Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance in Palestine, 1967-2016

Home , Ahmed Majdalani, Avi Issacharoff, Daniel Amit, Gaza flotilla raid, Gershon Baskin, Ghassan Andoni

Cooperating with the Enemy: Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance in Palestine, 1967-2016

by Daniel Nerenberg

B.A. in and Middle East Studies, May 2004, McGill University M.A. in Political Science, May 2006, McGill University

A Dissertation submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

August 31, 2016

Dissertation directed by

Nathan Brown Professor of Political Science and International Affairs

The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that

Daniel Nerenberg has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of

July 22, 2016. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation.

Cooperating with the Enemy: Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance in Palestine, 1967-2016

Daniel Nerenberg

Dissertation Research Committee:

Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Dissertation Director

Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Committee Member

Henry Hale, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Committee Member

iii Acknowledgements

After seven years of researching and writing, and a dozen prior to that getting to know the case, the list of good people who have influenced the process and outcome of this dissertation is too long to fit this small space. But some cannot go unmentioned. Ronit Avni, for starting me on this path, sparking my interest with her compassionate but incisive voice on movement building and the struggle for rights in Palestine and Israel. Shahabuddin, for guiding me through countless meditations on the pain of conflict and the power of contemplation. None of that early inspiration would have translated into a dissertation without Juliet Johnson, who taught me the value of critical, analytical thinking on messy topics like Palestine/Israel. I could not have conducted the research I did without the financial support of the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Societé et

Culture, the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace at Middlebury, the USIP Jennings Randolph

Peace Scholarship, George Washington University, POMEPS, the Institute for Middle East

Studies at GWU, and the generosity of my family, especially my Lillian Mauer A special thank you to my advisor and mentor, Nathan Brown, for countless reflective conversations on the case, fieldwork, and the theory, and for giving me that extra push when I needed it most. Thank you also to Kimberly Morgan, an encouraging voice when PhD land got too dark, Marc Lynch when academia seemed out-of-touch, and Robert Adcock when methodologies felt oppressive. This project would not have happened without my guides and gurus in Palestine: Amber Fares, Maha al-Shawreb, Ayman Badr, Julie Moujali, Lucy Martin, Khaled Jarrar, Vivian Korsten, Sami al-

Aloul, Rebecca Collard, Khaled Sabawi, Hamza Zbeidat, Bradley Parker and the many others who taught and entertained me during the year and a half of fieldwork. And of course, Khulood

Badawi, who served as my fixer, guide, interpreter and friend – I owe at least half of my interviews to her vast network of friends and colleagues. Back home, I owe much gratitude to

Suhad Babaa and the Just Vision crew, who gave me the space to complete the project while reminding me why the topic mattered beyond the words below. There are dear friends who have

iv walked with me along the way, patient friends who have pointed me toward my blind spots and pushed me through when I was stuck in the dreadful molasses of year five, year six, year seven.

Delano, Emily, Julia, Alanna, Erika, Misha, Arianne, Audrey, Annelle, Devin, Amos, Sarah M.,

Dr. Daniel, Alex R., Madeleine and Dan G. – I’m grateful to and inspired by you all. And finally, to Rochelle, my darling wife 2B – thank you for keeping me honest and doing the dance with me!

v Abstract of Dissertation

Cooperating with the Enemy: Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance in Palestine 1967-2016

Cooperation between members of subordinate and dominant national groups under conditions of alien rule is routine: rulers demand it, and the ruled – willingly or unwillingly – supply it. Yet the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable cooperation – what I term interactional norms - vary. Scholars have yet to explain how and why cooperation varies under military occupation, colonial rule, or other cases of asymmetric power relations between distinct identity groups. This study fills that gap by assessing fluctuations in Palestinian cooperation with

Israel from 1967-2016, building a theory of Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance. It process- traces a causal story, beginning with leadership dynamics, working through social purpose, and noting distinct and probable outcomes around interactional norms. Social purpose – the shared goals of a group that create obligations to behave in ways that aim at achieving collective goals - is considered a necessary condition for realizing clear interactional boundaries for subordinate groups under alien rule. Social purpose is triggered with cohesive leadership, producing sharp interactional norms and encouraging norm-compliance. When national strategy aims toward diplomacy, interactional norms will be positive (promoting cooperative relations with the dominant group), and compliance will be high. When national strategy aims at resistance, interactional norms will be negative (prohibiting certain interactions with the dominant group), and compliance will be moderate. Fragmented leadership, on the other hand, fails to trigger social purpose, resulting in social anomie. Where compliance exists, it is sporadic and isolated from a cohesive national strategy. This study draws on 2 years of fieldwork and process-traces changes in Palestinian interactional norms from 1967-2016, highlighting critical junctures and explaining shifts in five major phases of contestation: (1) The beginning of occupation – 1967-1987 (2) the first intifada – 1987-1993 (2) the Oslo years – 1994-2000 (3) the second intifada – 2000-2006 (4) and the post-inqisam years – 2006-2014.

vi Table of Contents

Acknowledgments iv

Abstract vi

List of Figures ix

List of Tables x

Introduction 1

The puzzle and research question 7

The argument 10

Methodology 15

Sources 18

The Case 21

Contribution 24

Structure of dissertation 26

Chapter I: Theory and Literature 28

The Emergence, Maintenance and Diffusion of Norms 31

1.2 Relational Identity and Interactional Norms 39

1.3 When Interaction is Betrayal: Deviance, Stigma, and the Outsider Within 45

1.4 A Theory of Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance 54

Chapter II: Occupation, Anomie and the Emergence of Interactional Norms 80

Leadership dynamics: Leaderless under Alien Rule 83

Un-triggered social purpose, low interactional norms 91

1973-1987: The Ascendency of the National Movement 99

vii The rise of social purpose, new and shifting interactional norms 107

Chapter III: The First Intifada 141

Leadership Out of the Ashes 146

Social purpose in the first 18 months 155

Interactional Norms 158

Unraveling leadership, unraveling norms 174

Abstruse interactional norms, decline in compliance 178

Chapter IV: Oslo and the Rise of Normalization 180

Arafat and the New Normal: 1993-2000: Leadership Dynamics 182

When Social Gets Personal 192

Making Nice, Making Normal – Interactional Norms during Oslo 194

Chapter V: The Second Intifada and the End of Normal 215

Fragmentation amidst Revolution: Leadership during the second intifada 220

No strategy, no purpose 229

Interactional Norms 233

Chapter VI: The Inqisam and Beyond 249

A shattered national movement 251

Social purpose post-second intifada – no leadership, no strategy 261

Interactional Norms – Munfalitah 265

Conclusion 294

Bibliography 311

viii List of Figures

Figure 1.1 A Theory of Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance 14

Figure 4.1: Political party support 1994-2000 188

Figure 4.2: Support for presidential candidate 188

ix List of Tables

Table 1.1 Rigby (1997) – Motivation-based typology 74

Table 1.2 A typology of interactional norms 77

Table 2.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance 1967-1973 82

Table 2.2 Interactional Norms 1967-1973 92

Table 2.3 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 1973-1987 100

Table 2.4 Interactional Norms 1973-1987 109

Table 3.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 1987-1989 142

Table 3.2 Interactional norms 1987-1989 157

Table 4.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 1993-2000 182

Table 4.2 Interactional norms 1993-2000 195

Table 5.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 2000-2005 217

Table 5.2 Interactional norms 2000-2005 234

Table 6.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 2005-2016 251

Table 6.2 Interactional norms 2005-2016 266

x Introduction

Omar sits under the fluorescent lights of the tarpaulin canopy he’s built outside his home in the northern Jordan Valley. He has the air and hardened hands of an elder, although he is only 53. He speaks of his work with pride. Omar has been a waseet – a middleman who recruits Palestinian laborers in his village to work on Israeli agricultural settlements deep in the West Bank – for a little over half his life. He has nothing bad to say about his employers, past and present – Moishe, his Israeli business liaison, stops by for tea in the village every now and then. His former employer once took him hunting, trusting him with a rifle, helping him take down a gazelle. His work, he says, is steady and satisfying

– there was more during the first intifada, except for on the occasional strike day, and business suffered some during the second intifada, but he has worked more or less steadily on the settlements since 1978. He is accompanied under the canopy by his sons, one who works in the settlement with him, and a group of boys and young men who, if they do not work in the settlements now, likely will in the future.1

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Muhannad is a social activist based in Ramallah, working for the BDS (Boycott,

Divestment and Sanctions) National Committee. He is smoking cigarettes at a local café, organizing and advocating for an academic, consumer, and cultural boycott of Israel. He is young, a graduate of Birzeit University, and is driven by a national obligation to challenge the institutions of Israeli apartheid, colonization, and occupation. He believes that a Palestinian boycott needs to go beyond the limited boundaries of the settlements – the only effective way to challenge Israel’s policies against the Palestinians is to punish and shame the occupying power nonviolently while stimulating an independent

1 Waseet, interview with author, Jordan Valley, July 20, 2013.

1 Palestinian economy. One of the biggest challenges to the fulfillment of Palestinian human and civil rights, he says, is “normalization” – working with Israel and Israelis as though the political reality between the two adversaries is in any way normal. When asked about the work of someone like Omar, he shrugs – “if he had alternatives and still chose to work in the settlements, then maybe I’d have something to say.”2

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A spokesperson for al-Karameh National Empowerment Fund at the Ministry of National

Economy proudly rifles through jpegs of posters his team displayed throughout the West

Bank at the height of a 2010-2011 campaign to halt private sector and consumer cooperation with the settlements. He shows me a baseball cap with an admonishing Uncle

Same-like finger and the slogan: “You and your conscience”. A Ramadan poster encouraging Palestinians to buy local, saying “Give me a chance to support national products.” A sticker for shop-owners to declare their place of business settlement-product free: “My conscience is clear – and yours? This place is clean of settlement products.” A t-shirt with the same reproving finger: “The lifeline of the settlements is your consumption of their products.” And an especially potent symbolic message: “Don’t destroy the refugee camps – But outlive the settlements.” The spokesperson tells me that paraphernalia carrying these slogans flooded the West Bank streets in 2010, encouraging consumers to respect the April 2010 Palestinian Authority (PA) Law to Ban and Combat

Settlement Products. He laments that the campaign lacks the resources to maintain the enthusiasm of those first few months.3

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2 BDS activist, interview with author, Ramallah, February 27, 2013. 3 PA official, interview with author, Ramallah, July 23, 2013.

2 Ahmed is a film-maker who started meeting Israelis for dialogue sessions at the

Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem in 2000, events sponsored by the Peres Center for Peace.

