[News] When the People Rose up: How the Intifada Changed the Political Discourse on Palestine

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.ramzybaroud.net/when-the-people-rose-up-how-the-intifada-changed-the-political-discourse-on-palestine/
When
the People Rose up: How the Intifada Changed the Political Discourse on
Palestine - Politics For The People
Ramzy Baroud - December 16, 2020

December 8 came and went as if it was an ordinary day. For Palestinian
political groups, it was another anniversary to be commemorated, however
hastily. It was on this day, thirty-three years ago, that the First
Palestinian Intifada (uprising) broke out
<https://imemc.org/article/december-8-1987-the-first-palestinian-uprising-intifada/>,
and there was nothing ordinary about this historic event.

Today, the uprising is merely viewed from a historic point of view, another
opportunity to reflect and, perhaps, learn from a seemingly distant past.
Whatever political context to the Intifada, it has evaporated over time.

The simple explanation of the Intifada goes as follows: Ordinary
Palestinians at the time were fed up with the status quo and they wished to
‘shake off’ Israel’s military occupation and make their voices heard.

Expectedly, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) quickly moved in to
harvest the fruit of the people’s sacrifices and translate them into
tangible political gains, as if the traditional Palestinian leadership
truly and democratically represented the will of the Palestinian people.
The outcome was a sheer disaster, as the Intifada was used to resurrect the
careers of some Palestinian ‘leaders’, who claimed to be mandated by the
Palestinians to speak on their behalf, resulting in the Madrid Talks in
1991, the Oslo Accords in 1993 and all other ‘compromises’ ever since.

But there is more to the story.

Thousands of Palestinians, mostly youth, were killed
<https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/palestineremix/phone/stories-from-the-intifada.html#:~:text=From%201987%E2%80%931993%2C%20more%20than,)%2C%20which%20erupted%20in%201987.>
by the Israeli army during the seven years of Intifada, where Israel
treated non-violent protesters and rock-throwing children, who were
demanding their freedom, as if enemy combatants. It was during these
horrific years that such terms as ‘shoot to kill’ and ‘broken-bones
policies’ and many more military stratagems were introduced to an already
violent discourse.

In truth, however, the Intifada was not a mandate for Yasser Arafat,
Mahmoud Abbas or any other Palestinian official or faction to negotiate on
behalf of the Palestinian people, and was certainly not a people’s call on
their leadership to offer unreciprocated political compromises.

To understand the meaning of the Intifada and its current relevance, it has
to be viewed as an active political event, constantly generating new
meanings, as opposed to a historical event of little relevance to today’s
realities.

Historically, the Palestinian people have struggled with the issue of
political representation. As early as the mid-20th century, various Arab
regimes have claimed to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people, thus,
inevitably using Palestine as an item in their own domestic and foreign
policy agendas.

The use and misuse of Palestine as an item in some imagined collective Arab
agenda came to a relative end after the humiliating defeat
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/4/the-naksa-how-israel-occupied-the-whole-of-palestine-in-1967>
of several Arab armies in the 1967 war, known in Arabic as the ‘Naksa’, or
the ‘Letdown’. The crisis of legitimacy was meant to be quickly resolved
when the largest Palestinian political party, Fatah, took over the
leadership of the PLO. The latter was then recognized
<https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/63D9A930E2B428DF852572C0006D06B8> in
1974 during the Arab Summit in Rabat, as the ‘sole legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people’.

The above statement alone was meant to be the formula that resolved the
crisis of representation, therefore drowning out all other claims made by
Arab governments. That strategy worked, but not for long. Despite Arafat’s
and Fatah’s hegemony over the PLO, the latter did, in fact, enjoy a degree
of legitimacy among Palestinians. At that time, Palestine was part and
parcel of a global national liberation movement, and Arab governments,
despite the deep wounds of war, were forced to accommodate the aspirations
of the Arab people, keeping Palestine the focal issue among the Arab masses
as well.

