Review

This chapter explores the impact of Palestinians on the 1967 War and vice versa, with a focus on the Palestinian national movement. Its main argument is that the descent into war was propelled not only by the conflict between Israel and Arab states but also by a multifaceted struggle among Palestinians and Arabs for control over mobilization for the Palestinian cause. This struggle was defined by three overlapping realms of contestation: that among Arab states, between Palestinians and Arab states, and among Palestinians. During the years leading up to the war, Palestinian groups, principally Ahmed Shuqairi's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Fatah movement, advanced competing claims to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and their aspirations. Yet their competition was also testimony to the ambiguous boundaries between the Palestinian national struggle and the larger Arab world. In developing their own conceptions of Palestinian nationalism, they were forced to address its relationship to the call for Arab unity. In vying for resources and power, they could not depend on Arab governments. These governments, themselves competing for stature and security in regional politics, in turn invoked the Palestinian cause as justification for attempts to dictate, restrict, or interfere in Palestinian mobilization. Aspirant Palestinian leaders thus positioned themselves in a matrix of opportunities and constraints constructed by rival Arab state interests. This positioning influenced the strategies that both Palestinian and Arab leaders pursued in the conflict with Israel. It was, therefore, a crucial piece of the story of the third Arab-Israeli war.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

T extension of the higher education “franchise” to significant numbers of young people with modest means and from underprivileged strata since the mid-1970s has had far-reaching social and political consequences for Palestinian society. This brief article will investigate how Palestinian institutions of higher education—primarily the four universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—were implicated in the formation of an influential and hegemonic generation of activist intelligentsia in the crucial two decades preceding the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. It will also discuss this generation’s fortunes under the current social and political regime in Palestine. It is appropriate to locate the widening of opportunities for higher education in the mid-1970s within the general trajectory taken by the Palestinian national movement during the same period. It may be noted briefly that changes in the strategic thinking of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) after 1974 identified the Occupied Territories as the site of the future Palestinian state and the main arena for the struggle for its realization. Thus, the establishment of an infrastructure of national institutions as well as a network of political parties and front organizations to promote the struggle can be viewed as the cornerstones of the Palestinian state-building strategy. The few institutions of higher education existing in the Occupied Territories were thus “nationalized,” and their rapid expansion after the mid-1970s was supported by funds channeled by the PLO into the Occupied Territories. Wide sectors of society took advantage of this unprecedented availability of highly subsidized “mass” university education, and enrollment in local institutions of higher education rose dramatically during the 1970s and 1980s. Although the PLO and some political parties were instrumental in providing university education in the Arab world and abroad (mainly through scholarships offered by some Arab and then-socialist countries), the bulk of university graduates in the Occupied Territories after the 1970s have been the products of the local educational system. Palestinian universities during the latter part of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s were the prime site for the formation of a cadre of political activists who at important junctures were in the vanguard of the national resistance to occupation. While such cadres were also being recruited and built within other institutions such as secondary schools, labor unions, and women’s organizations, the universities were by far the most enabling medium for the crystallization of a politicized cohort of activists. Higher education has been perceived as, and has actually been, an avenue of social mobility for sons and daughters of peasants, refugees, and the urban middle and lower classes in Palestinian society. In this sense, graduates of local universities constitute a significant segment of the growing middle strata in Palestinian society, especially in the period after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority and the expansion of employment opportunities in the growing public and private sectors. What concerns us here, however, is how Palestinian universities were implicated in this process by constituting the environment par excellence for the elaboration of a politically hegemonic elite during the period prior to and after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. The “nationalization” of the universities during this critical period meant above all that—by virtue of the fact that they were being supported by public, national funds (through the Palestinian Council for Higher Education)— they were part of the national project. As such, their administrations were expected (and often compelled) to allow full freedom of political activity and to align their institutions with the national movement. While political activity was largely conceived of as national, anti-occupation resistance, there was at the same time an increased student focus on internal university politics, embodied in activities such as the campaign for “Arabization” of the curriculum and the struggle for student representation in university bodies. Elected student councils succeeded in wresting a considerable degree of authority (and recognition of the legitimacy of that authority) from university administrations and became a powerful force in university life.

