Miller (Molly) Loeb
EDGE Final Paper
March 12, 2004
The Palestinian National Liberation Movement: From Non-State to State
The Role of Intra-party Opposition in National Liberation Movements
By and large, in the latter half of the twentieth century a regime change has meant the victory of a leftist national liberation movement over an oppressive power; whether the new regime makes good on its stated purpose of delivering justice to its people has not evidenced such a standard pattern, however. While liberation movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa were able successfully to convert their role as revolutionary “freedom fighters” into democratic participation in the state (Connell, 9), movements such as Castro’s Cuban Revolution, while accomplishing regime change, failed to deliver a successful state. This paper suggests that lessons can be derived from these cases that apply to the Palestinians’ national liberation movement, in that intra-movement conflict that often appears “intractable” may in fact be a specific prerequisite for a successful regime change into the hands of the Palestinian Authority.
Dangling today somewhere between the role of a state and a non-state actor, the Palestinian National Authority (PA) was chartered after the Oslo Accords to fill the governmental role in the would-be state of Palestine. Headed by Yassir Arafat, the PA provides an internationally recognized manifestation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which became the voice of the Palestinian nationalism movement since Israel’s independence in 1948. The ongoing transition of the PLO from a national liberation movement (and a distinctly non-state actor) to the ruling government party in a Palestinian state has proven difficult due not only to the controversial nature of the issue of a Palestinian state on an international level, but also because of the organization’s history of militant policies and because of opposition within the Palestinian national movement.
Radical Islamic Palestinian nationalist groups, the most prominent of which is Hamas, adamantly resist any concessions to the state of Israel and maintain that the PA should not be negotiating with the Israeli government. While there is little question that Hamas and similar organizations have had both the intent and the effect of erecting impediments on the road to a peace in the Middle East, this paper aims to dispel the notion that Palestinian opposition groups have completely derailed the peace process. Instead, I will argue that the presence of such vehement dissent is a necessary part to a lasting peace accord and to a stable two-state solution, as this intra-party opposition is often the most difficult hurdle to surmount for a national liberation movement that is attempting to rise to state power. To be clear, I argue that a critical first step to running a peaceful democratic state, before territory or infrastructure, is to pacify radical parties in a non-dictatorial fashion; a process by which a new political regimeproves itself capable of state governance by tying together the moderate with the extreme.
I further assert that the notion is incorrect that because the PA is born out of the PLO, an organization that employed guerrilla tactics to spoil peace efforts, the new Authority is necessarily an untrustworthy body. I will argue that in the majority of cases, as exemplified by South Africa, where a national liberation movement achieves the level of public recognition that makes it a contender for a state role, that movement has had to use violent means to jumpstart its action. It is inherent in the nature of liberation movements that many of them are haunted by the issue of “freedom fighter (or ‘terrorist’) turned politician” as they attempt a transition into state actors. Therefore the radical acts of the PLO that took place years ago, while condemnable on their own terms, should not be treated as conclusive indicators of the intentions of the PA.
It should be stressed that this paper is in no way intended to justify or condone violent resistance. To the contrary, it aims to breathe new hope for a peaceful ending into the seemingly intractable Arab-Israeli conflict by viewing the situation from a different perspective in which, despite the devastation and destruction caused by militant groups, the presence of such a force can be seen as constructive.
To defend these postulates, I will look at the role radical resistance groups analogous to Hamas have played in the rise of other national liberation movements to statehood. Though there are many examples of such intra-party resistance (including, for example, differences between the Jewish Agency forces and the more radical Irgun at the time Israel was established), I will focus on the case study of South Africa – in particular, the African National Congress’ (ANC) dealings with the Pan-African Congress (PAC) and Black Consciousness (AZAPO) – because of the many parallels that can be drawn between the PLO and the ANC (Younis, 2000). Ultimately, I find that addressing the radical position of these more radical movementsstrengthened the ANC’s capability to govern once it assumed the role of the state government.
I will further explore the South African case as an example of a militant liberation group successfully becoming democratic state actors, and then will briefly contrast this result to the Cuban Revolution as an example of a situation where the democracy that I suggest national liberation movements can potentially develop, was not achieved. Ultimately, however, I will conclude that the case of Cuba is not incompatible with my theory because there the regime that took over did so by force, not negotiation, consequently bypassing the critical stage that is the topic of this paper. Using the above conclusions, I will argue that the cause of Cuba’s failure and South Africa’s successes was the manner in which it addressed militant opposition; and that following this pattern, “Arafat’s Problem” (Kimmens) of Hamas is in fact a necessary step in route to democratic rule.