He first encountered the word taṭbee‘ – normalization – two years later, when his colleagues explained why they had stopped meeting their counterparts. “It was an alien concept to me and even now, 11 years later, it’s still an alien concept to me. And over the last two or three years, as the BDS movement has expanded, the word taṭbee‘ has become more commonplace. I’m often surprised over the last few years of who exactly is not normalizing and what their reasons are, and where they draw the boundaries. For me, for example – for film-makers – to be against normalization, to not show their films in Israel, is bizarre. Because I can show a packed house at al-Kasaba theatre4 films about the Wall and the occupation until the cows come home, and they all know about it. So why am I showing just one or two expats that might have arrived fresh off the boat? I mean, show your films in Israel!” Ahmed does have his own red lines of interaction. As a film-maker, he rejects funding from Israeli institutions, arguing that they have too big a creative share in Palestinian projects. Still, the boundaries of interaction, he says, are hardly clear: “The biggest issue is where you draw the line. I know film-makers who won’t show their films in Israel but who have collaborated with Israeli production companies on foreign films…so where do you draw the line? Do I have my lines? I think dialogue should always be there. Whether that means normalization or not, I’m not even sure.”5

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Across the way in Gaza, article 43 of the April 2013 Hamas government education law

“prohibits public, private, foreign or international educational institutions from a.)

4 Al-Kasaba Theatre and Cinematheque is a multi-purpose venue in Ramallah, in the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian territories. Since Israelis are forbidden from entering Area A, which consist of most urban areas in the West Bank, the audience would predominantly be Palestinians and ex-patriots. 5 Palestinian filmmaker, interview with author, July 3, 2013.

3 receiving grants aimed at normalization with the Zionist occupation b.) promoting or encouraging any activity with the Zionist occupation […] Anyone who violates the provisions of the paragraph (1) above is guilty of a felony involving breached honor

(moral turpitude), and the Secretariat will punish them for a term not exceeding ten years.

Educational institutions violating the law will be punished with a fine not exceeding

20,000 Jordanian Dinar or its equivalent in local currency.”

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On June 22, 2013, the Gaza interior ministry executed A.G., 49, and H.K., 43, for providing Israeli agents information on homes and security and military locations that were later targeted, leading to the deaths of adults and children. The two men had worked with Israel for over ten years. H.K, the Ministry stated, began working with an Israeli agent in 2003, an act he says he made to get a permit to visit his mother in Israel, who needed medical treatment. He also confessed to receiving monetary recompense for his services. A.G., in addition to providing the location of missile launching pads to Israeli agents, also confessed to forcing his wife to work with Israeli intelligence services. He claimed he was promised a work permit for Israel. This is the most egregious form of interaction with the enemy – collaboration6 – and the death penalty remains in place for violators, although only authorities in Gaza enforce it of late.

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6 A normative term that, for the purposed of this study, includes field informants, spies and prison informants. The term is often used to condemn other actions, like land dealing. I define it at greater length below.

4 This snapshot of contestation over norms relating to Palestinian cooperation with Israel – what I term “interactional norms” – is just a fraction of a discourse that Palestinians have engaged in since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. It is part of a much older conversation, opened when Jews from Europe started moving to Palestine in large numbers in the late 19th century. Perhaps the most striking feature of the above vignettes is the level of disagreement over red lines. The villager from the Jordan Valley sees no problem working on settlement farms or even befriending his employer, perhaps because he has no alternatives, perhaps because he does not see the relationship as anathema to the national ethos. The BDS activist, educated, living in relatively prosperous Ramallah, feels a national duty to encourage fellow Palestinians to draw clear boundaries, suggesting, but never enforcing, a boycott of all Israeli products. The PA and PLO, bound to agreements signed since 1994 and a political ideology that favors economic cooperation with Israel, set their red lines at the settlements, a looser boycott than the

BDS boycott, but a red line nonetheless. Film-makers and artists, especially those working along the seam with Israel in Jerusalem, assess for themselves the value of diverse forms of cooperation with their Israeli counterparts, making decisions that many activists view as normalization. And the Hamas government, working within a distinct political reality, are in the process of building their own guidelines, ones that challenges the PA’s red lines by moving beyond the settlements, and beyond the BDS movement’s normative philosophy, by threatening prison terms and hefty fines for violations. One constant red line is Palestinian “collaboration” with Israeli secret services and Palestinian land brokers, but guilty parties are only sometimes tracked down, tried, and executed.

5 In data drawn from over 150 interviews as well as secondary sources collected from 2012-2013, norms governing interactions with Israel are munfalitah –

“unbounded”.7 But they have not always been so messy. In the course of the last 45 years, since Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, interactional norms and the degree of compliance over them has varied a great deal. Why do interactional norms change? When are the boundaries of acceptable interaction clear, and when blurry? What affects the degree of compliance with these norms at any given point in time?

This dissertation develops a theory of Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance. It process-traces a dynamic causal story, beginning with leadership dynamics, working through social purpose, and noting distinct and probable outcomes around interactional norms. Social purpose lies at the center of the reflexive model. I define the term both by what it is - the horizontally (across social cleavages) and vertically (bottom-up and top- down) shared goals of a group – and what it does – creates obligations on members of the group to behave in ways that will achieve group goals. I consider social purpose to be a necessary condition for realizing clear interactional boundaries for groups under alien rule.

Social purpose is triggered with cohesive leadership, producing sharp interactional norms and encouraging norm-compliance. When the national strategy aims toward diplomacy, interactional boundaries will be positive (promoting cooperative relations with the outgroup), and compliance will be high. When national strategy aims at resistance, interactional norms will be negative (prohibiting certain interactions with the

7 A term used by Palestinian political analyst Khalil Shaheen in a televised debate on Palestinian television, “Meetings with Israelis are one form of the Palestinian struggle,” Watan, October 5, 2013, http://wattan.tv/ar/news/41857.html.

6 outgroup), and compliance will be moderate. Fragmented leadership, on the other hand, fails to trigger social purpose, resulting in social anomie. Interactional boundaries under fragmented leadership are jumbled, as moral authorities distinct from the core national leadership prescribe their own guidelines; guidelines that are often contradictory. Where compliance exists, it is sporadic and isolated from a cohesive national strategy. I assess this relationship by process-tracing changes in Palestinian interactional norms from 1987-

2016, highlighting critical junctures and explaining dramatic shifts in four major phases of contestation: (1) the first intifada – 1987-1993 (2) the Oslo years – 1994-2000 (3) the second intifada – 2000-2006 (4) and the post-inqisam years – 2006-2014.

The puzzle and research question

Occupation obliges interaction between occupier and occupied, regardless the degree of hostility between the two groups. And the occupied identity group must, despite, and indeed because of their forced interaction with an outside other, mark the outer boundaries of acceptable cooperation. Delineating interactions with an adversarial national group is a critical component of identity construction and boundary maintenance.8 It is part of the larger process by which members of an in-group debate the content of their identity and the expected behavior of dedicated members. But the extent and quality of that interaction changes over time, especially in protracted occupations or colonial ventures that waver between violence and relative calm.

One expectation from the literature is that institutions should do the lion’s share of work here; in the hands of deft elites, institutions canalize norms and produce

8 See Fredrik Barth, ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1998 and Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly. Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

7 incentives to comply, a conclusion drawn especially in the nation-building vs state- building debate, and institutionalist studies of norms.9 We should therefore expect greater consensus and coordination around norms as formal nationalist institutions evolve and became more robust. But quite the opposite has occurred in the Palestinian case: as institutions became more robust, the boundaries of acceptable interactions with Israel became more blurred. If institutions don’t do what we expect, what explains shifts in the degree of norm-agreement and compliance? Scholars have yet to explore the theoretical underpinnings of this unexpected outcome.

A close look at the establishment of the PA and the genesis of the Oslo process demonstrates the puzzling variation. Prior to 1994, “collaborators” – those deemed in pubic discourse to be cooperating with Israelis in an unacceptable way – included seven major categories: “informants” who told Israeli security forces about the activities of

Palestinian militant; “infiltrators” who penetrated Palestinian organizations on behalf of

Israeli agencies; “land-sellers” who surreptitiously sold Palestinian land to Israeli individuals or agencies; “intermediaries” who facilitated Palestinian security checks and work visas by cooperating directly with the Israeli bureaucracy; “economic collaborators” who promoted Israeli products in the West Bank and Gaza; “armed collaborators” who conducted attacks against Israel’s rivals on behalf of Israeli agencies; and “political collaborators” who represented Israeli interests in the public realm.10 Anyone committing these acts could face public humiliation, social ostracism, and for the most egregious

9 See for example Russell Hardin, One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict, Reprint edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Robert C. Ellickson, "The Evolution of Social Norms: A perspective from the legal academy," in eds. Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp. Social Norms, (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), 35-75; Christine Horne, "Sociological Perspectives on the Emergence of Norms," in Social Norms (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), 3-34; Thomas Voss, "Game-theoretical perspectives on the emergence of social norms," in eds. Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp. Social Norms, (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), 105-138. 10 “Refworld | Palestine: Information on Palestinians Collaborating or Suspected of Collaborating with Israelis; Treatment of Suspected Collaborators by Palestinian Militant Groups in the Occupied Territories,” Refworld, accessed December 1, 2013, http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=publisher&publisher=IRBC&type=&coi=PSE&docid=41501c4b2d&skip=0.

8 crimes, bodily harm or death. These seven categories shifted most dramatically after the signing of the Oslo Accords and the gradual development of formal institutions. The PA, in open institutionalized cooperation with Israel after 1993, took on a modified version of

“economic collaborator”, “political collaborator”, “armed collaborator”, and

“intermediary”, roles that were now presumed and presented as part of the national project. In assuming these roles the leadership around the PA and PLO effectively altered the boundaries of acceptable interactions and began a process of redefining Palestinian national identity, an historic task that required no short degree of political will, institutional capacity, and inspired leadership.

Despite the myriad difficulties leaders of a national movement face while crafting and maintaining identity boundaries, we should expect the PA to have been at least nominally successful. They had at their disposal many of the institutions necessary to forge and enforce a national identity: an education ministry, a police force, a legislature and judiciary, and a relatively centralized media. The received wisdom from nationalism literature suggests that these institutions would have aided the PA in their identity- building project.11 Institutions can make the socially constructed world – where meanings are in constant flux – a little stickier: “At their most basic cognitive level, institutions are sets of mental rules and schemas that drive our desires to reduce and replicate specific behaviors in specific contexts.”12 We should, in short, observe that the founding of the

PA and its constituent institutions would produce greater norm coherence and compliance among Palestinians. We should also observe increasingly clear norms and accompanying

11 See for example Keith A. Darden, Resisting Occupation: Mass Schooling and the Creation of Durable National Loyalties. (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Daniel Dor, Intifada hits the headlines. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Daniel Dor, The suppression of guilt. (London: Pluto Press, 2005); Barry Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army and Military Power,” International Security 18, 2 (1993) 80-124; and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. (London: Verso, 1983). 12 Orion A. Lewis and Sven Steinmo, “How Institutions Evolve: Evolutionary Theory and Institutional Change,” Polity 44, no. 3 (July 2012): 318.

9 compliance, as Palestinian institutions grew stronger throughout the 1990s. But quite the opposite occurred – despite a brief period of clear social purpose and shared interactional norms in the first few years of the Oslo period, interactional norms slackened while noncompliance became rampant. Social actors began to challenge the PA’s lines from as early as 1996, introducing new terms like “normalization” to the national lexicon, while suggesting that the PA themselves had entered into an unacceptable relationship with the occupying power – some blatantly accused the PA of collaboration and treason. The discourse ramped up in 2005 with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) national call, and the rise to power of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2006. The population, meanwhile, has observed its own guidelines throughout these turbulent years, only rarely complying with leadership-articulated norms. In 2016, the boundaries of interaction are messier than they have ever been. With that heightened contestation comes a confused and deeply unsettled Palestinian identity.