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic Language Publications

Book Reviews 169 Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993, by Yezid Sayigh. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 953 pp. $99.00. Yezid Sayigh's Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 is perhaps the definitive account on the subject of the Palestinian national movement. A leading scholar on Middle Eastern politics and professor at Cambridge University, Sayigh has produced a panoramic and nuanced study that charts the life of the Palestinian movement through its turning points and between-from its origins with the diaspora in 1948/49, to the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964, to the revolutionary years between the 1967 and 1973 wars, to the PLO's steady attempt to build a state without a territory during the 1970s and 1980s, to the PLO's much anticipated return to Palestine with the signing ofthe 1993 Oslo Accords. Based on hundreds of interviews with Palestinian leaders and the rank-and-file, volumes ofprimary documents and internal memos from the various political and guerilla organizations, and a thorough reading ofthe secondary literature, this is an exhaustive and very well written book that leaves the reader in debt for Sayigh's dogged determination and skillful analysis. What distinguishes Sayigh's account ofthe Palestinian national movement from the crowd is its depth and breadth, and the analytic narrative that he uses to fashion the historical materials. In his effort to cover the events that shaped the history of the Palestinian national movement, Sayigh provides a thorough airing of the background conditions and political motivations that informed the decisions and the ultimate outcome of the event in question. Arguably the most novel aspect here is Sayigh's detailed account ofthe internal dealings and politics within the Palestinian nationalist movement, including the struggles both within the PLO and between the key constituencies and those outside the organization. Many works attempt to assess the roles and motives ofthe different players; few actually and convincingly do so. The historical details are informed by an overarching narrative that makes two central claims. The first is that the armed struggle "provided the political impulse and organizational dynamic in the evolution ofthe Palestinian national identity and in the formation of parastatal institutions and a bureaucratic elite, the nucleus of a government " (p. vii). Armed struggle, in other words, had significant effects that extended beyond the stated political or strategic goal in its conflict with Israel. Indeed, the decision to use violent rather than political or diplomatic means oftentimes compromised if not completely undercut the ability of the Palestinian national movement to obtain its publicly declared objectives. Yet armed struggle's enduring legacy was to help defme the Palestinian national identity. Social scientists and historians have long noted how violence and wars have been central to nation and state formation, observing 170 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, No.2 how these processes are central to group and identity fonnation and boundary drawing; Sayigh makes a real contribution by noting how a similar process unfolded here. Anned struggle, moreover, helped to distinguish the PLO from other Arab states and political actors. Whereas once Palestine was infused in Arab politics, and Arab politics was infused in Palestine, over time there has been a clearer demarcation and separation between the two. Although there are many factors that have led them to become disentangled and enabled the Palestinian movement to peel itselfaway from the grasp of other Arab states, anned struggle was central to this process. This was not without its cost to the Palestinian movement; the more the PLO differentiated and separated itselffrom the Arab states, the less likely Arab states were ready to sacrifice for and support the PLO. Two questionsjump out in Sayigh's discussion ofthe relationship between national identity and anned struggle. First, ifanned struggle was central to the fonnation ofthe Palestinian nationalist identity, then how might that constitutive feature have shaped the favored policies and repertoires? What other fonns ofcollective action and protest were considered and perhaps dismissed? In other words, certain policies might well have been selected not because they were more "efficient" but instead because they were viewed as more legitimate...

