary elections may support this contention); and • The continued militarization of Palestinian politics and marginalization of society in the absence of a political alternative. In this greatly weakened context, therefore, it is difficult to envision a process of reconstruction or reassertion be it political, social, or economic. Today, much as before, there is no governing institution in Palestine that can protect or defend its citizens or engage in meaningful public service or leadership in any form. There is no due process or any real system of accountability, appeal, or justice. And, there is no economic growth or development or any possibility of any. Indeed, the discord that is seen at the political level is also found at the economic and social levels in the macro- and micro-spaces of daily life where survival is struggled over, fostered and sometimes lost. With the second Palestinian uprising and the enormous pressures imposed by the Israeli authorities on an already weakened economy and society, Palestinians now face a moribund economy, a humanitarian crisis characterized by levels of impoverishment and economic decline that have no parallel during Israel’s 39-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the destruction of ordinary life. Some features of Palestine’s economic dismemberment include a decline in per capita income of some 75 per cent between 1993 and 2004, and 46 per cent since 1999; the contraction of the economy by half; unemployment levels that until 2004 averaged between 30–35 per cent with some as high as 50 per cent in certain parts of Gaza and the West Bank; a poverty rate that increased from 21 per cent in September 2000 to 60 per cent as early as December 2002, with certain regions of Gaza reaching 80 per cent; a decline in overall food consumption of more than 25 per cent per capita, with more than half the Palestinian population totally dependent on food aid, and around 13 per cent of Palestinian children suffering from some form of malnutrition (2005). On the eve of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research reported that for the first time since the occupation began, unemployment was ranked as the
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most critical issue for Palestinians, superceding occupation.9 Under a best-case scenario, the World Bank predicts that it will take the Palestinian economy 20 years to return to where it was on the eve of the current uprising. Two new and pernicious features of the Intifada period with profound economic consequences, particularly for issues of viability, are the creation of buffer zones in the Gaza Strip (even after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza) and the building of the separation barrier or wall in the West Bank, both logical expressions of territorial fragmentation and spatial partitioning. Buffer zones are areas forcibly emptied of people, buildings and agriculture by which the army is able to monitor large areas of land. Once emptied, buffer zones become firing zones that Palestinians enter at their own risk and many, including children, have died doing so. Between 2000 and 2005 entire agricultural areas and residential neighborhoods were systematically destroyed, the most egregious example being Rafah where the IDF demolished over 1,600 homes alone, displacing over 10 per cent of the local population. The razing of homes and land was concentrated along the border—making it even more impermeable—and on the periphery of settlements: “The destruction was often carried out in an incremental fashion, which gave the impression that individual acts of destruction were tied to specific instances of combat, thus keeping international outrage within acceptable limits.”10 Despite its “disengagement” from Gaza, Israel has continued to establish buffer zones in the northern and eastern borders of the Strip—evacuating part of the population there—officially in response to Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. Recreating the failed “security zones” carved into Lebanon over 20 years ago, Gaza’s buffer zones have been declared closed military areas off limits to Palestinians, which the army regularly shells with artillery from Israel and from the air in order to prevent Palestinians from approaching the border. In late December 2005 the Israeli Defense Forces Command issued the following leaflet to residents of the northern area of the Gaza Strip: “While the terrorists continue to launch rockets from your houses towards Israeli territories, [the] IDF acts to defend the safety and security of Israeli inhabitants and would continue to hunt perpetrators of these actions. Remaining in these areas from which these rockets are launched would endanger
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your lives.” In the period between its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September 2005 and June 2006, the Israeli military fired more than 7,700 shells at northern Gaza.11 In the West Bank the Israeli military has, since June 2002, been erecting a barrier or wall that is meant to separate Israel and the West Bank and thereby prevent the uncontrolled entry of Palestinians (that is, suicide bombers) to Israel or Israeli settlements. The barrier is currently over a hundred miles in length and was originally projected to be 217 miles at completion. However, with the subsequent decision by the government to expand the wall to the eastern side of the West Bank, it will be approximately 425 miles (681 kilometers) when finished—four times the length of the Berlin Wall. According to the World Bank: The wall is not just a wall. Depending upon location, sections will comprise some (or all) of the following elements [themselves a kind of mitigated buffer zone]: four meter [12 feet] deep trenches on either side; a dirt path “to which access will be forbidden” where potential infiltrators would be exposed to IDF fire; a trace path to register foot prints; an electronic warning or “smart” fence; a concrete barrier topped with barbed wire; a concrete wall rising as high as eight meters [24 feet]; a two-lane military patrol road; and fortified guard towers placed at regular intervals.12
The Israeli human rights group, B’tselem states: “In most areas the barrier is comprised of an electronic fence with dirt paths, barbed wire fences, and trenches on both sides, at an average width of 60 meters [approximately 180 feet]. In some areas, a wall six to eight meters [approximately 18–24 feet] high has been erected in place of the barrier system.”13 Furthermore, the territory between the Green Line, Israel’s border with the West Bank, and the wall has been declared a closed military zone. The path of the separation barrier does not adhere consistently to the Green Line but at some points deviates several miles into the West Bank in order to incorporate Israeli settlements into the “Israeli” side of the wall. As of this writing only 11 per cent of the wall runs along Israel’s border with the West Bank. The wall will, in effect, annex large tracts of the most fertile Palestinian land, and confiscate many of the water wells used for drinking/agricultural purposes. According to B’tselem and the World Bank, over 250,000 Palestinians will be trapped in enclaves to the east and west of the wall. Furthermore, the barrier will separate
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approximately 200,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank while more than a hundred communities will be separated from their agricultural land. In all, nearly 17 per cent of the West Bank will be totally surrounded by barriers, fragmenting and isolating Palestinian communities over and above the enduring isolation already imposed.14 The wall’s construction and the suffering, dispossession and impoverishment it is causing can only be considered acceptable if one embraces the premise that every single Palestinian man, woman and child is responsible for suicide bombers and deserves punishment on this scale. Indeed, the construction of the wall, together with continuous settlement expansion, exacerbated physical fragmentation of Palestinians achieved through the imposition of military checkpoints and bypass roads, the accelerated destruction of Palestinian homes, agricultural lands and livelihood, and the massive destruction of Palestinian institutions and physical infrastructure, have given rise to specific outcomes—some of which have no precedent in Palestinian life—such as the jurisdictional fragmentation of territory and space (by the end of 2002, the U.N. reported that the West Bank was cut up into 50 disconnected pockets while Gaza was divided into four), the emergence of an internal refugee problem, the virtual destruction of the Palestinian middle class, brain drain and the weakening of the productive sector of society, the rapidly diminishing health and educational status of the population, changing ideals of the society, and a visible shift in the balance of power among various strata of Palestinian society toward the radical extreme. There is, in effect, an inexorable return to subsistence—economic, political and psychological—and the final arbiters of power remain the United States and Israel. The U.S. Roadmap for Peace It was within this diminished context that the “Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”—known more commonly as the U.S. roadmap for peace—was introduced. Formerly announced on April 30, 2003, the roadmap—like Oslo before it and the Disengagement Plan after it—was hailed as an historic compromise. Given its central role during the period of the Al
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Aqsa Intifada and continued invocation as a policy framework (postdisengagement), some of its main features will be examined. The roadmap contains many of the structural flaws of the Oslo Accords. For one, it maintains the occupation and the structural imbalance of power until the last phase of the process and defers key issues until the end phase of negotiations in line with a staged approach that eventually undermined Oslo. The roadmap similarly rejects international law as a legal framework for resolving the conflict except for U.N. Resolutions 242, 338 and 1397, and makes the Palestinian state contingent on a new Palestinian leadership, reformed authority, the cessation of violence and on a security apparatus that would enforce Israeli security, which was the very basis of the Oslo agreements. The Palestinians accepted the roadmap because they had no choice. Ariel Sharon’s cabinet accepted it on May 25, 2003 conditioned on 14 amendments, which would effectively stalemate negotiations and preclude the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. For example, Palestinians would have to stop and dismantle terrorism as originally stated in President Bush’s June 24, 2002 speech although there is no mention of ending Israeli violence against Palestinians, which after 9/11, is regarded as a justifiable response to terrorism. Palestinians would also have to renounce the legal refugee right of return, something they could never do. Further, the freezing of Israeli settlement activity will only occur after a prolonged period of calm and this freezing refers only to new settlements. Critically, the only settlements to be dismantled are those that were established since March 2001, leaving the overwhelming majority of settlements in place and reinforcing the geographic noncontiguity of Palestinian lands, a hallmark feature of Oslo. In this regard, Palestinians were being asked to undertake momentous reforms including the cessation of violence while the Israeli government was being asked to refrain from doing what was already illegal: freeze all settlement activity. In a similar vein—and in line with its narrow interpretation of land-for-peace under Oslo—Israel agreed to withdraw its forces to the September 2000 border as security increases and not to the June 4, 1967 borders, which would mean withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza entirely. Despite these features, the roadmap has been lauded as a breakthrough for two reasons (which technically represent a departure from Oslo).
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First, it makes explicit reference to a provisional Palestinian state with uncertain boundaries, whose final configuration, however, is left undefined. That is, the roadmap calls for enhancing Palestine’s territorial contiguity but does not demand it. Not surprisingly, there is no mention of an independent Palestinian state nor is there a map of one. Second, the roadmap refers explicitly to occupation and to ending the occupation at the end phase of the process. However, there is no mention that Israeli occupation is illegal (there is, for example, no reference to the separation wall), and must end in accordance with international law and U.N. resolutions. Embedded in all this are specific assumptions underlying the roadmap, which not only reflect political understandings after 9/11 but which (re)shaped the context for future Israeli–Palestinian relations and negotiations. These assumptions argue that: 1. Terrorism is forcing Israel to maintain the occupation, and not that the occupation is generating resistance and terrorism. 2. Israel’s fight against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinians is part of the U.S. global war against terrorism. If the Israeli– Palestinian conflict is defined as a war on terrorism, then negotiating with Palestinians or giving into their demands is a form of moral compromise. And since Palestinians are considered terrorists, they have ceded some of their sovereign rights. In this way, Sharon managed to position the question of territory and its control beyond the reach of diplomacy, thereby insulating those policies and undermining the emergence of a Palestinian state. 3. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the primary source of insecurity in the area, the lack of democracy is. Therefore, democratization must precede peace; this will take time and needs a long-term transitional phase. Hence, Palestinians must reform and change before the occupation ends. In fact, in response to the December 2002 draft of the roadmap, the Israeli government stated that the roadmap’s purpose is to seek an end to the conflict rather than an end to the occupation.15 So framed and conditioned, the roadmap, like Oslo, has proved to be a non-starter because the primary condition that produces the violence—
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the occupation and the oppressive policies that define it—remained unchanged and unchallenged, and after 9/11, legitimized. Yet, the roadmap continues to be invoked by the international community as a reference point for negotiations as it was during and after the disengagement from Gaza, and as a reasonable point of departure. Given the evolution of the conflict particularly since Oslo, it would seem logical that negotiations should follow, not precede, concrete changes on the ground. It is also essential to create a negotiating framework that eliminates the power asymmetries between Palestinians and Israelis in favor of one that introduces greater parity. Furthermore, phased solutions, conditioned change and imposed settlements have failed. The most important issues between the two protagonists must be dealt with up front and not deferred: the final objective of the process must be defined in advance in order to proceed. The occupation must end before the conflict can be resolved. Any attempt by the U.S. and Israel to impose a political settlement on Palestinians while maintaining the occupation and Israel’s matrix of control, which underpinned the Oslo process and the roadmap, will ultimately fail (whether the Palestinian government is run by Hamas or Fateh). Yet, the imposition of such a political “settlement” is exactly what happened with Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza and subsequently with Prime Minister Olmert’s realignment plan for the West Bank. Throughout the second Intifada, the Sharon government made it increasingly clear that what it sought was an encircled non-contiguous Palestinian entity on about half of the West Bank controlled by Israel with the other half effectively annexed to Israel. Gaza, too, would be encircled and remain under Israeli control. This diminished entity would critically eliminate Palestinian control over the whole of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In order to achieve this the government needed to attenuate Palestinian demands—which it attempted to do largely through economic deprivation, physical/institutional destruction and demographic isolation—and create a malleable leadership that would accept a highly compromised outcome. Towards this end, the Israeli government is using siege as well as occupation as a method of control, imprisoning people and eroding their capacity to resist internally. If it succeeds (and it is likely that it has, at least in the near-term), the Israeli government will argue that it has ended the occupation (as it did after its disengagement from Gaza) but in a manner that will undeniably
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maintain it. The occupation will then be transformed from a political and legal issue with international legitimacy into a simple dispute over borders. With the Gaza Disengagement Plan, the Israeli government has arguably and finally achieved this goal.
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15 Why Peace Failed: An Oslo Autopsy*
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HE TRAGEDY OF SEPTEMBER 11 and the increasingly violent struggle between Palestinians and Israelis have refocused attention on the continuing Palestinian–Israeli conflict as a primary concern of the Arab world. The Palestinian problem, perhaps more than any other, resonates deeply with Arab and Muslim peoples. According to a recent survey quoted by journalist David Hirst, nearly 60 per cent of the people of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf Emirates and Lebanon regard Palestine as the “single most important issue to them personally”; for Egyptians this figure rises to 79 per cent. Not surprisingly, Osama bin Laden, for whom the Palestinian issue had not appeared primary, stated that Americans will not be safe until Palestinians are safe. Soon after, President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged the centrality of the Palestinian question in the current crisis and the need for a viable Palestinian state (although the Bush administration’s hardening toward the Palestinians following the suicide bombings in December 2001 may change this). It is commonly believed that the failure of the Middle East peace process to resolve the Palestinian–Israeli conflict occurred at the Camp David II summit in July 2000, when Israeli, Palestinian and American delegates met to reach a final settlement. It was at Camp David that Israel supposedly offered the Palestinians an exceedingly generous compromise that came close to an agreement—but which the Palestinians selfishly and foolishly rejected. This perception was reinforced by President Bill Clinton, who publicly blamed Palestinian
* Originally published in Current History, January 2002, pp. 8–16. The version reprinted here has been slightly edited. 233
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Authority President Yasir Arafat for the summit’s failure. Others have since argued that the summit’s failure was not due to the Palestinians alone but to the Israelis and Americans as well, and that the failure of the Oslo peace process was due largely to faulty negotiating styles, poor management of the implementation process, and the unwillingness of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to honor negotiated agreements. Hence, it was the inability to negotiate the terms of the Oslo peace agreements that was the problem rather than the terms themselves. But the ongoing crisis among Israelis and Palestinians is not primarily the result of a failed summit, poor implementation, or Netanyahu’s intransigence: it is instead the result of a “peace” process that by design altered the political, economic and physical landscape of the Palestinian territories in a manner that intensified rather than mitigated Palestinian dispossession, deprivation and oppression, and so precluded a fair and workable settlement of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict (irrespective of what might have been agreed to at Camp David II). The egregious outcomes imposed by the Oslo process were not an unfortunate byproduct of a fundamentally fair set of agreements but largely a direct result of the terms of those agreements themselves (and Israeli closure policy, a defining feature of the Oslo period), which were fundamentally unfair. Rather than coming close to an agreement, the parties had never been farther apart. Oslo: Key Terms and Outcomes The initiation of the Oslo peace process in September 1993 brought with it the hope and expectation among Palestinians and Israelis that a resolution to the conflict was attainable. Yet, in the years between Oslo’s inception and its unofficial end in September 2000, when the Al Aqsa uprising began, conditions in the West Bank and Gaza steadily and dramatically deteriorated to a point far worse than during any other period of Israeli occupation, providing the context for the current uprising. Illustrations of this decline include the influx of almost 100,000 new Israeli settlers into the West Bank and Gaza—which doubled the settler population—and the addition of at least 30 new Israeli settlements, and settlement-related infrastructure, since 1993. During this time, the government of Israel confiscated over 40,000 acres
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of Palestinian land—much of it viable agricultural land worth more than $1 billion—for Israeli settlement expansion and road building. (The latter refers to the paving of 250 miles of settler bypass roads onto expropriated Arab lands designed to connect Jewish settlements and divide Palestinian population centers.) Palestinian decline is also seen in the institutionalization of closure policy, the measure that had a pronounced effect on the Palestinian economy and the free movement of people during the Oslo period; closure resulted in significantly heightened unemployment and increased poverty and child-labor rates between 1992 and mid-2000. Perhaps the most striking indicator of Palestinian weakness during this period was the dissection of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into territorially non-contiguous enclaves that directly resulted from Oslo’s terms, with entry and exit controlled by Israeli military checkpoints. The last seven years of the Oslo peace process were shaped primarily by the policy imperatives of the Israeli government with the explicit support of the United States government, and secondarily by those of the Palestinian Authority. Israeli imperatives were three: the solidification of Israeli control over the Palestinian population and resources (notably land and water), the preclusion of Palestinian geographic continuity, and the institutionalization of policies of economic integration with political, social and demographic separation with the Palestinian people. The PA’s imperatives were also three and fundamentally no different from those of Israel: the demobilization and repression of the Palestinian people and the disempowerment of their institutions; the elimination of all forms of dissent and opposition, particularly to the Oslo Accords, and security cooperation with Israel. The Oslo agreements and the process to which they gave shape were not about peace or reconciliation but about security and Israel’s continued control of Palestinian resources. In the words of one Israeli official, “Both sides gained from this [security] cooperation. After all, Israel and the PA have one thing in common. Both want stability, not democracy, in the territories . . . .”1 Indeed, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s decision to allow Arafat to return and establish a governing authority was not based on Israel’s desire to see democracy flourish in the West Bank and Gaza, but on the need to devolve responsibility for controlling Palestinians to a body wholly dependent on and accountable to Israel. Just days before the signing of the first Oslo
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agreement on the White House lawn, Rabin told the political council of the Labor Party: I prefer the Palestinians to cope with the problems of enforcing order in the Gaza [Strip]. The Palestinians will be better at it than we are because they allow no appeals to the Supreme Court and will prevent the [Israeli] Association for Civil Rights from criticizing the conditions there by denying it access to the area. They will rule there by their own methods, freeing—and this is important—the Israeli army soldiers from having to do what they will do.2
The Oslo process, therefore, did not represent the end of Israeli occupation but its continuation, albeit in a less direct form. The structural relationship between occupier and occupied, and the gross asymmetries in power that attend it, were not dismantled by the accords but reinforced and strengthened. The Oslo agreements formalized and institutionalized the occupation in a manner that was altogether new. Oslo I: Legalizing Israeli Control The first Oslo agreement, the Declaration of Principles (DOP), was signed on September 13, 1993. It contained several noteworthy features: the removal of international law as the basis for resolving the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, the redeployment of Israeli forces from within circumscribed areas of the Gaza Strip and West Bank (beginning with the West Bank town of Jericho), the delinking of interim and final status issues (whose linkage was a major obstacle for both sides at the 1991 Madrid peace talks), the establishment of the PA, and mutual recognition. Perhaps the most critical feature of the Oslo process was the abandonment of the entire body of international law and resolutions pertaining to the conflict that had evolved over the last 53 years in favor of bilateral negotiations between two actors of grossly unequal power. The only legal underpinning of the Oslo agreements was U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 (and 338, reaffirming 242), which calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from territories occupied in the 1967 war. Israel’s interpretation of U.N. Resolution 242 differed from that of the PLO and the international community. Israel viewed 242 as not requiring it to withdraw from all occupied Arab territories,
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given that the accepted English version of the resolution refers only to “territories” occupied in 1967, but not to the territories as is stated in the French version. This ambiguity was deliberate. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the majority of the international community regarded Israel as an occupying power and understood 242 as requiring Israel to withdraw from all the Palestinian areas occupied in June 1967. Given the United States’ position, that negotiations would be based on “land for peace,” Israel understood that it would have to relinquish some land. Its implicit objective was to assure that its interpretation of 242 would be the framework for negotiations. When Arafat signed the DOP and the subsequent interim agreements, he de facto affirmed the Israeli position, which has prevailed and is reflected in all the Oslo Accords, none of which contains the word “occupation” or acknowledges Israel as an occupying power (the agreements also do not recognize the right of Palestinian statehood, borders, or full equality). A review of the various Oslo agreements clearly demonstrates that Israel successfully established itself as the sole authority that would determine which land areas it would yield to the Palestinian Authority. The major confirmation of the Israeli position was the Hebron Protocol. When Arafat signed the protocol in 1997 he conceded the Palestinian interpretation of 242 forever since the protocol gave Israel the right, supported explicitly by the United States, to decide for itself from which of the Occupied Territories it would withdraw and from which it would not. Furthermore, the final status issues, such as borders, refugees, Jerusalem and settlements, which lie at the core of the conflict, were not subject to the provisions of the DOP but were instead relegated to a later phase set to begin in May 1996. However, not until Camp David II did Israel actually agree to make some commitments regarding key Palestinian national demands (for example, the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees). In the interim, both the Labor and Likud governments created many “facts on the ground”—the construction and expansion of settlements and the vast network of bypass roads, for example—that compromised negotiations greatly (settlement expansion and land confiscation were not expressly prohibited by the DOP). Contrary to accepted belief, the PA had no legal power to stop Israeli measures. In fact, under the terms of the 1995 Oslo II agreement, which
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extended limited self-rule to the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority gave its legal seal of approval to the confiscation of certain Palestinian lands for the paving of Israeli bypass roads. In this and many other ways, the Oslo agreements did not aim to end the occupation but to normalize it. Thus, under the DOP’s terms, the primary task of the new Palestinian Authority was to implement rather than to negotiate interim arrangements, and to manage the occupation for Israel.3 That the PA quickly revealed itself to be repressive and corrupt was not unwelcome by Israel or the United States. Although Israel and the PLO traded “mutual” recognition by signing the Oslo I agreement, no power symmetry exists between them. Israel, a fully sovereign state, possesses total power, and the PLO-PA, the acknowledged representative of the Palestinian people, possesses virtually none. By reducing the conflict to power negotiations between two such unequal parties, the Oslo agreements reflected Israeli strength and Palestinian weakness, and not the application of accepted international law or universal standards of justice. In this regard and far less known is the fact that under the terms of Oslo I, Israeli military law— including the Israeli military government and approximately 2,000 military orders in effect before Oslo during direct Israeli occupation—remained the legal framework for governing the West Bank and Gaza after Oslo. Thus, although the PA was assigned responsibility for various sectors of activity such as education and health, final authority over the territories, particularly regarding security and the economy, remained wholly with Israel. Furthermore, by agreeing to Israeli military government control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the PA, ipso facto, accepted both the existence and legitimacy of Israeli occupation. Oslo II: Territorial Bifurcation The second Oslo agreement, the “Interim Agreement,” was signed on September 28, 1995. A key feature of Oslo II was the division of the West Bank into three areas, each under varying degrees of Palestinian or Israeli control. The territorial division of the West Bank legalized in the Oslo II agreement was first carried out in the Gaza Strip just one month after the famous handshake between Rabin and Arafat on the White House
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lawn. In the Taba negotiations that took place in October 1993, Israel presented and eventually implemented a plan that grouped Jewish settlements in Gaza into three blocs that included the lands between the individual settlements. These blocs, combined with a network of bypass roads and military bases, comprise around a third of Gaza’s land, now home to 6,000 Israeli settlers. The remaining two-thirds of Gaza, cut into cantons, was left to 1.1 million Palestinians, leaving roughly 128 Israelis per square mile in Gaza compared to 11,702 Palestinians per square mile. With Oslo II, the Gaza arrangement was extended to the West Bank in the form of Areas A, B and C. Area A, which initially consisted of seven major Palestinian towns, is under the total civilian and security control of the PA. Area B comprises the remaining Palestinian population centers (excluding some refugee camps) where civilian control resides with the PA and security control with Israel, which effectively places Area B under Israeli jurisdiction. Area C, which incorporates all Israeli settlements, “state lands,” and Israeli military bases, remains under the total control of Israel. By mid-2000, Area A comprised 17.2 per cent and Area B 23.8 per cent of the West Bank; Area C incorporated the remaining 59 per cent. In practical terms, therefore, by the time of the Camp David summit, Israel actually controlled almost 83 per cent of the West Bank according to the terms of the Oslo agreement. Critically, all Palestinians in the West Bank presently live within six kilometers of Area C lands.4 Thus, while the absolute area under full or partial Palestinian control had increased, these areas were non-contiguous and remained isolated cantons separated by areas under the complete jurisdiction of Israel. Under this scenario, even if Palestinians had been given authority over 90 to 95 per cent of the West Bank—as allegedly proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David II—they would have had five enclaves isolated from each other by several Israeli settlement blocs, along with highways, industrial infrastructure and army checkpoints. Additionally, many individual settlements are in the midst of these Palestinian enclaves themselves. Under Barak’s offer, therefore, the Palestinian state would consist of the northern, central and southern West Bank enclaves, some isolated areas of East Jerusalem under autonomous or sovereign control by Palestinians, and at least twothirds of the Gaza Strip.
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Crucially, Palestinians would not have control over borders—internal or external—to the West Bank or Gaza. That control would remain with Israel; Palestine’s only borders would be with Israel. Thus, Barak’s supposedly generous offer at the Camp David summit basically aimed to enlarge the geographic areas under Palestinian Authority while maintaining their geographic fragmentation and isolation. In this way, the division of the West Bank into territorial sections, itself inconceivable in other national contexts and illegal under international law, would give Israel a new mechanism with which to ensure control over Palestinians and their resources even if a Palestinian state is declared. The question remains: under these conditions, what kind of state could it be? Settlement expansion has been a key factor in fragmenting Palestinian lands. By 2000, Palestinian built-up areas in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) comprised no more than 5 per cent of the territory, while the built-up area of the settlements (including East Jerusalem) covered 1.8 per cent. This reflects the scale and rapidity of Israeli settlement construction since 1967 and the myriad restrictions on Palestinian development. Despite promises to reduce and even halt the expansion of settlements as part of his commitment to the Oslo peace process, Prime Minister Barak engaged in policies that did just the opposite. Barak’s 2001 budget earmarked $500 million for settlements and, according to official data from Israel’s housing ministry, Barak’s government began construction of 1,943 housing units in the West Bank and Gaza in 2000, the largest number in any year since 1992.5 The Palestinian Authority, corrupt and mismanaged, conceded to and approved these and other Israeli policies from 1994 on, facilitating the status quo. With the Oslo II agreement, Israel gained legal control over a majority of the West Bank, something it had sought since 1967. The territorial divisions agreed to in the second Oslo Accord established the framework for a final settlement in the West Bank that would preclude any territorial continuum for a future Palestinian state and ensure the continued presence of the Israeli occupation in some form. Moreover, by accepting the division of the West Bank according to the provisions of the accord, Yasir Arafat accepted the legitimacy of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories.
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The Hebron Protocol: Defining New Precedents The first Oslo Accord brokered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government—the Hebron Protocol—was signed on January 15, 1997. It introduced some important departures from earlier accords and set new precedents for future negotiations. According to the protocol, the city of Hebron was divided into two parts: H1 and H2. Israel redeployed from 80 per cent of Hebron or H1, home to 100,000 Palestinians, and retained full control over the remaining 20 per cent or H2, where approximately 250 to 400 Israeli settlers, protected by the Israeli Army, live among 30,000 Palestinians. H2 is the downtown, commercial area. The Hebron Protocol contains no reference to U.N. Resolutions 242 or 338 as the legal framework for negotiations. Furthermore, in a letter appended to the document from former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the U.S. explicitly pledged its full support for Israel’s interpretation of its obligations under these accords, which stipulate that Israel alone will decide the timing and scope of any future redeployments. Furthermore, such redeployments are to be conditioned on Palestinians meeting their responsibilities as defined by Israel.6 Hebron’s division into two parts created an important precedent for the further division of Palestinian lands into isolated enclaves on territories where Palestinians expect to achieve statehood. The PA’s acceptance of an armed Israeli settler presence in a predominantly Arab population center also established another precedent for the permanence of Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza and, by extension, for the bifurcation of Palestinian lands that results from the presence of those settlements. The protocol also makes clear and concrete the right of Israel to decide unilaterally, and not through negotiations, when and how it will fulfill its obligations. Closure Policy The Oslo peace process and the conditions it imposed were directly linked to, and shaped by, Israeli closure policy, which has had a devastating impact on the Palestinian economy and people. The period between the start of the peace process in September 1993 and the beginning of the Al Aqsa uprising in September 2000 was a time of
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increasing and virtually uninterrupted economic decline for the majority of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.7 Arguably, not since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967 had the Palestinian economy been so weak and its people so vulnerable. The economic reality of the Oslo period is defined by the continuation of preexisting structures of dependency and de-development and by the introduction of new structures, particularly closure, that have exacerbated an already weakened economic base. Although the Israeli government first imposed closure in early 1991, it was in March 1993, in response to heightened violence by Palestinians against Israelis inside Israel, that closure became a permanent administrative measure. Closure has since become an institutionalized system in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and, almost nine years after it was introduced, has never been lifted, although its intensity is subject to change. Thus, although closure was imposed several months before the implementation of Oslo, the accords, in effect, legalized and institutionalized closure as a policy measure. Between 1993 and 1996 (considered the euphoric height of the Oslo process), the Israeli government imposed 342 days of total closure in the Gaza Strip and 291 days of total closure in the West Bank. Thus, for almost one-third of each year between 1993 and 1996, Palestinians were prohibited from any physical or economic movement outside the West Bank and Gaza, and on the remaining days were subject to closure in a less extreme form. The economic effects of closure have been enormous. In 1996, for example, losses derived from closure amounted to 39.6 per cent of Gaza’s GNP and 18.2 per cent of the West Bank’s GNP. Furthermore, the World Bank estimated the economic damage caused by closure policy to be between 11 and 18 per cent of gross national income in the West Bank and between 31 and 40 per cent in the Gaza Strip annually between 1994 and 1996. More recently, the World Bank stated that with the sealing of the Palestinian borders that followed the outbreak of the Al Aqsa uprising, “the Palestinian economy has been decimated.”8 In the first four months of the uprising, the Palestinian economy lost more than $1.15 billion primarily in production and income in an economy that produces only $5 billion annually; by June 2001, that loss had reached $5.2 billion.
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Rising poverty rates among Palestinians is another painful expression of closure’s effect and a stark illustration of economic life during Oslo. Since the start of the Intifada, poverty levels have risen dramatically and quickly: between October 2000 and April 2001, the number of Palestinians living in poverty increased from 650,000 to 2,100,000, or from 21 per cent to 64 per cent of the population.9 As a result, people spend a greater percentage of their income on food, deplete their savings, incur greater debt, and sell personal possessions to maintain family consumption levels. With the current uprising, economic conditions have deteriorated even further, creating, for the first time in the history of Israeli occupation, a looming humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Territories. According to the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, 15 per cent of all children in the Gaza Strip presently suffer from chronic malnutrition. A survey conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in May–June 2001 found that 14.2 per cent of Palestinian households (or 74,200 people) completely lost their sources of income during the current uprising and approximately 47.4 per cent of households reported losing more than 50 per cent of their income. Closure, in effect, is the method by which the Israeli policy of separation has been implemented (a policy that has historical antecedents in the British Mandate period). The idea of separating from the Palestinians—physically and politically (linked only economically in the form of cheap labor and captive export markets)—was revived by, and underlines the substance and implementation of, the Oslo agreements. According to Meron Benvenisti: The separation . . . is not only a strategy designed “to remove Gaza from Tel Aviv.” It is in fact a complex master plan, which is founded on a dual separation between Palestine in its British Mandate boundaries from the neighboring states; and second, an internal separation between Jewish and Arab demographic blocs within the country. The concrete control (known as “security”) of all the international borders, which Israel is succeeding in retaining at the land crossings, the Gaza airport and . . . seaport, enables it to implement the internal separation . . . Control of the external wrapper is essential for the Oslo strategy, because if the Palestinians control even one border crossing—and gain the ability to maintain direct relations with the outside world—the internal lines of separation will become full-fledged international borders, and Israel will lose its control over the passage of people
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and goods. Puncturing the external system will necessitate the establishment of a vast array of physical obstacles, crossing points, and customs barriers between the enclaves of the “internal separation,” and will expose the absurdity of the tortuous and non-contiguous borders of the ethnic cantons on which all the ideas of the permanent settlement are based.10
Israel currently operates 97 Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank and 32 in the Gaza Strip. Shlomo Ben Ami, who was Barak’s minister of internal security and chief negotiator at Camp David, maintains that “in practice” the Oslo agreements “were founded on a neo-colonialist basis, on a life of dependence of one on the other forever.”11 There should be no doubt that as long as Oslo and closure remain the defining policy framework for achieving a settlement, Israeli control over the Palestinians is assured. On The Eve of Camp David II . . . By the time the Camp David summit was held, several processes had become permanent features of the Palestinian landscape: 1) the steady confiscation of Arab lands in the West Bank and Gaza; 2) the accelerated expansion of existing Israeli settlements and the construction of new settlements on confiscated lands, bisecting them; 3) the near-doubling of the settler population to 200,000 in ten years; 4) the division of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into cantons disconnected from each other by territories under the control of Israel; 5) the paving of 250 miles of bypass roads onto confiscated lands that further bisect, truncate and encircle Palestinian areas; 6) the institutionalization of closure policy, restricting movement, locking Palestinians into the enclave structure created by the Oslo Accords, and wreaking havoc on their economy, and 7) the construction of myriad checkpoints and barricades throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip designed to control and further restrict Arab movement. In these policies, Israel relied on the Palestinian Authority and its vast security apparatus to maintain control of the population,
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suppress any visible forms of opposition, and provide protection for Israeli actions. By July 2000, the fundamentals of occupation had remained unaltered and the structure of occupation had become more entrenched. Separation— internal and external—also was becoming a demographic and political reality. Thus, by that July, the establishment of an adequately sovereign, resourced state was impossible. During the Oslo period, like the one preceding it, Palestinians had little recourse against Israeli measures. After Oslo, however, Israeli actions were defined as the price of peace rather than as a cause for conflict. Within this construct, legitimacy for Palestinians no longer derived from resisting Israeli occupation but from their willingness to accede to it. At Camp David, for the first time since the Oslo process began, the Palestinians refused any further concession. . . . And Barak’s “Generous” Offer Through the Oslo process and finally at Camp David, Prime Minister Barak sought international recognition and legal ratification for a form of ethnic separation that extended to all final status issues, including Palestinian statehood, the disposition of land, Jerusalem and refugees. At the summit, Barak moved directly to final status talks rather than implement a third redeployment of Israeli troops as was mandated under previous agreements. Thus, the PA was placed in a position of discussing permanent-status issues when it controlled only 17.2 per cent of the West Bank and between 66 and 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip in isolated, encircled enclaves: “Barak’s strategy sharpened Oslo’s fundamental imbalance of power: whereas final status talks had been contingent on withdrawal from almost all the Occupied Territories, the third (and final) redeployment was now contingent on major Palestinian concessions on final status issues.”12 Although Barak did go further than any other Israeli leader in breaking the taboo on talking about Jerusalem and the Temple Mount/ Haram al-Sharif, refugees and the “return” of territory, his vision of a final settlement—neither generous nor a compromise—did not depart from the one described earlier and consisted of the following general terms:
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• Passing reference to U.N. Resolution 242 and its mandate of full Israeli withdrawal to the borders of June 4, 1967, which effectively transformed a basic legal reference into a nonbinding Palestinian demand. • The annexation of three large settlement blocs (80 per cent of the settlers) and other areas of the West Bank to Israel (although Israel did not specify how it would handle all the settlements), which equaled roughly 10 per cent of the West Bank. The annexed settlement blocs include around 160,000 settlers who would retain their Israeli citizenship, in addition to 80,000 to 100,000 Palestinians who would likely be disenfranchised. The integration of these three settlement blocs would split the West Bank into four cantons: northern, central and southern (with the passages between them under full Israeli control), and an encircled and divided East Jerusalem cut off from its Palestinian hinterlands. Under this scenario, Palestinians were denied control over borders with the outside world and over Arab East Jerusalem. Their only borders were with Israel. In exchange for annexed lands, Israel would “return” around 90 per cent of the West Bank in addition to a swapping of land to compensate Palestinians for any additional West Bank lands taken. At least two-thirds, if not more, of the Gaza Strip, the fifth enclave, also would remain under Palestinian control but isolated from the West Bank and Jerusalem. Critically, therefore, Palestinians were offered around 90 per cent of the West Bank (which did not include annexed East Jerusalem) and the majority of the Gaza Strip in separated, encircled cantons.13 In addition, a sizeable portion of the Jordan Valley would remain under Israeli control. • Some form of Palestinian administrative autonomy or sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem (outlying Arab communities—the outer ring—would have full Palestinian sovereignty, and an inner ring of Arab neighborhoods would have autonomy only), Palestinian sovereignty over the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, and some form of Muslim control over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, with Israel retaining ultimate sovereignty.
