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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/30/bassam-shakaa-the-making-of-a-palestinian-organic-intellectual/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/30/bassam-shakaa-the-making-of-a-palestinian-organic-intellectual/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Bassam Shakaa: The Making of a
Palestinian ‘Organic Intellectual’</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/ramzy-baroud/"
rel="nofollow">Ramzy Baroud</a> - July 30, 2019</span></div>
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<p>It would be unfair to claim that Palestine has not
produced great leaders. It has, and Bassam Shakaa, the
former Mayor of Nablus, who passed away on July 22 at
the age of 89, was living proof of this.</p>
<p>The supposed deficit in good Palestinian leadership can
be attributed to the fact that many great leaders have
been either assassinated, languish in prison or are
politically marginalized by Palestinian factions.</p>
<p>What was unique about Shakaa is that he was a true
nationalist leader who struggled on behalf of all
Palestinians without harboring any ideological,
factionalist or religious prejudice. Shakaa was an
inclusive Palestinian leader, with profound affinity to
pan-Arabism and constant awareness of the global class
struggle.</p>
<p>In a way, Shakaa exemplified the ‘organic intellectual’
as described by Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci. Indeed,
Shakaa was not a mere “mover of feelings and passions”
but an “active participant in practical life, as
constructor and organizer – a permanent persuader, not
just a simple orator”.</p>
<p>Shakaa’s base of support was, and remained, the people
– ordinary Palestinians from Nablus and throughout
Palestine who always stood by his side, most memorably
when the Israeli government attempted to exile him in
1975; when the Palestinian Authority (PA) placed him
under house arrest in 1999 and when he was finally laid
to rest in his beloved home town of Nablus, a few days
ago.</p>
<p>Between his birth in Nablus in 1930 and his death,
Shakaa fought a relentless struggle for Palestinian
rights. He challenged Israel, the PA, US imperialism and
reactionary Arab governments. Throughout this arduous
journey, he survived exile, prison and an assassination
attempt.</p>
<p>But there is more to Shakaa than his intellect,
eloquence, and morally-guided positions. The man
represented the rise of a true democratic Palestinian
leadership, one that sprang from, spoke and fought for
the people.</p>
<p>It was in the mid-1970s that Shakaa rose to prominence
as a Palestinian nationalist leader, an event that
changed the face of Palestinian politics to this day.</p>
<p>Following its occupation of East Jerusalem, the West
Bank and Gaza in June 1967, the Israeli government moved
quickly to fashion a new status quo, where the
Occupation became permanent and the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) was denied any political base in the
newly-occupied territories.</p>
<p>Among other things, the Israeli government aimed at
creating an ‘alternative’ Palestinian leadership that
would engage with Israel with trivial, non-political
matters, therefore marginalizing the PLO and its
inclusive political program.</p>
<p>In April 1976, the Israeli government, then led by
Yitzhak Rabin, conducted local elections in the West
Bank and Gaza.</p>
<p>Israel had, by then, assembled another group of
Palestinian ‘leaders’, which consisted mostly of
traditional heads of clans – a small, self-seeking
oligarchy that historically accommodated whatever
foreign power happened to be ruling over Palestinians.</p>
<p>Israel was almost certain that its hand-picked allies
were ready to sweep the local elections. But the
Occupation had its unintended consequences, which
surprised the Israelis themselves. For the first time
since Israel’s creation, all of historic Palestine was
now under Israeli control. This also meant that the
Palestinian people were, once again, part of the same
demographic unit, which allowed for coordinated
political mobilization and popular resistance.</p>
<p>These efforts were largely facilitated by the
Palestinian National Front (PNF) which was founded in
1973 and comprised all Palestinian groups throughout
Occupied Palestine. What irked Israel most is that the
PNF had developed a political line that was largely
parallel to that of the PLO.</p>
<p>To Israel’s dismay, the PNF decided to take part in the
local elections, hoping that its victory could defeat
the Israeli stratagem entirely. To thwart the PNF’s
initiative, the Israeli army carried out a massive
campaign of arrests and deportation of the group’s
members, which included intellectuals, academics and
local leaders.</p>
<p>But all had failed as Palestine’s new leaders won
decisive victories, claiming most mayoral offices and
bravely articulating an anti-occupation, pro-PLO agenda.</p>
<p>“We are for the PLO, and we say this in our electoral
speeches,” the elected Mayor of Ramallah, Karim Khalaf,
said at the time. “The people who come along to our
meetings do not ask about road improvements and new
factories; we want an end to the Occupation.”</p>
<p>Bassam Shakaa was at the forefront of that nascent
movement, whose ideals and slogans spread out to all
Palestinian communities, including those inside Israel.</p>
<p>Despite decades of exile, fragmentation and Occupation,
the Palestinian national identity was now at its zenith,
an outcome the Israeli government could never have
anticipated.</p>
<p>In October 1978, Shakaa, Khalaf and the other empowered
mayors were joined by city councilors and leaders of
various nationalist institutions to form the National
Leadership Committee, the main objective of which was to
challenge the disastrous Camp David agreement and the
resulting marginalization of the Palestinian people and
their leadership.</p>
<p>On July 2, 1980, a bomb planted by a Jewish terrorist
group, blew up Shakaa’s car, costing him both of his
legs. Another targeted Khalaf, who had one of his legs
amputated. The leaders emerged even stronger following
the assassination attempts.</p>
<p>“They ripped off both my legs, but this only means that
I am closer to my land,” said Shakaa from his hospital
bed. “I have my heart, my intellect and a just aim to
fight for, I don’t need my legs.”</p>
<p>In November 1981, the Israeli government dismissed the
nationalist mayors, including Shakaa. But that was not
the end of his struggle which, following the formation
of the PA in Ramallah in 1994, acquired a new impetus.</p>
<p>Shakaa challenged the PA’s corruption and subservience
to Israel. His frustration with the PA led him to help
draft and to sign, in 1999, a “Cry from the Homeland”,
which denounced the PA for its “systematic methodology
of corruption, humiliation and abuse against the
people.” As a result, the PA placed Shakaa, then 70,
under house arrest.</p>
<p>However, it was that very movement created by Shakaa,
Khalaf and their peers that sowed the seeds for the
popular Palestinian uprising in 1987. In fact, the
‘First Intifada’ remains the most powerful popular
movement in modern Palestinian history.</p>
<p>May Shakaa rest in peace and power, now that he has
fulfilled his historic mission as one of Palestine’s
most beloved leaders and true organic intellectuals of
all times.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Ramzy Baroud</strong> is a journalist,
author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest
book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto
Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine
Studies from the University of Exeter and is a
Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and
International Studies, UCSB.</em> </p>
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