Actors turn to negotiating or spoiling as a means of contesting not only what a proposed peace settlement entails but also who has the power to decide the terms. Conflicts are more likely to witness negotiating and spoiling for purposes of internal contestation to the degree that one or both of the warring parties lack an institutionalized system of legitimate representation. Whether internal contestation leads a group to act as a peace maker or as a peace breaker is conditioned by its position in the internal balance of power. Two eras in the Palestinian national movement—the Palestine Liberation Organization's bid to join the Geneva peace conference in 1973–74 and its engagement in the Oslo peace process from 1993 to 2000—illustrate these propositions. Leaders of national movements and rebel groups, no less than leaders of states, are systematically influenced by domestic politics. As such, sponsors of peace processes should expect spoiler problems unless a movement heals rifts within its ranks.

The article offers an overview of the political history of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its birth to the present. It analyzes the social and political origins of the PLO, the impact on its politics of decades of regional upheavals in the scope and nature of the Arab–Israeli conflict and its ability to function as a national framework of resistance and civilian organizations despite geographical and political obstacles. Given the PLO’s nature as a non-state regional actor, the article is particularly concerned with its political adjustment along with the decline of pan-Arab identity and the Arab states collective action for the Palestinian cause, the post-1973 peace process, and the shifting center of gravity of Palestinian national action from the Arab states neighboring Israel into the Occupied Territories. The article thus explains the PLO’s survival and repeated rises from the ashes following military debacles and internal crises and examines how the Oslo process and the advent of the self-governing Palestinian Authority have affected the PLO as an overall national leadership.

If You Wish It—It Is the West Bank: The Israeli Regime in the West Bank in the First Decade, 1967–1976 [Im Tirtzu—Zo Hagada

Reviewed by: The Palestinian National Movement: Politics of Contention, 1967-2005 Gregory Mahler, Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs The Palestinian National Movement: Politics of Contention, 1967-2005, by Amal Jamal. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005. 229 pp. $22.95. The first thing to say about this book, as will be obvious to any potential reader, is that it is extremely timely. The Palestinian national movement is in the news on almost a daily basis, has proven to be among the top news stories of the last six months, and it is not likely to go away in the near future. The Palestinian National Movement provides a very good and well-documented portrait of a national liberation movement that has faced challenge after challenge, frustration after frustration, and yet has not only survived but has grown stronger over time. Although discussion of more distant historical material is included where needed, the concentration of the book focuses upon the period following the Six Day War in 1967, when the nature of so many Palestinians' lives changed dramatically as Israel became the occupying power in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The first chapter of the book focuses upon the historical context of the Palestinian national movement and includes discussion of who the political elite were in Palestine and how the outcomes of the 1967 War affected the lives of Palestinians. The War resulted in an Occupying Power (Israel), and led to a mobilization of the nationalist movement in a way that it had not been mobilized previously, shifting the political process "from nation building to state building" (p. 15). There is much discussion of the changing political structures of the Palestinians under Occupation, and how the Palestinians resisted the Israeli policy of "de-Palestinianization" on a regular basis. The issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a significant one, of course, both because of interactions between the Israelis and the Palestinians and because the philosophy and practice of Israeli settlements had significant consequences for what the Israelis were prepared to let the Palestinians do. This was a large "zero-sum game," and as Israeli settlements grew there were corresponding diminutions of Palestinian communities. Jamal does a very good job of describing the efforts of the PLO leadership as they tried to coordinate Palestinian dissent and resistance to the Israeli occupation. [End Page 194] This resistance often resulted in deportations, destruction of Palestinian property, and limitations on political freedoms of Palestinians. Of great interest is Jamal's discussion of the relationship "between exterior and interior in the Palestinian national movement" (p. 38), in which decisions were often made based upon which audience was being considered—the domestic Palestinian audience, the Occupying Israeli audience, or the more external World audience. Differences between the Fatah/PLO leadership and the Palestinian National Front began to surface in strategic terms, and the Palestinian National Guidance Committee often found itself in a position of having to struggle to make peace among the various groups of Palestinian political elites. The "politics of steadfastness" (p. 63) is the term used by Jamal to discuss the Palestinian strategy for responding to Israeli policy in the occupied territories, and a substantial effort is made in this book to discuss and analyze this complicated and terribly important topic. What can be called the "politics of occupation" has been a major, indeed, the major influence affecting the lives of Palestinians over the last four decades, and the discussion presented here examines the role of the Jordanians in this challenge, the role of domestic para-political structures such as the General Federation of Trade Unions, and the role of international actors in helping to provide financial assistance to keep the Palestinian organizations going. Among the most interesting areas of analysis for this reader was the discussion of Palestinian political leadership that is offered here, and the examination of the interaction between Islamic actors and more secular actors. Jamal tells us that "after founding Hamas and experiencing direct confrontation with the occupation authorities, the religious elite of the occupied territories sought to establish itself as an authentic representative of the Palestinian masses" (p. 110). This...