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The Israeli solution for Jerusalem also included the annexation of the main bloc of settlements in East Jerusalem: the Adumim bloc, 120 square kilometers around Ma’aleh Adumim, and the Etzion bloc. Under this scenario, the borders of Greater Jerusalem would have extended as far south as Gush Etzion near Hebron, dividing the northern part of the Palestinian state from the southern. Hence, despite the lack of specifics regarding the disposition of Arab and Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the Old City, the formulation for Jerusalem proposed by Israel would preclude territorial contiguity and functional economic borders between Jerusalem and the West Bank and between regions within the West Bank. • A “satisfactory solution” for the refugees, which included no right of return for Palestinian refugees (that is, no choice for refugees and no acknowledgment by Israel of its role in creating the refugee problem) except perhaps to the Palestinian state. Barak, however, did discuss the possibility of allowing the return to Israel of several thousand refugee families from Lebanon (out of a total Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon now estimated to be 250,000 to 300,000, itself a small percentage of the 4.9 million Palestinian refugees worldwide) under the family reunification laws. In exchange, Israel wanted Palestinian negotiators to sign an end-ofconflict statement releasing Israel from all further responsibilities for the refugee problem. • Israel’s continued control over the Palestinian economy through the imposition of an Israeli import and indirect taxation regime, which would make it impossible for a Palestinian state to implement external trade or fiscal policies different from Israel’s. Israel further insisted on maintaining control over indigenous groundwater resources in the West Bank and Gaza and all economic borders. Despite their lack of specificity, the Israeli proposals put forth at Camp David, which clearly reflected the terms and parameters of the Oslo agreements, precluded contiguous territory, defined and functional borders, political and economic sovereignty, and basic Palestinian national rights. Israel made it clear that it would not withdraw
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completely from the Occupied Territories (that is, withdraw from settlements and from the grid of bypass roads connecting them) or relinquish fully its control over vital areas of Palestinian life, which it deemed important to its own security. Palestinians, who had already compromised by conceding 78 per cent of Mandatory Palestine to Israel, were now being asked to compromise further on the remaining 22 per cent that was the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yet, the actual amount of land returned to the Palestinians was less important than the disposition of that land and who would control it. And there was little if any doubt that such control would remain with Israel. By the time of Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, the situation among Palestinians had become untenable. The Al Aqsa Intifada was the tragic but inevitable result. A Concluding Thought Even if both sides had been able to reach an agreement based on the policy parameters put forth at Camp David, that agreement would have failed for one fundamental reason: control over Palestinian life would have remained with Israel and the occupation would have remained structurally intact—two features that underpinned the Oslo agreements. Palestinians seek their own state, which must consist of a contiguous West Bank and Gaza, a connection between them, and only minor adjustments to 1967 borders. Palestinians will no longer tolerate occupation in any form. Yet, occupation remains the structural and policy cornerstone of Oslo, and Oslo, tragically, remains the official framework for future negotiations. Clearly, a new negotiating framework is needed that must consist of certain elements that were absent in Oslo: dismantling Israel’s matrix of control; incorporating the issues of control, sovereignty and viability as formal elements in the negotiation process; integrating a political solution with current realities on the ground, particularly with regard to land, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees and borders rather than deferring these issues to the future; incorporating international law and U.N. resolutions into the negotiating framework to provide Palestinians with greater leverage and protection; eliminating bilateral (power) negotiations in favor of an international framework involving a constellation of nations that includes the United States and the
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European Union, and addressing the Palestinian refugee issue both in principle and practice.14 Future negotiations must bring a complete end to Israeli occupation and yield two viable and sovereign states. Anything short of this will fail, and failure will bring greater violence and instability to the Middle East and beyond.
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16 Ending the Palestinian Economy*
The contention was that we needed justice first and that we would come to freedom later on, as if slaves could ever hope to achieve justice. And forceful intellectuals announced to the worker that bread alone interested him rather than freedom, as if the worker didn’t know that his bread depends in part on his freedom.–Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death (New York: Knopf, 1960), p. 91
T
HE TERRIBLE VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION that now describes the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel is without precedent but not without context. This context has many dimensions but is defined primarily by Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands. Israel’s violent five-week incursion into the West Bank that began at the end of March 2002 and daily incursions into parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WB/G) since then, particularly Israel’s reoccupation of most West Bank cities in June 2002, are perhaps the most visible illustrations of the government’s unwillingness to end the occupation. Another critical dimension of the current context is economic, particularly as Palestinians unquestionably face the approaching breakdown of their economy, a humanitarian crisis and the destruction of ordinary life. In an appearance on American television, the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, stated that “poverty does not cause terrorism; terrorism causes poverty.”1 Echoing a similar sentiment, a group of former (and right-wing) Israeli generals argued that if Israel declared sovereignty over the area west of the Jordan River, the Palestinian uprising would wither “because the suicide bombers are not blowing themselves up
* Originally published in Middle East Policy, Volume 9, Number 4, December 2002, pp. 122–65. The version reprinted here has been slightly edited. 250
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out of despair, but out of hope they can drive us out of the territories. As soon as they find out that won’t happen, the level of violence will also drop.”2 These statements at best reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the context in which the majority of Palestinians now live. This context is dehumanizing and paralyzing and is characterized in large part by levels of poverty and despair that have no parallel during Israel’s 35year occupation of WB/G. Not since 1948, perhaps, have Palestinians faced such conditions of loss and dispossession. These conditions, writes Edward Said, “multiply the distortions stemming from the original condition of loss and dispossession . . . [T]hey offer additional dislocations and the reproduction of distortions whose widening effects extend the whole range, from war to increasing numbers of refugees, more property abandoned and taken, more frustration, more anger, more humiliation . . . .”3 The roots of Palestinian terrorism are far broader than poverty alone; indeed, the repression and lack of possibility that such poverty reflects nurture the terrible violence emanating from WB/G. The phenomenon of terrorism among Palestinians—as morally reprehensible in the Palestinian context as it is in the Israeli one—emerged in a specific historical period long shaped by Israeli occupation and, more recently— with the beginning of the Middle East peace process over nine years ago—by occupation’s increasingly violent and brutal nature. The losses confronting Palestinians are profound, among them the potential collapse of the Palestinian economy and the impoverishment of virtually the entire Palestinian population. This oncoming collapse is not a matter of rhetoric but of reality. Its features have been described in published and unpublished reports by such institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.S. State Department and a variety of U.N. agencies. Using these sources and others, this article will demonstrate that, while the decline in the Palestinian economy is not new and has been almost continuous since the start of the Oslo “peace” process, the scale of the decline is unprecedented and threatens the future recovery and viability of the Palestinian economy. In this regard, the primary solution to the current economic crisis is political not economic.
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Background The present state of the Palestinian economy derives fundamentally from dynamics institutionalized during and by the Oslo peace process, which lasted officially from September 1993 through September 2000. The premise behind the (U.S.-led) peace initiative emphasized “Israeli security as its driving force preceding an end to the occupation.”4 As such, the peace process did not aim to dismantle the structure of Israeli occupation but rather to maintain and strengthen it, albeit in a different form. It is from this singular defining fact that all else emanates, including the now-possible collapse of the Palestinian economy. At the beginning of the peace process, the donor nations believed that “peace would only take root if there were significant, sustained improvements in the economy of WB/G.”5 Since October 1993, donors have pledged $6.5 billion and disbursed $4.4 billion in aid. This amounts to $195 per person per year since 1994, among the “highest levels of per capita official development assistance anywhere in the world.”6 Yet, despite these massive infusions of aid and contrary to what is commonly believed, the peace process failed in its attempts to promote sustainable growth or prosperity, let alone economic development or reform in the Palestinian entity.7 Recent data from the World Bank reveal that average per capita income is already below what it was when the Oslo agreements were signed in 1993. Furthermore, and perhaps more important, the peace process did considerable damage to the Palestinian economy. Not only did it fail to ameliorate or end the terms of Palestinian economic dependence and de-development, it actually accelerated these processes by introducing into the Palestinian economy two new dynamics—closure and territorial fragmentation— that further attenuated an already weakened economic base. In this regard, Israeli policy has been primary, although the policies of the Palestinian Authority (PA) played a similarly damaging, albeit secondary, role.8 These factors among others provided the context for the current uprising.9 Adding to the disabling of Palestine’s economic base during the period of the peace process was Israel’s continued confiscation of Palestinian lands, some of it with the explicit approval of the Palestinian Authority, which was formalized in the Oslo II agreement. Between
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September 1993 and August 2001, over 70,000 acres of Palestinian land were taken—much of it viable agricultural land worth more than $1 billion—largely for Israeli settlement expansion and the construction of settlement infrastructure.10 Settlement expansion, Israel’s primary claim on Palestinian land, was aggressive during the Oslo period and a key factor fragmenting Palestinian lands. Between 1992 and 2000, the settler population in WB/G nearly doubled from 109,784 to 213,672 people. These figures do not include East Jerusalem, where the total settler population rose from 141,000 in 1992 to 170,400 in 2000. There are 130 Israeli settlements in the West Bank and 16 in the Gaza Strip. At the start of the Oslo peace process in September 1993, WB/G settlements consisted of 32,750 residential units. Between September 1993 and July 2000, an additional 17,190 units were under construction, representing an increase of over 52 per cent.11 During this same period, Israel demolished close to 800 Palestinian homes in the West Bank alone.12 During the first year of the current uprising, at least 360 Palestinian homes were destroyed in the Gaza Strip and over 200 in the West Bank,13 while 5,575 homes were partially demolished.14 According to the British medical journal Lancet, 333 Palestinian homes were demolished (and their families evacuated) during January and February 2001 alone.15 The Palestinian Ministry of Housing reports the destruction of 1,601 Palestinian homes between September 2000 and April 2002 and damage to 14,436 more, affecting approximately 96,100 people.16 In October 2002, Israel ordered the demolition of over a hundred houses and apartments in Beit Sahour, which lies adjacent to the Israeli settlement, Har Homa. The majority of the houses belong to the Greek Orthodox Community Housing Project. Over six hundred people will become homeless.17 In striking contrast stands the fact that in 2001, the Israeli government issued tenders for the construction of 810 family housing units in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, followed a year later by tenders for 957 additional settlement homes. An aerial survey by the Israeli group Peace Now revealed that 34 new settlement sites were established throughout the West Bank in the year following the February 2001 Israeli elections.18 The Hebrew version of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz further reported on May 7, 2002, that the Knesset Finance Committee approved a transfer of NIS 30 million ($6.17 million) for the settlement
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movement including agricultural projects in the Jordan Valley, grants for young settlers, and security infrastructure in the settlements.19 The West Bank is 5,640 square kilometers in size (Gaza is 360 square kilometers). Built-up settlement areas comprise 1.8 per cent of the total area of the West Bank, itself a stunning statistic in light of the fact that Palestinian built-up areas comprise only 5.0 per cent of the West Bank. However, settlements actually control 41.9 per cent of the area of the West Bank, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem. The municipal boundaries of the settlements are three times as large as the built-up areas, covering 6.8 per cent of the West Bank, while regional councils cover an additional 35.1 per cent of the land area.20 Furthermore, since the start of the current uprising, “Israel appears to be planning ‘no-go’ areas 70–500 meters (approximately 230–1640 feet) wide around each settlement and every military installation in the occupied territories.”21 The process continues. On July 17, 2002, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) commander in the Gaza Strip issued an order calling for the seizure of 60 dunums (15 acres) of land located east of the Israeli settlement Netzarim and south of Gaza City. The order states that the land is being confiscated for “military necessity,” but, given the land’s location, it is more likely being taken to build a settlement bypass road connecting Netzarim to an Israeli military outpost near Gaza City. The order will remain in effect from July 17, 2002, to July 17, 2007.22 Hence, despite intermittent periods of economic growth and declines in unemployment and poverty levels (notably between 1998 and September 2000) during the seven years of the peace process, the Palestinian economy became weaker. This is because economic growth rates were unsustainable, responding not to market forces or internal structural reform aimed at the development of the private sector, but largely to Israel’s lessening of closure restrictions and the temporary opening of its borders to Palestinian labor and trade. Moreover, the economic growth that did occur was not enough to restore pre-Oslo per capita income levels, given the absence of major economic adjustment and the high population growth rates among Palestinians. Furthermore, the two most important sources of labor-market growth, the Israeli market and the Palestinian Authority, had by September 2000 little absorptive capacity left.23
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In the absence of sovereignty, demarcated borders and free access to world markets, for example, the economy became more fragmented, disarticulated and dependent, moving toward a structure that in part was characterized by small production units using local inputs to produce for the domestic market. This factor, among others, not only constrained growth but limited its impact when it did occur. The damaging measures imposed on the Palestinian economy during the Oslo years demonstrate that economic reform cannot precede political change but must follow from it. In the continued presence of Israeli occupation and the denial of rights on which it rests, meaningful and continuing economic change is simply not possible. The economic crisis that has emerged in WB/G since the start of the Al Aqsa uprising in September 2000 is perhaps the starkest illustration of this impossibility. Key Features of the Economy (Since September 2000) Context In an internal brief prepared in August 2001, almost one year into the uprising, the World Bank concluded that “The Palestinian economy has been decimated by a year of conflict”24 (emphasis mine). The shock to the Palestinian economy caused by the Intifada is the worst in thirty years, according to many donor agencies. The fact that economic conditions could deteriorate so quickly in such a short period of time attests, more than anything, to the weakened state of the economy prior to September 2000. And, closure is (and always has been) the primary factor underlying Palestinian economic demise.25 Since September 28, 2000, the Israeli government has established over ninety fixed and mobile military checkpoints in the West Bank and over thirty in the Gaza Strip in order to enforce more intense and comprehensive closures and has dramatically tightened the permit regime. In this the government has been successful. Between September 2000 and December 2001—a period of 15 months—the West Bank was under severe internal closure 73 per cent of the time, while Gaza suffered such closures 4 per cent of the time.26 Under severe internal closure “pedestrian and vehicle mobility on main roads is reserved for Israeli military personnel, settlers and non-Palestinians, while even on days of ‘partial’ closure these checkpoints have created a life of roundabout routes, interminable delays and frequent harassment.”27
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Closure has brought economic devastation to certain regions and individuals. Hebron’s plum harvest, for example, dropped in value from $2.5 million in 2000 to $250,000 just one year later because the plums could not be transported from an area near Hebron in the southern West Bank to Nablus in the north.28 According to the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, closure restrictions on cement imports (mostly from Israel) delayed construction and cost the economy $230 million between September and December 2000 alone. During this period, cement prices virtually doubled from NIS 330 to NIS 650 per ton.29 In addition to the severe internal closures described above, the Israeli authorities imposed partial internal closure on the West Bank for an additional 27 per cent of the September 2000–December 2001 period or 125 days, and did the same in the Gaza Strip for 95 per cent of the reporting period or 433 days.30 Partial closure allows relatively more movement but remains highly restrictive and generally involves diverting traffic away from Israeli settlements. As a result of severe and partial internal closures, the main north–south road in the West Bank was inaccessible to the Palestinian population for the majority of the first 15 months of the uprising. In the Gaza Strip, these closures resulted in an extreme reduction in travel between Gaza’s northern and southern regions and in the creation of three semi-isolated enclaves in the areas around Gaza City, Jabalya and Rafah/Khan Younis.31 According to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), internal closures have divided WB/G into 54 “fragments of isolated areas under Palestinian Authority . . . jurisdiction.”32 Palestinians wishing to enter Israel from Gaza and the West Bank have been subject to severe restrictions as well. According to the World Bank, between October 2000 and December 2001, the main crossing point between Israel and Gaza was closed for 65 per cent of the time. Even when it was open, the number of Gazans entering Israel to work fell below 20 per cent of its pre-Intifada average of 29,000, due to permit restrictions.33 The U.N. Special Coordinator’s Office (UNSCO) estimates that the number of Gazans working in Israel declined by 30,000 to 3,000 (a 90 per cent loss) in the year following the start of the Intifada.34 According to the World Bank, West Bank laborers also suffered dramatic declines from levels of 95,000–100,000 working in Israel before the uprising to 20,000 less
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than three months afterward.35 By the end of the uprising’s first year, UNSCO found that the number of West Bankers working in Israel had declined by about 56,000 to 60,000.36 Commercial activity across Israel/Gaza borders through the end of December 2001 fared little better than labor movement. Of the three main commercial crossings in the Gaza Strip, two—Erez and Sufa—were closed for over 60 per cent of the time, and Karni for only 9 per cent. All three crossings, however, were completely closed for 30 days. West Bank products did relatively better because their owners have access to Israeli-registered trucks, which do not require permits. However, for those areas in the West Bank under internal movement restrictions, commerce was severely affected.37 Israeli restrictions put into place during the Oslo period had by 1998 all but ended any movement between WB/G. What did exist was limited to several thousand Palestinians using the “safe passage” route designed by Israel for movement between the two territories. In early October 2000, the safe-passage access was closed and has not reopened, thus ending almost entirely any form of economic or demographic exchange between the two territories. The Intifada closure also restricts Palestinian access to neighboring countries. Gaza’s border with Egypt (through Rafah) was partially or totally closed to people and goods for 57 per cent and 60 per cent of the October 2000–December 2001 period respectively. The West Bank’s border with Jordan was similarly closed 18 per cent of the time for people and 83 per cent for commerce.38 Gaza’s airport also was virtually shut down 80 per cent of the time. The destruction of its runway by the IDF during the current crisis has rendered the airport unusable. The Gaza seaport, including all installations, administrative buildings and retaining walls, was similarly destroyed by Israeli bombardment in September 2001. Access to international markets, which occurs through Israeli ports, has been curtailed as well due to movement restrictions between the ports and the territories, and delays resulting from security inspections. Impact The combined impact of total and partial closures, sustained unchallenged for over two years, has been disastrous. Those vestiges of normalcy that
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existed before have largely been destroyed. Life and work have been interrupted and thwarted, devoid of control, predictability and safety. Normal business and commerce is “a thing of the past”39 according to the World Bank, leading to “economic dislocation and dismemberment, or ‘economic cantonization.’”40 Access to basic services, especially health and education, is increasingly denied.41 Employment in Israel, long so critical to Palestinian economic growth, has been radically curtailed, and with it have come other effects that have crippled and disabled the individual and the economy. Outright economic collapse has been averted—for now—by the PA and donor assistance, illegal employment in Israel and social safety nets. With further declines and increased economic pressures, however, these resources will disappear, bringing dire economic consequences. As stated by the World Bank, “a sustained further tightening of closure will impoverish Palestinians and will lead to economic implosion and a scale of hardship so far only hinted at.”42 The following sections will explain why. Employment The dramatic loss of employment, particularly in Israel and in the private sector, resulting from closure has been a critical factor in the present economic crisis. In September 2000, when the Al Aqsa uprising began, there were 688,000 workers in WB/G (734,000 including East Jerusalem) and unemployment averaged 10 per cent or approximately 69,000 workers. By December 2001—15 months later – the World Bank indicated that unemployment levels had more than tripled to 35 per cent (including discouraged workers [individuals who have stopped looking for work and are outside the labor force] and the natural growth of the labor force), leaving 275,800 people without a source of income.43 Given the high dependency ratio—the ratio of population per employed person—among Palestinians of 6.6 people in the third quarter of 2001, unemployment potentially affected over 1,800,000, or more than half the total population.44 In poorer areas such as Gaza, unemployment had soared to as high as 50 per cent in three months.45 Recent data released by UNSCO reveal the overall adjusted unemployment rate for the WB/G through June 2002 increased from 35–36 per cent to 50 per cent (including discouraged workers). On curfew days, which affect roughly 600,000 people, the
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unemployment rate in the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) increases to 63.3 per cent.46 In its most recent report (end of September 2002), the World Bank similarly placed unemployment at 44.7 per cent with the inclusion of discouraged workers (and at 33.6 per cent without).47 It is important to note that the dependency ratio among Palestinians has risen dramatically—by more than 50 per cent—since September 2000. Whereas in the third quarter of 2000, one worker supported 4.3 people in the West Bank and 5.9 people in the Gaza Strip, today that same worker must support 6.9 and 9.4 people in the West Bank and Gaza, respectively.48 The loss of employment in Israel (including Israeli settlements and industrial zones) was a major factor in rapidly rising unemployment rates, underlining the extreme vulnerability of the economy. Within weeks of the uprising’s start, approximately 100,000 Palestinian jobs in Israel out of a total of 125,000–130,000 (excluding East Jerusalem) disappeared, representing a loss of 80 per cent in a labor market critical to the Palestinian economy.49 The immediacy of the loss was due to the dramatic reduction in the number of work permits issued by the Israeli government and heightened movement restrictions, which affected the number of unofficial or nonpermit-holding workers, who account for over half of all Palestinians employed in Israel and Israeli settlements. Although an average of 50,000 workers from the West Bank (not Gaza) have managed to find work (without permits) inside Israel and the settlements since the start of the uprising, they remain vulnerable to total closures and other restrictions and their numbers have fluctuated, at times dramatically.50 UNSCO similarly found that between the third quarter of 2000 and the third quarter of 2001, Palestinian employment in Israel fell by over 50 per cent.51 The number of Palestinians working in the Israeli labor market is far less than half of what it was before the uprising—and continues to fluctuate. In the second quarter of 2002, according to the World Bank, Palestinian employment in Israel and Israeli settlements—including East Jerusalem residents—fell to 33,000 (31,000/WB and 2,000/G), a decline from 146,000 (116,000/WB and 30,000/G) before the Intifada.52 On August 27, 2002, the Israeli authorities issued a total of 12,490 permits to Palestinians from the WB/G to work inside Israel,53 and by the end
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of September, the number of issued work permits reached 31,179. No data, however, are available on the number of permits actually used.54 It should also be noted that Israel employs 300,000 migrant workers largely from China, Romania, Thailand and the Philippines, 40 per cent of whom work legally. Trade in migrant workers is extremely profitable, having generated about $3 billion for the Israeli economy.55 The loss of employment in the Israeli market also has had enormous negative repercussions for the domestic economies of WB/G. Because workers earn substantially higher wages in Israel than they do locally,56 remittances from work in Israel play an essential role in internal demand for goods and labor. The drop in worker remittances resulting from the precipitous loss of jobs inside Israel due to closure depressed demand for goods obtained in WB/G,57 which in turn contributed to a declining demand for domestic labor. Within the first three months of the uprising alone, domestic employment in Gaza declined by over 25 per cent from 164,000 to 120,000 workers, destroying approximately 44,000 jobs.58 Within the first six months, almost 100,000 domestic jobs were destroyed overall, falling from 515,000 employed to 418,000 employed; by mid-2001, however, the number of employed increased to 443,000, due in part to donor-funded employment programs.59 Nonetheless, UNSCO reports that 72,000 domestic private sector jobs were destroyed over the first year of the uprising, which is particularly alarming given the sector’s increasing role in labor absorption prior to the uprising.60 Indeed, between 1997 and mid-2000, for example, the private sector’s contribution to domestic employment grew from 38.2 to 70 per cent.61 The World Bank summarizes, “By the end of June 2002 . . . [a]lmost as many jobs that were created in the [five-year] period through September 2000 [approximately 220,000 jobs] were lost; 50,000 in the Second Quarter of 2002 alone.”62 The decline in overall employment has, of course, led to a decline in total wage income. Monthly wage income among Palestinians fell from $233 million in the third quarter of 2000 to $131 million in the second quarter of 2002, a decline of 43.8 per cent. During the same period, per capita (as opposed to per employee) wage income in the West Bank fell from $105 per month to $48 per month and in Gaza from $56 to $29, levels that are half of what they were before the uprising and that reflect rising dependency ratios. In this eroding context, PA
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salaries play an essential role, contributing $56 million per month or 43 per cent of total monthly wage income.63 Within this scenario, not only does the number of unemployed workers increase but also the number of discouraged workers. Because of this, labor-force participation among Palestinians has decreased dramatically. According to UNSCO: Between October 2000 and September 2001, the labour-force participation rate declined from 48.3 to 38.3 per cent. Due to this decline, the size of the labour force was reduced by 7.6 per cent over the same period, despite the rapid 4.2 per cent growth in working age population. In Gaza, the contraction in the absolute size of the labour force was a more dramatic 13.6 per cent. Such a contraction in the economically active population—i.e. a retrenchment in the supply of labour available for the production of goods and services in the economy—is indicative of a severe macroeconomic crisis.64
The Private Sector One of the greatest constraints on the development or modernization of the private sector is the small size and traditional character of business and industry. Even after massive infusions of “development” assistance over the seven-year period of the peace process, the private sector remained—despite certain improvements—fundamentally unchanged (structurally) since 1967. By September 2000, the private sector, which employed 334,000 people or 52 per cent of the total workforce (if employees of local authorities and public enterprises are included), continued to be dominated by approximately 60,000 business units, over 90 per cent of which were small to medium-sized enterprises or microbusinesses engaged largely in services, employing an average of 2.5 people and capitalized for no more than $10,000.65 A more recent survey of 526 Palestinian firms in the WB/G carried out by the Palestinian Federation of Industries and the Palestine Trade Center in June and July 2002 found that 78 per cent of manufacturing firms were small (42 per cent) and medium (36 per cent) scale. The former are capitalized for less than $100,000 and the latter for between $100,000–500,000.66 The available data, therefore, show that the Palestinian business sector is small in size and organizational structure. This fact alone— apart from the manifold difficulties currently plaguing the business
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environment—represents a formidable obstacle to the development of the private sector. Because of these and other inherent limitations (and closure),67 only 23 per cent of private sector earnings derived from exports in 1999, another indication of the sector’s weakness.68 With the dramatic drop in the overall demand for internal goods and services and intensified closures since the uprising, the private sector has suffered enormous losses. According to UNCTAD, total domestic output was cut by almost half in the first three months of the uprising alone.69 Furthermore, those businesses still operating (in 2001) also endured immense losses, which included an average 47 per cent drop in sales and profits (among 94 per cent of Palestinian firms surveyed) and profit rates that were only 47 per cent of their pre-Intifada levels. The average firm, furthermore, was working at 50 per cent of capacity compared with 85 per cent before the uprising.70 These losses are further compounded by interruptions in supply and fluctuating prices in addition to the higher costs of operation, transaction, distribution and storage, all resulting from closure. Prior to the Intifada, Palestinian firms were already in a weaker competitive position vis-à-vis their Israeli counterparts. Indeed, Palestinian businesses “seeking to export or import through Israeli ports faced transaction costs that [were], on average, 35 per cent higher than for an Israeli firm in the same industry.”71 With this starting disadvantage and the added exigencies imposed since the Intifada, transaction costs for Palestinian firms have increased to an unprecedented level.72 Indeed by September 2002, these costs were 41.8 per cent above their pre-Intifada level in the West Bank. Because of increased overall costs, many suppliers have raised their prices, further undermining their market competitiveness: “Manufacturers thus become more dependent on local markets, as the ‘cantonization effect’ of military restrictions becomes binding.”73 Given weakened demand, estimated output in the first half of 2002 (compared with a year before) fell by 21.9 per cent in the West Bank and by 17.5 per cent in the Gaza Strip. If one compares just second quarter 2002 with second quarter 2001, output declines were near 46.5 per cent in the West Bank and 16.9 per cent in the Gaza Strip, or 40.3 per cent overall.74 At the end of 2002, only 6.9 per cent of industrial firms were operating at their pre-Intifada levels (12 per cent in the West Bank and 3.4 per cent in the Gaza Strip), 76.3 per cent were working at a
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lower capacity, and 16.9 per cent closed down completely.75 Almost 33 per cent of firms were behind in payments and an additional 15 per cent were in default.76 In this regard, the problems associated with closure and their deleterious effect on the private sector (including a weak legal and regulatory environment and PA corruption) were evident during the Oslo years as well. Hence, it is not the substance of the problems that have changed since the Intifada but their scale. Trade Palestinian trade has also experienced serious declines resulting from closure that have affected both exports and imports, with imports from Israel experiencing greater relative declines than exports to Israel. Indeed, exports declined by 7.4 per cent and 7.6 per cent in 2000 and 2001 respectively while imports dropped 10.9 per cent in 2000 and 19.4 per cent a year later.77 Palestinian trade has long been characterized by a preponderance of imports over exports. According to the Palestinian and Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, imports declined 40–50 per cent during the first three months of the uprising. Based on the number of truckloads entering Gaza and the West Bank, UNSCO argues that imports dropped 75 per cent between the second and fourth quarters of 2000.78 Another study (based on a survey of 177 private firms with international activities) by the Palestinian Federation of the Chambers of Commerce found that imports declined by 56.1 per cent during the second quarter of 2001 compared with pre-Intifada levels. The largest declines occurred in capital goods (83.7 per cent), vehicles (79 per cent), household equipment (63.3 per cent), construction materials (52.7 per cent) and consumption products (48 per cent).79 The Chambers of Commerce survey also found a marked decline in total exports from WB/G to Israel and other countries of 50.3 per cent relative to pre-Intifada levels (with a 52.6 per cent fall in agricultural exports and a 49.6 per cent decline in industrial exports).80 The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz similarly reports that in April 2000, 3,773 trucks carrying NIS 97 million worth of goods entered Gaza from Israel; by April 2002, only 979 trucks entered Gaza, with NIS 27 million worth of goods, a reduction of 72 per cent in monetary terms. UNSCO reports a more dramatic reduction from
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12,122 trucks crossing into Gaza through different entry points in April 2000 to 1,133 trucks crossing through the only entry point at Karni in April 2002, a reduction of 91 per cent. (On October 20, 2002, the Israeli Army spokesperson reported that 230 trucks entered Gaza from Israel through the Karni crossing.81) During that same period, exports from Gaza also fell precipitously from NIS 28 million in April 2000 to NIS 424,000 in April 2002, a decline of 98 per cent.82 All in all, the World Bank estimates that with the rising inaccessibility of outside markets and the decline in capital flows and higher import prices, the capacity of the Palestinian economy to import fell by $168 million in 2000 and by as much as $336 million in 2001.83 Agricultural and manufacturing exports, similarly, lost approximately 30 per cent and 24 per cent of their potential export value respectively in 2001.84 By August 2002, the agricultural sector, which relies on the Israeli and European markets for its exports, was practically paralyzed.85 Beyond the actual costs incurred by the Palestinian exporter lies the declining competitiveness of Palestinian products in international markets, which threatens to sever the WB/G producer from his foreign customer, a problem with damaging long-term effects. Productive Capacity Since Palestinian production is highly dependent on imported inputs, import reductions have had damaging effects on the efficiency and capacity of the productive system. Similarly, the high operational costs imposed by closure have had a negative impact on capacity because these costs have reduced efficiency; that is, “[fewer] goods and services were produced with a given amount of available resources,”86 such as labor, capital or land. Productive capacity has also been damaged by the loss of investment flows, both private and public, which naturally emanate from such a diminished economic environment. Simply put, the risks now present in WB/G—violence and political uncertainty, erratic imports, the heightened inability to conduct business reliably and predictably, a weak regulatory environment and the more recent destruction of Palestinian institutional and governmental structures—have deterred potential (private) investors and forced others to disengage. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, in just
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the first three months of the uprising alone, many foreign companies left the country and took with them nearly $50 million in investments, while other companies such as Nestle, Pepsi and Coca-Cola cancelled planned investments valued at an additional $55.8 million.87 Furthermore, low domestic demand has exacerbated the problem. During the first year of the crisis, domestic economic losses were valued somewhere between $1.87 and $2.67 billion, which then translated into a daily domestic loss averaging between $6.0 and $8.6 million per business day.88 Indeed, investor confidence in the Palestinian business sector has been hurt and may not recover even in an improved environment. Similarly, business ties have been cut and will take a very long time to be reestablished, if they can be at all. Under such extreme economic conditions, businesses increasingly have had to divert their working capital from long-term development to short-term survival in the face of mounting losses, itself a great disincentive to investors and banks. Indeed, new company registrations declined by 80 per cent between the third and fourth quarters of 2000 while the capitalization in U.S. dollars of firms registered on the Palestinian stock exchange dropped by 34 per cent between September 2000 and September 2001 (from $936 million to $622 million).89 Add to this investor flight from sectors considered viable before the Intifada such as tourism or housing, where investments had been planned. Tourism has evaporated as the conflict has intensified, and housing construction has been obstructed by closure’s restrictions on the flow of raw materials, notably cement, which accounts for almost 80 per cent of construction costs. Indeed, according to UNSCO, between the third and fourth quarters of 2000, the volume of imported cement dropped by 64 per cent.90 Furthermore, the much-heralded industrial estates costing $173 million have been frozen.91 These factors, among others, have slowed the expansion rate of productive capital stock—housing and businesses—in the Palestinian economy.92 Public investment has contracted as well. In 2000, such investment (grants and soft loans) was overwhelmingly (93 per cent) financed by donors. Although donor funding has been maintained at close to pre-Intifada levels, the composition of that funding has changed dramatically due to the acute economic conditions in WB/G. Over 90 per cent of donor disbursements now goes to budget support and emergency relief, leaving little for development or investment in other
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sectors.93 The World Bank estimates that total investment may have fallen in real terms by 19 per cent in 2000 and by an additional 30 per cent in 2001, after gains of 8 per cent and 16 per cent in 1998 and 1999, respectively.94 Cumulative lost investment opportunities reached $1.2 billion by the end of 2001.95 The effects of this stunning decline in investment will take years to reverse and may, in fact, be impossible to reverse completely. Furthermore, the World Bank believes that most of the $4–5 billion invested in WB/G since 1993–94 has been destroyed.96 The Fiscal Crisis: the PA and the Municipalities The Palestinian Authority can no longer contribute to public investment in any meaningful way, given the fiscal crisis it now confronts. In fact, one new feature of the current situation is the radically weakened fiscal position of the PA. Prior to the March–April 2002 invasion, which inflicted enormous economic damage, the World Bank had already determined that the PA was effectively bankrupt and had to rely on Arab and European donors for 75–80 per cent of its monthly expenses. The PA is also borrowing from commercial banks, cutting salaries and delaying the payment of bills. These strategies are approaching their limits: by December 2001, the PA owed $430 million,97 and by the end of June 2002, was $527 million in arrears ($295 million due suppliers and $232 million in wages, including pensions).98 The IMF cites three reasons for the PA’s weakening fiscal situation in 2001 and 2002: • a dramatic decline in the PA’s revenue-making capacity (current revenues, made up of indirect taxes on consumption, the largest component at 80 per cent—for example, VAT, import taxes, excise taxes on fuel and tobacco—and direct taxes collected by the PA and tied to the level of Palestinian demand); • the suspension by the government of Israel (GOI) of accumulated clearance revenue transfers (taxes collected by the Israeli Tax Administration on the PA’s behalf), which amounted to $0.5 billion by the end of December 2001 and $681 million by the end of June 2002, accruing at a monthly rate of around $29 million99
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(the last such transfer by the GOI to the PA was in December 2000), and • the adverse effect on expenditure associated with emergency needs arising from the crisis.100 Because of the extreme hardships caused by dramatically reduced tax collection, the withholding by Israel of PA funds, and reduced demand resulting from high levels of unemployment, PA revenues have fallen markedly. For example, average monthly revenues declined from $91 million during the third quarter of 2000 to $22 million by the third quarter of 2001 for a loss of 76 per cent.101 By the second quarter of 2002, central government revenues had fallen to $15.7 million for a decline of 82.7 per cent since the third quarter of 2000.102 Clearly, without direct budgetary support from the donor community—mainly from the Arab League states through the Islamic Development Bank (IDB)—the Palestinian Authority would collapse. More alarmingly, says the World Bank, “[w]ithout the intervention of the donors, and in particular the Arab League and the European Union states, all semblance of a modern economy would have disappeared by now.”103 Between November 2000 and December 2001, the PA received some $584 million in emergency budgetary support—compared with $265 million during the first three years of the PA’s existence104—from the Arab League/IDB ($405 million), European Union ($114 million), Saudi Arabia ($40 million), the UAE ($15 million) and Norway ($10 million). This averaged out to $41.7 million per month or 46 per cent of monthly budget outlays.105 Add to this the $22 million per month the PA was able to collect, and the resulting shortfall was approximately $27 million or a stunning 30 per cent of the PA’s monthly budget needs in 2001. In 2002, the PA has run an average monthly deficit of approximately $20 million after donor contributions.106 The PA has dealt with this deficit by borrowing from domestic banks, not paying private sector suppliers, delaying payments of salaries, pensions and benefits to social welfare recipients, and reducing expenditures. Total expenditures also dropped between the third quarter of 2000 and the second quarter of 2001 from a monthly average of $107 million to $90 million respectively, where they remained through the end of 2001. Although wages accounted for the largest share of expenditures and non-wage expenditures such as operations and maintenance accounted
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for the smallest, it was the latter that suffered the largest reductions; the monthly salary component actually increased. Traditional (nonemergency) non-wage expenditures fell 74 per cent in just over one year, from an average of $54 million per month during the third quarter of 2000 to an average of $14 million per month during the fourth quarter of 2001, most of which were used for emergency needs.107 While the Palestinian Authority has been able for the most part to meet central-government salaries, reduced funds have meant that the PA has been increasingly unable to deliver basic public services, which are breaking down. There are, for example, severe shortages of drugs, school materials and spare parts for water, electricity and solid-wastecollection systems. One illustration of this breakdown comes from the Ministry of Health, which reported a June 2000 budget of $18 million compared to a June 2001 budget of $5.3 million. Because of Israel’s tightened closure and rising fiscal problems during the period September 2000–July 2001 for which data are available, 5–16 per cent of health professionals could not reach work on any given day; drugs were in increasingly short supply; 40–50 per cent of medical staff lost two to four hours per day due to transport difficulties; transport costs tripled; the infant mortality rate (IMR) increased by 13 per cent; home deliveries increased by 30 per cent overall and by 128 per cent in some remote villages of the West Bank; high-risk pregnancies increased by 29 per cent; contraceptive use declined by 30 per cent, and environmental health activities were reduced by 30–90 per cent.108 The breakdown of public services is perhaps more immediately felt at the municipal level since municipal budgets—already acutely stretched by the crisis—do not receive external budgetary support. As a result, revenues for 14 surveyed municipalities in WB/G fell an average of 30 per cent during the first twelve months of the uprising (with the municipality of Al Bireh experiencing a loss of 57 per cent) because two critical sources of municipal revenue—user charges and taxes—declined as people quickly became unable to pay their electricity, water and tax bills.109 With the loss of revenue, most municipal governments had to reduce their expenditures, particularly with regard to such services as road maintenance and solid-waste collection and disposal, with obvious implications for public and environmental health. An April 2002 survey by Bir Zeit University found that 26 out of 34 villages in the Tulkarm
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district had long disruptions in garbage collection and 26 villages had problems with sewage removal.110 Another serious problem is the closing of municipal slaughterhouses, which is widespread. This in turn has forced people to butcher animals in their homes and has resulted in a significant increase in the level of animal blood in waste water.111 The delivery of municipal services is further obstructed by the Israeli military and closure. Since March 2002, for example, the landfill for Gaza has been inaccessible. Consequently, solid waste has been disposed in open areas, including inside urban areas. Similar problems have confronted municipalities in those West Bank towns that have been under intermittent curfew since June 2002. The possible outbreak of communicable diseases is a growing fear. Already, since July 2002, approximately six hundred cases of shigellosis (bloody diarrhea) have been registered in the Nablus governorate.112 Most municipalities furthermore experienced deficits since the decline in expenditures was not as high as that of revenues. Municipalities have financed these deficits by withholding staff salaries and payments to suppliers, especially Israeli suppliers of water and electricity, who in turn have threatened to cut off supplies entirely. The World Bank estimates that by the end of September 2001, total debt for the 14 municipalities sampled increased from less than $1 million to over $4 million. If all municipalities are included (based on the sample), then total debt reached $20–23 million by December 2001 and has increased at a monthly rate of near $1 million ever since.113 When one adds an estimated $430 million owed by the PA by December 2001 (to the $20 million in municipal debt)—approximately 10 per cent of Palestinian GDP—it is clear that Palestinian debt is a problem of dramatic proportions, having accumulated at an average rate of $30 million per month in the first 15 months of the uprising. If the current crisis continues, economic conditions and living standards will deteriorate even more rapidly, forcing the Palestinian economy into a deeper, more acute recession. By the end of 2001, Gross National Income (GNI=GDP + factor income from abroad), an important measure of economic loss, had plummeted an astounding $4.5 billion according to the World Bank’s most recent estimates.114 This is particularly stunning when compared with an estimated annual GNI of $5.4 billion in 1999.115 Lost income associated with declining employment in Israel and Israeli settlements—having reached $635