The argument

Interactional norms are a vital component of a national group’s identity, most especially national groups contending with some form of alien rule.13 And while stateless nations are in constant debate over the boundaries of acceptable interaction with the alien ruler, certain conditions make the rules clearer and more consensual, and compliance more likely. A correct analysis of interactional boundary variation in the stateless national context must look past the purported effects of institutions, which have amplifying or dampening effects at best. A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance begins with

13 For a useful discussion of alien rule, see Michael Hechter. “Alien Rule and Its Discontents.” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 3 (November 1, 2009): 289–310.

10 leadership dynamics, a variable scholars emphasize to explain various outcomes in nationalist conflict. 14 National leaders are especially important forces for norm- generation and norm-compliance in the stateless context; absent the institutions of the state, a national leadership must guide the nation toward particular aims, and specify strategies that best serve those aims. In short, they provide a “script” that members of the group can refer to when choosing appropriate behavior, and ultimately can help with coordination problems. But the causal line between X (leadership dynamics) and Y

(interactional norms) is not direct. Aligning with a mechanistic ontology of causation, this study unpacks the “theoretical process whereby X produces Y” with special emphasis on the “transmission of what can be termed causal forces from X to Y.”15 A cohesive leadership, therefore, produces clearer normative boundaries by triggering social purpose, a situational mechanism that links the micro to the macro, framing individual preferences and needs within the larger socio-cultural environment.

Social purpose is a frequently harnessed variable in the literature on social norms and identity. Abdelal et al define it as “the goals that are shared by members of a group,” and hold it as one of four types of identity content.16 Contested at various points of authority, it helps define group interests, goals, and preferences and creates “obligations to engage in practices that make the group’s achievement of a set of goals more likely.”17

The concept is not unlike Wendy Pearlman’s “collective purpose”, one of three elements she finds central to a national movement’s degree of cohesion.18 She understands collective purpose as a set of shared objectives, developed bottom-up or top-down, that

14 Wendy Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 15 Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods: Foundations and Guidelines (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013), 25. 16 Rawi Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable,” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 04 (2006): 696. 17 Ibid., 698. 18 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement.

11 cut across social cleavages. Noting the importance of collective purpose for a national group: “when the population lacks a collective mission […] the political arena can become a free-for-all in which any actor pursues private interests.”19

My definition combines elements of the two: the horizontally and vertically shared goals of a group that create obligations to behave in ways that will achieve group goals. In this sense, social purpose is a compass that guides members of the ingroup to follow norms and behavioral patterns that are pro-social. Most significant are the mechanistic qualities of social purpose. When social purpose is triggered, it produces norm coherence and greater compliance. By inspiring members of the identity group to identify with the abstract collective, social purpose generates compliance with interactional norms, although for reasons made clear below, that compliance will never be complete.

The relation between X (leadership dynamics) and the causal mechanism (social purpose) explains two interrelated outcomes: the degree of clarity around transactional norms, and the degree of compliance with them. I do not measure interactional norms, per se. Instead I observe variation along the nexus of words and deeds, employing discourse analysis at critical junctures to observe a.) the specific content of interactional norms and b.) the degree of contestation over those boundaries. Finally, I complement extant rationalist and symbolic theories of social norms with my own findings, explaining variation in the degree of norm compliance.

My model builds in a final contingency, “national strategy”, which determines whether interactional norms will be “positive” or “negative”, and consequently, the degree of compliance. When national strategy aims at diplomacy, interactional

19 Ibid., 10.

12 boundaries are “positive” – encouraging interactions with the outgroup. There is little need to enforce positive interactional norms, as individual behavior (cooperation with material benefits) is also pro-social (in line with collective goals). When the national strategy aims at resistance, on the other hand, interactional boundaries are “negative” – prohibiting certain interactions with the outgroup. Enforcement is an important element of compliance under resistance, as negative interactional norms disrupt “normal relations” and often come at high cost to the individual (while purportedly serving the group interest). Social purpose produces compliance with articulated norms under a united leadership, but differences in the costs associated with positive and negative norms produces varying results: positive interactional norms produce higher levels of society- wide compliance, while negative interactional norms produce only moderate society-wide compliance.

There is a third and final possible outcome: when leadership is fragmented, social purpose is low and diffuse, failing to trigger its mechanistic quality. The result is ambiguously defined interactional norms, with a high degree of contestation over their content. Society-wide compliance cannot be expected in this outcome, as individuals align themselves with one of several, divergent and competing national strategies. We are most likely to see members of the nation act in self-interest (rather than collective interest) in this third outcome.

Finally, a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance is dynamic; it considers norms to be mutually constituted, proposed by leaders and reformulated after negotiations with the targeted population. As such, compliance with a particular norm feeds back into cohesive leadership, affirming its legitimacy and strengthening social

13 purpose. Lack of compliance, on the other hand, weakens leadership legitimacy, unless norm entrepreneurs prove responsive and flexible in the next iteration of normative demands. Compliance also directly reaffirms social purpose; agents are moved by a sense of shared purpose when they see their neighbors cooperate with a norm, producing positive emotional incentives for compliance down the road.

Figure 1.1 illustrates the theory.

FIGURE 1.1: A theory of Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance

Four hypotheses follow

H1: Cohesive leadership triggers social purpose, producing clear interactional norms and urging compliance with those norms.

14 A. H1a: If national strategy aims toward diplomacy, interactional norms will

be positive, and society-wide compliance high.

B. H1b: If national strategy aims toward resistance, interactional norms will

be negative, and society-wide compliance moderate.

H2: Fragmented leadership produces low social purpose, failing to trigger the mechanism. Interactional boundaries will be ambiguous and highly contested, and compliance will be individually-centered.

Methodology

The major challenge of a project of this scope is to tell a compelling causal story, one deep in description, but with overt theorizing and observable implications. Process- tracing meets the basic ontological and methodological requirements of the task through the use of “deterministic theorization and a mechanistic understanding of causation that focuses on the process whereby causal forces are transmitted through a series of interlocking parts of a mechanism to produce an outcome.”20 This project, inspired by over three years working with joint Israeli-Palestinian organizations toward the end of the second intifada, proceeded at first inductively. I was puzzled by shifts in the norms governing joint Israeli-Palestinian partnerships. I saw no lucidity around the issue of normalization, and could not discern a popular consensus on the oft-cited charge of being a “normalizer”. And yet the discourse was all around me – in social media, in op-eds in major newspapers, in heated conversations at the coffee shop. When I approached the

20 Beach and Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods, 13.

15 topic academically years later, I began with the puzzling empirical material and worked backwards, to uncover a cause, and explain the mechanistic process by which

Palestinians internalized interactional norms. In this way, this dissertation is a Y-centric theory-building exercise, placing fact before theory. I am nevertheless unsatisfied with the purely inductive, and, like other theory-building projects, seek to “build a midrange theory describing a causal mechanism that is generalizable outside of the individual case to a bounded context.”21

To be sure, any real contribution to the field from this study will be determined by whether my causal mechanism is what I claim it is, and does what I purport it does. I follow in the social scientific tradition of overt theorization of unseen entities that produce observed outcomes. 22 Mechanisms – “frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences” open the black box, allowing for a deeper understanding of complex social and political phenomena.23 I employ process-tracing in this study to identify the triggering conditions, and determine the consequences.

A puzzle like the one I explore here also demands careful attention to the interplay of structure and agency, a dynamic that process-tracing tackled from its genesis in cognitive psychology.24 My project is very much deeply structural, situating a causal story in the strategic environment of leadership dynamics and national strategy. But it is also centered on micro-level processes, the simple choices members of an ingroup make

21 Ibid., 16. 22 See for example Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg, Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1998); Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and John Gerring, Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2006). 23 Jon Elster, “A plea for causal mechanisms.” In Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg, Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 45. 24 Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey T. Checkel, eds., Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

16 to comply with or eschew national norms. I situate the basic ontological assumptions of my project in the interpretive constructivist school, where agents and structures are mutually constitutive. While I cannot claim to fully disaggregate causes and consequences, I do bracket events to “discern steps at which an agent […] is contesting social structures, and steps at which a structure prevents agents from acting upon or even conceiving of courses of action that are taboo.”25

Finally, this project contends with measurement challenges, to observe variation in the dependent and independent variables, and to know when the causal mechanism has been triggered. While leadership dynamics are distinctly observable, interactional norms are less so. We can observe whether interactional norms are positive or negative, through a study of leadership statements and officially sanctioned strategies. But how can we determine whether norms are “clearly articulated” or “ambiguously defined”? Likewise, how do we assess whether compliance is “high”, “moderate” or “low”? And finally, is it possible to identify the threshold after which social purpose is high enough to be triggered? To be sure, much of the work of process-tracing is interpretive. Unlike positivist epistemologies, there is no binary outcome to be explained – instead we have a process by which interactional norms are more or less clearly articulated, and more or less complied with. Discourse analysis, a complement to the process-tracing used here, meets the basic ontological assumptions and epistemological challenges of my study. It presumes the intersubjective construction and interpretation of reality, and states as its goal the analysis of subjectivity and mediation.26 Discourse analysis weds a constructivist ontology and epistemology by asking how we come to know the representations that we

25 Ibid., 18. 26 Yoshiko M. Herrera, Bear F. Braumoeller, and others, “Symposium: Discourse and Content Analysis,” Qualitative Methods 2, no. 1 (2004): 15–19.

17 claim constitutes reality. Most of my sources are centered on words, phrases, and language writ large, but I extend the discursive study to deeds as well. Despite a clear interpretivist bend, this project is at its core empirical. I simultaneously reject the positivist bias that the world is fixed, but accept that “it is important to be able to have techniques that can take relatively rapid and easily developed snap shots of identities as they evolve, as they are challenged, and as they are constructed and reconstructed.”27 I elaborate below on the operationalization of my variables.

Sources

The sources that inform this dissertation get at both implicit and explicit modes of identity contestation and norm generation. Explicit contestation is self-referential in that it addresses head-on the question of what interaction with Israel means for Palestinian identity. Implicit contestation is found in every day discourse, and can best be observed through political debates, party platforms, media discourse, coffee shop talk, and day-today practices. I divide my data collection into five broad forms of contested interaction – social, academic, political, economic, and security – and tap the following textual and ethnographic sources to help uncover the content of discourse at particular moments of contestation.

Textual Sources

First intifada leaflets: These documents, distributed clandestinely but treated as sacrosanct, were the main source of contestation over social purpose and interactional norms during the uprising. They outlined which previously-acceptable forms of

27 Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable,” 700.

18 interaction (many of them day-to-day activities for a majority of Palestinians) were now proscribed. They sketched the rationale for the shift in norms explicitly, and tied them to a bourgeoning and almost consensual social purpose. The leaflets are also exciting because they show the evolution of interactional norms as the intifada progresses. Finally, first intifada leaflets were not the exclusive domain of pro-PLO UNCU activists.

