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<font size="1"><a href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/when-the-people-rose-up-how-the-intifada-changed-the-political-discourse-on-palestine/">http://www.ramzybaroud.net/when-the-people-rose-up-how-the-intifada-changed-the-political-discourse-on-palestine/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">When the People Rose up: How the Intifada Changed the Political Discourse on Palestine - Politics For The People</h1>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">Ramzy Baroud - December 16, 2020
</div></div></div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>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) <a href="https://imemc.org/article/december-8-1987-the-first-palestinian-uprising-intifada/">broke out</a>, and there was nothing ordinary about this historic event.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>But there is more to the story.</p>
<p>Thousands of Palestinians, mostly youth, <a href="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.">were killed</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The use and misuse of Palestine as an item in some imagined collective Arab agenda came to a relative end after the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/4/the-naksa-how-israel-occupied-the-whole-of-palestine-in-1967">humiliating defeat</a>
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 <a href="https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/63D9A930E2B428DF852572C0006D06B8">recognized</a> in 1974 during the Arab Summit in Rabat, as the ‘sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>However, in the 1980s, things began changing rapidly. Israel’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538330">invasion</a>
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 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/9/16/remembering-the-sabra-and-shatila-massacre-35-years-on/">massacres</a> targeting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/6/4/the-naksa-how-israel-occupied-the-whole-of-palestine-in-1967">Arab regimes</a>,
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 <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/first-intifada-30-years-on-palestinians-resist-israeli-occupation/a-41708853">creation</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/2/17/the-need-for-a-palestinian-history-from-below/">Oslo Accords</a> and the futile peace process were, themselves, direct ‘achievements’ of the Intifada.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em> – Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “</em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092"><em>These Chains Will Be Broken</em></a><em>:
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 </em><a href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><em>www.ramzybaroud.net</em></a></p>
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