On May 1, 2017, the Islamic Resistance Movement-Hamas promulgated a “Document of General Principles and Policies”, adopted by its representative bodies after several years of debate. The reading that I propose operates a constant back and forth between the text itself and, on the one hand, a body of press releases published by the movement itself and previous declarations of its leaders, including of course the 1988 Charter and, on the other hand, the positions of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). With this Document, Hamas explicitly assumes its vocation to be one of the elements of the Palestinian national liberation movement. The originality of the text lies in the absence of explicit religious references and in the multiplicity of nods to the positions held by the PLO in the 1970s. The only novelty lies in the mention of armed resistance as a strategic choice. The Document, however, is a subtle work and its silences are just as meaningful as its assertions. Thus, far from a truly secular approach, its authors appear to have simply opted to silence the religious foundations, without of course denying them, of assessments expressed most of the time in secular terms. The Document could express a kind of bet on the future when the generation of Mahmoud Abbas, head of the PLO and the Interim Palestinian Authority of Autonomy (PA), and Salim Zaanoun, speaker of the National Council Palestinian, is called to disappear sooner or later and when is periodically announced the annexation to Israel of new Palestinian lands. While the PLO and the PA prove incapable of offering a vision of the future, prisoners of the sole logic of survival in the preservation of assets which are most often financial and individual, Hamas would thus aim to restore depth to the policies it pursued in Gaza while seeking to broaden its base.

This article examines the rise and fall of the Peace Process and questions the reason for which the United States of America was successful in bringing the two sides to the negotiating table during the 1990s. It investigates the reason for which the process ultimately failed, as well as the reason for which Washingtonwas unsuccessful in restarting the peace process in the past decade. It is argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the Arab states’ most important ally, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s decision to back Saddam Hussein during the First Persian Gulf War, and the rise of Islamic movements in theoccupied territories were the main reasons for which the PLO decided to negotiate with Israel. The subsequent Peace Process was a major political, economic and public image success for Washington and Tel-Aviv, while it was damaging to the Palestinian cause. Not only did the PLO recognize Israel and the Zionist movement, but it also ceded most of the West Bank in the process. Finally, it is argued that after the collapse of the process during the early 2000s, Donald Trump has attempted to restart the negotiations, but has failed thus fardue to the inexistence of strong leaders in both Palestinian and Israeli sides, the rise of Hamas as a resistance movement, and the disenchantment of the Palestinian people with the Peace Process.