Members of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, distributed their own leaflets, outlining sometimes competing social purpose and interactional norms. PA legislation:

PA legislation is a primary source of data for tracing social purpose and interactional norms from 1994-2013. It represents the main leadership line, and while not entirely respected at the popular level, serves as the basis for and justification of certain forms of interaction during this time. Hamas legislation: Hamas only started legislating after it won elections in 2006, but it soon became an important hub of contestation. Media debates: Many Palestinian media sources have broadcast debates around social purpose and interactions norms. I draw debates from the pages of al-Quds, al-Hayyat al-Jadida,

Donia al-Watan, The Palestine Official Gazette, The Palestine Information Center,

Ma’an, and Falasteen, as well as video debates on major Palestinian television networks.

BDS online content and conventions: The BDS movement has gained traction since

2005, beginning as a relatively fringe collection of civil society activists and growing into one of the more influential normative bodies in Palestine. I draw minutes from their annual conventions and study discourse from their website, and the affiliated website

Electronic Intifada. Polling data: I use polling results from the Palestinian Central

Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR),

19 Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) and other local and international polls.

Ethnography

I gathered information on social purpose and interactional norms over the course of 14 months of fieldwork from 2012-2013, although previous professional experience in the region between 2006-2008 laid the foundation for that work. Interviews: I interviewed over 150 Palestinians engaged in debates around interactional norms. These included PA and PLO officials, business leaders, social activists, academics, artists, students, intellectuals, human rights lawyers, former fighters, and laborers. Subjects were drawn from various socio-economic backgrounds, and from different geographic regions in the

West Bank and Gaza. Interview subjects also varied in age – from teenagers to octogenarians – allowing for a more complete story spanning generations. Ethnographic observation: Many findings arise through informal ethnography. I carried my research question and a note book with me on hikes through Bedouin villages, in coffee shops in

Ramallah and Jerusalem, on university campuses in Nablus and Bethlehem, and in late- night conversations with colleagues. I found these informal sessions to be of tremendous value. I also made five research trips through the Jordan Valley with Ma’an Development

Agency, an observing participant as they gathered data on labor in the settlements.

The Case

I determined Palestine as a case study through a combination of practical and theoretical considerations. First, the Israeli occupation over the West Bank, East Jerusalem and

Gaza, is exceptionally durable, offering a great deal of variation in the dependent

20 variable. This provides a unique opportunity to observe and operationalize interactional norms, to probe the various sources behind shifts in norm coherence and compliance, and to develop a generalizable theory that might serve other cases.

Perhaps more critically, the Palestinian case provides a natural laboratory to assess the effects of institutions on norm coherence and compliance. From 1994-2000, institutions around the PA - which include an executive, legislative, and judiciary, national security forces, an education ministry, and many other dressings of a quasi-state

– grew in both size and significance. Most institutional functioning paused with the second intifada, but resumed after Mahmoud Abbas’ election in 2005. We might expect these institutions, so critical to processes of national identity formation, to shape the normative world. In short, if institutions are to have the explanatory power we expect, then norm coherence and compliance should increase as institutions grow in strength and influence. The fact that they have not in offers a unique opportunity to explore shifts in interactional norms when they vary independent of institutions. The Palestinian case also allows for a comparison of two time frames marked by heightened intergroup competition, namely the first intifada and the second intifada. Both pitted Palestinians against Israel in an effort to gain some semblance of self-determination, and both included degrees of mass involvement. But they produced markedly different results in the realm of interactional norms, suggesting that intergroup competition may not be a good predictor of boundary maintenance.

The protracted nature of the occupation also permits careful analysis of my proposed independent variable, namely variation in leadership dynamics, making it a paradigmatic case “exemplifying extreme value for within-case analysis” (George and

21 Bennett 2005). Key leadership fluctuations have followed a combination of haphazard events and forces, from indigenously produced factionalism, to effective Israeli aggression, to meddling by Arab states whose interests only rarely coincided with those of the Palestinian national leadership. Observable leadership dynamics give us unique analytical insight into the discourse surrounding social purpose and interactional norms.

There are practical considerations to this research as well. Debates around interactional norms have long been in the public realm in Palestine. We therefore have unique access to a very rich and broadcast discourse in certain hubs of contestation, including primary and secondary sources. These include the bayanaat (leaflets) distributed by Hamas and the United National Command for the Uprising (UNCU) during the first intifada, PA legislation after 1994, official statements by competing factions during the second intifada, resources around the BDS movement, including their website and minutes from their conventions, Hamas legislation in Gaza since 2006, as well as public debates over academic, economic, and social collaboration found in newspapers, university events, and so on. In part because these debates have taken place in the public realm, interview subjects are open to discussing them frankly and in great detail, a reality that greatly facilitated the research process.

The scope

This project considers Palestine to be a ‘typical case’,28 and because I am positing a relationship between a particular cause, a mechanism, and particular outcome, I expect the theory will transfer to similar cases. And while I write broadly about contested

28 Jason Seawright and John Gerring, “Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research a Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options,” Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2008): 294–308.

22 identity groups, this project is distinctly about stateless national movements. The following points clarify my scope conditions.

• Cases include conflict areas where members of a geographically concentrated cultural

group are governed by a perceived or real alien group. Alien rule includes “the legally

distinct situations of colonialism, foreign occupation, and those multinational states

composed of some nations whose members consider their rulers to be alien” (Hechter

2009, 290).

• Cases must involve two (or more) distinct national groups in frequent interaction. By

distinct I mean that members of the ingroup can identify both themselves and

‘others’, whether this be through culture, language, skin color, religion etc.

• I cap the population of cases to conflicts that meet these characteristics post-1941,

when the allies of World War II signed the Atlantic Charter, accepting the principle

of self-determination (ratified in the United Nations Charter in 1945).

• Possible cases include, but are not limited to:

o Northern Ireland (1969-1998)

o The Basque region of Spain (1959-present)

o Tibet (1950-present)

o American occupation of Afghanistan (2001-present)

o Algerian war of independence (1954-1962)

o Chechnya (1991-2006)

o The Tamil region of Sri Lanka (1983-2009)

o North Yemen civil war (1962-1970)

23 o Cypriot Civil War (1967-1974)

o American occupation of Iraq (2003-2011)

o Nazi occupation of Europe (1939-1945)

Contribution

This dissertation is a first attempt at building a theory that explains why the norms governing interactions between ingroup and outgroup under alien rule vary. I build on a rich constructivist tradition that understands identity construction and maintenance as intersubjective and fluid. To be sure, much literature has theorized the construction of boundaries between distinct identity groups. Others have theorized why, once those boundaries are set, individuals deviate. And still others have explored why that deviation is considered “treason,” “defection,” or “taboo.” I explore those bodies of literature in depth below. But no study has so far attempted to explain how and why boundaries change over time, and why the same “deviation” is at times identified as unacceptable and punished, while at others it is ignored, overlooked, or forgiven. Mine is a first attempt at explaining the evolutionary and reflective process by which interactional norms are generated, negotiated, and renegotiated under alien rule, where power asymmetries shape the fundamental interactions between members of the subordinate and dominant groups.

This project has two specific contributions with respect to “collaboration”, a seemingly fixed red line of cooperation. First this dissertation puts into question the framework for a large body of literature that considers “collaboration” to be a fixed category, both in identification and punishment. I find “collaboration” to be far more flexible than extant scholarship suggests. With regards to identification – informants,

24 spies, land sellers, and other clandestine operatives working for the benefit of the enemy maintain the title “collaborator” under almost any circumstance, whether during peaceful times or during war. But other actions, like political negotiations, economic cooperation, social dialogue, or laboring for the dominant group float in and out of the realm of unacceptable. These “gray zones” don’t factor into the existing literature on collaboration, and to my knowledge, no scholars have attempted to overtly theorize why and when those boundaries shift.

Second, I find that even the most egregious crimes vary in the degree of disdain they receive from the population. Because “collaborators” are most often coerced into their role, a process I outline in great detail in later chapters, many within the nation forgive them their crime, or at the least hold some degree of sympathy for their plight.

Indeed, thousands of Palestinians who have applied for a permit to work in Israel, a travel permit to visit an ailing relative in Israel, or a visa to leave the country have been approached by Israeli authorities as possible recruits for the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. Likewise, very few Palestinian prisoners have evaded being approached as possible recruits by Palestinian agents or Israeli Shin Bet agents. Because the occurrence is so common, Palestinian masses and elites have at times approached the collaborator with offers of amnesty or other opportunities to repent. Because of this collaborators are rarely considered to have “defected” from the national group – instead, they have accepted an uncomfortable position to survive an exceptionally difficult existence. Few scholars treat the term with such variability, and this dissertation hopes to challenge that tendency.

25 Finally, this dissertation fleshes out the grey zones between loyalty and betrayal under conditions of alien rule. The scope conditions of this project place power front and center. In this sense, my project differs from those assessing civil wars, where one side or the other might gain the upper hand at any given phase of the conflict. Under alien rule, be that military occupation or settler colonialism, one side is dominant and the other subordinate, and that power dynamic permeates every decision and every action that members of the subordinate group undertake. I found that calculus to be pervasive in dozens of interviews with Palestinians from every social class, every age, and every region. My theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance has power asymmetry built in, an ontological premise that drives the analysis in ways that I hope inform future research on the subject.

Structure of dissertation

The dissertation proceeds in 6 chapters. Chapter One offers a foundational literature review to help frame the theory, working through: norm generation, maintenance and compliance; relational identity and boundary maintenance; and theories of deviance, stigma and the outsider within. I then move on to flesh out a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance, assessing institutional robustness and intergroup competition as alternative explanations, before operationalizing leadership, social purpose and interactional norms. The proceeding five empirical chapters test my theory in different time frames: 1967-1987; 1987-1993; 1993-2000; 2000-2005; 2005-2014. I conclude with a discussion of the findings, including strengths and shortcoming, as well as a discussion of ways forward for future research.

Chapter I: Theory and Literature

“[I]f one defines collaboration in a wide manner, so as to include any act of co-operation with the occupiers that helps them fulfill their aims, and hence damages the national interests of one’s compatriots, then it is possible to argue that no one who aspires to live a reasonably normal life under occupation, in the sense of trying to survive without

27 courting martyrdom, can live without ‘co-operating’ in some way or another with the enemy.”29

Palestine’s interactional norms are chaotic and unruly today, but they were even more so in the first few years of the occupation. The social reality then was total anomie – if

Palestinian society was an organism, its organs functioned erratically and without coordinated purpose.30 Individuals struggled to feel part of an integral whole. They had no united leadership to turn to for guidance, no clear guidelines outlining the parameters of cooperation with the occupiers, and little historic precedent to fall back on. And while a distinct Palestinian national identity did exist by the late 1960s, it was not at all prepared to deal with the economic, political, and social consequences of an occupation that had no explicit aim and no anticipated expiry date.

Most critically, Palestinians found themselves in a veritable centrifuge, in which the forces of supply and demand made “boundlessness” an almost inevitable outcome.

From the demand side, Israel required sensitive information from Palestinians to learn about local leadership, root out pockets of resistance, and generally deal with new security threats, information that only informants and collaborators could provide. They recruited men and women from every segment of the occupied population, pinning

Palestinian against Palestinian from the very outset. Israel also benefited from a newly available and relatively cheap labor force, a force they exploited almost immediately.