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million in 2001 alone—is a major factor in GNI declines.116 For example, net wage income from employment in Israel (including Israeli settlements) dropped from $81 million per month in the third quarter of 2000 to $17 million per month during the second quarter of 2002, a decline of 79 per cent.117 In 2002, GNI is predicted to fall by 29 per cent (when factoring in a 4 per cent population growth rate). Per capita GNI has fallen 33 per cent in this year alone and a cumulative 52 per cent since 1999.118 Average per capita real income is therefore well below its level in 1994, when the Gaza–Jericho Agreement was signed, forcing WB/G behind Egypt and Morocco in regional per capita income rankings. Before the Intifada, per capita income levels in the WB/G were higher than those in Jordan.119 Given the dramatic GNI declines, the World Bank has declared that the Palestinian economy has “finally lost its ability to ‘bounce back.’”120 With the draining of the economy’s resources, it is not surprising that by April 2001, 80 per cent of Palestinian households had already reduced expenditures, 40 per cent had drawn down or depleted savings, and median household income was already 50 per cent below preIntifada levels.121 As a result, households have responded in some other ways that could prove injurious to the economy over the long term. One response, economically harmful but necessary to sustain people in the short term, is a turning to agricultural production of basic food products, which has in part skewed production towards low-value-added products destined for the local market rather than high-value-added products for export markets.122 Actually, this dynamic emerged in the last few years of the Oslo process in response to the exigencies of marketing and transacting commerce under closure. It has grown more acute in the last two years, with at least a doubling of people engaged in agricultural work.123 The crisis appears to have imposed certain structural changes on trade/commerce and the labor market that will have ramifications for the economy’s future growth potential. For example, those sectors oriented toward exports such as fruits and vegetables have been particularly affected. According to the World Bank, their export-market shares have been lost, perhaps permanently. As to labor, the percentage of wage workers and employers in the labor force has declined dramatically, while the number of unpaid
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family laborers and self-employed has risen. This structural shift in the labor market reflects the growing informalization of the economy, itself occurring within a context of eroding domestic production and income.124 Furthermore, domestic employment also shows a shift in the sectoral distribution of employment away from construction and manufacturing toward agriculture and public services, which accounted for a very high share of domestic employment creation as opposed to the receding private sector.125 Physical Damage The productive capacity of the economy has been further diminished by the damage and destruction, through closure and armed confrontation, of Palestine’s capital resources, that is, infrastructure, buildings (including equipment and furniture) and agriculture (buildings, irrigation systems, wells, trees).126 Data published by the president’s office of the Palestinian Authority reveal a loss of $116.19 million in the first year of the uprising due to damages, 65 per cent ($75 million) of which occurred in the Gaza Strip.127 The World Bank estimated the loss to be considerably higher. Between October 2000 and June 2001, the Bank conservatively placed the damage at $168 million; six months later, the damage had increased by 81.5 per cent or by $137 million, to $305 million. The Gaza Strip incurred 63 per cent of the damage ($193 million), much of it concentrated in Gaza City and the northern governorates. In the West Bank, the Ramallah and Bethlehem areas sustained most of the damage to the territory ($112 million).128 When viewed by sector, agriculture suffered the most during the period September 2000–December 2001, sustaining $176.6 million in damage or 58 per cent of the regional total.129 During the first nine months of the uprising alone, October 2000–June 2001, the Israeli Army damaged or destroyed 317,541 trees—olive, date, citrus, almond and other—valued at $35,395,765.130 By December 2001—six months later—454,874 trees had been attacked; the damage incurred was valued at $107,590,000.131 Another source states that Israel destroyed 5.5 square kilometers (2.1 square miles) of Palestinian orchards and 4.5 square kilometers (1.7 square miles) of field crops.132 Furthermore, 80 per cent of total agricultural losses ($141 million) through December
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2001 were concentrated in the more impoverished Gaza Strip. In fact, agricultural damage accounted for 73 per cent of total damage in the Gaza Strip, representing 89 per cent of total damage in the north, 84 per cent in the middle areas, 76 per cent in the south and 72 per cent in the Gaza City region.133 In the West Bank, damage to agriculture accounted for 31 per cent of total damage in the West Bank and was highest in Qalqilya (80 per cent) and Jericho (69 per cent).134 A report prepared for the Quartet (EU, U.N., U.S. and Russian Federation) in August 2002 found that since the beginning of the uprising, the IDF had destroyed or otherwise alienated 12,668 acres of agricultural land in the West Bank and Gaza. Approximately 5,636 acres of agricultural land (45 per cent of the total) were leveled just in the Gaza Strip.135 After agriculture, private buildings incurred the most damage at $47.5 million or about 16 per cent of total damage through December 2001. The West Bank suffered the most damage in this sector at $25.5 million (54 per cent of the sectoral total); Gaza lost $22 million (46 per cent). Within this category, residential dwellings accounted for $32 million or 67 per cent of private-building damage, while private commercial and industrial buildings accounted for the rest. Public buildings suffered a loss of $40.8 million or 13 per cent of total damage and accounted for 21 per cent of all West Bank damage compared with 9 per cent of Gaza’s.136 Building damage to schools, for example, was extensive. Of 1,800 primary and secondary schools in WB/G, 400 were damaged—from broken windows to total destruction—in the first nine months of the conflict alone, the majority in Hebron and southern Gaza. This represents almost one-quarter of all Palestinian schools.137 Also included in the public-building category are the national television facilities in the West Bank and the airport in Gaza. Damage to infrastructure accounted for $40.1 million or 13 per cent of total WB/G damage with losses proportionately greater in the West Bank (24 per cent of WB total) than Gaza (7 per cent).138 Israel’s West Bank Incursion (March/April 2002): Accelerating Economic Disintegration139 Profound physical damage has been done in 2002, dramatically increasing the total loss due to physical destruction to near one billion dollars. For example, Israel’s military incursion into Palestinian refugee
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camps and the bombing of Gaza in March 2002 will cost the UNRWA at least $3.8 million to address. During that month, 22 U.N. schools, four U.N. health clinics, two U.N. ambulances and four camp service centers were damaged. In addition, 141 refugee homes were destroyed, which alone will cost a minimum of $2.3 million to rebuild, while 1,800 shelters incurred minor damage that will require $540,000 to repair.140 However, the greatest physical destruction occurred during Israel’s five-week incursion into the West Bank, which began on March 29 and was known as Operation Defensive Shield. This incursion created an additional $361 million in damage and loss (excluding far greater income losses and other social costs) according to the UNSCO/ World Bank Local Aid Co-ordination Committee.141 So great was the destruction resulting from the April incursion that the damage done in this single five-week period exceeds by $56 million the total damage done during the first 15 months of the uprising ($305 million). The greatest damage was done to the Nablus region ($114 million) followed by Jenin ($83 million) and Ramallah ($51 million).142 The private sector incurred the greatest costs at $97 million, almost half of which consisted of damage to buildings and equipment and spoilage. Damage to roads, private housing and ancient cultural sites is estimated at $64 million, $66 million and $48 million respectively in addition to the costs of repairing other infrastructural networks and public structures.143 The March–April incursion increased by over 100 per cent the number of home demolitions since the start of the uprising. Between September 2000 and February 2002, 720 Palestinian homes were demolished by the Israeli Army and an additional 11,553 damaged, which affected 73,600 people. Israel’s five-week incursion resulted in the destruction of another 881 homes and damaged 2,883 more in refugee camps, leaving their 22,500 residents without proper housing.144 The Israeli incursion into Jenin alone resulted in the destruction and subsequent demolition of 170 structures, leaving at least 4,000 people homeless.145 An additional 20–30 structures will have to be torn down due to severe structural damage, while another 200 homes will require extensive rehabilitation. The resulting cost of reconstruction is estimated at $25–$30 million and will be funded by the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates.146 Furthermore, according to a number of U.N. agencies, donors and NGOs, an additional $47.3
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million is needed “to implement a number of emergency interventions ranging from food and water distributions to psychosocial support to traumatized children.”147 Current World Bank calculations place total infrastructure damage in the West Bank and Gaza through early June 2002 at over $800 million.148 On June 18, 2002, the IDF launched Operation Determined Path, which led to the reoccupation of most West Bank towns. This accelerated declines in economic activity—for example, productive capacity, output, income—and resulted in more physical damage. The Social Consequences of Emerging Economic Dissolution149 Closure’s impact has been pernicious and made worse by growing levels of armed violence. The combined effect of closure and armed conflict since September 28, 2000, has resulted in precipitous declines in employment, trade and investment (and associated losses and distortions), depleting and shrinking an economy that was already weak, small and fragmented to begin with. Indeed, even if closure were removed today and relations normalized, the damage done to the Palestinian economy is so acute that the World Bank estimates it would take at least two years for per capita income and economic activity generally to return to pre-Intifada levels, and only if “private-sector confidence in the future of the economy can be significantly restored; it would take much longer to restore real per capita income levels prevailing in 1994” (emphasis mine).150 The Bank further argues that even after two solid years of economic recovery, pre-Intifada living standards (not high to begin with) would continue to be elusive, since “poverty would still affect 30 per cent of the population.”151 Because these predictions were made prior to the massive economic and physical destruction that resulted from the March–April invasion and the June operation, they likely underestimate the problem. The devastation of the economy has led directly to the devastation of the individual.152 The U.N. Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories, Terje Larsen, stated in December 2000, just three months into the uprising: “[W]hat was achieved in progress in the living conditions of the Palestinians over the last three years has been completely destroyed over the last two months.”153 Similarly, a report commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International Development
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(USAID) as early as December 2000 argued, “[I]f the current situation remains, there will be indications of a humanitarian crisis—measured in high malnutrition rates, increased morbidity and mortality—among vulnerable groups within three months.”154 This is not surprising, given that, by June 2001, 14.2 per cent of Palestinian households had completely lost their sources of income during the uprising, and 47.4 per cent of households reported losing more than 50 per cent of their income.155 More recent World Bank data reveal that 56.5 per cent of all Palestinian households—58.0 per cent in the West Bank and 53.6 per cent in the Gaza Strip—have lost more than half their income since before the uprising.156 In the first four months of the Intifada, the number of people living below the poverty line (defined as a household with two adults and four children with a yearly consumption of less than $2.10 per person per day), increased from 650,000 to one million, or from 21 per cent to 32 per cent of the population.157 (Remember, too, that the impoverished must pay Israeli, not developing-world prices.) One-half of the Palestinian poor live in and around three areas—Khan Younis, Gaza City and Hebron—most severely affected by closure. These areas were cut off almost completely from labor and commercial markets in Israel and in the larger Palestinian towns, with poverty rates falling between 40 and 51 per cent.158 By July 2001, the number of people living below the poverty line doubled from 1 million to 2.1 million people or 65 per cent of the total population – 57 per cent in the West Bank and 80 per cent in Gaza— according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).159 More conservative World Bank estimates placed 40–50 per cent of the population in poverty by the end of 2001.160 The Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) calculated that by October 2001—one year into the uprising—410,000 families were in need of assistance: unemployed workers who once worked in Israel, 120,000; unemployed workers in industrial zones and Israeli settlements, 15,000; workers unemployed before the current uprising, 70,000; workers unemployed due to the current economic conditions, 120,000; families already obtaining assistance from MOSA, 65,000, and families of unemployed workers, 20,000.161 This represents approximately 2,050,000 people who were in need of assistance by October 2001.162
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In 2001, the UNRWA carried out two emergency appeals that provided food and cash aid to 216,000 refugee families classified as hardship cases: 127,000 families in Gaza (53 per cent of Gaza’s total population) and 89,000 families in the West Bank (21 per cent of the West Bank’s total population), or almost 1.1 million people. Prior to the Intifada, the UNRWA was feeding only 11,000 families classified as hardship cases.163 During this same period, the UNRWA also created 540,300 working days through various employment-generation schemes, 72 per cent of which were located in the Gaza Strip. The total cost for these and other assistance programs came to over $76 million for a seven-month period.164 The March–April incursion diminished access to food even more. According to a consortium of donor agencies including the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP): Severe damage to the physical infrastructure, including water, electricity and road networks combined with imposed curfews have brought to a halt all economic activities and caused a rapid deterioration of living conditions. People’s access to food and basic necessities has been severely curtailed. Even people with money have difficulties to get to the market to buy the little food available. The condition of those people with limited financial means and who have been unemployed for more than one year is even more critical.165
For those towns hardest hit by the invasion—Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Tulkarm—massive food shortages were reported both at home (37–64 per cent of households) and in the marketplace (43–89 per cent of households).166 The WFP estimates that around one million people have been directly affected by the March–April incursion, and their condition worsened. Of this, approximately 300,000 non-refugees in the Gaza Strip and 320,000 non-refugees in the West Bank are in need of emergency food assistance.167 According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), during the period just prior to the incursion and the weeks that followed it, more than 56 per cent of households lost at least half their income while almost 20 per cent lost their income entirely.168 The WFP will assist 500,000 people (prior to March 29, 2002, the WFP was feeding 373,500 people—224,900 in the West Bank and 148,600 in Gaza169) and the needs of the remaining 120,000 will be addressed by other NGOs. However, in July 2002, the WFP reported that its emergency food operation remained 90 per
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cent underfunded and that the agency was struggling to cover the basic needs of the Palestinian population.170 In addition, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was expanding its support to some 300,000 mostly rural people in the West Bank post-incursion.171 The ICRC will also be starting an urban food voucher program for an estimated 20,000 families.172 UNICEF has focused its food distribution efforts on child protection institutions and more recently on families expelled from the Jenin refugee camp. The Lutheran World Federation is also supporting almost 23,000 people in the Gaza Strip.173 All in all, USAID found that over 30 per cent of the more than three million Palestinians living in WB/G are dependent on food handouts. USAID also found that 50 per cent of all Palestinians require external food assistance to meet their minimum daily caloric intake.174 The World Bank/PCBS estimated that by February 2002, 58.3 per cent of all Palestinian households had received humanitarian assistance during the uprising—45 per cent in the West Bank and 86.1 per cent in the Gaza Strip.175 By August 2002, approximately 1.8 million Palestinians were receiving food aid and other forms of emergency assistance, a number that will only grow if closure and other restrictions continue.176 (The more than $700 million now owed the PA by Israel would help mitigate this problem if released. In July 2002, the Israeli government announced that it would release NIS 70 million or approximately $15 million of these monies (the first of three payments) or 3 per cent of what Israel owes. In addition, Israel deducted around NIS 140 million or around $30 million to offset PA debts to the Israel Electric Company.177 On August 20, 2002, the PA received another $14 million.) One illustration of personal hardship comes from the following account by a USAID fieldworker: There are 12 members of the family, and only one is working, a teenage son, and he works only intermittently. The husband is in deep despondence because he can’t support his family. He has tried going off to cross the green line, despite the risk, but was scared off and came home. There is an elderly mother of the wife living with them, in need of medication that the family cannot provide. The mother used to get 96 NIS/month from social services, but this has stopped months ago . . . They have almost no cash. The baby, who is 13 months old, has a chest infection, and the mother is trying home remedies although she is afraid that what he really needs is a doctor, because there is no money for that, just as there is
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none for the aged mother. The problem is that she has no way to know if the child must have a doctor or not, and if she takes him and he doesn’t need this treatment, then she will be unable to feed her children that day, and if he does need it, where will she get the money for the medication?178
By January–February 2002, prior to Operation Defensive Shield, the PCBS already found 66.5 per cent of Palestinians living below the poverty line: 57.8 per cent of households in the West Bank and 84.6 per cent of households in the Gaza Strip.179 The United Nations considers approximately two million Palestinians “vulnerable” or in need of food, shelter and access to health services.180 According to the World Bank, 57 per cent of Palestinians will be living in poverty by the end of 2002. And, as alarming, “[e]ven if the closures are lifted, the poverty rate will not fall by much in 2003 and 2004. According to the World Bank’s econometric simulations, even if donor aid inflows were to increase by $1 billion per year in 2003 and 2004, this would still have only a minor impact on poverty, allowing it to fall to 52 per cent by the end of 2004.”181 Despite the desperate need for food, UNRWA officials report: “[T]he Israeli authorities continue to block the entry of basic foodstuffs, medicines and fuel, and refuse to relax internal restrictions on the movement of all goods and personnel.”182 An internal U.S. State Department memo dated May 10, 2002 described the restrictions affecting people in Gaza: UNRWA has 300 containers of food languishing in Ashdod and not enough in Gaza for rations. UNRWA’s duty-free fuel is not being allowed through Karni, which means they have to buy fuel on the local market, costing an additional $19,000 per month. Since March 28, 2002, Karni has been closed except for a little food and one export of flour. [The] private sector is at a standstill because there are no raw materials and no exports. Municipal salaries in Gaza haven’t been paid since February 2002. The citrus crop of 140,000 boxes is not going to get out of Gaza because of the closure. The growers aren’t even picking the fruit because it isn’t effective to do so. There are no construction materials available in Gaza.183
And from the same memo: One of the latest examples of the difficulties posed by the closures involved the need for a convoy organized by several relief agencies with water, food and urgently needed medical supplies, which was hoping to reach Shweike, a village north of Tulkarm, today. The village is in its 38th day of total
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curfew, and its 7,000 inhabitants have been unable to leave their homes, even for medical care except for the short period when the curfew is lifted so people can buy food (which [has] occurred twice a week at the most). The consortium of agencies reports earlier Palestinian attempts to deliver bread to Schweike had been turned back, and many essential food items are not available there.184
An internal memo from a prominent donor agency working in the Gaza Strip dated May 2002 further states, “Gaza City remains much easier than the south, where IDF incursions, gunfights and bulldozing are daily or nightly occurrences. Products are generally available in Gaza City, but flour is sometimes hard to get in the south, depending on whether or not Karni has been open. (Israel apparently wants to send in fresh produce, but not construction materials or staples such as flour.)”185 According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “Israel is virtually the sole supplier of food to the West Bank and Gaza, accounting for 95 per cent of total agricultural imports and almost 100 per cent of exports.”186 In addition, the Israeli authorities at the Erez border crossing are under orders that no money is to be allowed into Gaza.187 The crisis is made worse by the imposition of curfews, which confine people to their homes almost continuously. Under curfew, typically, people are only able to leave their homes for a few hours every third or fourth day to buy food. With Operation Determined Path and Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank’s major population centers, curfews were (and continue to be) widely imposed. For example, the 24-hour curfew imposed on Nablus between June 21, 2002 and September 27, 2002 had only been lifted for a total of 83 hours. That is, Nablus had been under curfew for 2,293 out of 2,376 hours. The Nablus curfew, which is still ongoing, is now well over 100 days old. Other West Bank towns were also placed under curfew during roughly the same June– September period: for example, Tulkarm for 1,886 hours (plus 490 hours—or 21 per cent of the time—without curfew), Jenin for 1,801 hours (plus 646 hours—26 per cent—without curfew), and Ramallah for 1,747 hours (plus 557 hours—24 per cent—without curfew).188 UNSCO also reports: “During 2002 Israeli military incursions, there were essentially two waves of curfew imposed over the West Bank: one that began on March 29, 2002, and the other in the latter part of
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June. In between the two periods, there were many cases of curfew, in addition to more than 90 smaller-scale military incursions that were carried out in Palestinian localities in May 2002.”189 Furthermore: At least 600,000 Palestinians live under intermittent curfews and most of the time are confined to their residences, thus unable to adequately exercise their economic and social activities. Recent reports indicate that up to 37 per cent of families in curfewed cities house other families because of lifethreatening danger, destroyed or occupied houses, or being stranded and unable to reach their homes. Over 50 per cent of families in areas under curfew report considerable damages to their neighborhoods, and 28 to 59 per cent of families are reportedly exposed to shooting on a daily basis . . . .190
Closure has also had a severe impact on the health-care sector at a time when needs have increased and resources have declined. As PA and Ministry of Health (MOH) funds become less and less available, other providers dependent on those funds (and patient fees, which most people can no longer pay) have had to cut or curtail their services, firing medical staff or reducing their salaries as much as 40 per cent. Long-term projects have been frozen as organizations struggle to deal with basic health needs at the cost of other critically important areas such as preventive care and the treatment of chronic diseases, which have received little financial support. Budgetary problems also have forced substantial cutbacks in the maintenance of facilities and equipment, fuel (for ambulances) and medicines. By September 2001, 130 medications were no longer available, including those for hypertension and diabetes.191 One of the greatest problems affecting this sector is the inability of patients and medical personnel to access health facilities or to do so in a timely manner. Because over 70 per cent of Palestinians live in rural areas with few if any health facilities, “closure therefore severely restricts the majority of the population from secondary and tertiary health-care facilities.”192 According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO) covering the first year of the uprising, problems of access vary by region, creating acute “pockets of vulnerability” for some 40,000 people, many of them Bedouin.193 Indeed, West Bank hospitals report a marked decline in access to services. St. Luke’s hospital in Nablus, for example, reports a 49 per cent reduction in general patients, a 73 per cent decline in specialty services and a 53 per
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cent decline in the number of surgeries performed. St. John’s ophthalmic hospital in East Jerusalem is the only one of its kind in the West Bank. Given closure restrictions, it is probably safe to say that the majority of West Bankers can no longer access this hospital.194 There have been numerous stories of men, women and children impeded by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints from reaching hospitals or other health-care facilities for such services as dialysis or cancer treatment, giving birth or bleeding injuries, sometimes with tragic results. A survey conducted over a two-week period in August 2002 by Johns Hopkins University, CARE and others found that 45.6 per cent of Palestinians in the WB/G requiring dialysis (among all those needing it) could not receive it (79 per cent in the WB and 25 per cent in G); 50 per cent requiring chemotherapy could not access it (74.2 per cent/WB and 34.7 per cent/G); and 38.4 per cent needing diabetes treatment were unable to obtain it (56.6 per cent/WB and 18.1 per cent/G).195 The inability to access services was due primarily to closure/curfew and secondarily to the lack of money. For example, “in the Bethlehem governorate, 72.9 per cent of households reporting the need for emergency care were not able to access it due to curfew 97.5 per cent of the time . . . In 68.6 per cent of households with children needing immunization, there is no access due to curfew 93.8 per cent of the time.”196 In an UNRWA study on the impact of closures on prenatal care and anemia prevalence among pregnant women, the organization found the following: between 1999 and October 2001, there was a 75 per cent drop in early registration by pregnant women for prenatal care (from 8.7 per cent to 2.1 per cent); a near-50 per cent drop in regular prenatal-care attendance (from 46.1 per cent to 25.4 per cent); a more than doubling of home deliveries (from 6.1 per cent to 13.5 per cent), which could increase the spread of neonatal tetanus and hepatitis B (without immunization at delivery, the HepB virus could spread since 3 per cent of pregnant women in the West Bank are carriers197); and a 37 per cent increase in anemia deficiency among pregnant women (from 35.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent) despite the introduction by the UNRWA of an iron supplementation policy in 2000. The higher levels of anemia deficiency in turn have contributed to a 23 per cent increase in the proportion of high- and alert-risk pregnancies, a 100 per cent increase in the proportion of very-low-birthweight babies and a 21 per cent
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increase in the proportion of low-birthweight babies.198 In addition, 48 per cent of women of childbearing age suffer from moderate to mild anemia.199 The UNRWA concludes that the only explanation for the decline in prenatal care is “the poor accessibility of women to health centers because of closure, economic hardship and the inability of those living outside the camp to pay for the transportation.”200 Similarly, the UNRWA argues, “The ‘only explainable reason’ for the increase in anemia despite the introduction of an iron supplementation policy is ‘the deteriorating social economic status’ of women resulting from the ‘current closure, siege, curfews, demolitions and stress.’”201 Other emerging problems regarding public health are the continued control of water and sewage testing, water chlorination and vector control, all of which have been interrupted. The MOH reported that, within the first ten months of the uprising, water sampling was reduced by 52 per cent and sewage sampling by 95 per cent, with obvious implications for public health, particularly as regards the spread of infectious disease.202 Furthermore, the spread of infectious disease, particularly cholera, is heightened by overcrowding, inadequate shelter and diminished access to clean and potable water. In fact, a USAID environmental assessment team found that of 300 households surveyed in Nablus, not one had access to drinking water acceptable by international standards.203 According to the report prepared for the Quartet: Of 708 localities in the West Bank and Gaza, an estimated 300 that rely on the purchase of water from private or municipal water tankers have limited access to water sources because of closures and delays of tankers at checkpoints. As a result of increasing transportation costs, prices for tankerwater rise considerably—up to 80 per cent in certain West Bank locations. In addition to the rise in water prices, preliminary assessment reports indicate that due to a combination of economic and closure [logistics] factors, the water supply in several West Bank locations is falling below a minimum required 15 litres per person per day.204
A report on water scarcity in 101 Palestinian communities in WB/G prepared by Oxfam and the Palestinian Hydrology Group found the following problems (among others):205
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• Twenty-five per cent of total surveyed communities (TSCs) have difficult or no access to public health centers. • Twenty-five per cent of TSCs have a relatively high number of people infected with diseases—largely amoebic and skin—related to inadequate or substandard water and sanitation. Among the worst affected areas are Rantis near Ramallah, Nur Shams camp near Tulkarm, and Deir Abu Mashaal near Ramallah where 1,600 people (65 per cent of the total population), 800 people (11 per cent of population) and 400 people (14 per cent of population) respectively are infected with parasites. • Eight communities with more than 500 people have no water network and rely on tankers, cisterns or springs. • All communities with available water networks have difficulty paying their water bills, which is due entirely to the current economic crisis. In 47 out of 86 surveyed communities, over 50 per cent of households do not pay their bills. • Sixteen out of 101 TSCs have water consumption levels that are low (below 30 liters/capita/day). In two of these communities, Al Faqir and Al Burj, both near Hebron, Mekorot (the Israeli water supplier) completely stopped the supply of water. In Az Zuweidin (Hebron), Mekorot is providing only 5 per cent of the normal supply and in Rantis (Ramallah), Mekorot is supplying only 20 per cent of the normal supply. • Forty-seven of the communities surveyed receive their water from Mekorot. Most face serious reductions: 33 communities (70 per cent) are receiving less than 75 per cent of their normal supply; three communities (including Al Faqir and Al Burj above) have had their water supply terminated completely; and five communities (including Az Zuwiedin and Rantis above) are receiving no more than 30 per cent of their normal supply. • Forty communities have damaged water supply systems (wells, springs, cisterns, tankers and roof tanks). For example, 1,200 roof tanks were damaged in Tarqumiya (Hebron), 1,000 in Khan Younis, 350 in Adh Dhahiriya (Hebron) and 200 in Salfit. On October 22, 2002, Israel’s infrastructure minister ordered the water commissioner to stop all drilling for water by West Bank Palestinians (some of which is done illegally) and to freeze the issuing
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of all permits for future drillings. This will have a very damaging effect on Palestinian agriculture, which relies heavily on water drilled from the ground.206 Another health-related concern is vaccination coverage, which remains high despite declines from 98 per cent before the Intifada to 91 per cent in September 2001. However, by early May 2002, the vaccination schedule for almost 500,000 children in the West Bank had been disrupted, in some areas by as long as six months. This could increase the spread of measles, hepatitis B and polio.207 Continued restrictions on movement not only could threaten the level of coverage even more but diminish the efficacy of vaccines that are administered since delays in transportation have exposed them to heat.208 The mental health needs of the population have also increased. Long a problem and largely neglected, the mental health of Palestinians has declined even further under the pressures of closure and continued violence. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) found that during the first year of the uprising, 360,000 people were exposed daily to severe shelling and shooting.209 The MOH reported a 105 per cent increase in patient registrations at mental health clinics, most of them children under 18, and a 72 per cent rise in the demand for counseling services in the West Bank during the first seven months of the conflict.210 In a study investigating the nature of post-traumatic reactions in children aged 9–18 exposed to bombardment and home demolition (and in those who were not) during the Al Aqsa Intifada, the authors found far greater post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reactions in children who had experienced bombardment and the destruction of their homes (more than twice as many) than in those who had not. While this is not surprising, the authors also found that these disorders were widespread. For example, 66 per cent of exposed children identify the event as extremely stressful, 58 per cent have difficulty concentrating, and 57 per cent have problems sleeping. Furthermore, 76 per cent are afraid of being in a high place because they fear it will collapse, 69 per cent fear being in a closed space, 69 per cent have fears of height and high buildings, 67 per cent fear things and people the child knows will not hurt him, and 64 per cent fear having an untreatable disease.211 Another study conducted by an Israeli psychologist at Tel Aviv University found that 70 per cent of Palestinian children and 30 per
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cent of Jewish children in Israeli settlements suffer from trauma.212 The prevalence of mental health disorders among Palestinian children is similar to that found in children exposed to war in Iraqi Kurdistan, and displaced children in Iran and Croatia.213 During the March–April siege, exposure to political violence was greater and more concentrated. In Tulkarm, Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem, for example, 87 per cent, 78 per cent, 67 per cent, 52 per cent and 31 per cent of households respectively witnessed some sort of destruction while 90 per cent, 89 per cent, 70 per cent, 93 per cent and 87 per cent of households reported mental health problems during the siege. Between 71 per cent and 93 per cent of families also reported despair over the deterioration of their daily life.214 A related point of extreme importance is the fact that, increasingly, traditional leaders who regulated social behavior and provided protection are being replaced by political leaders who sanction violence and who provide no guarantees of safety or protection.215 The Palestinian family has responded to economic distress in different ways. The overwhelming majority have reduced their expenditures of both non-essential and essential goods. Various surveys report a marked decrease in consumption of basic food products, which the poor are increasingly unable to buy. The consumption of animal protein has fallen from an average of twice per week to once or twice per month. A PCBS survey conducted in 2001 found that 35 per cent and 55 per cent of respondents reduced the quantity and quality of their food intake respectively, while 65 per cent reported a reduction in meat and fruit consumption, and 43 per cent reduced their consumption of milk and milk products.216 On a visit by the author to a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip in January 2001, women raged that they did not have enough food to feed their children. A typical meal consisted of bread and zatar (spices), tea and sugar. Yet, food represents the largest part of consumption, accounting for over 40 per cent of spending by WB/G Palestinians. A study conducted by CARE and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in all 16 governorates of the WB/G (during two-week sampling intervals) found that in the second half of May 2002, 67.8 per cent of households had decreased their intake of meat, chicken and fish; 60.9 per cent were eating less fruits and vegetables; 49.7 per cent were consuming fewer milk and dairy products; and 30.3 per cent had lowered their
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consumption of bread, potatoes and rice, which is perhaps most concerning.217 By early September 2002, the percentage of households with reduced intake of meat/fish and fruits/vegetables had increased to 71.6 per cent and 67.2 per cent, respectively.218 A key factor affecting food intake is affordability: 54.1 per cent of 2,240 households were forced to borrow money to purchase food (61.4 per cent in Gaza and 48.6 per cent in the West Bank), while 17.7 per cent were forced to sell assets to buy food (25.1 per cent/G and 14.4 per cent/ WB).219 Another factor affecting food intake is curfew, which affects largely West Bank households. According to preliminary findings from USAID, chronic malnutrition (stunting—growth retarded by poor diet) and acute malnutrition (wasting—weight less than normal for age or height) affects 30 per cent and 21 per cent of Palestinian children under five years of age respectively, a fourfold increase from 7 per cent for chronic malnutrition in 2000 and an almost tenfold increase from 2.5 per cent for acute malnutrition in 2000.220 USAID further states that “moderate and severe malnutrition rates” and “moderate and severe anemia rates found to date [June 2002]” are “significant” among children under five years of age.221 In another study by CARE/JHU, the percentages are lower but still alarming. This assessment report found that 22.5 per cent of WB/G children below five suffer from chronic (13.2 per cent) and acute (9.3 per cent) malnutrition.222 Chronic malnutrition affects 17.5 per cent of children in Gaza, five times greater than the rate (3.5 per cent) in the West Bank.223 The situation is most dangerous in Gaza, where 13.2 per cent of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition (and 4.3 per cent in the West Bank), “a rate comparable to [that] of Sub-Saharan Africa,”224 in fact, higher than Zimbabwe (13.0 per cent) and just below the Congo (13.9 per cent).225 The outbreak of serious diseases, particularly cholera, is now an unquestioned risk. According to the U.N. Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team (UNDAC): The current situation in the oPt [occupied Palestinian territories] can be defined as a crisis within a crisis. While the Jenin drama had serious impact on the livelihoods of thousands of Palestinians, 4,000 of whom have been rendered homeless, the overall impact of the intifada and the Israeli policy of closures have a much more extensive humanitarian impact. Given the current level of closures and siege of entire populated areas, it is increasingly
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believed that the international community is facing a medium- to long-term humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza.226
Some Concluding Thoughts Many of the studies made of the post-September 2000 economy, notably the World Bank reports from which many of the data in this article are drawn, treat the current closure and the myriad problems created by it as something new and virtually without precedent. This is true only up to a point: with regard to the scale of the problem, but not with regard to its structure. The structural reality imposed by closure (and its damaging effects) can be traced back to January 1991 during the Gulf War and represented the beginning of an important shift in Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Since 1993, at least, the egregious economic impact of closure has been clear and well documented. Closure proved to be the single most damaging measure affecting the Palestinian economy during the Oslo period. It was during the years of the peace process and not during the current crisis that the inextricable connection between closure and economic growth was established and demonstrated. Indeed, long before September 2000, closure had already done considerable damage to the Palestinian economy. This is one reason economic conditions deteriorated so quickly afterward. In this regard, Israeli policy toward WB/G has not changed fundamentally throughout the occupation despite various modifications to that policy, both benign (for example, allowing the free movement of Palestinians in the early years of the occupation) and malignant (for example, closure). Israeli policy has always aimed to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian economy and state and has consistently used economic measures to insure continued Palestinian dependence and de-development.227 The political, economic and physical changes to WB/G during the Oslo period provide ample evidence of this. More recently, Ron Ben Eshai, a commentator for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, wrote, “It is impossible to vanquish the Al Aqsa intifada militarily, but it is definitely possible to frustrate it and to wear out the Palestinians physically and economically until it dies out.”228 According to a study carried out by USAID, the Palestinian economy has responded to the Intifada in three phases:
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The first phase was one of massive dislocation from October to December 2000, which sent all of the main economic indicators plummeting. This was followed by a more stable period . . . when the economy settled into a lower level equilibrium, as Palestinian households adjusted to the closures and the sharply lower levels of private sector activity and employment. During this period, the economy was sustained by large infusions of donor assistance . . . [I]t is . . . clear that the economy has entered a second—even more vicious—downward cycle. As a result of the successively higher thresholds of military activity, the situation is now catastrophic in certain areas of the West Bank. In general there is increasing deprivation and reduced access to basic services. The coping strategies which were successfully employed last year are no longer effective, and the economy is being demonetized as cash transactions decline in favor of a barter economy.229
The movement of people and goods in WB/G is becoming even more restricted with the introduction by Israel of a new travel-permit system between Palestinian localities and the cutting in half of the Gaza Strip.230 These measures, coupled with the deepened cantonization of the territories and the erection of new barriers, such as ditches, barbedwire fences, electronic warning systems and walls approaching 27 feet high around the perimeters of Palestinian towns, will give Israel total control over the movement of Palestinians within Arab areas, including those areas (Area A) previously under total Palestinian control, thereby eradicating the concept of Palestinian-controlled territory. This is altogether new. The security wall, already under construction and intended as a permanent structure, is to be 349 kilometers (217 miles) long (over twice as long as the Berlin Wall) and will cost $1 million per kilometer to build. Furthermore, according to the Palestinian mapping department, the wall will be built up to 3 kilometers inside the West Bank, taking up to 1.3 per cent of West Bank land and eleven villages and dispossessing 26,000 people of their agricultural plots.231 According to Jeffrey Halper, coordinator for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the security wall will be built 5–10 kilometers inside Palestinian territory, forcing over 100,000 Palestinians to live between the border and the wall.232 On May 7, 2002, at a meeting between the Israeli Army and international aid officials, the former outlined a plan to create buffer zones around the eight major population centers (key cities and their outlying villages) of the West Bank: Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron,
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Bethlehem, Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya and Jericho. According to the plan, Palestinians would have to apply for a special permit—valid only from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m.—to enter or exit a given zone. These permits are only valid for one-month periods and must be renewed.233 Trucks carrying goods would not be allowed to cross zones but would have to offload goods at crossing points onto other trucks. This back-to-back system has long been in effect in the Gaza Strip and exacts enormous added costs. Furthermore, under the Israeli plan, no Palestinian would be permitted to enter Israel. Because East Jerusalem is defined as part of Israel, those West Bank Palestinians who work in East Jerusalem, many of them in aid agencies headquartered there, will lose their jobs. Perhaps most important, Israel’s new restrictions will further obstruct the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian assistance.234 The resident representative of the Norwegian’s People Aid, Gudrun Bertinussen, writing on June 27, 2002, describes the problem: New restrictions on movement within the West Bank and within the Gaza Strip have serious consequences for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population. Israeli authorities have introduced a permit system in which Palestinian staff of local and international NGOs and of donor organizations no longer can move freely between villages and cities within the Palestinian territories. . . . Local NGOs are increasingly facing difficulties in carrying out their humanitarian activities within their regions. We have seen during the last weeks an intensification of unprecedented military restrictions on humanitarian access to the populations affected by the conflict. Local Palestinian organizations and Palestinian staff of international organizations have reported that they have been harassed at checkpoints. They have been denied travel between project sites and offices within the West Bank and within the Gaza Strip. Military checkpoints have multiplied and have been strengthened. Temporary military checkpoints are turning into permanent ones. At the time of writing all Palestinian cities in the West Bank except Jericho and Jerusalem are under curfew. Some areas are severely affected by the closures—a number of smaller villages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been under permanent curfew for up to 18 months. In the Gaza Strip there is a different kind of internal closure. Parts of the Palestinian road network have been closed with physical barriers, and there is now one road linking the north to the south of [the] Gaza Strip. This road is frequently closed half way at Abu Hole, close to [the] Kfar Darom settlement, where there is a military point. At this military point there is no checking of ID cards. Cars are merely stopped from both directions and for the last weeks the road has been opened for a few hours in the morning and
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evening. The only road connecting the north and south of Gaza remains closed for most of the day. The situation also affects people’s living conditions . . . Ongoing longterm development projects . . . have to be re-planned in terms of what is operationally possible in each particular region and in terms of people’s immediate needs . . . [L]ocal organizations adapt in creative but also risky ways. Palestinian humanitarian workers bypass roadblocks and checkpoints in their efforts to continue their work . . . [One] organization is cooperating with other local organizations to further decentralize their activities within Gaza. Travel between even short distances is difficult for project staff as well as for beneficiaries . . . who are mothers with severely undernourished children [who] cannot risk delays at checkpoints for up to eight hours in the summer heat . . . With the new restrictions, humanitarian agencies are no longer able to effectively reach the population in immediate need of assistance, and our capacity to provide sustained and quality support in the long term has been severely undermined.235
For Israelis, the army plan is designed to keep suicide bombers from entering Israel. For Palestinians the plan will establish prison walls further designed to divide and isolate sections of WB/G from one another, fueling even greater frustration and hatred.236 Prime Minister Sharon’s new policy of seizing and holding Palestinian lands in response to continued suicide bombings will only intensify the problem (as will President Bush’s approval of this policy and his threat to terminate U.S. aid to Palestinians should Yasir Arafat be re-elected president).237 Indeed, Israel’s June 2002 military operation includes not only the reoccupation of seven of eight main Palestinian population centers in the West Bank—the Israeli Army redeployed from Bethlehem in August 2002—and the imposition of widespread curfews, but the reimposition of direct Israeli rule, which is a major component of that reoccupation.238 Prime Minister Sharon has since made it clear that he will focus the army’s efforts on Gaza as well. By August 2002, according to the humanitarian report prepared for the Quartet: Travel by Palestinians between cities and villages has come to an almost complete halt. The principal economic result has been a near complete cessation of all productive activity in the main West Bank centers of manufacturing, construction, commerce and private and public services. Activities in these centers account for at least 75 per cent of the value of goods and services produced in the West Bank. The Palestinian economy
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will cease to function completely should the current closure regime be undetermined in its length, as announced by the IDF.239
Clearly, the economic impact of such Israeli measures, whatever their motivation, will be nothing short of destructive. According to one World Bank official, “We could see the emergence of enclave economies relying on local subsistence agriculture and petty trade and in which the financial system would be reluctant or unable to extend meaningful credit.”240 Under this scenario, the donor program—estimated to rise from $930 million to $1.2 billion this year—would be transformed into a quasi-welfare program in part because the movement of material aid and aid workers would be obstructed. If this happens, it will no longer be possible to build a Palestinian economy in preparation for statehood. It would logically follow that Israel, as sovereign, would control WB/G militarily while the international community assumes responsibility for the population by preventing the local economy from collapsing.241 The report to the Quartet acknowledges: “While maintaining troops in the oPt, and thus paralyzing the functioning of the civil service and private sector, the IDF and the Israeli civil administration now rely on [the] international relief community to ensure continuity of basic services that are otherwise impossible to deliver.”242 By so doing, the donors, in effect, are also providing financial support for the deepened cantonization of the territories.243 Indeed, the World Bank recently concluded that given the severe recession of the Palestinian economy, donors will, for the next few years, have to focus on humanitarian and emergency needs, including direct budgetary support to the PA and job creation programs.244 The Bank states: “Under the current circumstances, foreign assistance, though significant, can at best maintain minimum welfare and address immediate humanitarian needs. It cannot meaningfully address unemployment levels or foster real economic recovery.”245 Now, as before, “progress” and “growth,” if those terms still apply, are really measured not by any viable movement forward (structural reform of the economy) but by a slower movement backward (moderate and less frequent declines and constrained growth). Such are the parameters within which the Palestinian economy has always been confined.