However, in the 1980s, things began changing rapidly. Israel’s invasion
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538330> of Lebanon in 1982 resulted in the
forced exile of tens of thousands of Palestinian fighters, along with the
leaderships of all Palestinian groups, leading to successive and bloody
massacres
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/9/16/remembering-the-sabra-and-shatila-massacre-35-years-on/>
targeting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

The years that followed accentuated two grave realities. First, the
Palestinian leadership shifted its focus from armed struggle to merely
remaining relevant as a political actor. Now based in Tunis, Arafat, Abbas
and others were issuing statements, sending all kinds of signals that they
were ready to ‘compromise’ – as per the American definitions of this term.
Second, Arab governments also moved on, as the growing marginalization of
the Palestinian leadership was lessening the pressure of the Arab masses to
act as a united front against Israeli military occupation and colonialism
in Palestine.

It was at this precise moment in history that Palestinians rose and,
indeed, it was a spontaneous movement that, at its beginning, involved none
of the traditional Palestinian leadership, Arab regimes
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/4/the-naksa-how-israel-occupied-the-whole-of-palestine-in-1967>,
or any of the familiar slogans. I was a teenager in a Gaza refugee camp
when all of this took place, a true popular revolution being fashioned in a
most organic and pure form. The use of a slingshot to counter Israeli
military helicopters; the use of blankets to disable the chains of Israeli
army tanks; the use of raw onions to assuage the pain of inhaling teargas;
and, more importantly, the creation
<https://www.dw.com/en/first-intifada-30-years-on-palestinians-resist-israeli-occupation/a-41708853>
of language to respond to every violent strategy employed by the Israeli
army, and to articulate the resistance of Palestinians on the ground in
simple, yet profound slogans, written on the decaying walls of every
Palestinian refugee camp, town or city.

While the Intifada did not attack the traditional leadership openly, it was
clear that Palestinians were seeking alternative leadership. Grassroots
local leadership swiftly sprang out from every neighborhood, every
university and even in prison, and no amount of Israeli violence was able
to thwart the natural formation of this leadership.

It was unmistakably clear that the Palestinian people had chosen a
different path, one that did not go through any Arab capital – and
certainly not through Tunis. Not that Palestinians at the time quit seeking
solidarity from their Arab brethren, or the world at large. Instead, they
sought solidarity that does not subtract the Palestinian people from their
own quest for freedom and justice.

Years of relentless Israeli violence, coupled with the lack of a political
strategy by the Palestinian leadership, sheer exhaustion, growing
factionalism and extreme poverty brought the Intifada to an end.

Since then, even the achievements of the Intifada were tarnished, where the
Palestinian leadership has used it to revive itself politically and
financially, reaching the point of arguing that the dismal Oslo Accords
<https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/2/17/the-need-for-a-palestinian-history-from-below/>
and the futile peace process were, themselves, direct ‘achievements’ of the
Intifada.

The true accomplishment of the Intifada is the fact that it almost entirely
changed the nature of the political equation pertaining to Palestine,
imposing the ‘Palestinian people’, not as a cliche used by the Palestinian
leadership and Arab governments to secure for themselves a degree of
political legitimacy, but as an actual political actor.

Thanks to the Intifada, the Palestinian people have demonstrated their own
capacity at challenging Israel without having their own military,
challenging the Palestinian leadership by organically generating their own
leaders, confronting the Arabs and, in fact, the whole world, regarding
their own moral and legal responsibilities towards Palestine and the
Palestinian people.

Very few popular movements around the world, and throughout modern history,
can be compared to the First Intifada, which remains as relevant today as
it was when it began thirty-three years ago.

* – Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of five books. His latest is “**These Chains Will Be
Broken*
<https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092>*:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity
Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center
for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center
(AMEC). His website is **www.ramzybaroud.net* <http://www.ramzybaroud.net/>
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