Over 150,000 Palestinians worked in Israel in the lead-up to the intifada, not including those building the settlements on the Palestinian side of the Green line.31 Finally, Israel

29 Andrew Rigby, Legacy of the Past: The Problem of Collaborators and the Palestinian Case (Jerusalem: PASSIA, 1997), 4. 30 Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (Simon and Schuster, 1997). 31 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 43.

28 benefited from a fragmented Palestinian society and leadership, and had every incentive to inhibit Palestinian unity, mobility, and more broadly, national consciousness. If these forces were not enough, Palestinians on the supply side needed to survive occupation and provide for their families. To “live a reasonably normal life under occupation…without courting martyrdom” meant daily cooperation. Few Palestinians considered whether their actions were good for the national cause – this is not the luxurious line of questioning afforded to the occupied.

Like the Czechs, Slovaks, French, Dutch, Norwegians and others under Nazi occupation, Iraqis under American occupation, black South Africans under the apartheid regime, or Chechens under Russian alien rule, Palestinians have been obliged to interact in uncomfortable ways with the adversarial other. With indistinct parameters come all sorts of loyalties and betrayals, some witting, some unwitting. And like other national groups, Palestinians wrestle with forces – from inside and outside the nation – that encumber the development of a national consciousness and an effective resistance movement. But the Palestinian case is valuable for the extreme variation over time in the content of interactional norms and the degree of compliance with them. It is thus a paradigmatic case with extreme variation in the dependent and independent variable, one that can teach us a fair deal about how social actors shape the meaning of interaction, and when they are most likely to do so.

A basic premise of this project is that social order is paramount to the successful realization of nationalist goals, and in developing my theory, I hope to shed light on the

Hobbesian dilemma, that is: How does a group attain social order when individual interests clash with the common good? One known method of overcoming associated

29 problems of collective action is to build a predictable world, where individuals understand the basic parameters of “ought-ness”:32 “If groups are to maintain a stable social order—an order that supports social psychological needs for predictability— members must develop a robust and complex system of expectations of behavior that allows for the actions of others within their perceptual fields to be treated as routine.”33

This chapter begins with an overview of the social science literature on norms and norm-compliance. It then elaborates on notions of relational identity, framing the core assumptions of this project. I build on the social identity approach in cognitive and social psychology, which underlines self-categorization as fluid, variable, and context dependent, and then shift attention to more interpretive approaches of cultural anthropology and sociology, with an eye on boundary maintenance. While these two distinct sets of scholarship frame my assumptions about identity formation and group boundaries, they lack overt theorizing of normative lines of interaction between the ingroup and the outgroup. What happens when, after boundaries are made clear, members of the ingroup “deviate”? What does the identification and punishment of this deviance tell us about the shifting normative boundaries of the group, or the likelihood of compliance? In the next section, I review three research agendas from three different disciplines: sociological theories of stigma; political science work on “ethnic defection”; and anthropological explorations of the treason discourse. I find satisfactory explanations for why individuals betray the ingroup, how societies deal with those deviants, and why the “enemy within” is both a threat to national consciousness and an important marker of negative identity, but find no explanation of how and why interactional norms change

32 Hardin, One for All, 60–65. 33 Gary Alan Fine, “Enacting Norms: Mushrooming and the culture of expectations and explanations” in eds. Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp. Social Norms, (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), 139-164.

30 over time, or why degrees of compliance vary so markedly. In the final section, I extend the discussion from these disciplines to my own theorizing of the phenomenon.

The Emergence, Maintenance and Diffusion of Norms

The theory presented here is fundamentally about the emergence, maintenance, and diffusion of norms, those rules that regulate social behavior in the inherently unpredictable world of nationalist struggle. Sociologists have, since Durkheim, noted that clearly articulated and consistent norms regulate behavior, both reflecting and producing social order. The reverse is equally true, that frequently shifting norms are a symptom and cause of social unrest, what Durkheim famously described as social anomie. Social norms are thus intrinsic to Hobbes’ elusive social order: “If groups are to maintain a stable social order—an order that supports social psychological needs for predictability— members must develop a robust and complex system of expectations of behavior that allows for the actions of others within their perceptual fields to be treated as routine.”34

The Hobbesian dilemma, then, frames the central question of this dissertation—how can members of a national group be expected to act “pro-socially” – that is to say, in the interests of the group writ large – when pro-social behavior so often contradicts individual interests? The question is, of course, not so easily answered, and demands a number of qualifications: What is pro-social behavior? Who has the right, legitimacy, and authority to define such normative guidelines? Can the understanding of “pro-social” shift over time, and if it does, who guides these shifts? Most importantly, when are we likely to observe compliance with the normative framework?

34 Fine, “Enacting Norms,” 139.

31 Social scientists struggle with these questions, predominantly because “social norms” is a slippery unit of analysis. Norms are hard to define, and even harder to observe – in the positivist sense of measurement. Two dominant traditions frame the set of questions above. The rational/legal/individualist school35 argues that individuals are rational and self-interested, and purposively choose normative behavior based on calculated assessment of cost and benefit to following a particular norm. Standing in contrast, is the symbolic/institutionalist school36, who “employ a methodological holism that views aggregations such as cultures and social classes as operative agents in the generation of norms. 37 While the “symbolic” and “rational” most often stand in opposition in the social sciences, they are not so mutually exclusive here. My theory of social purpose and interactional norms takes important insights from both, building a mid-range theory that considers the influence of symbolic and emotional forces on the rational calculations of members of the national group.

What is a norm? The core function of a social norm contains elements of both the material and the symbolic. At the most basic level, norms are “statements that regulate behavior,”38 but they are more than just behaviors that occur with statistical frequency. A norm is something that members of a group believe is both right and appropriate. In this sense, norms have a cultural component, relating to the very identity of the group, and a rational component, in which actors assess a norm’s validity within their own incentive structures. Most importantly, norms have an “ought” quality, so they do not merely occur

– they are taught. The symbolic view of norms suggest that members of a group are

35 See for example Hardin. One for All, 1995; Ellickson “The Evolution of Norms,” 2001; Voss, “Game-theoretical perspectives,” 2001; Horne, “Sociological Perspective,” 2001 and Cristina Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 36 See for example Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 1997; Fine, “Enacting Norms,” 2001; John W. Meyer et al. “World Society and the Nation‐State.” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 1 (1997): 144–81. 37 Ellickson “The Evolution of Norms,” 34. 38 Horne, “Sociological Perspective,” 4.

32 socialized into believing in their value and legitimacy,39 and many rationalists, while concerned mostly with enforcement mechanisms and incentives, would agree.

One way to conceive of the meeting between rational and symbolic in the discourse around norms is within the structure-agent framework. Gary Alan Fine, writing from the symbolic perspective, states that, “norms constitute a ‘frame’ within which individuals interpret a given situation and from which they then take direction for their responsibilities as actors in that domain.”40 Cristina Bicchieri’s game theory models draws similar conclusions about the nature of norms:

[Norms are] embedded into scripts, the rudimentary theories about social

roles and situations that guide us in interpreting social interactions,

forming expectations and predictions, assessing intentions, and making

causal attributes. Once a script has been activated, the corresponding

beliefs preferences, and behavioral rules (norms) are prompted. The

expectations and preferences that determine our choices are thus the result

of the activation of collectively shared scripts that are general enough to

subsume a wide variety of situations.41

Both statements combine the individualist and symbolic by noting interplay between structure and agent. “Scripts” and “frames” are the stuff of symbolic politics, while taking “choices” and “direction” are more about individual, rational responses to those frames. My approach to interactional norms in the national context elaborates on this theme by noting the importance of social purpose in providing a script of behavior, but

39 Fine, “Enacting Norms,” 142. 40 Ibid., 140. 41 Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, xi.

33 recognizes the decisions of purposive actors both in making new norms and complying with them.

Norm entrepreneurs and the production and diffusion of norms – Rationalists and instrumentalists concur that purposive agents produce social norms, an idea first developed as the “moral entrepreneur” by sociologist Howard S. Becker.42 Later scholars borrowed from Becker to formulate the idea of the “norm entrepreneur,”43 a term increasingly popular in the legal field.44 Importantly, studies of norms differentiate between norm entrepreneurs and the state. This is because a norm is, by definition,

“implicit in the operations of a society” and “not the product of human design and planning.”45 Nevertheless, social actors do take part in the crafting of normative frameworks, where norms are “diffusely enforced by third parties other than state agents by means of social sanctions.”46 The norm entrepreneur, central to the emergence, maintenance, and diffusion of new and old social norms, can originate from any number of social segments. They must, by definition, possess superior social intelligence and leadership skills. The national setting contains a multitude of norm entrepreneurs: nationalist leaders designate behavioral codes by virtue of the legitimacy they claim as representatives of the nation; artists and poets produce symbols of national unity that may imply particular behavioral codes; civil society actors can mobilize a national discourse and its implicit norms; religious authorities can propose norms from the pulpit or khutbah; etc.

42 Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies In The Sociology Of Deviance (New York: Free Press, 1963). 43 Cass R. Sunstein, “Social Norms and Social Roles,” Columbia Law Review 96, no. 4 (1996): 903–68. 44 Ellickson “The Evolution of Norms,” 2001; Eric A. Posner, “Symbols, Signals, and Social Norms in Politics and the Law,” The Journal of Legal Studies 27, no. S2 (1998): 765–97. 45 Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, ix. 46 Ellickson “The Evolution of Norms,” 35.

34 To comply or not to comply – The existence of a norm does not imply universal compliance. On the contrary, because norms almost always involve a clash between self and group interest, they are never consensual. When, then, might we see compliance?

Rationalists contend that individuals weigh the costs and benefits of any given behavior in light of the expected behavior of others. Cooperation with a given norm is expected when individuals perceive personal benefit and reach a Nash equilibrium, a stable outcome wherein no individual has a positive incentive to deviate from cooperation.

Thomas Voss argues that the main task of any rational theory is to explain the social context or causal mechanism that is likely to lead to a Nash equilibrium.47 In short, what are the conditions that generate a demand for a norm, and what leads to their effective realization? For Voss and other rationalists, the answer lies with incentive structures:

“The effective realization of norms depends on mechanisms that render norm conformity self-reinforcing. Self-enforcement means that rational target actors of a norm accept a norm because the norm beneficiaries have created certain incentives that make norm conformity consistent with a Nash equilibrium.”48 “Incentives” may change, but they most often involve sanction and punishment. Social sanctions enforce norms through three distinct mechanisms: 1.) Fear of negative sanction (social ostracism, resentment, unpleasant social relations, and sometimes violence). This can also include self-sanction in the form of guilt or shame;49 2.) Expectation of positive sanction (promise of reward, desire to impress others who might expect the norm to be followed); and 3.) The agent accepts that the norm is well founded (internalized norms).

To illustrate, let us imagine four hypothetical Palestinian shop-keepers in Nablus.

47 Voss, “Game-theoretical perspectives,” 2001 48 Ibid., 105. 49 Jon Elster, “Social Norms and Economic Theory,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 3, no. 4 (Fall 1989): 99–117.