Mahmoud Darwish: Literature and the Politics of Palestinian Identity

Fayez Abdullah Sayegh (b. 1922 – d. 1980) was born in Kharraba, Syria, where his father was a Presbyterian minister. Starting his studies at the American University of Beirut, he moved to the US and earned a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1949. He subsequently taught at the American University of Beirut, Yale, Stanford and Macalester College. Publishing widely on numerous topics pertaining to the Arab world, and the question of Palestine in particular, he became one of the foremost intellectuals and diplomats representing Palestine internationally. In 1965, he founded the Research Center of the Palestine Liberation Organization and served as a member of its Executive Committee. In this capacity, he edited and cultivated the main intellectual output of the 1960s revolutionary period in the Palestinian national movement, and was a foundational member of the diplomatic leadership of the movement. He served as the Chargé d’Affaires of the Arab States Delegations' Office at the United Nations. His most lasting legacy came on 10 November, 1975, when, as a delegate of Kuwait, he jointly authored and presented United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which determined Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. This Resolution would be revoked in 1991 by UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86, a precondition set by Israel for its participation in the Madrid Conference. The following excerpts are from of his ‘Zionist Colonialism in Palestine’, which is possibly one of the clearest and most concise descriptions of its generation to discuss the organisational set-up of the Zionist settler colonial movement, its diplomatic strategies, as well as the ideology and structural features underpinning it. As a document of its time, it places Zionist settler colonialism in the context of European colonialism, and yet it distinguishes the Zionist project from other settler colonial movements. Sayegh does so by highlighting Zionism’s aspiration to racial self segregation, its rejection of any form of coexistence or assimilation, its unbending drive towards territorial expansion, and the necessary violence, structural and physical, it has to employ to achieve its goals. These phenomena are not passing features of Zionism, but, as Sayegh remarks, are ‘congenial, essential and permanent’, and consequently also manifest themselves in the policies of the Israeli state towards Palestinians and the wider Arab region. Palestinian resistance to Zionism has demanded many sacrifices, but, as Sayegh argues, these were not in vain, for ‘[r]ights undefended are rights surrendered’, and while the Palestinian nation lost its homeland, it did so ‘not without fighting’. ‘It was dislodged’, he notes, ‘but not for want of the will to defend its heritage’. However, he also argues, the threat emanating from Zionist settler colonialism, and the duty to challenge it, is not only the concern of Palestinians alone. Rather, a regional response to Zionism is necessary, given its constant threat to destabilise the region and wage wars on its neighbours. Likewise, it is also a challenge to anti-colonial movements everywhere, ‘[f]or whenever and wherever the dignity of but one single human being is violated, in pursuance of the creed of racism, a heinous sin is committed against the dignity of all men, everywhere’. The following excerpts from Zionist Colonialism in Palestine were prepared by this issue's editors.

Jillian Becker is disturbed by what she feels are prevalent and serious (p. 2) popular misconceptions about Israel/Palestine conflict and nature of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). For Becker, two misconceptions in particular stand out: the belief that there was a state of Palestine which was usurped by Jews, who drove out its nationals, Palestinians; and . . . that Palestinians have a body of chosen representatives, PLO, to speak, act and fight for them in accordance with their wishes (p. 2). Becker's aim is to set historical record straight and help focus public debate on Israel/Palestine issue. Becker's historical narrative covers period from 1915 to 1982, and her basic contention is that since World War I, Palestinians have been misled and cynically manipulated by leaders that they themselves did not choose. The author notes that before 1948, several important Palestinian landowners privately sold land to Zionist groups even while they publicly condemned Zionism. However, when she asserts that great landowning families were ones who sold most land to Zionists (p. 19), she neglects to mention that a mere 7 percent of land area of Palestine was owned by Jews before outbreak of 1948 war. The implicit suggestion-that a few dozen cynical Palestinian families sold their country to Zionists-seriously distorts important historical information. In addition, Becker overlooks widespread popular opposition to Zionism among Palestinian peasants. As might be expected, Becker is sharply critical of present leaders of Palestinian armed resistance. She castigates these leaders for their failure to help refugee camp Palestinians, yet is unclear about precisely how refugees should be helped. She seems to think that Jordan's policy of incorporating Palestinians into Jordanian society is reasonable and should be followed by other Arab states. This outlook reflects author's belief that primary conflict in region is between Israel and Arab states, not between Israel and Palestinians. Becker concludes that those who have spoken in name of Palestinians have all been politically inept, intransigent, and murderous: tragedy of Palestinians is that they were led by men who despised or were devoid of political realism.. . . If hope lay anywhere it was in IJohn P. Egan is managing editor of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.