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The human impact of a disintegrating economy has been devastating. The individual has been ravaged by widespread poverty, declining health status, eroding education, physical and environmental destruction, and the absence of hope. During the first two years of the uprising, 1,781 Palestinians were killed and 20,455 injured (as were 622 and 4,578 Israelis, respectively). Palestine is not a failed society, as some have argued, but a wounded one. In a Palestinian’s words: “I don’t want my land back. Land belongs to God. I want to work and live . . . Doesn’t Israel understand how dangerous poverty is to everyone? Does Israel think it can throw us out? This situation makes everyone want to explode. I’m convinced that everyone that blew himself up has an unemployed brother.”246 Recommendations designed to promote sustainable socioeconomic recovery (and there are many) must first seek a political, not an economic, solution. For the crux of the problem between Palestinians and Israelis is occupation and Israel’s continued repressive control of Palestinian lands and resources. One Israeli political analyst put it this way: “[W]hat does it mean for economic sustainability if you have 4m–5m people who are in an impoverished and inequitable position?”247 Israeli occupation remained structurally intact during the Oslo period. This is the primary reason the Oslo process failed and with it the expectation of meaningful political and economic reform. During this time, donors sought economic change in the absence of a political solution. Placing the economic cart before the political horse was destined to fail because the locus of control remained with the occupier and reflected the occupier’s interests and objectives. Hence, donors could not respond to the developmental needs of the Palestinians but had to work within an Israeli-imposed framework that sought to preclude those needs often through the imposition of restrictive measures such as closure. As a result and despite certain positive achievements, donors were often placed in a position of having to mitigate the damaging effects of Israeli occupation policy rather than addressing the legitimate needs of the Palestinian economy. In its very lengthy economic studies cited in this paper, the World Bank rarely if ever used the word “occupation” to describe the current crisis. Yet, the Bank describes the natural outcome of occupation when it argues that, if current conditions of tightened closure and confrontation continue, this will lead:
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. . . in all probability to a functional collapse of normal civil governance within a year [by September 2002], a reversion from any semblance of modern business activity into barter trade and subsistence farming, and a growing dependence on donor food aid, as under such conditions a monetized economy can scarcely function (thus dampening the impact of further conventional donor contributions). Unemployment could climb to about 40 per cent by the end of 2002, poverty rates could reach 60 per cent of the population, and GNI per capita could fall a further 30 per cent, leaving GNI per capita at only half the pre-intifada level.248 [Hence], if closure is tightened further, current PA, community and donor efforts will not suffice, and the economy will unravel. Soon little will remain of the private sector other than subsistence agriculture, petty trade and workshop manufacturing.249
Again, given that these predictions were made prior to the March–April 2002 and June 2002 invasions, economic declines will be (and in some cases already are) more dramatic than those predicted above. It is both puzzling and tragic that donors including the World Bank are still pursuing the same kind of apolitical approach, seeking technical solutions that will mitigate economic damage rather than political solutions that will enable structural reform.250 This approach did not work during the seven years of the peace process and will not work now, particularly given the rapid disintegration of the Palestinian economy. Although there are interim economic measures that can and should be pursued (lifting closure, dismantling the system of internal checkpoints, reopening the Israeli market to Palestinian labor, transferring Israeliheld revenues to the PA), long-term Palestinian economic growth, let alone development, cannot occur or be sustained without a complete end to Israeli occupation. The destruction of the Palestinian economy is not a technical problem but a political one, and it requires a political solution. Anything short of this will fail.
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17 Hamas and the Transformation(s) of Political Islam in Palestine*
I
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T’S OVER FOR THIS GENERATION
of Islamic activists. We tried and failed, but time is on our side. We must plant the seeds for an Islamic future in the next generation through social change. We must alter the mindset and mentality of people through an Islamic value system. We must do this through example and education. We must do it quietly and with persistence.” A senior official in Hamas made this comment to me in 1999, which described without question the thinking of many key figures in the Islamic political leadership in Gaza and the West Bank before the start of the current uprising. In the five years that preceded the recent unrest, the Islamists—particularly Hamas, the largest political faction in the Palestinian Islamic movement—were clearly undergoing a process of deradicalization and searching for political and social accommodation within the status quo of Palestinian society.1 There was a pronounced shift in emphasis within the movement away from political-military action to social-cultural reform; political violence was slowly but steadily being abandoned as a form of resistance and as a strategy for defeating the occupier. This shift, by the admission of the Islamist leadership itself, reflected the successful weakening by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) of the Islamic political sector and the defeat of its military wing. The thrust toward the social was not simply a return to old forms of social service provision commonly associated with the Islamic movement, but included entry into new * Originally published in Current History, January 2003, pp. 13–20. 294
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areas of community and development work that pointed to an emerging new logic between state and society.2 The Al Aqsa Intifada, which began in September 2000 in response to seven years of a “peace” process that not only deepened Palestinian dispossession and deprivation but strengthened Israel’s occupation, reversed the dramatic changes within the Islamic movement. The militarization of the uprising by Fateh, the dominant (secular) nationalist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), effectively sidelined the role of civil society—including secular and Islamic institutions—in the struggle to end Israeli occupation. This contributed to the reascendance of the political-military sector as the defining and authoritative component within the Islamic movement. Israel’s increasingly brutal and continued assault against Palestinian society and the Palestinian economy, and the deliberate destruction of its civic institutions, have only strengthened the embrace of the military option by Palestinians, including the Islamists. Despite this, the social core of the Islamic movement remains strong and has become an increasingly important part of the Palestinian social welfare system as unemployment and poverty have grown and the PA’s capacity to deliver even the most basic services has diminished. Relatively little has been written about the main political and social transformations in the Islamic movement both before and since the current uprising.3 While certain key dynamics within the movement (engaging in patterns of social accommodation) have remained relatively unchanged, others (the strengthening—and dominance—of the PA, and the weakening and silencing of the Islamists) are being replaced with altogether new dynamics that portend equally damaging consequences for Palestinian society and for a political resolution to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Political and Social Islam During Oslo Hamas—an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement—was born with the first Palestinian uprising or Intifada, which began in December 1987. The birth of this organization represented the Palestinian embodiment of political Islam in the Middle East. Hamas’s evolution and influence were primarily outgrowths of the first Intifada and the ways in which Hamas participated in the uprising: through
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the operations of its military wing, the work of its political leadership, and its social activities. Hamas’s goals—a nationalist position couched in religious discourse—are articulated in Hamas’s key documents: a charter, political memoranda, and communiqués. Some of these documents are undeniably racist and dogmatic, calling for the liberation of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Yet, later documentation, particularly since the mid-1990s, is less doctrinaire and depicts the struggle as a form of resistance to an occupying power—as a struggle over land and its usurpation, and over how to end the occupation. Recent statements by key Hamas officials maintain that their goals are Israel’s withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 war, the end of Israeli occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state, and a solution to the refugee issue. According to a senior political official, “If these things are implemented, the Palestinians will be satisfied, and they will be busy for more than 20 years building their state.”4 During the years of the Oslo peace process (from September 1993 to September 2000), the political and military sectors of the Islamic movement in which Hamas predominated were substantively weakened by a combination of factors. Most significant was the sustained intense pressure—arrests, imprisonment, execution—imposed by Israel and the PA, which weakened the organization from within. In addition, these pressures were imposed on Islamic social institutions, the socalled “terrorist infrastructure,” which resulted in the closing of many charitable societies (although some later reopened). Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat thus did a great deal to promote Israel’s policy objectives. Not only did he undermine Islamist organizations (notably Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another prominent Palestinian Islamist faction), he weakened Palestinian civil society and the Palestinian/PLO leadership structure. Supporters of the Oslo process termed this “liberalization”—one that not only preceded democracy but precluded it. Another critical factor was the Palestinian population itself. As the mass base of support for Hamas, it no longer tolerated extremism in any form. The economic costs of Hamas’s military operations and terrorist attacks became too high in an eroding socioeconomic environment, and widespread popular opposition to such attacks played an important role in ending them. The defection of younger
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Hamas cadres, disillusioned by the failure of their leadership to achieve any meaningful political change, further contributed to Hamas’s decline, as did the absence of any alternative political channels of expression. Similarly, the Islamic political sector was weakened by the PA’s successful co-optation of some parts of that sector in newly established Islamic parties or groups (for example, the National Islamic Salvation Party, the National Movement for Change, and the Islamic Struggle Movement) that were controlled by the PA. Apparently, no relations existed between these groups and Hamas (or the Islamic Jihad). Another factor that contributed to Hamas’s internal malaise was growing popular alienation from politics—perhaps especially political Islam—in favor of cultural and religious practices. Moreover, with the end of the Intifada and the initiation of the Oslo peace process, the resistance component of the Palestinian struggle, so critical to Hamas’s political thinking and action, was undermined. This had direct repercussions for Hamas’s social theory and practice, which were largely if not wholly developed and shaped during the uprising. For Hamas, social and political action are inextricably linked. With the removal of the resistance/opposition component from Palestinian political imperatives, what role, at least one that might be acceptable to most Palestinians, was left for Hamas? The resulting problem confronting Hamas (and the Islamic movement generally) was fundamentally one of survival. In response, there was a steady shift in emphasis, both ideologically and strategically, to the social sector of the Islamic movement, which had always been a critical component of that movement, providing a range of important services and doing so effectively. This shift was a search for accommodation and consensus within the status quo; it also reflected the need for Islamists to adjust to the conditions of the country in which they lived. Strategically, Hamas, and the Islamic movement generally, attempted to carve out public space in which they could operate without too much harassment from the Israeli or Palestinian authorities, and provide much-needed services to an increasingly needy population through a well-developed institutional infrastructure. In this way the Islamists would maintain their popular base of support. Did direct ties exist between Islamic political military and social institutions? The debate over the answer has been heated since the founding of Hamas. Conventional wisdom holds that Hamas
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controls all Islamic social institutions and uses them for political indoctrination and military recruitment. While a detailed discussion of these interrelationships is beyond the scope of this article, they clearly were not always as routine and assured as is commonly believed—nor as evil where they did exist. Some institutions claimed no political links at all. It cannot be denied, however, that the work of Islamic social institutions, whether aligned or nonaligned, did bolster Hamas’s position during the first Intifada. In the final analysis, more important than the existence of links was the work of these institutions and the services they provided. Interestingly, many members of the Islamic political leadership did not view the nonaligned sector or the growing dominance of the social sector as a problem. A senior Hamas official explained it this way: “Everyone who is religious is Hamas and anyone who teaches Islamic values furthers Hamas’s goals.” Thus, the organic interconnection between political and social action in Hamas’s ideology meant that the expansion of the social sector served the movement’s objectives even if social institutions were nonaffiliated. Hence, the retreat from the political sphere was pragmatic and accompanied by a need to rediscover Islam and its relevance to society. In the two- to three-year period before the second Intifida, Hamas was no longer prominently or consistently calling for political or military action against the occupation, but was instead shifting its attention to social works and the propagation of Islamic values and religious practice. According to a key Hamas official interviewed at the time, “Increasingly, Hamas represents religion and an Islamic way of life, not political violence.” Concomitant with this shift toward the sociocultural was a shift in certain terms and ideas, notably a growing acceptance of civil society as a concept—of a society where Islamic and Islamist institutions functioned as part of an integrated whole with their secular counterparts. The definition of the threats facing Palestinian society also changed. These threats were no longer confined to political or military attacks (by Israel and the PA) against Palestinian resources but also included cultural aggression against Palestinian values, beliefs and practices. Defeating the occupier became a matter of cultural preservation, building a moral consensus and Islamic value system as well as political and military power. Hence, the struggle was not for power per se but for defining
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new social arrangements and appropriate cultural and institutional models that would meet real social needs, and do so without violence. The idea was not to create an Islamic society but one that was more Islamic, as a form of protection against all forms of aggression. In so doing, the Islamic movement was creating a discourse of empowerment despite the retreat of its long-dominant political sector. Before Oslo, social action was historically focused on religious education through charitable societies, mosques, zakat (alms-giving) committees, health clinics, relief organizations, orphanages, schools and various clubs. The objective was to teach Islamic values and to embody them through practice, that is, the provision of social services. Recipients were largely the poor and working classes. The Islamists gained a reputation for honesty and integrity in the way they conducted themselves, especially when compared to the PLO. However, and perhaps most important, the shift to social services represented more than a return to Islamist and Islamic roots in the Muslim Brotherhood (the “parent” organization of Hamas, which emerged in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1970s as a social and cultural movement, abstaining from any political or military action against the occupation); it was accompanied by entry into seemingly new areas of social activity or the expansion of activity in preexisting areas that went beyond the traditional boundaries of religious education and proselytizing that had characterized the social work of the Muslim Brotherhood. This allowed the Islamists entry to, and legitimation by, the existing order, which they apparently were seeking, or at least accepted. Although social action has a political and revolutionary purpose in Hamas’s political ideology, Islamic social activism, as it was evolving in the Oslo context, was becoming increasingly incorporated within the mainstream (which, of course, was one way the ruling authority controlled the Islamic sector, but it worked to the advantage of both; by September 2000 approximately 10–40 per cent of all social institutions in the West Bank and Gaza were Islamic, according to official and private sources). Some of the clearest examples of this dynamic were in education, health and banking. In education, Islamic kindergartens, reputed centers of intense political proselytizing, taught a standard curriculum that was approved by the Palestinian Ministry of Education. The same applied to new Islamic schools at the elementary (and potentially secondary) school
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level. Interestingly, many but not all Islamic schools taught a religious curriculum, which in a growing number of cases, was also standardized, regulated and approved by the Ministry of Education. In fact, the Islamic movement appears to have strengthened its presence in the education sector. According to the Ministry of Education, 65 per cent of all Gazan educational institutions below the secondary level were Islamic (a percentage that has in all likelihood increased). Other examples were found in the health care sector with the emergence of tertiary and highly specialized medical care in Islamic facilities. One of the most sophisticated hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza is in Hebron; it was founded, administered and financed by the Islamic and Islamist leadership. And a highly respected (by the Palestinian medical establishment) rehabilitation and treatment center for acute spinal-cord injuries is an Islamic facility in Gaza. Initiatives also were taking place in the economic sector with the establishment of an Islamic banking network. This included four Islamic banks with more than twenty branches in the Occupied Territories, Islamic investment houses and a range of business enterprises. Furthermore, Hamas most likely had no control, direct or even indirect, over certain kinds of Islamic economic institutions such as those in banking and finance, given its own limited organizational structure and the tight regulation of such activities by government agencies. In all these cases, Islamic institutions were working with and were regulated by the appropriate Palestinian ministries and agencies and in many cases had what appeared to be good working relationships with the governmental sector. Arguably, these expanded or new areas of Islamic social activity represented the normalization, institutionalization and professionalization of the Islamic sector in the public curriculum, the system of health care delivery, and banking and finance. At the same time, the Islamic sector was not advancing a policy of isolation but was calling for greater accommodation and cooperation with local, national and international actors, including certain corresponding professional institutions in Israel. In one health care institution in Gaza, which was considered “Hamas” since some members of its management team were political supporters of the organization, the medical director proudly described a training program inside Israel to which he sent some of his staff. In all likelihood, this decision could not have been taken
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without the consent of the Islamic political leadership. This position advocating greater social (and political?) integration with non-Islamic actors, both internal and external, appeared widespread among officials in the Islamic social sector and was the stated position of some members of the political leadership. The shift to social action, to new forms of social engagement, and to the normalization and institutionalization of the Islamic and Islamist agendas during the Oslo period represented an important change within the Islamist movement. Hamas or its successors seemed to be slowly moving away from the political extreme toward a more centrist position, trying to place itself between the corruption of the PA and its donor-linked development projects, and violent Islamic militants and the impossibilities they came to represent. Islamists perhaps were trying to limit the arbitrary political power of the PA not through political or military confrontation, which had failed and was costly, but through mobilizing people at the sociocultural level and allowing the social part of the movement to define, pragmatically and non-violently, the Islamic and Islamist agenda for some time to come. Although it was not smooth or quick, the transformation from militancy to accommodation was taking place. Political Islam’s Reascendence The start of the second Palestinian Intifada on September 28, 2000, coupled with the impact of September 11, 2001, dramatically changed the environment in the West Bank and Gaza.5 Preexisting political arrangements have been severely disrupted, economic conditions have deteriorated, and key social structures and mediatory institutions have weakened. Within this context of desperation and hopelessness, the Islamist opposition, notably Hamas, has reasserted itself. Several political factors have contributed to the reascendance of the Islamists. Among the most important is the abnegation of any leadership or command role by the PA during the uprising, and the emergence of a younger generation of more militant Fateh cadres who assumed leadership of the uprising early on. The resulting militarization of the Intifada not only marginalized the role of Palestinian civil society, but discredited and eclipsed the function of the older generation of PA/ PLO elites. Fateh, however, has not been able to exert control over the
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PA, the Islamists, or other factions partly because of its own internal divisions. The internal political splits within the Palestinian national movement and the strengthening of armed and cross-factional militias seeking political power and an end to occupation through violent confrontation, coupled with the overall militarization of the uprising, created the time and space for Hamas to rebuild its political-military infrastructure and pursue a form of militancy that went beyond Fateh’s (which confined operations to the Occupied Territories). By attacking civilian targets inside Israel—a strategy subsequently followed by Fateh and others— Hamas not only succeeded in gaining support from an increasingly desperate population, it also undermined the PA—which was blamed for the attacks— and the diplomatic initiatives it was pursuing. Other factors contributing to the reemergence and strengthening of the Islamists include: • the internal political marginalization of Yasir Arafat and the growing international isolation of the Palestinian leadership, which was later transformed into an explicit attempt by Israel and the United States at “regime change”; • the politico-military campaign against the Palestinian Authority, which has resulted in the large-scale destruction of its institutional infrastructure—including its security forces and leadership/ command structure—and the immobilization of the PA as a political institution and administrative apparatus; • the absence of a common approach to the conflict and a coherent strategy of resistance, which reflects the lack of a unifying national liberation movement; • the growing decentralization of Palestinian politics and rising political fragmentation, where central authority steadily ceded to local control; • the implementation of (sometimes) conflicting political strategies by different factions (the PA’s eroding political/diplomatic track, Fateh’s war of attrition, and the Islamists’ larger war) that perpetuate organizational chaos politically; • the acceptance, especially by the United States, of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s agenda, which aims to eliminate the PA and preclude the establishment of a Palestinian state through
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continued Israeli settlement expansion, land expropriation and economic dispossession; • the failure of the United States to pursue seriously a political resolution of the conflict, and • the absence of any credible prospect for a meaningful political settlement. These factors have not only catalyzed the Islamist factions and their radicalization, but have resulted in a balance of power that could slowly shift in their favor. This potential shift is underlined by three dynamics: changing popular sentiment, the PA/nationalist–Islamist relationship, and Israeli policy toward the Islamist opposition. The Shift in Popular Sentiment Historically, popular support for Hamas and other Islamist factions was strongest in the perceived absence of political progress. During the Oslo period, when Palestinians were hopeful of a political settlement, support for Hamas—never substantial—waned; but when prospects dimmed, as they did after the failed Camp David summit in July 2000, support rose, albeit incrementally. Before the Intifada, political despair did not translate into support for the Islamists but into losses for the nationalists. After Camp David, for example, Palestinian analyst Khalil Shikaki found that support for Arafat dropped to 47 per cent from its peak of 65 per cent in 1996 and support for Fateh declined to 37 per cent after having reached an unprecedented 55 per cent in 1996 (when Palestinian support for the peace process reached 80 per cent and support for violent attacks against Israeli targets dropped to 20 per cent). Almost one year into the current Intifada, Arafat’s popularity plummeted to 33 per cent and Fateh’s to 29 per cent. Popular desertion of the secular nationalist forces did not translate into support for the Islamists; instead, people remained uncommitted (the popularity of the Islamists rose only from 15 per cent in 1996 to 17 per cent in 2000). This changed during the Intifada, however, when loyalties began to shift to the Islamists in the context of growing desperation and political failure. According to Shikaki, by July 2001 the Islamist factions claimed 27 per cent of polled support, which represented an 80 per cent increase from 1996. Furthermore, during
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this period, support for the opposition, both Islamist and nationalist, reached 31 per cent, which exceeded that of Fateh and its associates at 30 per cent. Yet, simultaneously, a December 25, 2001 poll by the Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah showed that while 61 per cent of Palestinians believed that armed confrontations with Israel had helped achieved national rights where negotiations failed, 71 per cent supported an immediate return to negotiations and 73 per cent supported reconciliation with the Israelis after the establishment of a Palestinian state recognized by Israel. A year later, in the context of dramatic economic decline and political disintegration, a Bir Zeit University poll revealed that 42 per cent of Palestinians favored an Islamic state, a finding that was totally unprecedented. Internal Dynamics With the Intifada, the Palestinian political environment underwent dramatic changes. First was the restoration of the resistance component and militancy to the Palestinian struggle, embraced by all factions, not just the Islamist opposition. Second was the attempt by the nationalist forces to accommodate the demands of the Islamists for the sake of maintaining national unity and an internal political consensus. Third was the effort by the Islamists to normalize their relationship with the PA, without conceding to its political conditions. For the PA, compromise meant remaining silent on calls for international protection, the application of the Geneva Conventions, and cooperation with the Israeli peace movement, all of which the Islamists reject. For the nationalist factions, compromise also meant bringing the Islamists into an institutional alliance of sorts to preclude the formation of parallel Islamist institutions and strike forces, which happened during the first Intifada. For the Islamists, compromise was cooperating with the nationalist forces in a military campaign against the occupation, that is, coordination in the field, but not in politics. As such, the Islamists were granted de facto if not de jure veto power in political decision-making. The establishment early in the Intifada of the National and Islamic Forces (NIF)—a broad coalition of 14 political factions and civic organizations whose mandate is coordinating the uprising—was one practical expression of this cooperation. Because
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the PA rejects the NIF’s supervisory role, the factions maintain they are not bound by NIF decisions, limiting the NIF’s effectiveness. The result has been uneven and tendentious. While there have been several examples of cooperation and coordination—the PA’s release of jailed Islamic activists, Hamas’s support of Arafat during the siege of his compound by Israeli forces, and ceasefire agreements between Hamas and the PA— tensions remain high and conflicts intense. For example, in the absence of a common political program (itself the result of Arafat’s failure to institutionalize a political relationship between the PA and the factions and to provide them with a viable decision-making role), factions compete with and undermine each other, contributing to greater organizational chaos within the domestic political environment. And while the relationship between the PA and the nationalist and Islamist factions is complex, defying simplistic notions of strategic control or open opposition, the Palestinian Authority cannot and will not exercise real authority over them in the absence of meaningful political prospects. Within this maelstrom, Hamas and other militant factions conduct suicide-bombing attacks in Israeli cities, actions in opposition to official PA policy but for which the PA is held accountable, and to which Israel responds with devastating results. With the PA weakened by Israeli actions, Hamas can weaken it further to the point where a significant part of the Hamas leadership now believes it is in a position to fill any vacuum created by the destruction of the Palestinian Authority—or perhaps displace it altogether. While it is impossible to predict whether this will occur, Hamas’s role clearly is gaining importance. In early September 2002, before Israel’s siege of Arafat’s compound later that month, the United States held indirect contacts with senior Hamas officials and apparently promised them that, in exchange for their agreement to become part of a secular, democratic unity government in a new Palestinian state (a discussion that Hamas was already conducting with Fateh, and which no doubt contributed to the six-week lull in suicide bombings, a lull during which at least eighty Palestinians were killed), the United States would pressure Israeli officials to end their policy of targeted assassinations and arrests of Hamas officials. The U.S. envoy engaged in the “talks” explained that while he could not guarantee Israeli acceptance, he did indicate that the United States welcomed Hamas’s decision to become a “legitimate part of the political process.” The United States clearly
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also endorsed Hamas–Fateh talks. Reportedly, Hamas officials were pleased by these signals and by United States indications that it would welcome Hamas’s political participation.6 Israeli Policy and the Islamist Opposition United States–Hamas contacts (of which Israel was fully aware) ended when the Israeli Army arrested a politically moderate Hamas official in Ramallah on September 9, which Hamas interpreted as a deliberate attempt by the Sharon government to undermine its exchange with the Americans. A few days later, Israel launched an attack in Rafah that killed nine Palestinians, including civilians. Predictably, a suicide bomber staged an attack on a bus in Tel Aviv on September 19, killing six people. This was followed by Israel’s siege of the presidential compound in Ramallah. Under U.S. pressure, Sharon ordered an end to the operation shortly after. Other Hamas–PA ceasefires have been undermined by Israeli attacks. Alex Fishman, the security commentator for the right-of-center Yedioth Ahronot, Israel’s largest mass circulation newspaper, detailed in the November 25, 2001 issue of the newspaper how the assassination in November 2001 of Mahmud Abu Hanud, a key Hamas figure, shattered a Hamas promise not to carry out suicide bombings inside Israel: Whoever gave the green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he was thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line [Israel’s pre1967 borders] of the kind perpetrated at the Dolphinarium [a discotheque in Tel Aviv]. Such an agreement did exist, even if neither the PA nor Hamas would admit it in public. It is a fact that, while the security services did accumulate repeated warnings of planned Hamas terrorist attacks within the Green Line, these did not materialize. That cannot be attributed solely to the Shabak’s [the General Security Services’] impressive success in intercepting the suicide bombers and their controllers. Rather, the respective leaderships of the PA and Hamas came to the understanding that it would be better not to play into Israel’s hands by mass attacks on its population centers. This understanding was, however, shattered by the assassination the day before yesterday—and whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hanud knew in advance that that would be the price. The subject was extensively
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discussed both by Israel’s military echelon and its political one before it was decided to carry out the liquidation.
On December 1 and 2 came the Hamas bombings in Jerusalem’s Zion Square and of a bus in Haifa in which 25 Israelis were killed, many of them children. In July 2002, with the help of European diplomats, the Fateh tanzim7— as opposed to the PA—and Hamas had reached an understanding that all attacks inside Israel would stop, and they were preparing to issue a formal statement to that effect on July 22. Hamas’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, announced publicly that Hamas was considering a cease-fire if Israel withdrew its troops from recently reoccupied Palestinian population centers. Just 90 minutes before the proclamation was to be announced, the Israeli authorities bombed the Gaza apartment of Hamas military-wing leader Sheikh Salah Shehada, killing him and 16 others, including 11 children. More Hamas suicide bombings in Israel followed. On November 26, 2002, Israeli helicopters targeted and killed the commanders of the military wings of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigades in the Jenin refugee camp. Both factions promised to carry out large-scale attacks inside Israel in revenge. Suicide bombings are horrific and criminal but what do the examples above say about the policies of the Sharon government? The argument has been made that Sharon’s policies aim to undermine any possibility of a political settlement, which would involve compromises his government is unwilling to make, preferring instead a decisive military victory and long-term interim arrangements dictated by Israel no matter the cost. Yet, Israel’s policies toward the Islamist opposition may have another dimension. Some analysts maintain that while Hamas leaders are being targeted, Israel is simultaneously pursuing its old strategy of promoting Hamas over the secular nationalist factions as a way of ensuring the ultimate demise of the PA, and as an effort to extinguish Palestinian nationalism once and for all. In fact, some allies of Arafat accuse Hamas of being in tacit alliance with Israel. In so doing, the argument continues, Israel creates a justification for maintaining the occupation since it will deal with Palestinians only as militant radicals and not on the basis of national rights or as a legitimate part of a political process. But then what?
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The Fundamental Issue While an Islamist alternative still remains unacceptable to most Palestinians, the Islamists, notably Hamas, increasingly have become a vocal and institutionalized part of the Palestinian political landscape; as such, they will need to be incorporated into—not marginalized from—any future political arrangement. Despite its militant extremism, the Islamist movement has shown that it can be pragmatic. The political transformations of Hamas and the Islamic movement generally derive from a combination of internal and external factors that have only been touched on here. As for the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, the greatest threat to peace is not extremism—Islamic or secular—but the context that produces and nurtures it: occupation. Palestinians are a secular people seeking their political rights and national liberation, but this could change if their misery deepens and their possibilities end.