35 The night before a business day, a Palestinian is killed by Israeli sniper fire. To honor the martyr, civil society groups announce a merchant’s strike. One shopkeeper obeys because an angry mob shattered his windows when he violated a previous strike. Another follows because he experiences a warm, fuzzy feeling from being a loyal patriot, as well as the support of his patrons; the third has obeyed every strike since the first intifada and recognizes that shuttering his windows to honor the martyred is precisely what he ought to do. In all three cases, the actors have positive and negative incentives to follow the norm, and make their decisions based on a calculation of their own expected behavior and the expectations of others. The fourth merchant, however, make a very different assessment. This one owns a restaurant on the outskirts of the city, shaded by trees and outside the public eye. He expects high material gain from keeping the restaurant open, little threat of public censure, and feels little value in the norm that others consider sacred

(or beneficial to business, at the very least). Nevertheless, he takes note of the norm and must choose whether to follow it or not, evidence that the norm does in fact exist.

Rational theories make lofty assumptions about human behavior, however.

Agents do not always make calculated and informed assessments of their preferences, and so compliance does not occur solely because of internal or external incentives to behave pro-socially. Stating as much ignores that rational calculations are costly, require skill, information, and social intelligence. In short, compliance or noncompliance is not always deliberate, and is often reflexive and automatic.50 The institutionalist approach offers an answer to this by describing norms as cognitive templates or “frames” that designate appropriate behavior. Norms shape social institutions, and these in turn embody

50 Cristina Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

36 those norms. When norms are engrained in the cultural ethos, there is no need for enforcement – norms simply are.51 They take on a sort of “oughtness”, that transcends instrumental considerations.52 This approach, too, has its shortcomings, and rationalists counter that institutionalists take norms, and compliance with them, for granted.53

This dissertation finds a middle ground between meaning and interests, symbols and incentives. It aligns itself more closely with the rational view on individual compliance, but contends that rational calculations are made within an overarching environment rife with symbolism and emotive power. It may never be known whether individuals care more about the “oughtness” of their actions compared with material consequences, although ethnographic study helps approach the question. Indeed, it may be true that oughtness trumps interests at certain points, while interests trump oughtness at others. For this reason, I consider that norms are realized through negotiations, in which symbols are employed to create a moral sense of obligation to follow the norms, and attempts are made to create material and symbolic incentives to follow the norm.

Norms and a theory of social purpose – My theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance leadership draws important insights and assumptions from rational and symbolic approaches to norms. I consider norms to be fluid and variable, shifting at critical junctures. Norm entrepreneurs are especially active during these historical moments, producing scripts that speak to the strategic environment and the purported aims of the movement. When nationalist leadership is cohesive, it is capable of articulating and advocating for the shared goals of the group, and as a result, is granted

51 John W. Meyer et al., “World Society and the Nation‐State,” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 1 (1997): 144–81. 52 Hardin, One for All, 60–65. 53 Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp, eds., Social Norms (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001).

37 the right to sanction externality-producing behaviors. Cohesion also implies that norm entrepreneurs will be effective in enforcement, be that negative or positive sanction. The result is triggered social purpose, wherein the script proposed by norm entrepreneurs becomes active, guiding agents in the interpretation of social interactions. When social purpose is triggered, interactional norms are more likely to be clear and compliance more frequent. The opposing scenario, fragmented leadership, does not mean scripts do not exist. On the contrary, too many scripts exist, contributing to Durkheim’s anomie.

Of course, there is no pristine realm wherein interactional norms are fully known and complied with. No degree of cohesive leadership will produce that result, in large part because of associated problems of collective action, the presence of free-riders, and the high cost of norms that place group interest ahead of self-interest. Yet it remains the daunting task of any national leadership hoping to mobilize its population with common vision and tactics. For this reason, national leaders must find creative and effective ways to draft a script that encourages members of the nation to make the analytical leap from self-identity to group-identity, a quandary I now turn to.

1.2 Relational Identity and Interactional Norms

Norms guiding interactions between Palestinians and Israelis have, unsurprisingly, never been consensual, nor has compliance ever come close to complete. We nevertheless should be concerned with the character and contestation over interactional norms, as they tell us a great deal about the evolution of Palestinian national identity over time. Guiding the following discussion is the Hegelian principle that identity is defined in dialogue

38 with, and at times in struggle against, a “significant other.”54 Identity is fundamentally relational, and Palestinians have had little choice but to define their own group in relation to an adversarial other.

From self-identification to social identification - Much of the received knowledge in political science regarding relational identity stems from seminal pieces in social psychology, anthropology, and sociology. If we are to understand interactional norms we must begin at the level of the individual, as it moves from narrow notions of self-identity, to more abstract notions of collective identity. Social Identity Theory (SIT) and self- categorization theory, constituent parts of the social identity approach, follow the

Hegelian principle that expressions of identity are fundamentally relational and comparative. This is an especially potent idea in cognitive55 and social psychology56 with the observation that the individual moves from the abstract “personal self” to the abstract

“social self” in varying social contexts. Scholars in this field argue that the leap from self to collective consciousness is only accomplished by comparing “us” to “them”, a process taken within innumerable self-categories, as varied as family, clan, class, gender, ethnic group, race, or nation. The social identity approach recognizes that social categories give meaning to the world – meaning formed through accentuation, distinction, and comparison within groups and between them.

We can explain a great deal about Palestinian normative frameworks through the psychological lens. At its foundation, social psychology tells us that increased social identity (in contrast to self identity), tends toward deindividuation, allowing the agent to

54 Charles Taylor et al., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann, Expanded Paperback edition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1994), 33. 55 Ulric Neisser, ed., Concepts and Conceptual Development: Ecological and Intellectual Factors in Categorization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 56 H. Tajfel, “Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations,” Annual Review of Psychology 33, no. 1 (1982): 1–39. John C. Turner et al., “Self and Collective: Cognition and Social Context,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20, no. 5 (October 1, 1994): 454–63.

39 transcend personal preferences and act according to group needs and desires. A social identity both reflects and encourages shared purpose and collective action based on an abstract “we”. Most relevant to this study on leadership, social purpose and interactional norms, is the observation that self-categorization is a fluid process in which agents choose to act in the interest of the self (a lower level of abstraction) or a reified collective, like the nation (a higher level of abstraction). Turner et al make the point well:

If self-categorization is comparative, inherently variable, fluid, and

context dependent, then the inference is that the self is not a relatively

fixed mental structure, but the expression of a dynamic process of social

judgment. The particular self-categories that emerge in different contexts

are the variable products of this judgmental process. We can speculate that

self-categories are reflexive judgments in which the perceiver is defined in

terms of his or her changing relationships to others within the frame of

reference, presumably to enable the individual to regulate himself or

herself in relations to an ever-changing social reality.57

Implicit here is that agents act within changing social structures, at times motivated by self-interest, and at others urged toward collective interest. The social identity approach is especially useful for understanding the effect of the causal mechanism specified in this study, and the social context in which it is triggered. Social purpose urges the individual to act beyond narrow self-interest, for the advancement of the aims of the collective. It is the invisible force that engenders a social identity, the

57 Turner et al., “Self and Collective,” 458.

40 script that guides members of the nation from self-consciousness to group-consciousness.

Whereas social identity theory is predominantly concerned with intra-individual processes – the relational abstractions the self makes vis-à-vis others – my study steps back from the agent’s own decision-making process, and asks how others view their behavior. In short, being concerned with charges of loyalty and betrayal, this project is not only about self-judgment, but also about judgment by members of the nation against other members of the nation. So while I hope to explain why individual Palestinians

“shun the national interest” by interacting in unacceptable ways with Israelis, I also aim to explain how norm entrepreneurs delineate and enforce the boundaries of acceptable interaction over time. And while I draw from social identity literature broadly when explaining the actions of personal “deviants”, I will defer to extant scholarship in cognitive and social psychology for a more complete explanation. Still, the social identity approach does frame two core assumptions of this research – that identity is relational, and that self-categorization is fluid, variable, and context dependent. To better understand the specific normative boundaries shaped by social context, I shift attention to the more interpretive approaches of cultural anthropologists and sociologists.

Why interactional boundaries matter – The idea of “boundaries” – symbolic, social, and physical – has grown in popularity in recent scholarship in the social sciences,58 unsurprising given that boundaries form the basis of work by Marx (class distinctions),

Weber (ethnic distinctions), Durkheim (distinguishing the sacred and profane), among others. While diverse, the scholarship nevertheless agrees on the following: symbolic

58 For a review, see Michele Lamont and Virág Molnár, “The Study of Boundaries Across the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002).

41 boundaries, when agreed upon, can constrain and guide beliefs and actions, having important and practical impact on the ordering of social life. An especially influential piece theorizing this phenomenon for ethnic groups is Fredrik Barth’s essay on the social organization of cultural difference. 59 Barth’s key insight is that ethnic identity is relational and processual – that is to say a group’s identity is defined by its relationship to one or more other groups and maintained with particular strategies over time. Like psychological work on the subject, he suggests that social actors work to create boundaries between the in-group and out-group, delineating a cultural border that prescribes acceptable interactions. The figurative location of that border then highlights the relational characteristics of the identity group, serving as a reminder of what it means to be a loyal member of the group. Barth makes a critical leap in ethnicity studies, arguing that identity is shaped by much more than just overt diacritical features like language, dress, or shared history. It also includes the “basic value orientations: the standards of morality and excellence by which performance is judged.”60

The social boundary that defines a group and separates it from others is not merely a marker of identity. It is an all-important tool that shapes the permissible and prohibited vis-à-vis interactions with outside groups. Boundaries “canalize social life”, in essence guiding the complex and sometimes violent flow of cultural life into a navigable canal so that members of the same group can identify each other by virtue of the fact that they are ‘playing the same game.’61 This is all the more important when considering that interactions with a more dominant culture in multicultural or complex societies can

59 Fredrik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969). 60 Ibid., 14. 61 Ibid., 15.

42 threaten the fabric of the weaker group’s society.62 When interactions are inevitable, as they are between competing identity groups, structuring social interactions allows the weaker side to differentiate and reaffirm its own identity, surviving even the most turbulent social upheavals. In short, clear social boundaries “[teach] the individual appropriate behavior vis-à-vis others” 63 and “[insulate] parts of the cultures from confrontation and modification.”64 The most effective groups, be they national or ethnic, succeed in delineating unambiguous and binary boundaries.

Three points are especially relevant to this dissertation: First, identity groups construct and maintain social boundaries in large part by interacting with distinct

“others”. Second, the boundaries that those interactions produce, while never exact or fixed, outline appropriate behavior for members of the ingroup. Finally, and crucially, relations with an outside other allow individuals to self-categorize into larger social collectives, groups that can offer a sense of belonging and social purpose.