I will conclude the paper by demonstrating how the South African and Cuban examples may be representative of a general characteristic of the relationship between how a national liberation movement deals with radical opposition and its ultimate success in consolidating state power. By plotting the outcome of state takeover versus the level of opposition incurred (and, moreover, endured),I will show that national liberation movements turned into state actors are more likely to rule successfully and with stability – the two essentials to a genuine and lasting solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – if they are required to tame their radical elements as part of the early exercise of newly-acquired state powers.
The PLO/PA and Hamas
The dynamic that has emerged between PLO (and later the PA) and Hamas is a balancing act that has teetered back and forth between cooperation and condemnation. The two organizations, on the most fundamental level, have the same goal of the creation of a Palestinian state, but over the last half century, their beliefs as to the means to achieve this end have grown further apart.
The PLO was established in 1964 as a political entity that would represent Palestinian interests while functioning independently of Arab governments. While the organization did include some very basic armed forces, at the time of its founding the PLO was intended not as a physical or guerrilla force but a liberation movement that would operate through lobbying and other conventional tactics (Rubenberg, 5). By 1967, however, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War resulted in its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the PLO increasingly shifted its tactics to guerilla warfare and began to emerge as a terrorist force in the region. At the helm of this militant and revolutionary faction of the PLO was Yassir Arafat, leading the Fatah (the Palestinian National Liberation Movement), which he helped found in 1958. Fatah quickly emerged as the dominating force in the PLO.
The period between 1967-1973 was marked by Arab militancy and by PLO attempts to establish itself as the sole representative of the Palestinian people (Sagel, 19). Arafat and his party maintained that to accept the land return offer by Israel would be to acknowledge the existence of a sovereign Jewish state, a reality the Fatah had refused to accept since the creation of Israel in 1948. This is evident in a resolution passed by the twelfth meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), which served as a “parliament” for the PLO, declaring that:
The PLO will struggle by all means, foremost of which is armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian land and to establish the people’s national, independent and fighting authority on every part of Palestinian land to be liberated…
(Twelfth Session of the Palestinian National Council, Resolution Number 2)
War once again altered the PLO’s tactics after 1973, when the Yom Kippur War forced the organization to face the reality that Egypt was actively engaging in peace negotiations with Israel, and that Israel’s permanence in the region seemed assured. The PLO began to acknowledge that to continue to play a role as the system around them changed, it had to alter its hard-edge stance against the acknowledgement of the Israeli state.
Negations began to take form through the 1980’s until the beginning of the Intifada (Palestinian Uprising) of 1987, when Islamic resistance movements staged a revolt denying the existence of Israel as a state. In the PLO’s pivotal 1988 declaration of independence that formally accepted the state of Israel, the Islamic resistance groups were pitted directly against the Liberation Organization (Connell, 89). Shortly after the PLO’s declaration was released, Islamic fundamentalist groups began to consolidate and form militant organizations, such as Hamas, with charters calling for total Palestinian control over all land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea (therefore eliminating any land for Israel).
Hamas and like organizations promptly launched massive terrorist campaigns against Israelis and Israel supporters, putting the Palestinian question on the stage in a way that no amount of lobbying or protest had achieved before (Connell, 66). While the PLO worked to repair the damage done during the Intifada and resume negotiations, Hamas continued to undermine the organization’s efforts by creating an environment unfit for peace.
The Oslo Accords of the early 1990s attempted to overcome the PLO’s historic association with violent opposition (which pleased neither the Palestinian nationalists, who felt betrayed, or the Israeli parties who did not trust the Organization) by creating a new government body, the Palestinian Authority (PA), that would serve as a state actor in international affairs. While Hamas has refused to accept the PA as the voice of the Palestinians, that group has been careful not to label the would-be state actor as an “enemy.” Even in times when the PA has indulged Israel’s demands by using PA forces to arrest Hamas members en masse, the organization still outwardly maintained its “unconditional civil relationship” (Rubin, 22). Though in practice Hamas has not always demonstrated such regard forthe PA (Rubin, 116), its official position toward the PA has been unwaveringly supportive.
There are many theories why Hamas has adamantly maintained its is outward relations with the PA despite taking actions demonstrating its continuing aim of replacing the PA as the voice of Palestine. On the most basic level, Hamas gets its power from its popularity among the Palestinian populace that derives not from its political position but from the civil benefits (such as education and technological infrastructure) it provides to impoverished Palestinian areas (Connell, 94). Moreover, if the organization were to openly come out against the PA, risking chance of a Palestinian civil war, Hamas would be “held responsible for the destruction of Palestinian dreams [should war erupt] and would destroy its base of support.” (Rubin, 122). Another explanation for Hamas’ allegiance to the PA is as a tactic to further stall the peace process; at many points, the Israeli government has threatened to end negotiations with Arafat if the PA did not outwardly condemn and more clearly distinguish itself from radical groups such as Hamas.