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Part V Conclusion—The Disengagement from Gaza
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18 A Dubai on the Mediterranean*
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APRIL [2005] PRESIDENT BUSH said that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza would allow the establishment of “a democratic state in the Gaza” and open the door for democracy in the Middle East. The columnist Thomas Friedman was more explicit, arguing that “the issue for Palestinians is no longer about how they resist the Israeli occupation in Gaza, but whether they build a decent mini-state there – a Dubai on the Mediterranean. Because if they do, it will fundamentally reshape the Israeli debate about whether the Palestinians can be handed most of the West Bank.” Embedded in these statements is the assumption that Palestinians will be free to build their own democracy, that Israel will eventually cede the West Bank (or at least consider the possibility), that Israel’s “withdrawal” will strengthen the Palestinian position in negotiations over the West Bank, that the occupation will end or become increasingly irrelevant, that the gross asymmetries between the two sides will be redressed. Hence, the Gaza Disengagement Plan—if implemented “properly”—provides a real (perhaps the only) opportunity for resolving the conflict and creating a Palestinian state. It follows that Palestinians will be responsible for the success or failure of the Plan: if they fail to build a “democratic” or “decent mini-state” in Gaza, the fault will be theirs alone. Today, there are more than 1.4 million Palestinians living in the Strip: by 2010 the figure will be close to 2 million. Gaza has the highest birthrate in the region—5.5 to 6.0 children per woman—and AST
* Originally published in The London Review of Books, Volume 27, Number 21, November 3, 2005, pp. 15–18, <www.lrb.co.uk>. 311
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the population grows by 3 to 5 per cent annually. Eighty per cent of the population is under 50; 50 per cent is 15 years old or younger, and access to health care and education is rapidly declining. The half of the territory in which the population is concentrated has one of the highest densities in the world. In the Jabalya refugee camp alone, there are 74,000 people per square kilometer, compared with 25,000 in Manhattan. According to the World Bank, Palestinians are currently experiencing the worst economic depression in modern history, caused primarily by the long-standing Israeli restrictions that have dramatically reduced Gaza’s levels of trade and virtually cut off its labor force from their jobs inside Israel. This has resulted in unprecedented levels of unemployment of 35 to 40 per cent. Some 65 to 75 per cent of Gazans are impoverished (compared to 30 per cent in 2000); many are hungry. In 2004, a Harvard study concluded that by 2010 the increase in Gaza’s population would require the “creation of some 250,000 new jobs . . . to maintain current employment rates at 60 per cent and the establishment of an additional 2000 classrooms and 100 primary healthcare clinics annually to bring access to education and public health services at par with the West Bank.” Yet the Disengagement Plan states that Israel will further reduce the number of Palestinians working in Israel and eventually bar them altogether. The same Harvard study predicted that within a few years Gaza’s labor force will be “entirely unskilled and increasingly illiterate.” Between 1997 and 2004, the number of teachers per student declined by 30 per cent, with 80 students per class in government schools and 40 per class in UNRWA schools. Test scores for Palestinian children are well below the pass level, and the majority of eight-year-olds fail to advance to the next grade. About 42 per cent of Gazans are now categorized by the World Food Programme (WFP) as “food insecure,” that is, lacking secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development; in five areas of Gaza, the figure exceeds 50 per cent. An additional 30 per cent of the population is “food vulnerable”, that is, under threat of becoming food insecure or malnourished. Since 2000, the economy of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has lost a potential income of approximately $6.4 billion and suffered $3.5 billion worth of physical damage at the hands of the Israeli Army. This
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means, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, that the “occupied Palestinian territory has lost at least one fifth of its economic base over the last four years as a consequence of war and occupation.” Yet the authors of the Plan are confident that “the process of disengagement will serve to dispel claims regarding Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” They assume, in other words, that Gaza’s suffering is a recent phenomenon borne of the last five years of Intifada, and that the return of the land taken up by military installations and settlements—anywhere from 15 to 30 per cent of the territory—and the removal of 9,000 Israeli settlers will soon redress the situation. Israel’s primary role in creating Palestine’s misery and decline since it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 is expunged from the narrative. There is no doubt that the destruction wrought by Israel over the last five years—the demolition of homes (some 4,600 between 2000 and 2004), schools, roads, factories, workshops, hospitals, mosques and greenhouses, the razing of agricultural fields, the uprooting of trees, the confinement of the population and the denial of access to education and health services as a consequence of Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints—has been ruinous for Palestinians, especially those in the Gaza Strip. But one need only look at the economy of Gaza on the eve of the uprising to realise that the devastation is not recent. By the time the second Intifada broke out, Israel’s closure policy had been in force for seven years, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment and poverty (which would soon be surpassed). Yet the closure policy proved so destructive only because the thirty-year process of integrating Gaza’s economy into Israel’s had made the local economy deeply dependent. As a result, when the border was closed in 1993, self-sustainment was no longer possible—the means weren’t there. Decades of expropriation and de-institutionalization had long ago robbed Palestine of its potential for development, ensuring that no viable economic (and hence political) structure could emerge. The damage—the de-development of Palestine—cannot be undone simply by “returning” Gaza’s lands and allowing Palestinians freedom of movement and the right to build factories and industrial estates. Enlarging its sliver of land—or Palestinian access to it—won’t solve Gaza’s myriad problems when its growing population is confined within it. Density is not just a problem of people but of access to resources,
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especially labor markets. Without porous boundaries allowing workers access to jobs, something the Disengagement Plan not only doesn’t address but in effect denies, the Strip will remain effectively a prison without any possibility of establishing a viable economy. Yet, it is the opposite idea—that with disengagement, development is possible—that Israel is trying to promote, in the hope that this will absolve it of any responsibility for Gaza’s desolation, past or present. Even if we leave aside Israel’s primary responsibility for the state Gaza is in today, the Plan itself stands in the way of any real development. According to the Plan, Israel will evacuate the Gaza Strip—except for the 100-meter-wide Philadelphi corridor on the border with Egypt— and redeploy outside it. Israel subsequently agreed to withdraw from the corridor in favor of Egyptian military control, but the terms are still being deliberated, and there is strong opposition from within the Israeli cabinet and parliament. Pending the final disposition of the corridor, the Israeli Army has begun to erect a wall along its 12 kilometers that will consist of “eight-metre-high concrete plates that could easily be removed . . . The new wall will be interspersed with observation posts and a new road for heavy armoured vehicles is being paved on its southern side.”1 Whether or not Israel eventually withdraws from the Philadelphi corridor (or gives Palestinians control over their own seaport and airport, which is also under discussion) is ultimately irrelevant. For the Plan gives Israel “exclusive authority” over Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters, which translates into full control over the movement of people and goods into and out of the Strip. Israel will also “continue, for full price, to supply electricity, water, gas and petrol to the Palestinians, in accordance with current arrangements.” Israel will also continue to collect customs duties on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli shekel will remain the local currency. Further, the Israeli government is building a new terminal at the point where Gaza, Israel and Egypt meet, that would require Palestinian labor and goods to go through Israeli territory. Israel’s Interior Ministry retains full control over the issuing of Palestinian identity cards and all population data—births, deaths, marriages—and all Palestinians must continue to be registered with the ministry. There would be no point in the PA acting unilaterally and issuing Palestinian identity cards because Israel
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controls the international border crossings and Palestinian movements within the West Bank. As for the perimeter separating the Gaza Strip from Israel, a second fence is already under construction. It is being built to the east of the existing fence on Israeli territory and creates a buffer zone around the Strip 70 kilometers long and several hundred meters wide. The fence will be augmented with optical and electronic sensors that will detect any attempts to cross it. “It will enable us to better prevent illegal entries of Palestinians from Gaza,” an Israeli army source said. “We are witnessing an increase in attempts to cross the existing fence around Gaza, though mostly by workers seeking employment rather than terrorists.” There is no reference in the Disengagement Plan to any link between Gaza and the West Bank, though there has been some discussion of a railway line between the two territories. The Oslo agreement stated that the West Bank and Gaza Strip were “one territorial unit,” but it seems clear that Israel will not tolerate a genuine territorial link between them. With implementation of the Plan, the population of Gaza is effectively sealed in, and the national dismemberment of the Palestinians, long a cornerstone of Israeli policy, has been achieved, at least with regard to the West Bank and Gaza. The part of the Plan that relates to the West Bank calls for the evacuation of four of the 120 Jewish settlements in “an area” to the north of Nablus, allowing for territorial contiguity for Palestinians there. However, in July the Israeli security cabinet determined that Israel would “retain security control of the territory around the four West Bank settlements and keep existing military bases in the area.” In other regions of the West Bank, Israel will “assist . . . in improving the transportation infrastructure in order to facilitate the contiguity of Palestinian transportation.” This “contiguity of transportation” will have to accommodate the following conditions: 1. A planned 620-kilometer wall (of which 205 kilometers have been built) made of nine-meter-high concrete slabs and impermeable fences, constructed on confiscated West Bank land; at present 10 per cent of all Palestinians—242,000 people—are isolated in the closed military zone between Israel’s border and the western side of the wall, and 12 per cent are separated internally from their land
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because of settler roads and housing blocks. At best Palestinians will have access to 54 per cent of the West Bank once the wall is completed. Twenty-nine settler highways or bypasses spanning 400 kilometers of the West Bank, explicitly designed to provide freedom of movement for 400,000 Jewish settlers while imprisoning 3 million Palestinians in their encircled and isolated enclaves. Forty planned tunnels in the West Bank (of which 28 have been completed, compared to seven a year ago) that will connect Jewish settlements to each other and to Israel. The planned construction of 6,400 new settlement houses in the West Bank. At least 42 settlements are being expanded and colleges, hotels, commercial areas and parks being built. The isolation of East Jerusalem—the commercial and cultural heart of the West Bank – from Ramallah and Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank. The separation of the northern and southern West Bank; and the separation of Gaza, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jericho, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Salfit, Nablus and Jenin.
The Plan puts an end to any hope of Palestinian territorial and national unity and contiguity, and can only accelerate Palestine’s gradual depopulation, continuing what the Oslo process began. Yet, like Oslo, Camp David and Taba before it, the Plan is rarely analyzed. It is enveloped in silence. Whatever else it claims to be, the Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an instrument for Israel’s continued annexation of West Bank land and the physical integration of that land into Israel. This is all but spelled out in the Plan itself, which states that “in any future permanent status arrangement, there will be no Israeli towns and villages in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand” (and here, Israel is uncharacteristically transparent) “it is clear that in the West Bank, there are areas which will be part of the state of Israel, including major Israeli population centres, cities, towns and villages, security areas and other places of special interest to Israel.” To my knowledge this is the first time that the formal annexation of West Bank land has been explicitly and officially put forward. Everywhere except in the evacuated area in the northern West Bank, Israeli settlement can continue unimpeded. Whether under
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Labour or Likud, Israel has always engaged in a zero-sum struggle for control of Palestinian land in the West Bank, and with the Gaza Disengagement Plan it clearly believes the struggle can finally be won. Far from paving the way for more concessions and withdrawals, unilateral disengagement can only consolidate Israeli control, bringing Palestinians greater repression, isolation and ghettoization. How, given all this, can the current plan be seen as a political departure, or an act of Israeli courage or magnanimity, as many have argued? Why should disengagement be regarded as an opening or opportunity, let alone a watershed? The international community, led by the United States, would like to weave the Disengagement Plan into the road map, believing it to be a first step towards the creation of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. Yet under the terms of disengagement, Israel’s occupation is assured. Gazans will be contained and sealed within the electrified borders of the Strip, while West Bankers, their lands dismembered by relentless Israeli settlement, will be penned into fragmented spaces, isolated behind and between walls and barriers. Despite this terrible reality, the word “occupation” has been removed from the political lexicon. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA and an architect of Oslo, never used the word “occupation” in any of the agreements he helped draft. Yet it was the gap between the implication in the Oslo Accords that the occupation would end and the reality which emerged in its place that led to the second Palestinian uprising. At the Sharm el-Sheikh summit between Abbas, Sharon and Bush in February 2005, the word “occupation” was again not mentioned. The final version of the Gaza Disengagement Plan makes no reference to it either, but the original April 18, 2004 version is explicit about what is clearly one of its main goals: on completion of the evacuation, the Plan states, “there will be no basis for claiming that the Gaza Strip is occupied territory.” The omission of the clause from the revised plan of June 6, 2004 does not indicate a change in Israeli priorities. Indeed, one of the most striking elements of Geoffrey Aronson’s revealing technocratic study of the Plan, commissioned by an international donor and based on a series of interviews with Israeli officials, is Israel’s obsessive focus on legally ridding itself of occupier status in the Gaza Strip.2 It would appear that what this is really about is obtaining international acceptance (however tacit) of Israel’s full control over
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the West Bank—and eventually Jerusalem—while retaining control over the Strip in a different form. It’s possible that with the Gaza Plan Israel may, for the first time and with pressure from the international donor community, be able to secure Palestinian endorsement of what it is creating. In this respect, the Disengagement Plan can be seen as yet another in a long line of Israeli attempts to extract from the Palestinians what it has always sought but has so far been unable to obtain: total capitulation to Israel’s terms coupled with an acknowledgment of the legitimacy of Israeli actions. This is what Ehud Barak demanded of Yasir Arafat at Camp David in July 2000 when he insisted on an end-of-conflict/endof-claims clause, and this is what Sharon, in his own way, is insisting on now: almost total Palestinian surrender to Israeli diktats and the suffocating reality they have created, formalized in a plan that would recognize those diktats as justified. Tragically, the Palestinian leadership continues to view the Gaza Disengagement Plan as a first step in a political process towards the resumption of negotiations for final status talks, and refuses to accept that disengagement from Gaza is the final status and that the occupation will not end. As for the international community—in particular, foreign donors— almost all its attention has been on “developing” the Gaza Strip, a focus painfully reminiscent of some of the mistakes of the Oslo period. The same three misguided assumptions are made: first, that the preexisting structures of occupation—Israeli control and Palestinian dependency—will be mitigated, perhaps even dismantled; second, that Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will have the effect of shifting the priorities of both Israelis and Palestinians from issues of territory and security to the economic interests of entrepreneurs and nations, and third, that innovative ways of thinking about economic cooperation will lead to political stability and peaceful coexistence in the Middle East. These assumptions proved completely unfounded in the wake of Oslo (when, at least initially, there was a modicum of bilateralism and cooperation); why would one hope for something better now, with a unilateral Disengagement Plan that makes no secret of being a diktat, at a time when the structures of occupation and control are far more deeply entrenched? Given all this and the Plan’s aim “to reduce the number of Palestinian workers entering Israel to the point
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that it ceases completely,” there is every reason to expect the Israeli authorities to use economic pressure not only to ensure control but to extract political concessions, much as they did during the Oslo period. Despite this—arguably because of it—international donors are again displaying their unwillingness to confront the occupation, preferring instead to mitigate the damage by helping the Palestinians deal with this unjust solution, whatever their private reservations. In so perverse an environment and in the absence of any challenge to Israel’s structure of control, international assistance will not eradicate poverty but simply modernize it. In so doing, donor aid—despite its critical importance—will solidify the structures of occupation by simply ignoring them. How, given this scenario, can Palestine ever become a productive society? With the international community eager to be rid of the Israeli– Palestinian conflict, the Palestinians’ continued dispossession is regarded as the price of peace, not as a reason for conflict. So defined, Palestinian legitimacy, at least for some members of the international community, no longer derives from the justice and morality of its cause but from Palestinian willingness to agree to terms largely if not entirely imposed by Israel. Thus, with the Gaza Disengagement Plan, the Palestinian quest for minimal justice in the form of a state in 22 per cent of their homeland, once dismissed as utopian, is now derided as short-sighted and selfish. The asymmetries between occupier and occupied are not only sanctioned, but their institutionalization is seen as progress. Like its predecessors, the Disengagement Plan is hailed as an act of courage, as yet another example of Israel’s desire for peace, of its willingness to make concessions and sacrifices without demanding equivalent concessions of the Palestinians, who are the real aggressors, repeatedly refusing Israeli generosity. What the disengagement initiative makes explicit, in a way that Oslo did not, is the fact that Israel is really negotiating with the United States, not with the Palestinians, over how far it can go in dispossessing them. Despite Bush’s promises to Abbas regarding the contours of the Palestinian state and how it will be established, the U.S. will, in the end, accept, as it always has, what Israel wants and does. According to Aaron Miller, a former State Department official who was heavily involved with the Middle East peace process, during his 25 years in government there never was “an honest conversation about what the
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Israelis were actually doing on the ground. Nor were we prepared to impose, at least in the last seven or eight years, a cost on the Israelis for their actions.”3 Finally, Israeli unilateralism is evident in another, more subtle way, which has to do with the starting point for negotiations. History, to which Israel and the Jewish people cling so tenaciously, is denied to the Palestinians, whose mere invocation of it is decried as obstructionist. The Palestinian compromise of 1988—when they conceded 78 per cent of the country, where they had once constituted two-thirds of the population and owned all but 7 per cent of the land, in order to settle for a state in the West Bank and Gaza—is rejected (if remembered at all) as a legitimate point of departure. Rather, the Palestinians are supposed to begin negotiations at whatever point Israel (backed by the U.S.) says they should, a point that alters in line with the diminished realities Israel has imposed on them. The result of Israel’s ever shrinking “offers” is that compromise becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, and Palestinian violence more likely. With the Gaza Disengagement Plan, Israel’s generous offer has gone from a weak, cantonized entity in the West Bank and Gaza to the encircled and desperately impoverished enclave of the Gaza Strip—1 per cent of historical Palestine. The disengagement from Gaza (while encircling it and absorbing the West Bank) is the most extreme illustration to date of Israel’s power to determine and reduce what there is left to talk about. The weeks since the last Israeli soldier pulled out of the Gaza Strip have been marred by violence. There are almost daily battles between the PA and Hamas, Fateh and Hamas, and Gaza’s many clans, militias and security forces. Not since the terrible one-year period just before the signing of the Oslo agreements in 1993, when internal controls had weakened dramatically, have Gazans known such frightening insecurity. Although the disengagement did not cause a breakdown of the Palestinian community or the disintegration of Palestinian politics, it has certainly made the situation worse, given Israel’s decision to reshape the occupation without ending it—that is, to maintain external control of Gaza while ceding internal control, thereby creating a vacuum that is now being filled by competing internal forces. As Darryl Li of Harvard writes, “the ‘dilemma’ . . . is how to maximise control over the territory of the Gaza Strip while minimising responsibility in the eyes of the
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world for the welfare of its inhabitants. The upshot is a situation in which Israel exercises less direct control than before, while preventing anyone else from fully taking over.”4 There are two imperatives in the short term: resolving the problems between the PA and Hamas, and securing official control over warring political factions and security services. Both seem unlikely in the face of Israel’s continued consolidation of power in the West Bank (and the PA’s inability to stop it) through settlement expansion, the wall, continued land confiscations and the de-Arabization of Jerusalem—and, I might add, by the fact that 39 per cent of the members of Israel’s Labour Party want Sharon to head their party while 46 per cent favor joining a new Knesset list headed by him. The PA, its power and credibility greatly undermined by Israel’s destruction of its infrastructure and security apparatus since 2000 as well as by its own mismanagement, corruption, and failure to articulate a vision of state or society-building, is unable and unwilling to assume real responsibility for its own population, let alone to engage political factions—who seek to preserve their own power by further weakening the PA and the rule of law—or articulate a political program with which to challenge Israel and the U.S. Israel and the United States worry that the Islamists will take over. But the real threat lies deeper, with the waning of resolve, the disabling of families and communities, and the disintegration of morale. Can the Gaza Disengagement Plan, with its promise of restricted and externally controlled autonomy, redress any of this? For Palestinians, the taking of their land has always been the primary issue distinguishing Israel’s occupation from earlier ones. By taking so much more away from Palestinians than any other agreement since the occupation began, the Disengagement Plan will prove disastrous for everyone, including Israel.
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19 Conclusion—Where Next?
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ISRAELI–PALESTINIAN CONFLICT IS essentially a conflict over land and its control and dates back to World War I when Great Britain made conflicting commitments to the Arabs for incorporation of Palestine into a regional Arab state, and to the Zionist movement seeking to transform Palestine into a Jewish state. The 1947 United Nations Partition plan for Palestine recommended the creation of two states, one Jewish and the other Arab, the latter established on less than half of the land it possessed prior. The Arabs rejected partition while the Jews accepted it, eventually leading to the war of 1948 by which Zionist forces conquered 78 per cent of Palestine and caused the expulsion and fleeing of some 80–85 per cent of the existing Palestinian population in the conquered area. Leaving aside the historical political context in which these events occurred, Palestinians have since been attacked for rejecting territorial division (and hence it is argued, a peaceful resolution), in effect, for refusing to cede over half their country to another people. The eminent Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, long ago asked why was Jewish acceptance seen as moral and that of the Palestinians to reject it seen as negative since they understood it to threaten their national existence? As a result of the 1967 war, the remaining 22 per cent of pre-1948 Palestine was conquered, and some 300,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result. The whole of pre-1948 Palestine came under Israeli control and the new geopolitical reality created in the aftermath of the 1967 war demanded a renewed peace process. As a result, on November 22, 1967, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242, which among other things, called for the withdrawal of Israeli troops HE
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from territories occupied in 1967 in exchange for peace. After a failed attempt by the United Nations, the United States assumed control over Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. The interpretation of 242 became a source of contention. The American and Israeli version, which was the official one, called for Israel to withdraw from occupied lands, not from “the” occupied lands, which was the interpretation of the international community. [Note: Between 1967 and 1971, the U.S. interpretation of 242 agreed with that of the international community but when Henry Kissinger won the internal bureaucratic battle and replaced diplomacy with “stalemate,” joining Israel in rejecting then Egyptian President Sadat’s peace proposal—which was more favorable to Israel than in 1977, since it did not even mention the Palestinians—the U.S. interpretation shifted, joining Israel’s.] Since then the various peace settlements that have emerged have all been based on three key assumptions:1 1. that the Palestinian refugees of 1948 would not be an issue or primary factor in negotiations; 2. that the Arab minority in Israel—those Arabs who remained within the newly created State of Israel—would not be part of any comprehensive settlement, and 3. that the only territories subject to negotiation would be the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the 22 per cent of pre-1948 Palestine occupied in 1967 (to which the PLO agreed in 1988 and thereafter). Furthermore and virtually effaced from history are two crucial facts that Noam Chomsky has continually underscored: since 1971 the U.S. was opposed to the international community (and its own earlier practice) in the interpretation of 242; and since the U.S. veto of the two-state Security Council resolution in January 1976, the crucial issue in diplomacy has been whether the peace settlement should be in terms of 242 alone or 242 supplemented by recognition of Palestinian national rights. Since 1976 until the present, the U.S. has, alone in the world apart from Israel, insisted on the position that 242 cannot be supplemented to incorporate Palestinian rights except in territories that the U.S. and Israel agree to relinquish. After the Gulf War, the U.S.
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was in a position to impose its interpretation and the world acceded, providing both the means and the diplomatic support for Israel’s integration of the West Bank and Gaza.2 Thus, according to the post-1967 settlement formula, 78 per cent of what was pre-1948 Palestine (that later became the State of Israel), and more than 50 per cent of Palestinians were, minimally, to be excluded from any peace-making process. This formula, which also included the American/Israeli interpretation of 242 and the rejection of Palestinian national rights, was incorporated into the 1991 Madrid peace talks, the 1993 Oslo agreements, the 2001 Taba talks, the 2002 American Road Map and the unofficial 2003 Geneva Initiative. Israel’s intentions toward the Occupied Territories were illustrated early on in the 1967 Allon Plan, which defined the framework for Israeli land control. The plan called for the annexation of 25–40 per cent of the West Bank and established key territorial fundamentals that were used and expanded by subsequent Israeli governments. These fundamentals separated Jerusalem from the West Bank, which in turn would separate the northern from the southern West Bank, a reality directly imposed over 25 years later by the Oslo agreements. The Allon Plan also established the concept of security borders, used by Israel to justify land confiscations, and reasserted the importance of building Israeli settlements as a way of ensuring the incorporation of the maximum amount of land but with the least amount of Palestinians.3 If the Allon Plan provided the territorial framework for establishing Israel’s control of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the 1978 Drobless Plan provided the overall framework for “translating this control into a Jewish geographic and demographic reality.”4 Drobless defined the agenda for settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza, and was crucial for shaping the future fragmentation of the West Bank. It aimed to preclude the emergence of another Arab state in the region by Judaizing and integrating the West Bank into Israel through settlement expansion within and around Palestinian areas, the building of settlement blocks, and settlement infrastructure, and integrating West Bank settlements within the metropolitan areas of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The objective was to normalize and institutionalize land expropriations by eroding the 1967 borders thus making territorial retreat difficult if not impossible.5 The idea, if not to make annexation easier, was to make separation harder. With the Gaza
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Disengagement Plan, Drobless’ objectives have arguably been attained and institutionalized: a Palestinian mini-state in the Gaza Strip severed from the West Bank, itself largely integrated and virtually annexed into Israel. Hence, with the Gaza Disengagement Plan, the American/Israel peace-making formula may have reached its maximal interpretation. The political and violent deadlock of the second uprising and the opprobrious toll it has taken on Palestinians and Israelis compelled some form of redress. In April 2004, Prime Minister Sharon proposed, and in August 2005 implemented, Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza, which has been hailed as a breakthrough in Palestinian– Israeli relations, an opportunity to end the deadlock and restart political negotiations toward a two-state solution along the lines of the American Road Map for peace. As with Oslo, the Gaza Disengagement Plan is treated as a political departure for Israel, a magnanimous and historic concession and act of courage (for which Palestinians will no doubt have to reciprocate) de-linked from the history of Israeli–Palestinian relations. Hence, and in a similar echo of the past, any failure to realize the opportunities presented will lie primarily, if not singularly, with the Palestinians, an argument now heard from the Europeans as well as the Americans and Israelis. From the time I started researching the Israeli–Palestinian conflict over two decades ago, I have consistently encountered two recurring themes: Israel’s desire to rid itself of any responsibility for Gaza while maintaining control of it; and Israel’s desire to “exchange” Gaza as it were, for full and internationally that is, American-sanctioned control of the West Bank.6 Israel has now achieved both these ends. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip—redeploying the Israeli Army outside Gaza’s borders, and evacuating Jewish settlements but leaving Israel with direct control over Gaza’s borders, air space and waters—is no more than the latest expression of long-standing Israeli policy objectives that will keep Gaza (and the West Bank) imprisoned. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza also represents the end of a 10-year project designed to sever the Gaza Strip from the West Bank begun during Oslo, destroying, finally, the Palestinian national body. In fact, because of the disengagement, 15–20 per cent of the entire Palestinian population is now confined to 1 per cent of what was Mandate Palestine. Israel’s disengagement effectively
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completed the implementation of Oslo’s 1994 “Gaza and Jericho first” plan, which similarly aimed to create a provisional Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, freeing Israel to pursue, in one form or another, the annexation of the West Bank, which it did with stunning success during the seven years of the “peace” process. One critical difference, however, between the Oslo agreements and the Gaza Disengagement Plan is that with the former, the annexation of West Bank lands was de facto; with the latter, de jure. In fact it was the physical changes to the West Bank imposed by the Oslo agreements, notably its division and segmentation into Areas A, B and C, that facilitated Sharon’s usurpation of Palestinian lands and their incorporation into Israel. The Gaza Disengagement Plan, while technically a reversal of some of Sharon’s policies, should be understood as part of the same political continuum created by the Oslo process (and indeed by Israeli policies since 1967 beginning with the Allon Plan). It should also be understood as serving the same goals, namely: • to maintain Israel’s full control—both direct and indirect—over all Palestinian lands and resources; • to consolidate and institutionalize direct and permanent (military and political) control over a majority of the West Bank (primarily through continued settlement expansion, the concentration of settlers in the main settlement blocs and the building of the separation wall); • to secure control over the Jordan Valley by severing it from the rest of the West Bank through a wall of checkpoints; secure, to the extent possible, demographic separation with the Palestinians, and thereby guarantee a Jewish majority within Israel (which may now include transferring some Arab citizens of Israel to Palestinian areas or a future Palestinian state); • to deepen the fragmentation of Palestinian lands into isolated territorial enclaves thereby fragmenting Palestinian consciousness, and • so insure that if a Palestinian state is declared, it will be weak, diminished, physically as well as psychologically compromised, and highly dependent on Israel, a state that Sharon believed Palestinians would have no choice but to accept.
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Having “relinquished” volatile Gaza, Sharon strengthened his argument for maintaining direct control over those areas of the West Bank deemed essential for security or settlement purposes including the strategic Jordan Valley—itself 15–30 per cent of the West Bank— thereby eliminating any prospect of a Palestinian state that includes the entire West Bank. This also undermines any return to pre-June 4, 1967 borders as called for in the Arab League’s Beirut Declaration of 2002 in which all Arab states offered Israel permanent peace and normal diplomatic and economic relations in exchange for Israel’s compliance with international law and return to pre-1967 borders. Indeed, the number of new settlers in the West Bank in 2005— 15,800—exceeded those evacuated from Gaza as a part of the disengagement—8,475—by almost a factor of two.7 Israeli control (through annexation) post-disengagement could extend to at least 50 per cent of the West Bank, leaving Palestinians under permanent and worsening occupation—living in isolated, disconnected and encircled fragments of territory—the Gaza Strip being one of them—unable to mobilize politically or economically. Under such a scenario, Palestinians will be unable to claim Israeli citizenship or create a real state, demoted to statelessness in their own homes. The violence that will inevitably erupt—reducing Palestinians to mere perpetrators—is a price the Israeli government appears willing to pay for the territorial gains it guarantees.8 In an October 2004 Ha’aretz interview on the Gaza disengagement, which he later repudiated, Sharon’s advisor Dov Weisglass revealed: I found a device, in cooperation with the management of the world, to ensure that there will be no stopwatch here. [T]here will be no timetable to implement the settlers’ nightmare. I have postponed the nightmare indefinitely. Because what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did. The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. What more could have been anticipated? What more could have been given to the settlers?9
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Thus, with the disengagement from Gaza, the Sharon government was clearly seeking to preclude any return to political negotiations, including the roadmap, while preserving and deepening its hold on Palestine. And it did so with the explicit support of the U.S. and the international community and its domestic constituency, the latter perhaps most importantly of all. Domestically, the disengagement held great appeal to many if not most Israelis, including the military who for long have not supported the direct occupation of Gaza or the expense associated with it. Most importantly, Israeli mothers and fathers have always opposed having their children sent to Khan Younis or Netzarim to perform their military service where they faced certain danger. Furthermore, erasing the optics of Gaza from Israel’s popular consciousness has its own advantages. By 2004 these optics included: • the division of the West Bank into 300 isolated clusters—an apparent increase from 50 in 2002—and Gaza into 4; • the building of over 50 permanent (and hundreds of moveable) military checkpoints throughout the West Bank and Gaza since the start of the uprising, solidifying the fragmentation and isolation of Palestinian lands and severely restricting the movement of people, and • the demolition of at least 4,000 homes since September 2000, leaving between 10,000 and 40,000 people homeless in Gaza alone (while the number of settlers in Gaza’s Kfar Darom and Netzarim grew by 51 per cent and 24 per cent since March 2001 when Sharon came to power). Attending these optics are others: the steady contraction of the Palestinian economy by at least half with poverty and unemployment rates that are three times higher than their (already compromised) pre-2000 levels. Palestinian GDP per capita income is lower in 2006 than it was in 1999, having fallen by 30 per cent over the last five years. It should be noted that during the great Depression of the 1930s in the United States, per capita income dropped by 25 per cent. Poverty levels still average 50–60 per cent and show no signs of abating. Unemployment continues to be a major problem, averaging 23 per cent in January 2006 according to the World Bank, itself a somewhat deceptive figure
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given a 75 per cent unemployment rate among refugee camp men between 16 and 25 years, and equally high rates of joblessness in certain regions of the West Bank and Gaza. Nonetheless, in the weeks following the disengagement, Israel prohibited over 5,000 Gazan laborers from entering Israel to work,10 a policy that has, to alternating degrees, continued. Israel imposed a virtually unabated closure of Gaza at the Karni crossing point, which led to a food crisis inside the Gaza Strip. As a result of these and other Israeli policies including the suspension of tax revenue transfers and restrictions on trade (imposed in response to the installation of the Hamas-run government), the World Bank predicts that by 2008, [...] under a “best-case” scenario, where aid and revenues are maintained at 2005 levels, unemployment will increase by 11 per cent to 34 per cent and poverty will increase by 7 per cent to 51 per cent. Under a “worse-case” scenario, which refers to a suspension of revenue transfers, trade and labor restrictions, and reduced international aid, unemployment will rise to 47 per cent and poverty will increase to 74 per cent.11 Similarly, the ubiquitous system of checkpoints and physical barriers cost the Palestinian economy 5 per cent real growth every year, which is significant given that 10 per cent real growth would be required to redress the unemployment problem.12 And, with the separation barrier, well over a half a million Palestinians in the West Bank will be entrapped or otherwise severely damaged through loss of land and destruction of assets. Gaza also has additional burdens that it alone must bear, among them one of the highest population growth rates in the Middle East and the highest proportion of youth with 60 per cent below 20 years. With a 3.5 per cent growth rate, Gaza’s population of 1.3 million will double in the next 23 years but Gaza does not have the capacity to support this doubling. Indeed, between 69,000 and 100,000 Palestinians will enter the workforce by 2010 and 135,000–162,000 new jobs will be needed over this time period just to keep unemployment at 10 per cent.13 For Gaza, the problem is not only one of occupation but of population. If one adds to these problems Gaza’s equally acute housing crisis, large numbers (and ultimately a majority) of young people will not be able to secure work or housing, both of which are key to marriage and family structure. With such a (widening) gap between supply and demand, the violence one sees in Gaza today will only grow and with
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it the continued and accelerated militarization of society. In light of these realities, Israel’s unilateral separation from Palestinians will bring further misery and certain disaster. Indeed, one of the disengagement’s greatest failings is its inattention to issues of viability, a failure that strikingly characterized the Oslo agreements as well. Yet, the disengagement from Gaza was preceded by other attempts to isolate it. In May 2003, for example, foreign visitors wishing to enter Gaza, including journalists, human rights and NGO workers, and international monitors were required to sign a waiver absolving Israel of any responsibility for their injury or death by the Israeli Army. Many refused and consequently fewer are present in Gaza. On January 4, 2004 Israel issued a new set of restrictions designed to obstruct the entry of foreign nationals into Gaza and the West Bank, further isolating Palestinians. Now, individuals wishing to enter the Occupied Territories must apply for permission and obtain written authorization from the Civil Administration of the Israeli military. Permission to enter Gaza requires a minimum of five days to obtain. Individuals found in the West Bank or Gaza without official authorization can be deported and refused future entry into Israel and the Occupied Territories. Furthermore, in May 2004, the Israeli government implemented a law little known to the outside world (and for that matter to the world inside Israel and the Occupied Territories) that states that no Jew from anywhere in the world will be allowed to enter and work in any part of the Gaza Strip and certain parts of the West Bank, specifically Area A (the major Palestinian towns in the West Bank) and the seam line around the separation wall. Instituted at the beginning of the current uprising but not enforced until four years later, the regulation falls under the joint jurisdiction of the Shin Bet (Israel’s FBI), the Ministry of the Interior and the Airport Authority. It bars all Jews entry into Palestinian areas because as “potential citizens of Israel,” according to an official Israeli source, Jews—no matter their nationality—are at greater risk for kidnapping and attack by Palestinians. This policy should also be understood as a way of further separating Jews and Arabs and thereby encourage, if not sanction, the continued dehumanization of one people by the other. It is also meant to silence dissenting Jewish voices. As the previous chapter, “A Dubai in the Mediterranean” argues, Israel remains the defining presence in Gaza post-disengagement and has not removed Gaza from its political equation despite claims to
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the contrary. Israel’s power to send forces back into the Gaza Strip, create buffer zones, control air and sea space, register population data, supply (and withhold) critical resources such as water, electricity, petrol, medical supplies (by May 2006, Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, was virtually out of needed medications, disposables and equipment due to the ongoing closure of the Karni crossing point, and the cut-off of Western aid), and control trade (Israel sets tariffs on imports, which enter Gaza through Kerem Shalom inside Israel, and collects custom duties and tax monies amounting to $55 million per month on behalf of the PA—a crucial source of revenue and control14) mean, in the final analysis, that unilateral separation is physically and functionally impossible and even undesirable. As such, the disengagement should be understood as the most recent and perhaps final attempt by the Israeli government to maintain its occupation and the occupation’s attendant objectives. I say “final” because Israel’s strategy—“giving up” some land to gain control over other land, an old one among Israeli politicians—is now doomed by a new and unprecedented reality: the rapidly deteriorating conditions of life among Palestinians, and the slow but steady disintegration of their society. According to a March 2006 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 44 per cent of Palestinians stated that unemployment and poverty remained their primary concern, not occupation. By March 2006, over one-third of the West Bank was inaccessible to Palestinians—for example, Palestinians can no longer enter the Jordan Valley (except residents); they are barred from entering those villages between the separation wall and the Green Line (except for residents), and no Palestinian is allowed to enter Nablus by car. Fewer than 30 per cent of Palestinians living in the West Bank are eligible to apply for permits to move within their own territory and fewer than 10 per cent actually receive permission, meaning that at least 90 per cent of the population is totally confined to their territorial enclaves. Gazans are prohibited from entering, and barred from residing, in the West Bank—at present (2006) only 500 out of 1.3 million Gazans have permission to do so, and Palestinians from East Jerusalem are prohibited from entering any city in the West Bank except for Ramallah.15 Israel still has veto power over Palestinian legislation, which means that Israel can veto any law passed in the Palestinian parliament. These
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factors, among others, spurred Hamas’s ascendance as the dominant political force in the Occupied Territories. The Islamists’ success in addressing internal and external problems and the degree to which they are aided in, or thwarted from, doing so will set the context either for continued violent descent or potential constructive change. Although Israelis have always seen their conflict with the Palestinians as a zero-sum struggle, it has never been that perhaps until now. For with the Gaza disengagement and Israeli unilateralism—now expressed in Israel’s post-election declaration to determine its permanent borders in the West Bank (itself a violation of concluded agreements with Palestinians)—there is a feeling among some Israelis that the zero-sum struggle is over and has finally been won, when in fact it has become more desperate. If Israel’s unilateral “disengagement” from the West Bank does occur, permanent status negotiations and the establishment of a Palestinian state will be effectively undermined for Israel’s borders will be set, Jerusalem will be encircled and settlement blocks will become permanent features in the West Bank. Prior to Oslo there was a belief among Israelis that peace and occupation were incompatible but this has changed. In recent years more and more Israelis are benefiting from the occupation. Their lives, for example, have been facilitated by the vast settlement road network built in the West Bank and by an improved economy16 resulting from a perceived containment of the conflict and of Palestinians. Settlements are now regarded as natural outgrowth, a needed constituency providing protection and security, with important familial links to Israel proper. Hence, Israelis no longer feel uncomfortable with the occupation at a time when the occupation has grown more repressive and perverse. This contradiction is dangerous and unsustainable. Some Palestinians, too, are thinking in different and troubling terms. Increasingly people are speaking of the end of a two-state solution, something that is altogether new. Certain circles argue that if the PA is no more than a legitimizing façade for occupation, why have it? Why support a Palestinian president, government, legislature, judiciary and security force that are there to enforce the occupation rather than remove it?17 In the end, the only solution to the conflict lies in restoring what has been lost to both peoples—human dignity. And the only way to do that is to meaningfully end the occupation and recreate the ordinary so that both Palestinians and Israelis can finally lead a normal life.