The most explicit references to relational identity in political science derive from nationalism and ethnicity scholarship, particularly those who subscribe to a constructivist ontology. Max Weber, the progenitor of many fundamental assumptions of ethnic studies in political science, was perhaps the first to articulate ethnicity and nationalism as relational,65 stressing not only common decent and shared history and culture, but also comparisons to hostile “others”. Ingroup – outgroup relations are unsurprisingly the basis for most theorizing of ethnic violence,66 as well as work that explores the relationship of

62 See for example Abner Cohen, Two-Dimensional Man; an Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and Taylor et al., Multiculturalism, 1994. 63 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives: Third Edition (New York: Pluto Press, 2010), 49. 64 Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, 16. 65 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (University of California Press, 1978). 66 See for example Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (University of California Press, 2000); James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin. “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation.” The American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (December 1996): 715–35;

43 the state to ethnic and national identity mobilization.67 While each of these accept some element of relationality, Henry Hale’s treatment of the subject is more explicit. He transcends debates by suggesting that “‘ethnicity’ does not produce any behavioral motivation at all, be it conflictual or cooperative,” and instead proposes that it allows people to navigate a complex social world by giving them strategies to pursue the most significant motivations.68 Finally, interactions with distinct and sometimes adversarial identity groups are at the basis of much social movement literature,69 and discussions on social and collective identity more broadly.70

Like the social identity approach and social anthropological research, political scientists agree that relationality is a fundamental social process, one that constructs identity, maintains borders, and shapes individual and social behavior. Despite the very diverse nature of this work, it largely undertheorizes the specific dynamics of groups and individuals working to construct clear normative boundaries of interaction with distinct others. We are left with many unanswered questions: when are boundaries most likely to be clearly articulated? When should we expect members of the ingroup to accept those boundaries? How do these boundaries change over time? The literature certainly gives us the analytical tools to deal with these questions, but the overt theorizing is still missing.

Wilkinson, Steven. Votes and Violence Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Andreas Wimmer, “The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory.” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 4 (January 1, 2008): 970–1022; and Kanchan Chandra, “Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability.” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 2 (June 2005): 235–52.

67 See for example Weber, Economy and Society; E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Keith Darden and Anna Maria Grzymała-Busse, “The Great Divide: Literacy, Nationalism, and the Communist Collapse.” World Politics 59, no. 1 (2006): 83–115; Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. 68 Henry E Hale, The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2. 69 William A. Gamson, Talking Politics. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. Dynamics of Contention. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Charles Tilly, Identities, Boundaries and Social Ties. (Boulder, Colo.: Routledge, 2006). 70 Brubaker, Rogers, and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity.’” Theory and Society 29 (2000): 1–47; Lamont and Molnár, “The Study of Boundaries Across the Social Sciences”; Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable.”

44 Most importantly, the literature seems blind to the very exciting and dynamic discourse surrounding red lines of interaction, failing to note the effect that deviance from identity boundaries can have on the larger community. This next section explores the production of insiders and outsiders when red lines are crossed.

1.3 When Interaction is Betrayal: Deviance, Stigma, and the Outsider

Within

Boundary construction and maintenance does more than merely help members of an identity group differentiate between “us” and “them”. It is also more than a tool to guide behavior and generate a sense of belonging. To maintain a boundary around a particular group is to emphasize political and social sameness, and by inference, to create stigmatized others from within the intimate group. Boundary maintenance can place traitorous “sames” in stark relief to loyal members, creating, in essence, a myth of “good” and “bad” co-nationals. In that sense, boundary maintenance is a means of enforcing interactional norms, a way of producing highly emotional social costs for noncompliance, and tangible benefits for compliance. Because canalizing basic value orientations is a task of immeasurable difficulty, resulting in the fact that social boundaries are almost never binary or digital, traitors are never clearly defined. I draw here on three distinct bodies of literature – sociological theories of ‘social deviance’, theories of ‘ethnic defection’ in civil wars and anthropological treatment of the treason discourse – to explore the dilemma of the outsider from within.

45 Most of what we know of ‘deviance’ comes via social psychology in the 1960s.71

These theorists explored the relationship between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ or ‘normal’ and

‘stigmatized’, highlighting ways in which these two groups interact. Scholars in this tradition were primarily concerned with undesirable attributes – actions by or qualities of a person deemed “incongruous with our stereotype of what a given type of individual should be.”72 Goffman and his counterparts in psychology explored the ways in which society might dehumanize the social deviant: “we construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents, sometimes rationalizing an animosity…[toward him].”73 Importantly, this process of dehumanization comes with an assortment of stereotypes, symbols, and metaphors, used across society to paint a stark picture of the citizen possessing the unwanted attribute. This literature tells us that stigma can devastate the stigmatized while creating painful and often irrational societal divides. But it says little about stigma produced when individuals interact unacceptably with an outside other. For this, we turn to a dynamic research agenda around ethnic defection.

Surprisingly, there is no explicit connection between this early social psychology work and more recent work on unacceptable behavior in the context of nationalism, ethnic politics and civil war. This is one of the theoretical short-comings of rational explanations for civil war, popularized by Stathis Kalyvas and those that followed in his footsteps. Kalyvas’ work on ethnic defection in civil war, “a process whereby individuals join organizations explicitly opposed to the national aspirations of the ethnic group with

71 Especially Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies In The Sociology Of Deviance. (New York: Free Press, 1963) and Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Reissue edition. (New York: Touchstone, 1986). 72 Goffman, Stigma, 3. 73 Ibid., 5.

46 which they identify and end up fighting against their co-ethnics,”74 does provide a foundation from which we can explore other forms of unacceptable nationalist behavior.

He was among the first to describe the organizational demand for ethnic defection by adversaries. He also explicitly notes the fluidity of ethnic loyalty and identification, a perspective that is central to the study of ‘deviant’ behavior – defining and redefining unacceptable behavior is only possible if national norms can be constructed, and if circumstances demand, redefined.

From Kalyvas comes an entire research agenda specifying mechanisms that make defection more likely. Paul Staniland (2012) theorizes “fratricidal flipping”, a phenomenon in which paramilitaries join with the out-group to eliminate co-ethnic rivals.75 Theodore McLauchlin assesses strategies to maintain military loyalty through individual incentives and ethnic preference.76 Ana Arjona’s Social Order in Civil War, offers insight into the dynamics of armed groups and civilians in irregular warfare, notably in the civil war in Columbia.77 Glaringly obvious, however, is the security bias of the research agenda – each of these authors hone in on mechanisms that explain ethnic defection from the military or paramilitary standpoint, a bias shaped by the scope conditions of the authors’ research. We are left wondering about civilian collaboration with clandestine security forces, a phenomenon widespread in cases of insurgency, civil war or occupation. Military or paramilitary defection, whatever the motivation, is a clear- cut example of deviant behavior – individuals who cooperate militarily with other ethnic groups against their co-ethnics have openly broken with their purported national loyalties.

74 Stathis N. Kalyvas, “Ethnic Defection in Civil War,” Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 8 (2008): 3. 75 Paul Staniland, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place Insurgent Fratricide, Ethnic Defection, and the Rise of Pro-State Paramilitaries,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 1 (February 1, 2012): 16–40. 76 Theodore McLauchlin, “Loyalty Strategies and Military Defection in Rebellion,” Comparative Politics 42, no. 3 (March 31, 2010): 333–50. 77 Ana M. Arjona, Social Order in Civil War (Yale University, 2010).

47 But everyday collaborators, those who cooperate economically or politically with an occupier, have a far more ambiguous standing in the nation. They are also more numerous, so identifying and sanctioning them comes at a higher cost to nationalist elites.

Theories of military defection cannot explain how pinpointing and punishing every day deviants might be integral to the social construction of ethnic and national identity. They describe accurately ways that defection may vitiate the nation, but fail to discuss the psycho-social effect of boundary maintenance when more benign forms of cooperation with the enemy are in play.

More importantly, Kalyvas incorrectly assumes that members of one group who switch sides to work for the enemy are necessarily “defecting” from their own group. The issue, and it is one that bleeds through much of the follow-up research, is the assumption that betraying ones own cause is also an act of loyalty to an oppositional other.

Collaborators, however, are rarely so inclined. Israeli intelligence forces do not recruit

Palestinians who they think will buy into the Israeli national story. They do not expect their informants to defect as Palestinians and become Zionists. The demand is much simpler – they need individuals who are “weak of spirit”, 78 easily manipulated and blackmailed as a result of moral shortcomings, financial problems, sexual preferences, or family illnesses.79 Surely, some informants work for the enemy because they choose to reject their own group, and this we might consider “ethnic defection”. But these cases are rare. Most often, individuals collaborate for the opposite reason – because they do not want to be rejected by their co-ethnics. Working with the enemy, when faced with

78 The term is one used by Palestinians empathetic to collaborators, who view their “collapse” (isqat) is a result of being “weak of spirit” (d‘ouf an-nufasa’). 79 See (sources on recruiting collabs, including Guardian article on refuseniks).

48 blackmail and the risk of social opprobrium, is often the only way to preserve a place in one’s identity group.

A recent anthropological research agenda provides a more satisfactory treatment of the outsider from within, explaining not only the rationale for “defection”, but also the intriguing ways in which betrayals – and accusations of betrayal – shape intra-group dynamics. Thiranagama and Kelly’s edited volume, while not exclusively about betrayal vis-à-vis interactions with the enemy, provides us with three crucial insights. First, the act, identification, and punishment of betrayal produces social and political order. This is a curious claim. For Kalyvas, and much of the research agenda he inspired, defection challenges the social cohesion that the ethnic group supposes to provide, and constrains the effectiveness of collective resistance along ethnic lines. Acts of betrayal do threaten the social and political fabric of the group in question, but they also help map the ethical boundaries of the group in the midst of social and political change. As Thiranagama and

Kelly state: “Acts of treason are produced through the contradictory loyalties and fears produced by rapid social change, creating particular configurations or accountability and responsibility.”80 The treason discourse, then, is not only oppositional (by identifying and punishing those who have crossed red lines), but also affirmative (by setting guidelines for other members who wish to remain “loyal” and “good”). This is an important distinction that plays out in important ways in the Palestinian case, and proves critical for our understanding of why so-called “acts of betrayal” change in content and contestation over time.

80 Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly, Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 3.

49 A second claim from the anthropological literature is that betrayal is an everyday act. This, too, challenges political science scholarship that sees “defection” as an anomalous phenomenon in a world of supposedly sturdy ethnic bonds and rigid moral boundaries. Rather than seeing clear red lines, in which the terms for defection are unmoving and clear, Thiranagama and Kelly find that most betrayal occurs in the “gray zones”81:

…any act of treachery can also be a potential act of loyalty to another

cause. The guilt or innocence of traitors is, therefore, never clear-cut, as

competing moral values make often-conflicting demands. Treachery is

reproduced in the “gray zones” of political life, destabilizing the rigid

moral binaries of victim and persecutor, friend and enemy.”82

The extreme obscurity of red lines of interaction with the enemy in cases of civil war, occupation, and ethnic conflict makes betrayal all the more likely as a daily act. Frommer

(2005) found the phenomenon of collaboration so common in the Nazi occupation of

Czechoslovakia, for example, not because citizens were eager to support the other side, but because occupation necessitated daily interaction, the guidelines for which no national leadership could either claim to know nor enforce. Kelly observed the same dilemma for Palestinians in the pseudonymous West Bank village of Beit Hajjar:

Palestinians have been forced constantly to renegotiate the boundaries of

complicity and betrayal in their everyday lives. The everyday potential for

81 A notion made popular by Primo Levy (1986), “grey zones” are especially relevant in moments of extreme violence, when the boundary between victim and prosecutor is blurred. 82 Thiranagama and Kelly, Traitors, 1.