As a result of the public support he has received from the popular Islamic organization as well as pressures from Israel and the international community, Arafat’s handling of Hamas has required a delicate mix of pressure and accommodation (Rubin, 13). To uphold his agreement that the PA would bear down on radical acts against Israel, Arafat arrested and intimidated high-ranking members of Hamas, but still fell under international criticism for releasing the prisoners hastily. Arafat has continued this balancing act by quickly and “justly” trying Palestinians arrested for attacking Israelis, while at the same time always trying to “avoid a Palestinian civil war and not to antagonize non-Hamas Palestinians by appearing too eager to ‘appease’ Israel” (Rubin, 13).
The cordial relationships, complicated and superficial as they may be, which Arafat has been forced to maintain with leaders on all sides have caused him to create a regime constantly aware of public opinion and responding to the expectations of the public he seeks to lead.. Had Arafat’s Fatah group assumed such state leadership in its militant days, it is likely that such precautions would not be taken to achieve a solution that served not only Palestinians, but Israelis living in the occupied territory as well.
The following exploration of the ANC’s transition from opposition to participation in government illuminates that this pattern of productive engagement with radical opposition creates a more stable regime. This notion as a phenomenon, as opposed to a coincidence, will be shown in the conclusion of the paper where I contrast the two cases to the liberation movement in Cuba and identify a number of other national liberation movements that fit the same pattern.
The ANC and Black Opposition
Much like the PLO, the early years of ANC activism were marked by terrorist acts against the ruling government. For black South Africans the offending government was that of Afrikaners implementing the apartheid system, which was based on legal discrimination against South Africans of color. The ANC, which originally emerged as political advocacy organization quickly turned to violence and radical guerilla war to rise to national recognition.
Again drawing the parallel between the case in South Africa and the Middle East, the leader of the most radical faction of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (meaning “spear of the people,” shortened to “MK”), Nelson Mandela -- who would ultimately become President Mandela, receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and become celebrated as one of the great peacemakers of the twentieth century -- began his rise to power with militant radical actions, much as Arafat did with the Fatah movement. The early acts of the ANC and the MK, along with other revolutionary organizations such as the PNC, quickly became infamous across South Africa, causing the organizations to be banned and members to be arrested. Mandela spent seventeen months in hiding in Ethiopia, where he trained as a guerrilla fighter, and traveled around South Africa in secret before he was finally arrested in 1962 (Roberts, 45).
Mandela would spend the next 28 years in jail, remaining active in the struggle against apartheid by writing while molding his strategy for implementing change from violence to negotiation. By the time he was released from prison in 1990, Mandela, along with the ANC, had adopted a much less radical stance from which to fight against apartheid.
As negotiation talks between the ANC leader and Afrikaner President F.W. de Klerk began, Mandela, who had become famous as a radical, found himself much to the right of many “freedom fighters” from groups that had not reformed their violent ways, such as the PAC. Similar to the PLO’s vision immediately post-Intifada of “a Palestinian State for both Arabs and Jews” (Connell, 67), the ANC was attempting to create a South Africa that would treat fairly both black and white citizens. Black Consciousness groups violently opposed this integrated approach and set up roadblocks, much as Hamas has in Palestine, to interfere with the ANC’s attempt to over throw apartheid. The AZAPO, a Black Consciousness group that stressed that blacks must free themselves from dependence on whites and strive for a black workers’ revolutionary republic” (Roberts, 97), along with the PAC, which was founded alongside the ANC decades earlier, launched a massive terrorist campaign against not only Afrikaners but also black South Africans supporting collaboration with the apartheid government.
Mandela would later write in his book A Long Walk to Freedom about the horrendous violence that ensued during the negotiations: “these were the darkest hours before dawn” (Roberts, 20). Mandela, realizing that South Africa was on the brink of a full-scale civil war, organized the monumental National Peace Convention in September 1991 to bring all the factions vying for control of South Africa into one room. Though no one had ever before attempted such a long shotproject (Gastro, 33) and most thought it impossible, Mandela was able to convince leaders from the militant PAC and AZAPO to attend and to “declare their support for the spirit and objectives of the accord [though they still] declined to sign it because of their strong noncollaborationist stance [which] prevented them from being part of any structure in which the government was represented” (Gastro, 33). Though the intra-race violence continued to torment the peace process even after the 1991 convention, Mandela thus demonstrated his ability to control and neutralize the radical opposition through peaceful means. This won him respect in the eyes not only of South Africa, but the world. When the ANC finally assumed the role of state in 1994, this respect – gained by the firm exercise of authority and leadership to quell rejections elements in his own coalition -- was invaluable in establishing Mandela’s authority to lead the country (Connell, 17).