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Notes Preface 1. Some fine examples (from which many of the points in this section are drawn) include: Edward W. Said, The Word, the Text and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); idem, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (New York: Vintage, 1994, 1996); idem, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); David Barsamian and Edward W. Said, Culture and Resistance: Conversations with Edward W. Said (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003); Noam Chomsky, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (New York: The New Press, 1969, 2003); idem, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989); Max Black (ed.), The Morality of Scholarship (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967); Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1928, 1959); Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks: Selections (New York: International Publishers, 1971); Michel Foucault, Power/knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980, ed. and trans. by Colin Gordon); idem, The Essential Foucault: Selections from the Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984 (New York: New Press, 2003, eds Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose); Doris Lessing, Prisons We Choose To Live Inside (New York: HarperCollins, 1987); Edward Shils, The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1972); idem, The Constitution of Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982); idem, “The Intellectuals and the Powers: Some Perspectives for Comparative Analysis” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 1, Number 1 (October 1958), pp. 5–22; Joseph Ben-David and Terry Nichols Clark (eds), Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (London: Verso, 1978); Philip Rieff (ed.), On Intellectuals: Theoretical Studies, Case Studies, 1st edition (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969); Ian Maclean, Alan Montefiore and Peter Winch (eds), The Political Responsibility of Intellectuals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Edward W. Said and Christopher Hitchens (eds), Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (London: Verso, 2001); Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998); idem, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); and George Orwell, A Collection of Essays (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1954). 333
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2. Northrop Frye, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil,” in Black (ed.), Morality of Scholarship, p. 9. 3. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (1994), p. 55. 4. Stuart Hampshire, “Commitment and Imagination,” in Black (ed.), Morality (1967), p. 32. 5. Conor Cruise O’Brien, “Politics and the Morality of Scholarship,” in Black (ed.), Morality (1967), p. 73. 6. Orwell, A Collection of Essays (1954), p. 177. 7. O’Brien, “Politics and the Morality of Scholarship” (1967), p. 68. 8. Frye, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” (1967), p. 14. 9. Ibid., p. 16. 10. See . 11. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (1994), pp. 86 and 98. 12. Stuart Hampshire, “Commitment and Imagination,” in Black (ed.), Morality (1967), p. 50. 13. Max Black, in Black (ed.), Morality (1967), p. x. 14. Hampshire, “Commitment and Imagination” (1967), p. 50. 15. See Bernard Barber, Intellectual Pursuits:Toward an Understanding of Culture (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 109–38, Chapter 5 entitled, “Cultural Tension and Conflict in the Academy: Scholars and Scientists Versus Ideologists and Reformers.” 16. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004), p. 73. 17. See Lessing, “You Are Damned, We Are Saved,” Prisons We Choose To Live In (1987), pp. 17–30, especially pp. 25–6. 18. See Gabriel Kolko, “On The Avoidance of Reality,” in Richard Falk, Gabriel Kolko and Robert Jay Lifton (eds), Crimes of War (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 11–16, where he made similar observations with regard to the Vietnam War. 19. Frye, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” (1967), pp. 6–7. 20. Edward Said’s favorite poem by Constantine Cavafy, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” says, “they were, those people, a kind of solution.” See Aliki Barnstone (trans.), The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A New Translation (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006). 21. Brian Klug, “Holocaust Memorial Day: Recollecting the point,” Catalyst: Bimonthly debate and analysis, January 26, 2006. In this regard, see a powerful essay by Herbert Kelman, “Dignity and Dehumanization: The Impact of the Holocaust on Central Themes of My Work,” in Peter Suedfeld (ed.), Light from the Ashes: Social Science Careers of Young Holocaust Refugees and Survivors (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). 22. Marc H. Ellis, Practicing Exile: The Religious Odyssey of an American Jew (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), p. 59. 23. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (1994), p. 35. 24. Ibid., p. 22. 25. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004), p. 78. 26. Jacqueline Rose, “‘Suffering and Injustice Enough for Everyone’—On Empathy and the Complexity of Political Life, Essay in Honor of Edward Said,” Draft, May 2004.
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27. 28. 29. 30.
31. 32. 33. 34. 35.
36. 37.
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Said, Representations of the Intellectual (1994), p. 44. Ibid., p. 94. O’Brien, “Politics and the Morality of Scholarship” (1967), pp. 66–7. Ralf Dahrendorf, “The Intellectual and Society: The Social Function of the ‘Fool’ in the Twentieth Century,” in Rieff (ed.), On Intellectuals (1969), p. 50. Shils, “The Intellectuals and the Powers (1958), p. 8. Edward Said spoke of this a great deal. Frye, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” (1967), p. 14. Lessing, “Group Minds,” Prisons We Choose To Live Inside (1987), p. 62. See Adrienne Rich, “Jewish Days and Nights,” in Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon (eds), Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict (New York: Grove Press, 2003), p. 159. Frye, “The Knowledge of Good and Evil” (1967), p. 28. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (2004), pp. 142–3.
Introduction to Part I 1. Arundhati Roy, “The New American Century,” The Nation, February 9, 2004. 2. See Adam Shatz (ed.), Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Zionism and Israel (New York: Nation Books, 2004). 3. Jacqueline Rose, “breaking bones—Zionism as politics (violence),” Lecture 3, The Question of Zion, The Christian Gauss seminars, Princeton University, September 16–23, 2003. Rose’s three lectures were later published in Jacqueline Rose, The Question of Zion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 4. Rose, “imponderables in thin air—Zionism as psychoanalysis (critique),” Lecture 2, The Question of Zion, 2005. 5. Marc Ellis, O, Jerusalem! The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999).
2
Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors 1. Irena Klepfisz, “Yom Hashoah, Yom Yerushalayim: A Meditation,” in Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches and Diatribes (Portland, OR: The Eighth Mountain Press, 1980).
3
Searching for the Covenant: A Response to the Works of Marc H. Ellis 1. Marc H. Ellis, Practicing Exile: The Religious Odyssey of an American Jew (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), p. 124. 2. Ibid., p. 65.
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3. Marc H. Ellis, O, Jerusalem! The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), p. 75. 4. Ellis, Practicing Exile (2002), p. 59. 5. Ellis, O, Jerusalem! (1999), p. 91. 6. Ibid., p. 75. 7. Ibid., p. 123. 8. Marc H. Ellis, Revolutionary Forgiveness: Essays on Judaism, Christianity, and the Future of Religious Life (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2000), p. 321.
4
Introduction to Part II 1. Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995, 2001), p. 5. In this book I define and examine in great detail the theory of de-development in the Palestinian–Israeli context and parts of this introduction are taken directly or paraphrased from the introductory section of my book and from Chapter 5, pp. 3–8, 117–34 (notably pp. 128–32). 2. See Sara Roy, “The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 17, Number 1 (August 1987), pp. 56–88. 3. See Roy, The Gaza Strip. 4. Sara Roy, “Black Milk: Lives of Desperation in the Gaza Strip,” The Women’s Review of Books (Summer 1993), p. 15. 5. Sara Roy, “Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 22, Number 4 (Summer 1993), pp. 28–9. 6. Ibid., p. 21.
5
The Political Economy of Despair: Changing Political and Economic Realities in the Gaza Strip 1. For a detailed discussion of this subject, see Sara Roy, “From Hardship to Hunger: The Economic Impact of the Intifada on the Gaza Strip,” AmericanArab Affairs Journal, Winter l99l. Portions of this article are excerpted in this chapter. 2. Civil Administration, The Economy of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip After Two Years of Events, Classified Document (in Hebrew), l990. 3. Peter Ford and George D. Moffett III, “Israel Eases Restrictions to Encourage Palestinian Businesses,” Christian Science Monitor, January 9, 1991. 4. Ministry of Defense, Internal document reviewing economic conditions in the Occupied Territories during l988 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv, February l989. This figure seems very low for l988 and may refer to GDP rather than GNP as stated in the document. 5. Joe O’Donovan-Lockard, “Gulf crisis squeezes the forgotten Palestinians,” In These Times, September 26, 1990, p. 9. 6. For an interesting and succinct discussion of the different political factions in the Occupied Territories, see Helena Cobban, “The PLO and the Intifada,” Middle East Journal, Volume 44, Number 2, Spring l990, pp. 207–33.
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7. For a discussion of the problems facing the Palestinian women’s movement at this point in the Intifada, see Basem Tawfeeq, “Openness and frankness dominate discussion on women’s role,” Al-Fajr, December 24, 1990.
7
Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration 1. Field Development and Planning Officer, Department of Development and Planning, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, January 1993. 2. Interview with Mr. Klaus Worm, Director, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, January 1993. 3. Muna Muhaisen, “Gaza Strip braces for economic disaster following prolonged siege and curfews,” Al-Fajr, December 28, 1992, p. 2. 4. In-house statistics, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, September 1990. 5. Interviews with teachers and principals of UNRWA schools, Gaza Strip, January 1993. 6. Interview, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, January 1993. 7. Interviews with officials of this research institution and other indigenous and foreign PVOs who asked not to be identified, Gaza Strip, January 1993. 8. According to Raji Sourani, the director of the Gaza Center on Rights and Law, only 18 per cent of the politically active people in the Gaza Strip are Hamas activists. Of the 17,000 detainees in jail, 3,000 are Hamas party members. Interview, January 1993. 9. Field Development and Planning Officer, Department of Development and Planning, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, January 1993, in addition to interviews with individuals who asked not to be identified but who have ties to the organization.
8
Introduction to Part III 1. Sara Roy, “The Politics of Peace: U.S. Aid to the West Bank and Gaza,” Middle East Policy, Volume 4, Number 4 (October 1996), p. 75. 2. Sara Roy, “Civil Society in the Gaza Strip: Obstacles to Social Reconstruction,” in Augustus Richard Norton (ed.), Civil Society in the Middle East, Volume 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pp. 257–8.
9
“The Seed of Chaos, and of Night”: the Gaza Strip after the Oslo Agreement 1. See Lamis Andoni, “The Human Rights Issue in the Occupied Territories,” Middle East International, February 18, 1994, p. 17. 2. See for example, “Abd-el-Shafi and Hamas Tried to Arrange a Cease Fire between Fatah and PFLP,” Davar, December 20, 1993. 3. With interfactional tensions high after the agreement, Hamas attempted to defuse the situation by calling a two-month moratorium on the killing of collaborators from the end of November through the end of January. Hamas also said it will not engage in violent conflict with the Palestinian
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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
10.
11.
12. 13.
14.
15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
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police. Many in Gaza see these as concrete indications that Hamas will not oppose the new political context. See for example, Elie Buhadna, “Succession Struggles in the Gaza Strip,” Ma’ariv, December 20, 1993. Series of interviews with officials and supporters of both parties, Gaza Strip, January 1994. Graham Usher, “Fatah tearing itself apart,” Middle East International 469 (February 18, 1994), pp. 4–5. Interview with Muhammad Sa’athi, Gaza Islamic University, Gaza, January 1994. Interview, Gaza Strip, January 1994. In January 1994, there was an incident in Gaza in which a boy deliberately shot his brother in the legs before a crowd of onlookers in order to demonstrate his impartiality in dispensing justice. See Sara Roy, “Separation or Integration: Closure and the Economic Future of the Gaza Strip Revisited,” Middle East Journal 48, no. 1 (Winter 1994), pp. 11–30. In January 1994, the Civil Administration in Gaza reported that although 22,000 workers from Gaza had permits to enter Israel, only 14,000–15,000 were actually arriving at work. Interview with Amira Hass, Ha’aretz, January 1994. Dr. Mahmoud Awkasheh, Initial findings, Industrial Sector Survey, Gaza Union of Industrialists, Gaza, 1993. By January 1994, there were approximately 10,000 family farms and 4,000 waged farm laborers employed primarily on a seasonal basis. UNRWA, Gaza Strip, September 1993. Marianne Heiberg and Geir Ovensen, Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions (Oslo: FAFO [Institute of Applied Social Science], 1993), p. 192. Update of survey, Awkasheh, Al-Azhar University, Gaza Strip, January 1994. David Hoffman, The Washington Post, July 1, 1993. Roy, “Separation or Integration” (Winter 1994), p. 21. Al Quds, October 24, 1993 and November 19, 1993. S. Katz, Agence France Presse appearing in the Jordan Times, July 13, 1993. Ibid. Interview with the director of a foreign private voluntary organization (PVO), Gaza Strip, January 1994. Interviews with Palestinian NGO and non-NGO officials, West Bank and Gaza Strip, January 1994. Although the EU’s action is policy, similar albeit less blatant patterns are found in the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program as well. An internal communication from USAID to AMIDEAST, an American private voluntary organization (PVO) working in the Occupied Territories, stated: “The AMIDEAST proposal should place primary emphasis on developing the planning and management skills and capabilities of Palestinian public service institutions . . . most of the training events as well as individuals trained, the number of departments
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23.
24.
25.
26. 27. 28.
29. 30.
10
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or institutions assisted, the largest number of AMIDEAST staff devoted to these activities, and the major part of project budget allocations will be in support of this sector. In sum, A.I.D. is requesting that project activities be concentrated on public sector institutions (‘public administration’) and that activities in the health and private enterprise sector be very limited” [emphasis added]. Letter from USAID to Diana Kamal, Director, West Bank/ Gaza Program, AMIDEAST, Washington, D.C., June 11, 1993. Interviews with Alex Pollack, Director, Department of Economic Development, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, January 1994; and Dr. Haydar ‘Abd al-Shafi, Director, Red Crescent Society, Gaza Strip, January 1994. In early 1994, 47 NGOs from the West Bank and Gaza Strip joined together and issued a position paper describing their role in the post-agreement period, particularly with regard to their relationship with the future Palestinian Authority. This proactive move was designed to present a coordinated front and mitigate attempts to weaken them as a community. See The Position of Non-Governmental Organizations of the Occupied Territories in Light of the Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles, Jerusalem, Winter 1994. See Gaza Centre for Rights and Law, Monthly Human Rights Reports (September–December), Gaza Strip, October 7, 1993, November 7, 1993, December 4, 1993, and January 5, 1994, for specific details. Ibid., January 5, 1994. Ibid. Interviews with a range of individuals, including political figures and professionals, revealed consensus on this point. Gaza Strip, January–February 1994. Interviews with individuals who have connections with these dealers and who cannot be identified. Gaza Strip, January–February 1994. Interview with Mark Taylor, Director of Research, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, February 1994.
Separation or Integration?: Closure and the Economic Future of the Gaza Strip Revisited
1. Interviews with Palestinian economists, Economic Development Group, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, Fall 1990 and Summer 1992. 2. Sara Roy, “The Political Economy of Despair: Changing Political and Economic Realities in the Gaza Strip,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume XX, Number 3 (Spring 1991), p. 61. 3. United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), “The Continuing Emergency in the Occupied Territory and Lebanon and Structural SocioEconomic Problems,” Vienna, March 1993, pp. 2–3. 4. Ibid., p. 3. 5. In 1990, the GNP of the Gaza Strip was estimated at $700 million. Mahmoud Okasha, “The Present Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Paris, April 26–29, 1993, p. 1.
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6. See Bishara A. Bahbah, “The Economic Consequences on Palestinians,” in The Palestinians and the War in the Gulf, The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, Washington, D.C., 1991, pp. 18 and 21. 7. Ibid., pp. 17–20; and interview with field development and planning officer, Department of Development and Planning, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, May 1991. 8. Ibid., pp. 20–21; and interview with field development and planning officer, Department of Development and Planning, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, May 1991. Also see At-Tali’a, April 19, 1991. 9. Interview with field development and planning officer, Department of Development and Planning, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, May 1991. Also see, Sara Roy, “Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume XXII, Number 4 (Summer 1993), p. 21. 10. UNRWA, “Continuing Emergency” (1993), p. 3. 11. Ibid., p. 3. As of July 4, 1992, work permits were only issued to Gazan men aged 20 years or more. Previously, the minimum age was 16 years. 12. “No Gaza produce to be sold in Israel,” Jerusalem Post, July 22, 1992; and “Israeli competition destroys the potato season in Gaza,” Al-Nahar, September 12, 1992. According to reports in the Israeli press, furthermore, “collaborators from Gaza receive special permits to transfer agricultural produce across the Green Line, despite the fact that this was a crime,” in Israel. Moreover, the Israeli government, working through collaborators, imported vegetables from Gaza as a way of regulating the price of vegetables in Israel, and as a way of bringing down Israel’s consumer price index. See Ronal Fisher, “The government caused the Israeli negative index by flooding the market with vegetables from the Gaza Strip,” Hadashot, June 19, 1992; and Ronal Fisher, “A senior government source confirms: Gazans received special permits to transfer vegetables,” Hadashot, June 22, 1992. 13. UNRWA, “Continuing Emergency” (1993), p. 6. 14. Ibid., p. 1. 15. Document, international nongovernmental organization that asked not to be identified, Spring 1993. 16. Interview with Mr. Klaus Worm, Director, UNRWA, Gaza Strip, January, 1993. Also see, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), “UNRWA Statement to the Ninth North America Seminar on the Question of Palestine,” New York, June 28–29, 1993, p. 8. 17. Interviews with teachers and principals of UNRWA schools, Gaza Strip, January, 1993. 18. Palestine Human Rights Information Center, “Israel’s Closure Of Occupied Territories Creates Military Enclave; Strangles East Jerusalem; Spells Loss Of Income To Families, Denies Access To Medical Care, Schools, Jobs, Place Of Worship,” Press release, Jerusalem, April 15, 1993. 19. Co-ordinating Committee of International NGOs (CCINGO), “The Economic Impact of the Israeli Military Closure of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip,” CCINGO Brief, Jerusalem, May 26, 1993, p. 1. 20. “A Disaster Preparedness Report: A Preliminary Assessment of the Impact of the Closures on the Population of the Gaza Strip,” Draft, June, 1993,
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21.
22.
23.
24. 25.
26.
27.
28. 29. 30.
31. 32.
33. 34. 35.
36.
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p. 5. The author of the report, a European nongovernmental organization (NGO), asked not to be identified. UNRWA document, West Bank, Spring 1993. Workers with permits are unable to work due to disinterest on the part of former employers or because of transport problems. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Summer 1993; and UNRWA document, West Bank, Summer 1993. One stated goal of the March closure was the elimination of illegal workers in Israel. Consequently, the authorities have conducted several massive arrest campaigns of illegal workers in which fines are issued. See Ha’aretz, June 21, 1993. Marianne Heiberg and Geir Ovensen, Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions (Oslo: Fagbevegelsens senter for forskning, utredning og dokumentasjon (FAFO), 1993), p. 212. UNRWA, “UNRWA Statement to the Ninth North America Seminar” (1993), p. 8. United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), “UNRWA Commissioner-General warns Arab League of socio-economic emergency in the occupied territory; appeals for additional funding for Arab sources,” Press Release CLO/1/93, Vienna, April 18, 1993, p. 1. A family ration consists of 110 lb flour, 4.4 lb powdered milk, 11 lb rice and 11 lb sugar. Total quantities for the entire distribution consist of 24,000 tons of flour, 960 tons of milk, 2,400 tons of rice, and 2,400 tons of sugar. UNRWA, Gaza Strip, Spring, 1993. UNRWA document, West Bank, Spring, 1993; and UNRWA, “UNRWA Statement to the Ninth North America Seminar” (1993), p. 5. UNRWA’s stock of food supplies, however, are insufficient to meet demand. By early July, UNRWA needed 16,000 tons of flour and 1,200 tons each of rice and sugar for distribution in the Gaza Strip. In addition, 3,900 tons of flour and 195 tons each of rice and sugar were needed for distribution in the West Bank. Special hardship families are those with no adult male medically fit to work and with no other source of regular financial aid. Source asked not to be identified, Summer 1993. UNRWA, “UNRWA Statement to the Ninth North America Seminar” (1993), p. 5. Also see, Sara Roy, “Joyless in Gaza,” The Nation, July 26/ August 2, 1993, p. 138. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Spring, 1993. These figures are calculated on the basis of 25 working days per month at $25 per day. UNRWA, Gaza Strip, November 1993, reported that 20,000 Gazans work in Israel. “Investing in Peace,” Jerusalem Post, May 14, 1993. Ibid. In Gaza, local observers report that a “producer of greenhouses with 30 workers withstood a 3-day strike to reduce his workers wages from NIS 50 to NIS 35. Biscuit factories, which paid their workers NIS 25-NIS 30 per day are now paying as low as NIS 15 and no higher than NIS 25. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Summer, 1993. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Spring 1993.
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37. CCINGO, “The Economic Impact of the Israeli Military Closure” (May 26, 1993), p. 2. 38. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Spring, 1993. Toward the end of July, when the glut of vegetables dried up, prices returned to their preclosure levels although demand remained depressed. 39. “Disaster Preparedness Report” (June 1993), p. 7. 40. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Spring, 1993. 41. Valencia oranges are the largest income earner within the citrus sector, accounting for 60 per cent of Gaza’s total citrus crop, and a potential competitor with Israeli produce in European markets. As early as April, Gaza packing houses reported that 3,000 tons of oranges had left Gaza for Amman, well below the 15,000 tons per month of citrus exports expected for that time of year. The drop in orange prices was part of a downward trend internationally in orange prices. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Spring, 1993. 42. “Disaster Preparedness Report” (June 1993), p. 26. 43. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Spring, 1993. 44. North American Coordinating Committee for NGOs on the Question of Palestine, “Emergency in the Gaza Strip,” The Fax Tree, Washington, D.C., July 16, 1993, p. 4. 45. Documents, Institutional sources in Gaza, which asked not to be identified, July 1993. 46. See Roy, “Joyless in Gaza” (1993), p. 139. 47. Documents, Institutional sources in the West Bank and Gaza, which asked not to be identified, Spring 1993. 48. Davar, June 9, 1993. 49. Ha’aretz, June 21, 1993. 50. Kav La’Oved—Workers’ Hotline for the Protection of Workers’ Rights, Israel Is Responsible For The Livelihood Of Workers From The Territories—The State Must Immediately Compensate The Workers For The Closure, Tel Aviv, April 4, 1993. The figure of $440 million does not include indirect taxes to which Palestinians are subject. The exact amount collected by the government in indirect taxes is unknown; however, it is estimated that the government collects between $600–$650 million per year in total taxes. Indirect taxes include the Value Added Tax (VAT) levied on a variety of consumer goods and a 50 per cent tax on gasoline. See Elias Rishmawi, “Taxes Hit Investment in Occupied Territories Hard,” News From Within, Jerusalem, June 1993. 51. State of Israel, Briefing on the Economy and Autonomy in the Territories, Government Press Office, Economic Desk, Jerusalem, February 8, 1993. 52. See Ezra Sadan, Durable Employment For The Refugee-Populated Region Of Gaza, April, 1993, p. 13; also see, idem, A Policy for Immediate EconomicIndustrial Development in the Gaza Strip: A Summary Report, Ben-Ezra Consultants, Ltd., August 1991, which contains details of the development scheme for Gaza. 53. State of Israel, Briefing of the Economy and Autonomy (February 8, 1993).
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54. In 1992, Israel’s GNP was $60 billion while the Occupied Territories’ GNP was $3 billion, of which more than $1 billion was derived from income earned in Israel. Although the Palestinian and Israeli economies are interdependent, Israel contributes close to 50 per cent of Gaza’s GNP and over 30 per cent of the West Bank’s, while Palestinians contribute at most 3 per cent to Israel’s GNP. 55. Sadan, Durable Employment (April 1993), p. 4. 56. Ibid., p. 7. 57. Sadan, Policy for Immediate Economic-Industrial Development (August 1991), p. 53. 58. Ibid., pp. 53–4. 59. “Investing in Peace,” Jerusalem Post (May 14, 1993). 60. Interview with officials of international organizations working in Gaza who asked not to be identified, April 1993. 61. Ibid. 62. General Assembly, Development And International Economic Cooperation: Human Settlements, Letter dated 11 March 1993 from the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the SecretaryGeneral, Forty-eighth session, New York, March 11, 1993, pp. 1–3; and State of Israel, Briefing on the Economy and Autonomy (February 8, 1993). 63. UNRWA document, Gaza Strip, Summer 1993. 64. Ibid. 65. See State of Israel, Measures to Improve the Welfare of the Population of the Territories, June 1993, p. 4; and General Assembly, Development and International Economic Cooperation (March 11, 1993), p. 2, which has slightly different numbers. Yehuda Litani, “Suspicion Clouds The Potential,” The Link, June 1993, p. 51, reports that 24 new factories were issued permits in the Gaza Strip and five in the West Bank. 66. General Assembly, Development and International Economic Cooperation (March 11, 1993), p. 3; and State of Israel, Measures to Improve the Welfare (June 1993), p. 6. 67. Ibid. 68. Source asked not to be identified, Spring 1993. 69. Ibid. “Palestinian exporters base their information of Israeli subsidies on reports from their Israeli counterparts who have approached them on several occasions offering to facilitate their shipments through the port to Europe by shipping them under the name of an Israeli producer. This illegal practice allows the Israeli producer to quality for the $20 per ton subsidy and his Palestinian partner to reduce his export costs.” 70. Industrial parks are planned for Bayt Hanoun, Gaza City (Shaykh Ajlin) and Dayr al-Balah in the Gaza Strip, and in Hebron and Nablus in the West Bank. General Assembly, Development and International Economic Cooperation (March 11, 1993), p. 3. 71. Litani, “Suspicion Clouds the Potential” (June 1993), p. 52. 72. Graham Usher, “Why Gaza Mostly Says Yes,” Middle East International, September 24, 1993, p. 20.
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11
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Civil Society in the Gaza Strip: Obstacles to Social Reconstruction
1. Samih K. Farsoun and Lucia P. Fort, “The Problematic of Civil Society, Intellectual Discourse and Arab Intellectuals,” paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., Spring 1992; and Elaine Hagopian, “Arab Intellectual Discourse on Civil Society: Regional Models,” paper presented at a conference entitled, “Prospects For Democracy in the Arab World,” Simmons College, Boston, MA, April 1993. 2. Farsoun and Fort, “The Problematic of Civil Society” (1992); and Hagopian, “Arab Intellectual Discourse on Civil Society” (1993). Also see, Martin Carnoy, The State and Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); and Alan Cawson, Corporatism and Political Theory (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986). 3. Ellen Meiksins Wood, “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Civil Society,’” in Ralph Miliband, ed., Socialist Register (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1990), p. 64. 4. Farsoun and Fort, “The Problematic of Civil Society” (1992); and Hagopian, “Arab Intellectual Discourse on Civil Society” (1993). Also see, Norberto Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); and Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith) (New York: International Publishers, 1971). 5. Augustus Richard Norton, “Civil Society in the Middle East—Project Concept Paper,” Department of Politics, New York University, 1994. 6. Edward Shils, “The Virtue of Civil Society,” Government and Opposition, Volume 26, Number 1 (Winter 1991), p. 3. 7. Michael Walzer, “The Idea of Civil Society,” Dissent (Spring 1991), p. 293. 8. Wood, “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Civil Society’” (1990), pp. 61 and 63. 9. Shils, “The Virtue of Civil Society” (1991), p. 16. 10. Ibid., p. 9. 11. Ibid., p. 4. 12. Wood, “The Uses and Abuses of ‘Civil Society’” (1990), p. 64. 13. Christopher Lasch, “Liberalism and Civic Virtue,” Telos, no. 88 (Summer 1991), p. 62; and Adam B. Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: Free Press, 1992), p. 10. 14. Walzer, “The Idea of Civil Society” (1991), p. 303. 15. Khalil Nakhleh, Indigenous Organizations in Palestine: Towards a Purposeful Societal Development (Jerusalem: Arab Thought Forum, 1991), p. 54. 16. Raja Shehadeh, “Questions of Jurisdiction: A Legal Analysis of the Gaza–Jericho Agreement,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 23, Number 4 (Summer 1994), p. 19. 17. Nimrod Raphaeli, “Gaza Under Four Administrations,” Public Administration in Israel and Abroad 1968, Volume 9 (1969), p. 44.
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18. Ghassan Shihabi, “Working Class and Its Labor Movement in the Gaza Strip,” Samed al-Iqtisadi, Volume 2, Number 84 (1991), pp. 68–80 [in Arabic]; and ‘Abd al-Qadir, “Political Movements in the Gaza Strip: 1948–1987,” Samed al-Iqtisadi, Volume 2, Number 84 (1991), pp. 30–46 [in Arabic]. Cited in Nakhleh, Indigenous Organizations in Palestine (1991), p. 24. 19. Joost Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 121. 20. Ibid., p. 61. 21. Nakhleh, Indigenous Organizations in Palestine (1991), pp. 33–4. 22. This assistance was officially extended to municipalities, schools, health clinics, and business and religious organizations. 23. The Jordanian government did channel some funds into the Gaza Strip as well but they were quite small compared to the total expended in the West Bank. Beginning in the early 1980s, both areas began receiving “development” assistance from a host of Arab and non-Arab donors, whose programs also favored the West Bank. 24. In 1974, the Arab states and the United Nations recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” 25. American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), NGO lists for the Gaza Strip and West Bank, April–May 1994, Jerusalem. These numbers are the most definitive available although they are not precise. For instance, one organization not included is the youth club. 26. These refer to women’s voluntary societies. By 1993, there were nine such societies in the Gaza Strip and 73 in the West Bank. Bisan Center for Research and Development, Directory of Palestinian Women’s Organizations (Ramallah, West Bank: Women’s Studies Committee, 1993), pp. 159–67 and Table 1. 27. See Lisa Taraki, “Mass Organizations in the West Bank,” in Occupation: Israel Over Palestine, 2nd edn, Naseer H. Aruri, ed. (Belmont, MA: Association of Arab–American University Graduates, 1989), pp. 431–63. 28. Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada (1992), p. 142. 29. Bisan Center, Directory (1993), pp. 168–90. 30. Sara Roy, “‘The Seed of Chaos, And Of Night’: The Gaza Strip After the Agreement,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 23, Number 4 (Spring 1994), p. 95. 31. By contrast, there are twelve women’s cooperatives in the West Bank. Bisan Center Directory (1993), Table 1. 32. Peter Gubser, Middle East Trip Report, 7 November 1992–22 November 1992, ANERA, Washington, D.C., December 1992, p. 1. 33. Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada (1992), p. 122. 34. In the Gaza Strip, this shared space was characterized by Israeli support for Palestinian notables who desired closer ties with Jordan rather than the PLO. In the West Bank, this local base was the village leagues which were armed Palestinian militias under Israeli control, empowered to perform a variety of social and bureaucratic functions. The population considered them collaborators with the occupation authorities and they had no community support.
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35. Shils, “The Virtue of Civil Society” (1991), p. 11. 36. Ann Mosley Lesch, Transition to Palestinian Self-Government: Practical Steps Toward Israeli–Palestinian Peace (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1992), pp. 29–30. 37. Ibid., p. 30. 38. Ibid. 39. See Emile Sahiliyeh, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics Since 1967 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988); and William B. Quandt, Fuad Jabber and Ann M. Lesch, The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). 40. Sara Roy, “Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 22, Number 4 (Summer 1993), pp. 24–6. 41. State of Israel, Statistical Abstract of Israel, No. 44 (Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1993), p. 759. 42. Roy, “Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration” (1993), p. 29. 43. Ibid., p. 27. 44. Ibid., pp. 27–8. Based on interviews with officials of this research institution and other indigenous and foreign PVOs who asked not to be identified, Gaza Strip, January 1993. 45. See Daniel Bell, “‘American exceptionalism’ revisited: the role of civil society,” The Public Interest, Number 95 (Spring 1989), pp. 38–56. 46. Elzbieta Tarkowska and Jacek Tarkowski, “Social Disintegration in Poland: Civil Society or Amoral Familism?” Telos, Number 89 (Fall 1991), p. 108. 47. Nakhleh, Indigenous Organizations in Palestine (1991), p. 59. 48. The points raised in this section are described in greater detail in Roy, “‘The Seed of Chaos, And Of Night’” (1994), pp. 86–92. 49. Gaza Community Mental Health Center, “Pilot Study on the Effects of Violence on Children,” Unpublished data and report, Gaza City, 1990. 50. Eyad El-Sarraj (MD), Peace and the Children of the Stone, A Study of the Gaza Mental Health Center, Gaza City, June 1993. 51. These findings were based on a sample of 2,779 children. See Eyad El-Sarraj and Fadel Abu Hein, Traumatized Children Under Military Occupation: The Palestinian Experience (Gaza City: Gaza Community Health Center, May 1993). 52. Roy, “Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration” (1993), pp. 28–9. 53. Ibid. Schools in the Gaza Strip have started administering exams to high school seniors under police supervision. Cheating has been a rampant problem in local schools long enforced by gun-toting students. Although the problem is improving, there have been confrontations between the Palestinian police and students who complained that the police had not allowed them to cheat. 54. Eyad El-Sarraj, Peace and States of Mind, A Study of the Gaza Mental Health Center, Gaza City, January 1994, p. 12. 55. See “Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area,” Cairo, May 4, 1994, Annex I/Protocol Concerning Withdrawal Of Israeli Military Forces And Security Arrangements, Article VII, Clause 9. For a detailed analysis, see Shehadeh, “Questions of Jurisdiction” (1994).
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56. Agreement, Article VIII, Clause 1; and Annex I/Protocol Concerning Withdrawal Of Israeli Military Forces And Security Arrangements, Article VII, Clause 6. 57. Personal interviews with individuals who cannot be identified. Also see, Caryle Murphy, “Shooting, ‘Death Threats’ Leave Palestinians Uneasy,” Washington Post, August 22, 1994. 58. Interviews with Gazan officials who asked not to be identified. Arafat eventually reinstated Youssef. 59. Five weeks after its banning, Al-Nahar was allowed to reopen but on the condition that it be loyal to the PLO. An editorial pledged allegiance to the “national line” and referred to Arafat as “The Brother, The Leader, The Symbol.” See, “Palestinian Paper Passes Loyalty Test,” New York Times, September 6, 1994. 60. El-Sarraj, Peace and States of Mind (1994), p. 12. 61. Walzer, “The Idea of Civil Society” (1991), p. 304. 62. “Gaza and the West Bank: Getting Nowhere,” The Economist, August 13, 1994, p. 38.
12
Beyond Hamas: Islamic Activism in the Gaza Strip
1. Amos Perlmutter, “The Israel–PLO Accord Is Dead,” Foreign Affairs, Volume 74, Number 3 (May–June 1995), p. 68. 2. Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza: The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Jihad (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 15. 3. John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 218, reiterates this point: “There is indeed an Islamic revolution occurring in many parts of the Muslim world. However, the most significant and pervasive revolution is not that of bombs and hostages, but of clinics and schools. It is dominated by social activists . . . and preachers rather than warriors . . . Radicalism and terrorism, though capturing the headlines, are a very small though at times deadly part of a phenomenon characterized by a broad-based religiosocial revolution which has affected most Muslim societies.” 4. Several polls and surveys conducted in the Gaza Strip and West Bank confirm this point. For example, see Wendy K. Levitt, “Islamistes palestiniens, la nouvelle generation,” Le Monde Diplomatique, June 1995, p. 5; and Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP), People’s Opinion of the Palestinian Authority and Their Political Attitudes (Gaza City: Research Unit, GCMHP, February 1995). 5. Based on interviews with officials of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. State Department, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, March 1995. 6. Based on interviews with officials of several Islamic social and economic organizations, Gaza Strip, February–March 1995. 7. For different approaches to the subject see, for example, Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991); John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious
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8.
9.
10. 11. 12. 13.
14.
15. 16.
17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
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Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), and Bassam Tibi, The Crisis of Modern Islam: A Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-Technological Age (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988). For a study of economic de-development in the Gaza Strip, see Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995). For an analysis of Gaza’s social and political sectors, see Sara Roy, “The Seed of Chaos, and of Night: The Gaza Strip After the Agreement,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 23, Number 3 (Spring 1994), pp. 85–92. See Political Islam (1991), Ayubi, p. 220. Ibid. See Sara Roy, “Report from Gaza: Alienation or Accommodation?”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 24, Number 4 (Summer 1995), pp. 73–82. In addition, there is the Islamic Liberation Party and the Islamic Jihad Movement-Bayt al-Maqdis that have limited political influence and will not be discussed. See Ali Al Jarbawi, “The Position of Palestinian Islamists on the Palestine-Israel Accord,” The Muslim World, Volume 84, Numbers 1–2 (January–April 1994), pp. 127–34. There are several detailed works on the Islamic movement in the West Bank and Gaza. For example, see Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism (1994); idem, “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 22, Number 4 (Summer 1993), pp. 5–19; Al Jarbawi, “The Position of Palestinian Islamists”; pp. 127–54; Ahmad Rashad, Hamas: Palestinian Politics with an Islamic Hue, Occasional Papers Series No. 2, United Association for Studies and Research, October 1993; Mohammed K. Shadid, “The Muslim Brotherhood Movement in the West Bank and Gaza,” Third World Quarterly, Volume 10, Number 2 (April 1988), pp. 658–82; Jean-Francois Legrain, “The Islamic Movement and the Intifada,” in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock (eds) (New York: Praeger, 1990), 175–89; idem, “A Defining Moment: Palestinian Islamic Fundamentalism,” in Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis, James Piscatori (ed.) (Chicago, IL: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991), pp. 70–87; and Michel Jubran and Laura Drake, “The Islamic Fundamentalist Movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Middle East Policy, Volume 2, Number 2 (1993), pp. 1–15. Shadid, “The Muslim Brotherhood” (1988), pp. 668–70. Abu-Amr, “Hamas” (1993), pp. 5–7. See also John O. Voll, “Fundamentalism in the Sunni Arab World: Egypt and Sudan,” in Fundamentalisms Observed, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 345–402. Rashad, Hamas (1993), pp. 2–3. Abu-Amr, “Hamas” (1993), p. 7. Ibid. Ibid. Graham Usher, “The Rise of Political Islam in the Occupied Territories,” Middle East International, June 25, 1993, p. 19. Abu-Amr, ibid., p. 8, notes
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22. 23. 24. 25.
26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
31. 32.
33. 34. 35.
36. 37.
38. 39.
40. 41.
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that between 1967 and 1987, the number of mosques grew from 200 to 600 in Gaza and 400 to 750 in the West Bank. Abu-Amr “Hamas” (1993), p. 8. Al Jarbawi, “The Position of Palestinian Islamists” (1994), p. 130. “The Islamist Movements in the Occupied Territories: An Interview with Iyad Bargouthi,” Middle East Report (MER) (July–August 1993), p. 10. Abu-Amr, “Hamas” (1993), p. 10; idem, Islamic Fundamentalism (1994), pp. 93–104; Legrain, “The Islamic Movement” (1990), pp. 177–9; and Jubran and Drake, “The Islamic Fudamentalist Movement” (1993), p. 5. Rashad, Hamas (1993), p. 4. Abu-Amr, “Hamas” (1993), pp. 10–11. Ibid., p. 12. Jarbawi, “The Position of Palestinian Islamists” (1994), p. 136. In addition to the sources cited in note 14, a detailed description of Hamas’s organizational structure can be found in Israel Information Service Gopher, Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement, Information Division, Israel Foreign Ministry, Jerusalem, January 1993. Jarbawi, “The Position of Palestinian Islamists” (1994), p. 137. Some observers believe this is a deliberately circulated rumor allowing the political wing of Hamas to maintain a tactical distance from its military wing, thereby increasing its political options. Serge Schmemann, “Israel Captures Arab Gang Linked to Two Bus Bombings,” New York Times, August 24, 1995, p. A1. “The Islamist Movements,” MERL (1993), p. 10. In a poll conducted one month after Oslo, only 13 per cent of respondents said they would vote for Hamas in elections compared to 45 per cent who would vote for Fateh. Jarbawi, “The Position of Palestinian Islamists” (1994), p. 141. See note 4. Musa Budieri, “The Nationalist Dimension of Islamic Movements in Palestinian Politics,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 24, Number 3 (Spring 1995), p. 93. Israel Information Service Gopher. James Brooke and Elaine Sciolino, “U.S. Muslims Say Their Aid Pays for Charity, Not Terror—Bread or Bullets: Money for Hamas,” New York Times, August 16, 1995, p. A12. Amos Perlmutter, “The Israel–PLO Accord is Dead” (1995), p. 65, writes, “Moreover, Hamas controls the education system in Gaza from kindergarten through high school . . .” This is factually incorrect since the primary responsibility for education in Gaza rests with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the government. However, Perlmutter’s statement is an excellent example of the gross exaggeration and errors made with reference to Hamas and the extent of its power in Gaza. Also see, Danny Rubinstein, “The New Message of Hamas,” Ha’aretz, February 10, 1993. Translated by Israel Shahak in From the Hebrew Press, March 1993. This section is derived from Roy, “Report from Gaza” (1995), pp. 73–7, who provides a detailed discussion of the economic situation. Israel Radio, Israel Line, June 13, 1995.
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42. Serge Schmemann, “For Gazans, Joy of Freedom Has Its Borders,” New York Times, August 25, 1995, p. A12. 43. Roy, “Report from Gaza” (1995), p. 75. Cited in Neil Patrick, Middle East International (MEI), May 12, 1995, p. 18. 44. Ibid. Interview with Amira Hass, correspondent for Ha’aretz, Gaza Strip, March 1995. 45. This section is derived from Roy, “Report from Gaza” (1995), pp. 77–80. 46. Roy, “The Seed of Chaos (1994), p. 92. Also see idem, “Separation or Integration: Closure and the Economic Future of the Gaza Strip Revisited,” Middle East Journal, Volume 48, No. 1 (Winter 1994), pp. 11–23. 47. Interview with Dr. Eyad Sarraj, Director, GCMHP, Gaza City, March 1995. 48. See InterAction, West Bank/Gaza Meeting, Minutes of Briefing with USAID on August 14, 1995, Washington, D.C. 49. Apparently, a new group has formed called “Fateh Sincere Youth”, which has called upon Arafat to stop the “immoral and ugly” practices of many PA officials. See Al Akhbar, Islamic Association for Palestine, Home Page, Internet, August 17, 1995 <www.iap.org>. 50. See, for example, Joel Greenberg, “Arabs Say Attacks Hurt Them Too,” New York Times, July 25, 1995, p. A3. 51. Interviews were conducted by the author with these and several other smaller organizations, Gaza Strip, February–March 1995. The data that follow are derived from interviews and site visits. 52. These checks were shown to the author by the association director, Gaza Strip, March 1995. 53. Given an average of eight people per family, there are approximately 5,000 families in Nuseirat camp. Hence, each volunteer would have to work with 17 families to cover the whole camp. 54. The sample consists of five Islamic business establishments and further study is planned. Access was very difficult and those institutions that participated asked not to be identified. 55. Nazih Ayubi, “Rethinking the Public/Private Dichotomy: Radical Islamism and Civil Society in the Middle East,” Contention, Volume 4, Number 3 (Spring 1995), p. 89. 56. See ibid., p. 98, for a similar but diverging interpretation. 57. Edward W. Said, “The Phony Islamic Threat,” New York Times Magazine, November 21, 1993, p. 64, writes, “Being an Arab, even for a non-Muslim, means being a member of what the late scholar Marshall Hodgson called an Islamicate world or culture.” 58. Ayubi, “Rethinking the Public/Private Dichtomy” (1995), p. 98. 59. Ayubi, Political Islam (1991), p. 230. See also Sana Abed-Kotob, “The Accomodationists Speak: Goals and Strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Volume 27, Number 3 (August 1995), pp. 326–7. For a fascinating discussion of the problem at a broader theoretical level, see Malcolm Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad ’Abduh and Rashid Rida (Berkeley and London: University of California and Cambridge University Presses, 1966).
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60. Ayubi, Political Islam (1991), p. 57. Original citation: Zakariyya S. Bayyumi, Al-Ikhwan al-muslimun was al-jama’at al-islamiyya [The Muslim Brothers and the Islamic Groupings] (Cairo: Wahba, 1979), p. 321. 61. Ibid.; and Kerr, Islamic Reform (1966), p. 221. 62. Francois Burgat and William Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa, Middle East Monograph Series (Austin: University of Texas, 1993), p. 41. 63. Similar characteristics are described by Ann M. Lesch, “The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Reform or Revolution?” in The Religious Challenge to the State, Matthew C. Moen and Lowell S. Gustafson (eds) (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992), p. 201. Also see John Thomas Cummings, Hossein Askari and Ahmad Mustafa, “Islam and Modern Economic Change,” in Islam and Development: Religion and Sociopolitical Change, John L. Esposito (ed.) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1980), pp. 25–47. 64. Ayubi, Islamic Reform (1991), pp. 186–95, addresses these and other questions with respect to Islamic enterprises in Egypt. 65. For example, Imad Faluji, the former head of Hamas’s military wing, is now associate director of the Al-Salah Association. Interview, Gaza City, February–March 1995. 66. Youssef M. Ibrahim, “Arafat’s Forces Push Crackdown on Gaza Radicals,” New York Times, July 10, 1995, p. A8. 67. Interview with one such individual, Gaza Strip, March 1995. 68. See, for example, Ilan Pappe, “Moderation in Islam: Religion in the Test of Reality,” Palestine–Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture, Number 2 (Spring 1994), pp. 11–25. 69. Eva Bellin, Civil Society and the Prospects for Political Reform in the Middle East, Conference Report, Civil Society in the Middle East Project, New York University, September 30–October 2, 1994, p. 12. 70. Ibid. See Pappe, “Moderation in Islam” (1994), pp. 16–19.
13
The Crisis Within: The Struggle for Palestinian Society
1. Sara Roy, “Beyond Hamas: Islamic Activism in the Gaza Strip,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review, 2 (1995), p. 16. This section on political conditions is based in part from that publication, pp. 5–6. 2. Interview, Gaza, Summer 1999. 3. Interview, West Bank, Summer 1999. 4. Interview, Gaza, Summer 1999. 5. Ibid. 6. See Fawaz Turki, “Palestinian Self-Criticism and the Liberation of Palestinian Society,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 25, Number 2 (Winter 1996), p. 74. 7. Interview, Gaza, Summer 1999. 8. Ibid. 9. Tracy Wilkinson and Mary Curtius, “Statehood No Panacea for the Palestinians,” Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2000.
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10. Sara Roy, “De-Development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society Since Oslo,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 28, Number 3 (Spring 1999), p. 77. 11. Ibid. 12. The economic data in this section are drawn from several sources, including Sara Roy, “Postscript,” The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of Dedevelopment, 2nd edn (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, Fall 2000); idem, “De-Development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society Since Oslo” (1999) pp. 64–82; The World Bank Group, West Bank and Gaza Update: Poverty in the West Bank and Gaza (Jerusalem: The World Bank, April 2000); and Patricia Alonso-Gamo, Max Alier, Thomas Baunsgaard and Ulric Erickson von Allmen, West Bank and Gaza Strip: Economic Developments in the Five Years Since Oslo (Washington, D.C.: Middle Eastern Department, International Monetary Fund, 1999). 13. Interview, Gaza, May 2000. 14. Geoffrey Aronson, Recapitulating the Redeployments: The Israel–PLO Interim Agreements, Information Brief, No. 32 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, April 27, 2000). 15. Amira Hass, Lecture, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, May 1999. 16. See Roy, “Postscript” (2000) for a detailed discussion and list of bibliographic references on the subject. 17. Closure has resulted in other realities with acute consequences for people. In the health sector, for example, there are many cases of people being denied access to needed medical care or hospital staff being prevented from reaching work. Increasing economic hardship also has resulted in the decreased use of primary health care facilities. In the education sector, similarly, at least 33,000 students and 15,000 teachers at one time or another have been denied access to educational institutions because of total or internal closures. 18. See Lee Hockstader, “Dependence Shapes Emerging State: Reality of Israeli Control Tempers Dreams of Autonomy,” Washington Post, September 8, 2000. 19. Interview, West Bank, May 2000. 20. See Roy, “Postscript” (2000). 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. See, for example, Moshe Reinfeld, “Ginosar role in PA talks questioned due to economic ties to the PA” [in Hebrew], Ha’aretz, May 1, 2000. 24. Sara Roy, “Economic Deterioration in the Gaza Strip,” Middle East Report (July–September 1996), p. 38. The source for this information was the U.S. Department of State. 25. This information was obtained from the U.S. Department of State, Summer 2000. It also is described in Wilkinson and Curtius, “Statehood No Panacea” (2000). 26. Palestinian Center for Human Rights, “The Palestinian Center for Human Rights calls for stopping a shaming phenomenon: A casino in a settlement is frequented by Palestinians,” Press release, Ref: 102/2000, Gaza, September 11, 2000.
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27. Palestinian National Authority and the International Monetary Fund, West Bank and Gaza Economic Policy Framework, Progress Report, May 31, 2000, Lisbon, June 7–8, 2000, Paragraph 13 and Annex 1 <www.pna. net/events/economic_ahlc.html>. 28. Amira Hass, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999). 29. Turki, “Palestinian Self-criticism” (1996), p. 76. 30. Ibid.
14
Introduction to Part IV
1. The Taba non-paper agreement, which followed in January 2001, attempted to address some of the Oslo/Camp David deficiencies particularly with regard to territorial contiguity and removal of settlements but the talks were canceled by Barak because of imminent Israeli elections. Still, Taba is held up as an example of what is possible. 2. See Sara Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy: The Continued Denial of Possibility,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 30, Number 4 (Summer 2001), p. 13. Original source: Text of an Interview with Charles Shammas, Senior Partner, Mattin Group/International Human Rights Enforcement, Ramallah, January 29, 2001, which can be found at <www.crimesofwar. com>. 3. Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard University, “Population Projections for Socioeconomic Development in the Gaza Strip,” Gaza 2010: Human Security Needs in the Gaza Strip, working paper, May 2006. 4. Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy” (2001), pp. 6–9. 5. Ibid. See Edward Said’s excellent piece, “Palestinians Under Siege,” London Review of Books, Volume 22, Number 24, December 14, 2000. 6. Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy” (2001), p. 7. Original source: Fouad Moughrabi, “Borders in Palestinian Society,” Draft, al-Qattan Center for Educational Research, Ramallah, West Bank, 2000, p. 10. 7. See Mouin Rabbani and Sara Roy, “Palestinian Politics and September 11,” in Augustus Richard Norton and Louis Cantori (eds), “The Impact of 9/11 on the Middle East,” Middle East Policy, Volume IX, No. 4, December 2002, pp. 90–91. 8. It should be noted that Israel’s strategy of toppling the Palestinian Authority, removing Arafat and undermining the Palestinian leadership had been long in the making, well before the Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians began. The strategy was first articulated in 1996 and was known as the Field of Thorns plan. It was updated during the current Intifada and includes many of the measures executed by Israel during the uprising. The fated suicide bombers provided legitimacy to the plan. 9. International Crisis Group, Enter Hamas: The Challenges of Political Integration, January 18, 2006, p. 12, ftn. 82. 10. Darryl Li, “Gaza as Laboratory,” Draft, December 2005. Later published as Darryl Li, “The Gaza Strip as Laboratory,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter 2006), pp. 38–55.
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11. Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Gaza Beach Investigation Ignores Evidence,” June 20, 2006 . 12. World Bank, Internal document, 2003. 13. B’tselem—The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories <www.btselem.org/english/Separation_Barrier/Index.asp>. 14. Ibid., World Bank, Internal document (2003) and B’tselem. 15. Correspondence with the late Professor Samih Farsoun.
15
Why Peace Failed: An Oslo Autopsy
1. Judy Dempsey, “Move to Stop Israel’s Policy of Liquidation,” Financial Times, January 9, 2001. 2. Yedioth Ahronot, September 7, 1993. 3. Dr. Souad Dajani, “What Are the Terms of the Oslo Peace Process?” Fact Sheet No. 3 (Boston, MA: Grassroots International, Fall 2000). 4. Geoffrey Aronson, “Recapitulating the Redeployments: The Israel–PLO Interim Agreements,” Information Brief No. 32 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, April 27, 2000). 5. Nadav Shragai, “Barak Was Biggest Settlement Builder Since ’92,” Ha’aretz, February 27, 2001. 6. Dajani, “What are the Terms of the Oslo Peace Process?” (2000). 7. This section draws on Sara Roy, “Postscript,” The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development, 2nd edn (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Palestine Studies, 2001), pp. 345–8, which contains the original citations for the data in this section; and idem, “Palestinian Economy and Society: The Continued Denial of Possibility,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2001), pp. 5–20. 8. World Bank, Economic Crisis in the West Bank and Gaza, Internal Document, August 19, 2001. 9. United Nations, The Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontations, Mobility Restrictions and Border Closures, 1 October 2000–31 January 2001, Summary (Gaza Strip: Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories [UNSCO], February 2001); and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Impact of the Israeli Measures on the Economic Conditions of Palestinian Households, Press Conference on the Survey Results, Ramallah, West Bank, April 2001. 10. Meron Benvenisti, “The Illusion of Soft Borders,” Ha’aretz, October 14, 1999. 11. Cited in Noam Chomsky, “Introduction,” in Roane Carey, ed., The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid (London: Verso, 2001), p. 20. 12. Rema Hamami and Salim Tamari, “Anatomy of Another Rebellion,” Middle East Report 217 (Winter 2000), p. 9. 13. See Jan de Jong and Geoffrey Aronson, “The Final Status Maps—A Territorial Analysis,” Report on Israeli Settlement (Washington, D.C.: Foundation for Middle East Peace, January–February 2001), p. 6. 14. Jeff Halper, “No Return to Oslo,” Information Brief No. 83 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, October 5, 2001).
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Ending the Palestinian Economy
1. Interview with Shimon Peres, the Charlie Rose television show, February 2002. A related argument can be found in Daniel Pipes, “God and Mammon: Does Poverty Cause Militant Islam?” The National Interest, Winter 2001/02, pp. 14–21. 2. Amos Harel, “Rightist Ex-generals Propose Massive Invasion of Territories,” Ha’aretz, January 31, 2002. 3. Edward W. Said, “Afterword: The Consequences of 1948,” Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds, The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 215. 4. Lamis Andoni, “Deeds Speak Louder than Words,” The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2002, p. 94. 5. World Bank, Fifteen Months—Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis: An Assessment, Final Report, March 18, 2002. 6. Ibid., p. v. 7. See U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Report on UNCTAD’s Assistance to the Palestinian People (Geneva: UNCTAD, August 21, 2001). 8. For a detailed discussion of economic conditions during the Oslo period, see Sara Roy, “Postscript—The Palestinian Economy After Oslo: DeDevelopment Unabated,” in idem, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development, 2nd edn (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2001), pp. 333–94. A detailed discussion of PA corruption and mismanagement is provided. 9. See Sara Roy, “Why Peace Failed: An Oslo Autopsy,” Current History, January 2002, pp. 8–16. 10. The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), Fact Sheet—Home Demolition and Land Confiscation (updated October 2001), October 8, 2001. 11. Foundation for Middle East Peace, Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories: A Guide, Special Report, Washington, D.C., March 2002, p. 6. 12. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’tselem), Demolition of Houses Built without Permits—1987–2002 Statistics, <www.btselem.org>, June 2002. 13. Foundation for Middle East Peace, Israeli Settlements (March 2002). 14. MIFTAH, Fact Sheet (October 8, 2001). 15. Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet, Yehia Abed and Panos Vostanis, “Emotional Problems in Palestinian Children Living in a War Zone: A Cross-sectional Study,” Lancet, Vol. 359, May 25, 2002, pp. 1801–2. 16. USAID, “Assessment of the Humanitarian Situation in Palestine: Key Findings,” July 2002. See also Margot Dudkevitch, “B’tselem: 5,124 Homeless Due to House Demolitions in Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, February 4, 2002. 17. Office of Afif Safieh, Palestinian general delegate to the United Kingdom and the Holy See, Urgent Appeal from Beit Sahour, October 11, 2002. 18. Peace Now, “Tenders Issued for 957 Housing Units in the Settlements,” May 20, 2002. See <www.peacenow.org> and <www.peace-now.org/
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19. 20.
21. 22.
23.
24. 25.
26. 27. 28.
29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.
36. 37. 38. 39.
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ArimTenderMay16–2002.jpg>. See also James Bennet, “Despite Violence, Settlers Survive and Spread,” New York Times, April 28, 2002; and James Drummond, “Palestinian Fury Fails to Deter Settlement Builders,” Financial Times, April 29, 2002. Jewish Peace News, Money for Settlements, May 7, 2002. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’tselem), Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank, May 2002. Foundation for Middle East Peace, Israeli Settlements (March 2002), p. 6. Palestinian Center for Human Rights, “The Israeli Occupying Forces Commander in the Gaza Strip issues a military order to seize land to build new military road,” Press Release, July 20, 2002, Gaza. World Bank, “One Year of Intifada—The Palestinian Economy in Crisis: An Assessment, Draft” (unpublished), November 15, 2001, p. 15; and idem, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), pp. 12–14 and Annex 1. The latter is the final version of the November 15, 2001, report and both versions are cited in this article. Nick Kraft and Nigel Roberts, “Economic Crisis in WB/G,” Brief, World Bank, August 19, 2001. U.N. Special Coordinator’s Office (UNSCO), The Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontation, Border Closures and Mobility Restrictions, 1 October 2000–30 September 2001, Gaza, (October 2001), p. 23. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 3. Ibid. World Bank, “One Year of Intifada” (November 15, 2001), p. 35. For other such illustrations, see USAID, Field Notes from Visits to Villages of Hebron and Nablus Governorates, Village Water and Sanitation Program, West Bank and Gaza, October 18, 2001. Ibid., Annex 4, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation data. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), footnote 11, p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. See also UNSCO, Impact on Economy (October 2001), pp. 2–6. UNCTAD, Report on Assistance (August 21, 2001), p. 6. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 4. UNSCO, Impact (October 2001), p. 14 and footnote 29. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 5. For an official Israeli response to the criticisms of Israeli closure policy, see Israel Defense Forces (IDF), IDF Spokesperson Press Release on Cooperation With the PA— Regarding the Terry Larson Press Conference, December 20, 2001, website: PALDEV Digest. UNSCO, Impact (October 2001), p. 14 and footnote 29. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), pp. 4–5; UNSCO, Impact (October 2001), p. 4. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 6; UNSCO, Impact (October 2001), p. 5 gives closure figures for the first year. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 9.
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40. World Bank, The Impact of Recent Israeli Incursions, Closures and Curfews on the Economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Background/Discussion Paper, Executive Summary, September 28, 2002, p. 1. 41. See, for example, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, Targeting Medical Care: Israel’s Recent Incursion into the West Bank Renews Attacks on Ambulances: Sample Cases and Updates from Palestinian Population Centers in the West Bank, June 24, 2002. 42. World Bank, “One Year” (March 18, 2002), p. 12; and UNSCO, Impact (October 2001), p. 2. 43. World Bank, “One Year” (March 18, 2002), pp. 12–13. There were approximately 100,000 new entrants to the labor force between September 2000 and December 2001. Also, see Peter Hansen, “Palestine Needs Humanitarian Support,” Daily Star, Beirut, February 2, 2002; and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Main Findings According to the Relaxed Definition of Unemployment (July–September, 2001), Round, Ramallah, West Bank. The PCBS similarly put unemployment at 291,000 or 36.5 per cent by September 2001. 44. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Press Release on Labour Force Survey Results (July–September, 2001), Round: 291,000 unemployed persons during the 3rd quarter 2001, Ramallah, West Bank. 45. “Gaza: Sowing Seeds of Destruction,” The Economist, January 20, 2001, p. 40. See also UNSCO, The Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontations, Mobility Restrictions and Border Closures, 28 September–26 November 2000, Gaza, December 2000, pp. 2–3. See also American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), Peter Gubser’s Middle East Trip Report to the ANERA Board of Directors April 17–26, 2002, Washington, D.C., p. 6. 46. UNSCO, New Economic Figures for the West Bank and Gaza Show Rapid Deterioration Leading to Human Catastrophe, Gaza, August 29, 2002. 47. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), Executive Summary, p. 1 and full document, p. 4. See also USAID, Economic Situation Summary, Internal Document, Tel Aviv, October 3, 2002. 48. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), p. 2, and full document, Table 3, p. 7. 49. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 18. 50. Ibid., p. 19. 51. UNSCO (October 2001), p. 14. 52. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), Executive Summary, p. 1. 53. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesperson, “Humanitarian Aid in the West Bank and Gaza: For August 28, 2002”, PALDEV Digest—August 28, 2002August 29, 2002 (#2002–310), <
[email protected]>. 54. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), Executive Summary, p. 1, and full document, p. 6. 55. Kav LaOved, Newsletter: Bonded Labor in Israel—The Indenture of Migrant Workers to their Employers: A Policy and Its Consequences, Tel Aviv, July 2002. 56. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), footnote 25, p. 14.
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57. According to a study done by the Norwegian research institute FAFO, demand for non-essential goods almost disappeared completely in two West Bank villages and rapidly declined in Jericho and Gaza City during the first year of the uprising. FAFO, Paying a Price: Coping With Closure in Jericho, Gaza City and in Two Palestinian Villages, Summary (Oslo: December 2001). 58. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 14. 59. UNSCO, Impact on ... Economy (October 2001), p. 14. 60. Ibid. Given Palestine’s high population growth rates, the development of the domestic private sector is a critical economic imperative. The World Bank reports the loss of 60,000 domestic jobs through the end of 2001. 61. Ibid., p. 18. 62. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 4. 63. Ibid., Executive Summary, p. 2, and full document, Table 3, p. 7. 64. UNSCO, Impact on ... Economy (October 2001), p. 17. 65. Sara Roy, The Palestinian Economy and the Oslo Process: Decline and Fragmentation, The Emirates Occasional Papers No. 24 (Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1998); and World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 27. 66. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, pp. 21–2. 67. See Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development (2001) for a detailed discussion of these limitations. 68. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 28. 69. UNCTAD, Report on ... Assistance (August 21, 2001), p. 6. 70. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 34. These figures are based on a survey conducted by the Palestinian Trade Company (PalTrade) and by the Center for Private Sector Development in August 2001. See also FAFO, Paying a Price (2001). 71. UNSCO, Impact on ... Economy (October 2001), p. 10, footnote 17. Original source: The Palestinian Chambers of Commerce and the Center for Middle East Competitive Strategy, The Transaction Costs Study: An Examination of the Costs of International Trade in the West Bank, August 1998. 72. Ibid., p. 8. 73. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 23. 74. Ibid., Executive Summary, p. 1, and full document, p. 15. 75. Ibid., full document, p. 23. 76. Ibid., Executive Summary, p. 1. 77. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), Table 6, p. 30. 78. World Bank Group, “One Year of Intifada,” West Bank and Gaza Update, November 2001, p. 6. 79. UNSCO, Impact on ... Economy (October 2001), p. 9. 80. Ibid. 81. Informal Group on Humanitarian Policy, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report—for The Quartet (European
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82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89.
90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.
106. 107. 108. 109. 110.
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Union, United Nations, United States, Russian Federation), August 2002, p. 5; and IDF spokesperson, “Transporting fuel, gas and goods to the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank,” October 20, 2002, PALDEV Digest, October 25, 2002 <
[email protected]>. Amira Hass, “No Materials to Build in Gaza,” Ha’aretz, July 15, 2002. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 31. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 15. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (August 2002), p. 5. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), footnote 28, p. 30. Ibid., 21, Annex 4, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation data. UNSCO, Impact on ... Economy (October 2001), p. 7. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), footnote 20, p. 22. The March 2002 World Bank report places this figure at 23 per cent loss through December 2001. Ibid., pp. 21–2. Ibid., Annex 4, Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation data. World Bank, “One Year,” West Bank and Gaza Update (November 2001), p. 6. World Bank, “Economic Crisis in WB/G,” August 19, 2001. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 23 and Table 6, p. 30. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 19. ANERA, Peter Gubser’s Trip Report (2002), p. 5. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. vii. World Bank, Impact on ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 9. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), pp. vi, 19; and idem, Impact on ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 2. International Monetary Fund (IMF), The Palestinian Authority’s Fiscal Situation and the Prospects, Internal Memo, September 13, 2001. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 19. World Bank, Impact on ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 8. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. vi. Harvey Morris, “Palestinians Want Their Taxes Back,” Financial Times, August 19, 2002. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 20. The monthly average provided by the Bank is $48.70 based on a one-year period. The author’s calculation is based on 14-month period. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 9. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), pp. 20–21. USAID, Health Sector Working Group Meeting, Internal Document, July 31, 2001, Ramallah, West Bank. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), Table 4, p. 23. Health Action Response Team (HART) News, Vol. 1, No. 3, Jerusalem, May 1, 2002.
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111. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), footnote 72, p. 55. 112. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 8. 113. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), pp. 23–4. 114. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 17. See also USAID, Economic and Donor Response to the Intifada (2002), p. 2; and UNSCO, New Economic Figures (August 29, 2002). UNSCO, Impact on ... Economy (October 2001), p. 6, states that during the first year of the uprising, total income losses fell between $2.4 million and $3.2 million. Also see Humanitarian Task Force for Emergency Needs, Minutes of Meeting, Internal Document, UNSCO, Gaza, October 18, 2001. 115. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 11. 116. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 17. 117. Ibid., Executive Summary, p. 2. 118. USAID, Economic Situation Summary (October 3, 2002). 119. USAID, Economic and Donor Response to the Intifada, West Bank and Gaza Program Office, Background Paper #1, April 18, 2002, p. 3. 120. USAID, Economic Situation Summary (October 3, 2002). 121. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Impact of the Israeli Measures on the Economic Conditions of Palestinian Households. Press Conference on the Survey Results, April 2001; and World Bank, West Bank and Gaza Update, June 2001, p. 6. 122. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 41. 123. Ibid. 124. UNSCO, Annual Report on the Economy – Executive Summary, August 2001. 125. Ibid. 126. According to the World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), damage to trees and crops is included for Gaza only; damage to topsoil due to Israeli bulldozing is not included, so the total amount of agricultural damage is conservative to say the least. 127. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), Annex 4, pp. 115–17, PNA, President’s Office, Damages and Compensation Committee, Summary of Sum Needed for Compensation from IDB from September 28, 2000–September 2, 2001. 128. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), pp. 17–18. 129. Ibid., Table 2, p. 18. 130. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), Annex 3, p. 84. 131. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), Table A3.3, Annex 3, p. 100. 132. Foundation for Middle East Peace, Israeli Settlements (March 2002), p. 6. 133. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 18. 134. Ibid. 135. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 5. 136. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), Table 2, p. 18.
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137. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 48. 138. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. 18. 139. For another study of the social, economic and humanitarian impact of the March–April incursion, see Ricardo Bocco, Isabelle Daneels, Matthias Brunner and Jamil Rabah, An Overview of Palestinian Public Assessment of its Needs and Conditions Following the Recent Israeli Military Operations in the West Bank (March–April 2002) (Geneva: Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva, April 2002). 140. UNRWA, Israeli Assault on Refugee Camps Imposes Heavy Costs on UNRWA, March 20, 2002. 141. Local Aid Co-ordination Committee (LACC), “Damage to Civilian Infrastructure and Institutions in the West Bank Estimated at US$361 Million,” Press Release, May 17, 2002. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. USAID, Humanitarian Assessment, July 2002 (based on Palestinian Ministry of Housing data). 145. For a powerful account of what happened in Jenin and Jenin refugee camp, see Gregg Greenough, Report on Jenin Visit, April 13, 2002, CARE International. According to this report, there were 500 dead in the camp and 14,000 displaced during the first 14 days of the incursion. [NOTE: The figures on the number of dead and displaced vary widely.] 146. U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), West Bank Weekly Humanitarian Update 7–13 June 2002, June 14, 2002. See <www.reliefweb.int/hic-opt/>. 147. Ibid. 148. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 2. 149. Some of these data first appeared in Sara Roy, “The Crisis Within: The Struggle for Palestinian Society,” Critique: Journal for Critical Studies of the Middle East, Fall 2000, pp. 5–30; idem, “Palestinian Society and Economy: The Continued Denial of Possibility, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, Summer 2001, pp. 5–20; idem, The New Intifada (2001); and idem, Current History (2002). See also Riccardo Bocco, Mattias Brunner, Isabelle Daneels and Jamil Rabah, Palestinian Public Perceptions on Their Living Conditions (Geneva: Graduate Institute of Development Studies, University of Geneva, December 2001). 150. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 75. 151. Ibid., pp. 75–6, 17. 152. For an examination of the critical changes to Palestinian society since the start of the Oslo peace process, see Roy, “The Crisis Within” (2000). 153. UNCTAD, Report on ... Assistance (August 21, 2001), p. 7. 154. Peter Morris, Caroline Abla and Jack Myer, Humanitarian Assessment for West Bank and Gaza, Report submitted to the USAID/West Bank–Gaza Mission, Draft, December 19, 2000. 155. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Impact of the Israeli Measures on the Economic Conditions of Palestinian Households (2nd
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156.
157.
158. 159.
160.
161. 162. 163.
164. 165. 166.
167. 168. 169.
170. 171. 172.
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Round: May–June 2001), Press Conference on the Survey Results, Ramallah, West Bank, July 2001. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), Executive Summary, p. 2; and USAID, Economic Situation Summary (October 3, 2002). UNSCO, The Impact on the Palestinian Economy of Confrontations, Mobility Restrictions and Border Closures, 1 October 2000–31 January 2001, Summary, Gaza, February 2001. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2001), p. 11, states that the poor increased from 600,000 at the Intifada’s start to between 1.2 to 1.5 million by December 2001. World Bank, Poverty in WB/G: Summary, February 5, 2001. Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Impact of the Israeli Measures on the Economic Conditions of Palestinian Households, Press Conference on the Survey Results, Ramallah, West Bank, April 2001; and idem, Impact of the Israeli Measures on the Economic Conditions of Palestinian Households (2nd Round: May–June, 2001), Press Conference on the Survey Results, Ramallah, West Bank, July 2001. World Bank, Economic Crisis in WB/G (February 5, 2001); idem, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 37; and idem, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 18. Ibid., Economic Crisis (November 15, 2001), Annex 4, Ministry of Social Affairs’ Assessment. See also World Food Programme (WFP) et al., Joint Rapid Food Needs Assessment, Draft, May 2002, Executive Summary. Ibid.; “Gaza”, The Economist (January 20, 2001); and Justin Huggler, “One-fifth of Palestinian Children are Chronically Hungry,” Independent, July 27, 2002. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), Table 21, p. 58. WFP, Joint Rapid Food Needs Assessment (2002). USAID, Statistical Snapshot of the Impact of IDF Incursions, March–April 2002, Tel Aviv, Israel, based on a statistical analysis (in five reports) of the social/humanitarian impact of the March–April incursion on the Palestinian population conducted by Rita Giacaman and Abdullatif Husseini, Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University, Ramallah, West Bank, May–June 2002. WFP, Joint Rapid Food Needs Assessment (2002). UNSCO, New Economic Figures (August 29, 2002). USAID, Meeting Notes, Emergency Food Crisis Group Meeting, Jerusalem, April 18, 2002; and World Food Programme, “Emergency Assistance to Victims of Civil Strife”, Project Document, Submitted by World Food Program Operations in the Palestinian Territories, Jerusalem, 2001. World Food Programme (WFP), Two Months In, Palestinian Operation 90 Percent Underfunded, July 12, 2002. See <www.reliefweb.int>. UNDAC/OCHA Mission Report, Occupied Palestinian Territory, April 20, 2002–May 10, 2002, Internal Document, p. 6. West Bank Weekly Humanitarian Update 7–13 June 2002. See ICRC, Israel and the Occupied and Autonomous Territories: ICRC to Massively Increase Aid, May 24, 2002. See <www.reliefweb.int>.
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173. Lutheran World Federation/World Service, Palestinian Territories: ACT Humanitarian Relief Update, June 6, 2002. See <www.reliefweb.int>. Other NGOs including World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, Mennonite Central Committee, Caritas and the Pontifical Mission are also involved in the delivery of humanitarian aid. 174. USAID, Humanitarian Assessment (July 2002). 175. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 19. 176. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report, p. 10. 177. This decision came soon after a widely condemned Israeli missile attack against a Hamas official in his home in Gaza in which 14 people were killed and 140 injured. One condition for the release of these monies is that they not be diverted to militant groups. See Aluf Benn, “Israel Agrees to Transfer NIS 70 million to Palestinian Authority,” Ha’aretz, July 28, 2002; and Morris, “Palestinians Want Their Taxes Back” (2002). 178. USAID, Field Notes from Visits to Villages of Hebron and Nablus Governorates, October 18, 2001. 179. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 18; and USAID, Economic Situation Summary (October 3, 2002). These figures are based on household income data rather than consumption data, which are the more accurate measure but more difficult to calculate. 180. USAID, Humanitarian Assessment, July 2002; Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz, July 17, 2002; and Huggler, “One-Fifth of Palestinian Children…” (July 27, 2002). 181. USAID, Economic Situation Summary, October 3, 2002. 182. UNRWA, May 2, 2002. See <www.reliefweb.int>. See also, OCHA, Statement by West Bank Humanitarian Task Force, April 3, 2002, Jerusalem. 183. U.S. Department of State, Internal Memo, May 10, 2002. See also Hass, “No Materials to Build” (July 15, 2002). 184. Ibid. 185. Source asked not to be identified. 186. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), footnote 11, p. 50. 187. U.S. State Department, Internal Correspondence, May 2002. 188. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, pp. 1–2. 189. UNSCO, New Economic Figures (August 29, 2002). 190. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 4. 191. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 47. 192. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 7. 193. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 44. The WHO study is entitled, Vulnerability Assessment and was completed in September 2001. 194. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 7.
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195. Johns Hopkins University, Al Quds University, CARE International, ANERA and the Maram Project, Health Sector Bi-Weekly Report, No. 3, September 16, 2002, p. 10. See also idem, Health Sector Bi-Weekly Report, No. 2, August 19, 2002, p. 10. 196. Ibid., p. 11. 197. HART News (May 1, 2002). 198. USAID, Preliminary Data From UNRWA Study on Anemia Prevalence Amongst Pregnant Women [and on Impact of Closures on Prenatal Care], Internal Document Summarizing the Main Findings of the preliminary version of the UNRWA study, March 2002. 199. USAID, Humanitarian Assessment (July 2002). 200. USAID, Preliminary Data (March 2002). 201. Ibid. 202. USAID, Health Sector Working Group Meeting, Internal Document, July 31, 2001, Ramallah, West Bank. 203. USAID, Humanitarian Assessment (July 2002). 204. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 7. 205. Data in this section are drawn from Oxfam and Palestinian Hydrology Group, Water and Sanitation, Hygiene (WaSH) Monitoring Project (West Bank and Gaza Strip)/Impact of Current Crisis, Technical Report #3, Jerusalem, September 2002, pp. 7–55. 206. Amos Harel and Amiram Cohen, “Palestinians Barred from Picking Olives, Drilling for Water,” Ha’aretz, October 22, 2002. 207. HART News (May 1, 2002). 208. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), footnote 46, p. 44. 209. Humanitarian Task Force for Emergency Needs, Minutes of Meeting, October 18, 2001. 210. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 44. 211. Abdel Aziz Mousa Thabet, Yehia Abed and Panos Vostanis, “Emotional Problems in Palestinian Children Living in a War Zone: A Cross-sectional Study,” Lancet, Vol. 359, May 25, 2002, p. 1803. 212. Ramit Plushnick-Masti, “Study finds 70% of Palestinian Children, 30% of Settlers’ Children Suffer From Trauma,” Jordan Times, July 2002. 213. Lancet, “Emotional Problems” (May 25, 2002), pp. 1802–3. Also see Joop T.V. M. de Jong et al., “Lifetime Events and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in 4 Post-conflict Settings,” Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Vol. 286, No. 5, August 1, 2001, pp. 555–62; A.A.M. Thabet and P. Vostanis, “Social Adversities and Anxiety Disorders in the Gaza Strip,” Archives of Diseases of Childhood, Vol. 78, 1998, pp. 439–42; and Abdel Aziz Thabet and Panos Vostanis, “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Reactions in Children of War: A Longitudinal Study,” Child Abuse and Neglect, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2000, pp. 291–8. 214. USAID, Statistical Snapshot of the Impact of IDF Incursions (May–June 2002). 215. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), pp. 4–5.
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216. PCBS, Impact…Palestinian Households (July 2001); World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), footnote 39, p. 39; and FAFO, Paying a Price (2001). 217. CARE, Rapid Nutritional Assessment, Summary of key findings, U.S. State Department, July 2002; and Johns Hopkins University et al., Health Sector Bi-Weekly Report (September 16, 2002). 218. Ibid., Health Sector Bi-Weekly Report, p. 4. 219. Ibid., p. 6. 220. USAID, Humanitarian Assessment (July 2002); and James Bennet, “In Palestinian Children, Signs of Increasing Malnutrition,” New York Times, July 26, 2002. 221. USAID, Internal Memo, July 2002. 222. CARE, Preliminary Findings of the Nutritional Assessment and Sentinel Surveillance System for West Bank and Gaza, Executive Summary, July 2002; and Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 6. 223. Ibid; and World Bank, “Impact of ... Incursions” (September 28, 2002), Executive Summary, p. 2. 224. CARE, Preliminary Findings (July 2002); Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 6; and USAID, Economic Situation Summary (October 3, 2002). 225. Ibid., CARE; and World Bank (September 28, 2002), Executive Summary, p. 2. 226. UNDAC/OCHA, Mission Report, p. 7. 227. Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development. 228. Adel Zagha, “A Palestinian View: Barely Surviving,” The Economics of Confrontation, <www.bitterlemons.org>, Edition 19, May 27, 2002. 229. USAID, Economic and Donor Response to the Intifada, pp. 2–3. 230. Mark Lavie, “Israel Cuts Gaza Strip in Half,” Associated Press, May 22, 2002. 231. Avi Machlis, “Israel Looks to Keep Bombers at Bay with West Bank Wall, Financial Times, June 17, 2002. See also “Fences and Walls,” <www. bitterlemons.org>, Edition 21, June 10, 2002; Charles A. Radin, “Israelis consider wall of separation,” Boston Globe, May 5, 2002; idem, “West Bank wall spurs divisions,” Boston Globe, September 3, 2002; and Ehud Barak, “Israel’s Security Requires a Sturdy Fence,” New York Times, April 16, 2002. 232. Jeffrey Halper, “Terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Way Out,” lecture, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, September 30, 2002. 233. John Kifner, “Israelis Consider New Limits on West Bank Palestinians, New York Times, May 24, 2002. 234. Ibid. 235. Gudrun Bertinussen, Denial of Access—New Restrictions on Humanitarian Assistance in Palestine, Resident Representative, Norwegian People’s Aid, Palestine-Gaza, June 27, 2002. See <www.reliefweb.int>; and WFP, July 12, 2002. 236. See James Drummond, “Financial Aid Cut will Fuel Violence, Palestinians Warn US,” Financial Times, June 28, 2002.
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237. David Sanger, “Citing Israel’s Need for Security, Bush Accepts Occupation,” New York Times, July 9, 2002; and idem, “Bush Says Palestinians Will Lose Aid if They Keep Arafat,” New York Times, June 27, 2002. 238. See Amira Hass, “The Civil Administration was Never Disbanded,” Ha’aretz, July 3, 2002. 239. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 4. 240. Harvey Morris, “Israel’s Buffer Zones Threaten to Choke Palestinian Economy,” Financial Times, May 27, 2002. See also, The Economics of Confrontation, <www.bitterlemons.org>, Edition 19, May 27, 2002. 241. Ibid., Morris; and Harvey Morris, “Palestinian Economic Decline Worries Donors,” Financial Times, August 27, 2002. 242. Informal Group, Humanitarian Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory—Status Report (2002), p. 11. 243. Morris, “Israel’s Buffer Zones” (May 27, 2002). See Amira Hass, “Donors are Funding Cantonization,” Ha’aretz, May 22, 2002. 244. USAID, Economic Situation Summary (October 3, 2002). 245. World Bank, Impact of ... Incursions (September 28, 2002), full document, p. 3. 246. Amira Hass, “Jobless in Gaza,” Ha’aretz, June 27, 2002. 247. Machlis, “Israel Looks to keep Bombers at Bay” (June 7, 2002). 248. World Bank, “One Year” (November 15, 2001), p. 78. 249. World Bank, Fifteen Months (March 18, 2002), p. vii. 250. See World Bank (November 15, 2001),“What Donors Can Do,” Annex, pp. 1–6; and Sapir Peretz, “Israelis and Palestinians Formulate Economic Cooperation Proposals,” Globes, March 20, 2002.
17
Hamas and the Transformation(s) of Political Islam in Palestine
1. “Islamic movement” refers not only to that movement’s political sector, in which Hamas predominates, but to its social, cultural, and religious sectors that may or may not have direct links to the political; “Islamist movement” refers to the Islamic political sector in Palestine. 2. See Sara Roy, “The Transformation of Islamic NGOs in Palestine,” Middle East Report, Spring 2000, in which some of the findings described herein were first presented. 3. This essay will focus only on Hamas, since it is the largest and most influential of the Islamist parties. 4. See Roger Guess, “Interviews from Gaza,” Middle East Policy, December 2002, p. 109. 5. Some points in this section are raised and discussed in greater detail in Mouin Rabbani and Sara Roy, “Palestinian Politics and September 11th: Critical Changes in Policy and Structure,” Middle East Policy, December 2002; and Mouin Rabbani, “The Costs of Chaos in Palestine,” ms., 2002. 6. Mark Perry, “Israeli Offensive Disrupts US–Hamas Contacts,” Palestine Report, October 9, 2002 . A senior American diplomat indicated that the United States understood that “[t]here is a difference between Hamas and, say, the Iranian
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mullahs. The one tradition is nationalist and revolutionary, the other is clerical and religious. We know the difference. We know who the honest actors are. We don’t happen to like Hamas tactics, but we know there’s a world of difference between what they want and what, say, Mullah Omar wants.” 7. The tanzim is an armed militia consisting of Fateh street cadre/activists and elements of the PA’s Preventative Security Force that has undertaken many military operations.
18
A Dubai on the Mediterranean
1. “Israel bolsters security before Gaza Strip pull-out,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, April 27, 2005, p. 14. 2. Geoffrey Aronson, “Issues arising from the implementation of Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2005), pp. 49–63. 3. Geoffrey Aronson, “Grab and settle: the history of Ma’ale Adumim,” Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, Vol. 15, No. 3 (May–June 2005). 4. Darryl Li, Interview, Fall, 2005; and idem, “The Gaza Strip as laboratory,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter 2006), pp. 38–55.
19
Conclusion—Where Next?
1. I want to acknowledge the work and input of Professor Elaine Hagopian on these and other points raised in this section. 2. Correspondence with Professor Noam Chomsky, January 2002. 3. See Leila Farsakh, Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 53–5. 4. Ibid., p. 58. 5. Ibid., pp. 58, 60. 6. See Sara Roy, “Erasing the ‘optics’ of Gaza,” Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon, February 14, 2004; and idem, “The Sharon government is discriminating against . . . Jews,” Daily Star, June 5, 2004. 7. Alain Gresh, “Palestine: The Forgotten Reality,” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2005. 8. For an excellent analysis, see Juan Cole, “The jailer,” <www.salon.com/ opinion/feature/2006/01/12/sharon/print.html>. 9. Ibid. 10. Gresh, “Palestine” (December 2005). 11. Samar Assad, “Forecast for Palestinian Economic Survival,” Palestine Center Information Brief No. 135, The Jerusalem Fund, Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006; and Mohammed El-Samhouri, “Palestinian Economic Crisis: A Vicious Circle of Poverty, Conflict and Dependence,” Daily Star, April 14, 2006. 12. Steven Erlanger, “As Sharon Ails, Palestinians Face Own Travails,” New York Times, January 8, 2006.
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13. Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard University, “Population Projections for Socioeconomic Development in the Gaza Strip,” Gaza 2010: Human Security Needs in the Gaza Strip, working paper, May 2006. 14. In February 2006, the Israeli government transferred to the PA $54 million in tax and customs revenues it had collected and owed to the Palestinians. 15. “More than one-third of the West Bank: off limits to Palestinians,” Ha’aretz, March 24, 2006. Interview with Amira Hass, April 2006. 16. See Sharmilla Devi, “Buffet’s Israeli acquisition lifts investor mood,” Financial Times, May 9, 2006. 17. See The Palestine Center, “Palestinian Diplomacy at a Crossroads,” Transcript of Remarks by Ziad Abu Amr, For the Record No. 253, May 1, 2006, Washington, D.C.
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Index Compiled by Sue Carlton
9/11 terrorist attacks 12, 223–8, 229, 230–1, 233, 301 Abbas, Mahmoud 317, 319 Abu Hanud, Mahmud 306–7 Abu Jihad 159 al-Agha, Zacharia 88 Agrexco 117, 118 Alcalay, Ammiel 18 Allenby Bridge 110–11 Allon Plan (1967) 324, 326 Amnesty International 201 Ansar 3 170 Al Aqsa Brigades 307 Al Aqsa Intifada (2000–) 215, 217–22, 234, 248, 295, 304, 325 and changes to Palestinian political environment 304–6 damage to economy 242–3 lack of long-term strategy 221–2 and post-traumatic stress disorder 284 Arab League 267 Beirut Declaration (2002) 327 Arab Medical Society 136 Arab–Israeli War (1948) 54, 130, 322 Arafat, Musa 208 Arafat, Yasir 65, 86, 101, 159, 182, 223, 235, 302 and Al Aqsa Intifada 215 and appointments 89, 150 and Camp David II 234, 318 concentration of power 172, 194 control tactics 90, 156–8, 205 and corruption 208 and Islamic institutions 161–2, 194–5, 296 and Oslo peace process/DOP 216, 237, 240 patronage structure 164, 171, 195 and popular support 221, 303
refusal to sign Basic Law 205 relations with Hamas 305 arms trade 100 Aronson, Geoffrey 317 associational life and Gazan experience 147–9, 158–9 Gaza–West Bank differences 127–30 historical context 130–1 and Israeli occupation 138–42 key forms since (1967) 132–8 and Palestinian political culture 142–7 see also civil society Auschwitz concentration camp 16, 17, 27 authority, concept of 71–2, 93, 147–8 awqaf (religious endowments) 160–1, 166 Babar, Sheikh Ahmad 168 Bank of Jordan 120 Bank of Palestine 120 banking system 120, 122, 300 Barak, Ehud 217, 239–40, 245–8, 318 Basic Law (1998) 205 Beit Sahour 253 Bell, Daniel 148 Ben Ami, Shlomo 244 Ben Eshai, Ron 287 Benevolent Society 133 Benvenisti, Meron 21, 243–4 Bertinussen, Gudrun 289–90 Bethlehem 271, 276, 285, 289, 290, 316 bin Laden, Osama 233 Blair, Tony 233 B’tselem 227, 254 Buchenwald concentration camp 16 369
Roy 05 index 369
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370
buffer zones 226–7, 288–9, 315, 331 Bureij refugee camp 52, 66–7 Burgat, François 183 Bush, George W. 12, 223, 229, 233, 290, 311, 317, 319 bypass roads 217, 228, 235, 237–8, 239, 244, 248, 254 Cairo–Amman Bank 120 Camp David II (2000) 79, 86, 215, 217, 233–4, 237, 239–40, 244–8, 303, 318 cantonization 215, 217, 239, 244, 246, 258, 288, 291 cash shortage 111–12 chamber of commerce, Gaza Strip 136–7 charitable organizations 133–4, 145, 174, 175 checkpoints 216–17, 228, 235, 239, 244, 255, 289–90, 328 and access to health care 281 damage to Palestinian economy 313, 329 Chelmno death camp 16 children/young people and authority 71–2, 93, 151–2 child labor 44, 204, 235 impact of Intifada 36–7, 44, 58–60, 152–4 malnutrition 63–4, 170, 225, 243, 286 militarization 152–3, 171–2, 194, 219–20, 301 orphans 175, 177, 181 in refugee camps 176–7 traumatization 71–2, 152, 218, 284–5 Chomsky, Noam 18, 323 Christopher, Warren 241 citrus production 110–11, 121 civil society 99, 123–7, 298 breakdown of 38, 62, 65, 67, 86, 123, 218 control of institutions 66–8 future prospects for 156–9 and individual rights 125
Roy 05 index 370
FAILING PEACE
and lack of social trust 155–6 models of 123–5 and resistance 126, 131, 137, 139–40, 154–5 sidelined in Al Aqsa Intifada 295 and state 123–5 see also associational life; Islamic institutions; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) clan 85, 126, 130, 139 clan violence 198–9, 218, 320 see also family ‘clash of civilizations’ 160 Clinton, Bill 162, 233–4 closure policy 80–1, 96–102, 241–4, 292–3, 329 economic impact of 35–6, 64, 104–12, 201–4, 242–3, 255–66, 274–5, 287, 292–3, 313 and health system 218, 268–9, 280–7 impact on employment 67, 80, 105, 107–8, 170, 202–3, 235, 258–61, 313 impact on private sector 261–3 impact on productive capacity 264–6 impact on trade 203, 263–4 and institutional development 144, 147 March 1993 closure 35, 64, 67, 88, 104–12, 144, 173 and PNA 206–7 and poverty 203–4, 235, 277–9, 312–13 Coca-Cola 265 collaborators 175–6 Communists 47, 137, 143 cooperatives 135 curfews 63, 99, 105, 106, 108, 223, 258–9, 279, 286 Dahlan, Mohammed 206 Dayr al-Balah camp 97 de-development 33–4, 81, 192, 218, 242, 252, 287, 313 debt 97, 112, 269
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INDEX
Declaration of Principles (DOP) (1993) 88, 216, 236–8 see also Oslo peace process, Oslo I (September agreement) Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) 46, 90, 100, 150 deportation/expulsion 23, 50–1, 52, 58, 63, 64, 106, 168, 322 diet 285–6 dispossession 22, 33, 36, 41, 56, 57, 228, 251, 295, 319 dissent, legitimacy of 12–13 Dowell, William 183 Drobless Plan (1978) 324–5 East Jerusalem 41, 50, 70, 107, 202, 231, 246–7, 289, 316 economic institutions 179–80 education 94, 152, 204, 218, 228, 292, 299–300 access to 258, 312, 313 charitable organizations 132, 133 institutions 66, 142, 143, 300 kindergartens 176–7, 299 and NGOs 99, 210 religious 299 and women’s committees 135 Egypt 100, 126, 129, 131, 257, 270 Eichmann trial (1961) 16 Ellis, Marc 11, 14, 25–8 enclaves 80, 227, 256, 316, 331 enclave economies 291 and Oslo peace process 26, 192, 201, 235, 239, 241, 244, 245 Engineers Association 136 European Economic Community (EEC) 68, 69 European Union (EU) 99, 158, 215, 249, 267 export restrictions 110–11, 120–1, 203 factionalism 36, 46–9, 89–92, 150–1, 173–4, 193, 222 and development of institutions 142–3 interfactional divisions 46, 49, 90
Roy 05 index 371
371
intra-fractional divisions 46, 88, 91, 93, 156–8, 302 family 35, 139, 164 weakened role of 36–7, 49–50, 58, 85, 151–2, 153, 180–1, 218 see also clan al-Farra, Mahmoud 207, 208 Fateh 83, 88–9, 144, 165 and appointments 88–9, 150 and Al Aqsa Intifada 222, 295, 301–2 corruption 72, 89, 145, 194, 221 and elections 157, 219, 221 and factionalism 46, 89–92, 93, 150, 151, 174, 219, 320 and funding for institutions 98, 99, 158 and popular support 303 talks with Hamas 302–6 see also PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) Fida (Palestine Democratic Union) 90 First Intifada (1987–93) 34–9, 57–8, 166–7 achievements of 68 and birth of Hamas 295–6 and community solidarity 34–5, 46, 140 goals redefined 51–2, 65 impact on Gaza’s economy 34, 43–4 fiscal crisis 266–8 Fishman, Alex 306 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 279 food insecurity 312 foreign assistance 31, 32, 62, 82–3, 84, 106, 108–9, 122, 171, 252, 319 food assistance 63, 225, 276–7, 278, 293 see also UNRWA limitations of 291 loss of direct aid from Gulf States 44, 105 and party funding 98 role in social fragmentation 67, 68–70, 73, 98–9, 144 US and 290
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372
foreign investment 119–20, 206, 264–6 Friedman, Thomas 311 gang violence 85, 93–4, 153, 198–9 Gaza Bar Association 136 Gaza Community Mental Health Center (GCMHC) 152, 243 Gaza Disengagement Plan 83, 223, 226, 232, 311–21, 325–32 Gaza Strip after Oslo agreement 87–101 associations, see also associational life; civil society creation of 54–5 Islamic activism 160–90 and links to West Bank 315 living conditions 56–7, 63–4, 102–3 political attitudes in 40–3 population density 57–8, 64, 311–12, 313–14, 329–30 social reconstruction 156–9 territorial division 239, 244 trade unions 131, 137 and underdevelopment 31 see also Occupied Territories; Palestinian society; Palestinians Gaza Trade Union Federation 137 Gaza Women’s Cooperative 135 Gaza–Jericho plan (1994) 81, 91, 101, 102, 103, 117, 122, 270, 326 General Ration Program (GRP) 108 General Union of Palestinian Workers (GUPW) 131 Geneva Conventions 304 Geneva Initiative (2003) 324 Gillerman, Danny 115 Gramsci, Antonio 124 Greek Orthodox Community Housing Project 253 Gulf War (1990) 40, 42, 50, 133, 287 impact on Gaza’s economy 35, 44–5, 62 Gush Qatif Settlement Block, casino 208 Haam, Ahad 13 Ha’aretz 253, 263, 327
Roy 05 index 372
FAILING PEACE
Haifa bus bombing (2001) 307 Halbstadt concentration camp 17 Halper, Jeffrey 288 Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) 48–9, 83, 161, 165, 167–9, 194, 295–308, 332 activists arrested 168 assassination of leaders 306–7 attacks on army units 62, 65 ceasefires 307 charter 167, 296 deportations 106 election victory (2005, 2006) 221, 225 and factionalism 46–7, 90–1, 145, 150–1, 174, 320 goals 167, 296 military institutions 186, 187 and municipal elections 221–2 and popular support 168, 296–7, 303–4 and reemergence of political Islam 301–3 relations with US 305–6 relationship with PNA 305, 307, 321 social services 72–3, 84, 92, 145–6, 151, 168–9, 180, 184, 186–8, 297–301 weakening of 294, 296–7 Har Homa settlement 253 Hawks 93, 94 Hebron 256, 288, 300, 316 massacre (1994) 101, 187 Hebron Protocol 237, 241 Herzl, Theodore 13 Hirst, David 233 Holocaust lessons of 18, 27–8 link with Palestinian–Israeli conflict 11, 19–23, 28 and shame 18–19 survivors 11, 13–14, 15–18, 20–1, 26–8 homes, demolition of 21–2, 226, 228, 253, 273, 284, 313, 328 Huntington, Samuel 160 Hussein, Saddam 42, 48
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INDEX
industrial parks 121 infant mortality rate 268 infrastructural projects 113–14, 121 institutional development and factionalism 142–6, 150–1, 155, 173–4 and Gaza–West Bank relations 146–7 institutional decline 84, 140–2, 172–3 and Palestinian distrust of authority 147–9, 151–3, 155–6 and Palestinian political culture 142–7 see also Islamic institutions International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 277 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 251, 266–7 Intifadas see Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–); First Intifada (1987–93) Iran 73 Islamic Revolution (1979) 165–6 Iraq 41–3, 51 Islamic Center, Gaza 165 Islamic Committees 175, 176–8 Islamic Development Bank (IDB) 267 Islamic fundamentalism 46, 48–9, 160 and role of women 49–50 Islamic institutions 160–2, 169–90, 299–301 characteristics and services of 174–80 disempowerment of 194–5, 235, 296 economic institutions 179–80, 185–6, 300 focus on family and community 180–2, 184, 187 funding 67, 98, 99, 158, 180 and Islamic message 182, 183–5, 188, 299 limitations of 183 post-Oslo context 169–74, 182–3 and radical Islam 180, 184–5, 186–8 role of 180–6, 189–90 see also institutional development
Roy 05 index 373
373
Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad al-Islami) 48–9, 90, 150, 165, 166–7 Islamic movement 160–90 features of 162–9 transformation of 294–308 see also Islamic institutions Islamic Society 175 Islamism, definitions of 162–3, 183 Islamists 83, 84, 145–6, 181–2, 222 ascendancy 219, 224, 301–7 cooperation with nationalists 304–5 militant 187–8 popular support for 220–1, 303–4 shift to social services 294, 297, 299 see also Hamas Israel assassination of Hamas leaders 306–7 control over Palestinian legislation 126, 331–2 control of Palestinian economy 31–2, 35, 201, 247 encouraging Palestinian opposition 100, 101 and integration of Palestinian economy 81, 103, 115–19, 235 policy towards Islamists 306–7 withdrawal/disengagement 51, 74–5, 81, 88, 229, 231–2, 246, 248, 322–3 see also Gaza Disengagement Plan Israel Electric Company 277 Israeli peace movement 304 Israeli settlements 22, 41, 56, 228, 237, 253–4, 316, 321 blocks 239, 246, 247, 324, 326, 332 freezing and evacuation 75, 229, 315, 325 and Oslo peace process 215, 217, 223, 234–5, 239, 240, 241, 244, 246, 247 ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades 93, 167–8, 174
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374
Jabalya 45, 47, 57–8, 97, 111–12, 114, 170, 312 Jenin 273, 276, 279, 285, 286, 289, 307, 316 Jericho 289, 316 Jerusalem 202, 237, 245, 247, 321, 332 Zion Square bombing 307 Jerusalem Triangle 70 Jews and dissent 13 and empowerment 11–12, 26, 27 ethical tradition 11–12, 17–18, 23–4, 26–7, 28 and memory 22–3, 27–8 renewal 12, 13, 23, 27 John Hopkins University 281, 285–6 Jordan 110, 120–1, 128–9, 132, 166 economic crisis 45 Jordan Valley 246, 326, 327, 331 Karni 257, 264, 278–9, 329, 331 Kerr, Malcolm 183 Khalidi, Walid 322 Khan Younis 69, 97, 256 Kissinger, Henry 323 Klepfisz, Irena 23–4, 27 Kuwait 42, 44, 45, 73, 105 land confiscation 22, 56, 217, 223 and Allon Plan 324 for bypass roads 235, 254 and Oslo peace process 215, 234–5, 237, 238, 244, 252–3 and return of land 237, 245, 246, 313 and separation wall 227, 288 Larsen, Terje 274 Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investments 119–20 Lazare, Bernard 13 Lebanon 200, 222, 226, 247 1982 invasion of 223 Li, Darryl 320–1 Local Aid Co-ordination Committee 273 Lutheran World Federation 277
Roy 05 index 374
FAILING PEACE
Madrid peace process 79, 115, 168, 324 Mengele, Joseph 17 mental health problems 36, 59, 71–2, 284–5 see also children/young people, traumatization migrant workers 260 military wings of factions 93–4, 152, 167–8, 171 Miller, Aaron 319–20 Moledet party 51 movement, restrictions on 288–90, 328, 331 municipal government 114, 132, 141, 156–7, 221, 268–9 Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan alMuslimun) 165–7, 168, 174, 183, 299 mutaradin 93–4, 95, 100, 152–3, 157 Nablus 114, 273, 276, 279, 282, 285, 288, 316, 331 Al-Nahar newspaper 157 Namir, Ora 114 National and Islamic Forces (NIF) 304–5 nationalism 92, 94, 131, 137, 153, 164, 167–8, 186, 195, 296, 307 Nazis 14, 15, 20, 22, 23 Nazism 27 Nestlé 265 Netanyahu, Benjamin 234, 241 Netzarim settlement 254 New York Times 169 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 99, 132–8, 198 funding 98, 99, 158 restrictions on 172, 195, 289, 330 see also civil society; Islamic institutions Nuseirat camp 176, 177, 178 Oasis Casino, Jericho 208 Occupied Territories agricultural losses 271–2 banking system 120, 122, 300 breakdown of public services 268–9
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INDEX
cantonization 215, 217, 239, 244, 246, 258, 288, 291 cash shortage 111–12 export restrictions 110–11, 120–1, 203 fiscal crisis 266–8 food insecurity 312 foreign investment 119–20, 206, 264–6 health-care sector 280 infant mortality rate 268 infrastructural projects 113–14, 121 and Israeli withdrawal/ disengagement 51, 74–5, 81, 88, 229, 231–2, 246, 248, 322–3 see also Gaza Disengagement Plan and military law 55–6, 58 physical damage 271–4, 312–13 private sector 261–3 productive capacity 264–6 public health 282–4 and restrictions on entry of foreigners 330 tax system 119–20 territorial division 80, 83, 216–17, 238–41, 239, 244, 246, 326, 328 and threat of expulsion 50–1, 52 and trade 115–16, 121, 122, 203, 257, 263 see also Gaza Strip; West Bank Olmert, Ehud 231 Operation Defensive Shield 273 Operation Determined Path 274, 279 Oslo peace process and closure policy 80–1, 241–4 and damage to Palestinian society 79–80, 82, 83–6, 191–2, 196–7, 215–16 impact on Palestinian economy 81, 252 and international law 192, 216, 236, 238, 240 Oslo I (1993 September agreement) 87, 90, 102, 236–8, 324 Oslo I (September agreement) (1993), see also Declaration of Principles (DOP)
Roy 05 index 375
375
Oslo II (1995 Interim Agreement) 237, 238–41, 252 and Palestinian territory 80, 216–17 reasons for failure 233–49, 292 see also peace process Oxfam 282 Palestine National Union (PNU) 131 Palestine People’s Party 89, 90 Palestine Student Organization 131 Palestine Trade Center 261 Palestine Trade Union Federation (PTUF) 131 Palestinian Authority (PA) see Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Palestinian Center for Human Rights 208 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research 304, 331 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) 275, 276, 277 Palestinian Commercial Services Company (PCSC) 208 Palestinian economy 80–1 changing consumption patterns 44, 97, 105, 108, 204–5 and confiscation of land 252–3 decline 2, 31, 35–6, 43–5, 58, 62–4, 96–8, 200–9, 225, 312–13, 328–9 and potential collapse 251, 258 social consequences of 274–87, 292 impact of closure 35–6, 64, 104–12, 201–4, 242–3, 255–66, 274–5, 287, 292–3, 313 impact of peace process 81, 252–5 integration of 81, 103, 115–19, 235 Israeli control of 31–4, 35, 201, 247 Israeli response to crisis 113–21 and Israeli West Bank incursion 272–4 and PNA policies 205–9 responses to Al Aqsa Intifada 287–8 see also poverty
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376
Palestinian Federation of the Chambers of Commerce 263 Palestinian Federation of Industries 261 Palestinian Hydrology Group 282 Palestinian National Authority (PNA) 126, 156–7, 164, 171–2, 193, 194–5, 215 breakdown of 219–20, 221, 222, 223 and Camp David II 245 and closure policy 206–7, 245 and cooperation with Islamists 304–5 corruption 31, 164, 173, 192, 195–6, 205–6, 207–8, 219, 233, 240 and damage to Palestinian economy 205–9 and disregard for moral values 197–8 failure to empower Palestinians 84–5, 219 fiscal crisis 266–8 and Oslo peace process 235–6, 238, 245, 247 salaries 170–1, 260–1, 266, 267, 268 and state coercion 207–8 and weakening of Hamas 294, 296, 297 Palestinian society changing social order 209–11, 219 community organization 46–8 and decline of ideology 194–7 disintegration of political order 87–92, 193–4 internal social fragmentation 35–6, 38, 46–50, 58, 62, 65, 66–73, 80, 83–6, 93–5, 171, 218–19 law enforcement 55–6, 199–200 and new categories of exclusion 164 and reemergence of tribalism 197–200, 218, 222 West Bank–Gaza chasm 70–1 Palestinian state 32, 42, 48, 65, 163–4, 174, 196 and Disengagement Plan 311, 317, 319, 326–7, 332
Roy 05 index 376
FAILING PEACE
Hamas and 167, 296, 305 Israeli intentions 103, 302–3 and Oslo peace process 81, 216, 239–40 and roadmap for peace 229–30 Palestinian Unified National Command 35, 104 Palestinians decline in purchasing power 109–10 and empowerment 84–5, 94, 134, 205, 299 loss of work inside Israel 43–4, 62–3, 104–8, 170, 256–7, 258–61, 312 see also unemployment; work permits and resistance 92, 147–8, 160, 304 and use of violence 38, 39, 45, 50, 52–3, 61–2, 74, 86, 171, 220 Paris Economic Protocol 80–1 Peace Now 253 peace process acceptance of occupation 235, 236–8, 295, 318–19 and credibility 74, 79, 87 failure of 40, 41, 191–2, 215–16, 233–49 future of 322–32 impact of 9/11 223–8, 230, 231 see also Camp David II; Oslo peace process; roadmap for peace Pepsi 265 Peres, Shimon 250 Philadelphi corridor 314 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) 89–90, 125, 132, 139, 149–50, 165 appointments 89, 90 challenge from Hamas 167 financial crisis 105 funding for institutions 67, 144 and Gaza–Jericho plan 122 and Oslo peace process 149, 237, 238 recognition of Israel 41 and women’s committees 134 see also Fateh
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INDEX
political Islam 161, 164, 186–7, 295–6 reascendance of 301–7 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) 47–8, 89, 90, 91, 93, 100, 137, 150 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 284 see also children/young people, traumatization; mental health problems poverty 170–1, 203–5, 225, 235, 243, 275–9, 312–13, 331 and closure policy 203–4, 235, 277–9, 312–13 and terrorism 250–1, 292 prenatal care 281–2 private sector 261–3 private voluntary organizations (PVOs) 68 professional associations 131, 136 public health vaccination coverage 284 water 282–4 public services, breakdown of 268–9 Qalqilya 289 Quartet 272, 282, 290–1 Rabin, Yitzhak 61, 96, 106, 144, 235 Rafah 47–8, 97, 226, 306 Ramallah 157, 271, 273, 276, 279, 285, 288, 331 siege of presidential compound 305, 306 Rashid, Mohammed 206, 207, 208 Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates 273 Red Eagles 93 refugee camps 57–8, 59, 109, 112, 176–8, 329 cleansing of 23 and Islamic associations 134–5, 145, 175–8 Israeli incursion 272–3 refugees 44, 54–5, 128, 157–8, 247, 296, 323 right of return 210, 229, 247
Roy 05 index 377
377
Rishon le Ziyon 41 roadblocks 107, 290, 313 roadmap for peace 228–32, 317, 324, 325 and international law 229, 230 and Palestinian state 229–30 structural flaws 229–31 underlying assumptions 230 Rose, Jacqueline 12 Ross, Dennis 83 Sabawi, Mohammed 207 Sadan, Ezra 109, 115–17, 118 Sadat, Anwar 323 al-Safadi, Sheikh Salama 168 al-Salah Association 175, 177 El Sarraj, Dr. Eyad 199 Saudi Arabia 44, 62, 73 Second Intifada see Al Aqsa Intifada (2000–) separation barrier 23, 226, 227–8, 288, 315–16, 329 Shaath, Ali 207 Shaheen, Abu Ali 207 Sharm el-Sheikh summit (2005) 317 Sharon, Ariel 148, 220, 223, 229, 248, 302, 306, 307, 317, 318, 321, 325 Shati refugee camp 56 al-Shawwa family 133, 157 al-Shawwa, Mansour 141, 156–7 Shehada, Sheikh Salah 307 Shikaki, Khalil 303 Shils, Edward 139 Singer, Daniel 27 Six-Day War (1967) 55, 165, 322 state of Israel 26, 54, 130, 201, 323, 324 suicide bombers 22, 169, 187, 250–1 and restrictions on movement 227, 228, 290 suicide bombings 22, 23, 168, 171, 187, 220, 305, 306–7 Taba negotiations (1993, 2001) 239, 324 Tel Aviv bus bombing (1994) 168, 306
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378
Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif 245, 247, 248 terrorism 12, 160, 174, 229, 230 causes of 251 and poverty 250–1, 292 ‘terrorist infrastructure’ 296 war on 223, 224, 230 tikkun (repair) 28 tourism 265 trade unions 131, 137 travel permits 173, 288, 289 Tulkarm 268–9, 276, 279, 285, 289, 316 ‘Tunisians’ 195 Turki, Fawaz 210 two-state solution 41, 51, 228, 322, 325, 332 see also roadmap for peace
FAILING PEACE
UNOCHA (U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) 284 UNRWA (U.N. Relief and Works Agency) 63, 66–7, 73, 100, 105–7, 108, 115, 128, 278, 282 feeding programs 44, 63, 106, 108–9, 276 Khan Younis hospital project 69–70 UNSCO (U.N. Special Coordinator’s Office) 256–7, 258, 259–61, 263–4, 265, 273, 279 USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) 274–5, 277, 282, 286, 287–8 Usher, Graham 220 Via Maris (Sea Road) 54
UNCTAD (U.N. Conference on Trade and Development) 256, 262, 313 UNDAC (U.N. Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team) 286–7 unemployment 45, 63, 96, 225–6, 269–70, 328–9, 331 and closure policy 67, 80, 105, 107–8, 170, 202–3, 235, 258–61, 313 and foreign assistance 291, 293, 312 job creation 113, 114, 118 UNICEF 277 Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees 158 Union of UNRWA Teachers 131 United Nations Partition plan (1947) 322 Resolution 242 236–7, 241, 246, 322–3 Resolution 338 241 World Food Programme (WFP) 276 United States aid to Palestinians 82–3 and Hebron Protocol 241 and peace process 40–2, 74, 319–20, 323–4 veto of U.N. resolution 41
Roy 05 index 378
Walzer, Michael 125, 158 war on terrorism 223, 224, 230 Weisglass, Dov 327 West Bank annexation 316–17, 324, 326, 327 associational life 127–30 and Disengagement Plan 315, 332 Israeli incursion 273–4, 276–7 Israeli reoccupation of 223, 274 and links to Gaza Strip 315 realignment plan 231 territorial division/bifurcation 238–41, 244, 246, 326, 328 see also Occupied Territories women dress code 64–5 impact of Intifada 34, 36–7, 49–50, 64–5 and investments 179–80 and Islamic fundamentalism 48, 49–50, 65 living conditions in Gaza Strip 55, 56–7 women’s committees and associations 134–5, 177–9 Women’s Islamic Association 175, 178–9 work permits 96, 107, 206, 259–60
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INDEX
World Bank and closure policy 242, 256–7, 258, 264, 287 and investment 266 and Palestinian economy 226, 251, 252, 255, 267, 269–70, 274, 287, 292–3 and Palestinian employment 258, 259–60 and physical damage 271, 273, 274 and poverty 275, 276, 277, 278, 291, 312, 329 predictions 226, 292–3, 329 and security barrier 227–8
Roy 05 index 379
379
World Health Organization (WHO) 280 Yasin, Sheikh Ahmed 100–1, 165, 167–8, 307 Yedioth Ahronot 287, 306 Yiddish 17, 18 Youssef, Nasser 157 youth clubs 73 al-Zahar, Mahmud 168 zakat (alms) 72, 145, 160, 179, 184 Zeevi, Rehavin 51 Zionism, and dissent 13 Zionist movement 33, 322
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Roy 05 index 380
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