50 collaboration creates powerful feelings of vulnerability and suspicion,

inviting constant reflection on the moral, economic, and political

possibility of a Palestinian watan (nation).83

Stripping “defection” of its abnormality is an important step in understanding why members of a particular group cooperate with the adversary in questionable ways. Those accused of unacceptable cooperation with the adversary, whether the act be military defection, economic cooperation, or social interaction, are never clearly perpetrators nor innocent victims. Instead, they are individuals negotiating their way through messy social paradigms with often conflicting ethical and political demands.84

A final insight from anthropology is that the identification and punishment of betrayal is a means of demonstrating power and legitimacy. Because naming traitors is an interpretive act, “those who make claims to treachery also simultaneously give their own claims to power tangibility.”85 Political theorists have long argued that states police the loyalty of their citizens as a method of control and a means of seeking legitimacy. Arendt writes of regime efforts to control the thoughts and dreams of subjects,86 while Zizek stresses the role of the regime in patrolling loyalty.87 Lisa Wedeen argues that regimes do not care if their citizens believe in the constructed loyalties, only that they “act as if they do.”88 This is a vital task for the ruler, especially in the context of the nation-state. When power emanated from the King, subjects could address their loyalty to a tangible and

83 Tobias Kelly, “In a treacherous state: The fear of collaboration among West bank Palestinians,” in eds. Thiranagama and Kelly, Traitors, 171. 84 Ibid., 18. 85 Ibid., 5. 86 Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics; Civil Disobedience; On Violence; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution (New York: Harvest Books, 1972). 87 Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Second Edition (London; New York: Verso, 2009). 88 Lisa Wedeen, Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2008).

51 corporeal authority. In the transition to the nation-state, subjects were suddenly expected to pledge allegiance to the “people”, a far less tangible authority to betray. Accusations of betrayal are therefore central to an authority’s claim for legitimacy, a symbolic action that proves they speak for the people. If this was crucial in the making of the western- modeled nation-state, it was all the more so for post-colonial regimes, whose new

“nationhood” often lacked historical precedent, cultural homogeneity, or tangible physical borders. Thiranagama & Kelly provide a thoughtful account of this particular mechanism:

Accusations of treachery, then, are central to attempts to concretize the

empty signifier of “the people.” The allegation of treason allows popular

sovereignty to take on a corporeal form. However, in doing so, these

accusations also reveal the fragility of any claim to act in the name of the

people.89

A logical outcome of accusations of betrayal serving the authority’s claims of legitimacy, is that elites will often outbid each other, making reckless claims of betrayal that in turn weaken a national movement’s cohesion. This particular outcome, as we will see below, plays out forcefully in the Palestinian case.

What can we take away from the diverse literature on stigma, defection, and the treason discourse? From social psychology, we know that stigmatized individuals are viewed as outsiders from within, and that society has constructive (and ultimately destructive) ways of rationalizing deep hatred and distrust of the stigmatized. Kalyvas

89 Thiranagama and Kelly, Traitors, 8.

52 and others see this dynamic playing out in cases of collaboration or military defection in civil wars and ethnic conflict, and find the phenomenon surprising. But it may not be as surprising as this research agenda makes it out to be – so-called “defection”, especially around the gray-zones, is much more of a daily occurrence, and an understandable response for individuals whose loyalties are put into question by exceptional circumstances. Moreover, we know that betrayal not only divides the nation, but also provides it with reverse guidelines that are central to boundary maintenance. In short, we know that: betrayal is, by definition, a particularly heinous crime; as a crime, its content is hardly ever clearly defined and even more rarely societally agreed upon; it is constructed in the gray zones between acceptable and unacceptable behavior; it has dire political and social implications for an identity group; it is punished, both to draw boundaries around the nation and to stake claims to power. My theory of leadership, social purpose, and interactional norms considers ways in which the treason discourse is part of norm production and maintenance, and an instrumental mechanism for norm compliance.

1.4 A Theory of Purpose-Driven Boundary Maintenance

In previous sections of this chapter, I have considered diverse scholarship – rational and symbolic approaches to norms; relational identity and boundary maintenance; and stigma theory, ethnic violence, and the treason discourse – pulling out valuable insights while highlighting some shortcomings. I build on these insights here, asking when we might expect shifts in norms and consequent compliance with those behavioral codes. The

53 section begins with two alternative hypotheses: Intergroup competition and institutional robustness. Intergroup competition offers insight into normative shifts, but it lacks analytical bite when explaining norm coherence and compliance. I then examine institutional explanations, which appear strong at first, but ultimately fail to explain shifts in normative boundaries in the Palestinian case, where norms were more highly contested as institutions became more robust. Finally, I assess the impact of leadership dynamics, finding compelling evidence that it plays a vital role in triggering social purpose and shaping interactional norms and producing compliance. The section concludes with an overview of the theory, moves on to operationalize variables, and concludes with a typology of interactional norms.

Intergroup competition and the strategic environment

Shifts in interactional norms may be triggered by national crises, specifically increased competition with the alien ruler. This would be consistent with SIT scholarship: Ellemers et al find that agents turn to a social identity when intergroup competition is high, but defer to a personal identity (or lower levels of group abstraction like the clan or tribe) when intragroup competition is high.90 The effect of intergroup competition (ie: direct conflict between Palestinians and Israel) should be two-fold: first, nationalist leaders should outline the rules for pro-social behavior; second, Palestinians should comply with the call out of national duty. A brief comparison of Palestinian behavior during the first intifada and the 2006-2011 Palestinian “civil war” illustrates the point well. For much of

90 Naomi Ellemers, Russell Spears, and Bertjan Doosje, “Self and Social Identity*,” Annual Review of Psychology 53, no. 1 (2002): 161–86.

54 the first intifada – a social context where intergroup competition between Palestinians and Israelis was high – Palestinians deferred to a social identity, sharing a collective purpose and acting in accordance with highly articulated national goals. Those who deviated, and there were thousands, were publically shunned and punished according to the extent of their crimes. Quite the opposite occurred during the Hamas-Fatah civil war, an extreme moment of Palestinian intragroup competition, in which individuals deferred to a personal identity, or more accurately, a shrinking collective abstraction from nation to faction, eschewing the “social purpose of the Palestinian nation” so well articulated during the first intifada.

The theory stands up well when considering these two periods of contestation, but attenuates when we look at the second intifada. Like the first intifada, the second was marked by amplified competition between Palestinians and Israelis. But clear interactional norms did not follow. There was no “leaflet leadership” morally correcting members of the nation, guiding them toward proper conduct with respect to Israel. There was also a great deal of ambiguity around collective goals, from official and grassroots leadership. Interactional norms were correspondingly chaotic – the boycott discourse was muddled, and Palestinians acted, for the most part, without an overarching social purpose as their guide.

An argument centered on the intergroup competition should also see increased permissive cooperative norms in the absence of intergroup conflict. While the PA did encourage greater cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis during the relatively quiet early 1990s, many Palestinians questioned the logic. Just as cooperative norms flourished, so too did condemnations of “normalization”. The phenomenon continued in

55 the periods of relative calm after the end of the second intifada, with increased physical and psychological attacks against “normalizers” from 2009-2013. This seemingly random variation suggests that intergroup competition cannot be the main determinant of interactional norms or norm coherence and compliance.

Institutional explanations

Institutions play a vital role in most core theories of nation-building, both implicitly and explicitly. Scholars of nationalism highlight a variety of institutions that they deem necessary for nation-building at various steps in the nationalist project, all working to create a cohesive and consensually agreed upon identity. The types of institutions deemed critical in nation-building projects vary, and include map, census and museum,91 federal institutions,92 mass armies,93 and mass schooling94 to name only a few. But these theories conflate nation-building and state-building, implicitly or explicitly, and offer only hints about the impact of institutions in the stateless national setting. Institutional agendas presuppose “the centralization of control, for without this the state is unable to enforce its will throughout its realm.”95 Of course, institutions still matter in peripheral national projects96 or nations under occupation with diffuse control over state institutions. A forceful conclusion of the literature on nationalism is that institutions are vital tools in the hands of elites hoping to shape the bounds of the nation, whether those elites control a

91 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1991). 92 Philip G. Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007). 93 Barry R. Posen, “Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power,” International Security 18, no. 2 (1993): 80–124. 94 Keith Darden, Resisting Occupation: Mass Schooling and the Creation of Durable National Loyalties (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 95 Michael Hechter, Containing Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2000), 56. 96 Hechter defines peripheral nationalism in much the same way that most scholars refer to ethnically-motivated secessionist movements, where distinct groups seek “to bring about national self-determination by separating the nation from its host state” (Hechter, 70),

56 state, a quasi-state, or even the most rudimentary governance institutions. But the impact of institutions is overstated for nationalist movements, in large part because scholars underappreciate the importance of institutional autonomy. If it is true that national movements seeking statehood are most effective when they maintain sovereignty over the institutions that propagate the national myth, then institutional explanations cannot do all the explaining in the stateless context.

A brief assessment of 1993-2015 in the Palestinian case highlights some of the shortcomings of institutional explanations. Palestinian institutions grew exponentially in the 1990s after the signing of the Oslo Accords. The PA eventually had at their disposal many of the institutions necessary to forge and enforce a national identity: an education ministry, a police force, a legislature and judiciary, a statistics bureau, a relatively centralized media, and so on. The masses, too, had access to nationalist institutions in the form of the flourishing non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, which employed thousands of former nationalist activists. The opening of the cultural space was unprecedented for the national movement: leaders and activists could hang the flag and display other national symbols. If institutions did what we are told they do, we should see refined normative boundaries around interactions with Israel, with increased compliance around those norms. Indeed, Palestinians appeared to heed the call to engage positively with Israelis immediately following the signing of the Oslo Accords. Social dialogue groups proliferated; Palestinians continued to work inside Israel and the settlements;

Israeli goods flooded the Palestinian market; political cooperation became the norm; and security coordination with Israel became officially sanctioned and entrenched. But despite the persistence of PA institutions, norms began shifting and compliance with

57 positive interactional norms began to unravel. By 1996, social actors had begun to challenge the PA’s lines, introducing new terms like “normalization” to the national lexicon, while suggesting that the PA themselves had entered into an unacceptable relationship with the occupying power. The discourse ramped up in 2005 with the

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) national call, and the rise to power of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2006. Even the rise of Mahmoud Abbas and the revamping of PA institutions after the second intifada could not help galvanize positive interactional norms. If institutions remained constant throughout this time-frame – the second intifada notwithstanding – consistently proposing positive interactional boundaries, then why do we see such clear variation in normative boundaries, and such widespread noncompliance?

One reason why institutions do not do the work we expect is because Palestinian institutions have, since their inception, been captured by the Israeli state and the international community. The Oslo Accords and subsequent agreements have limited

Palestinian control over “state institutions”97, especially in the economic realm98 while the international donor community heavily influences the activities and missions of

Palestinian NGOs.99 While it is true that institutions make the socially constructed world a little stickier, they are more effective when autonomous. And while I consider the impact of institutions throughout this study, I deem them an insufficient cause for norm coherence and compliance. In this way, my research continues in the tradition of

97 Sara Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy: The Continued Denial of Possibility,” Journal of Palestine Studies 30, no. 4 (2001): 5–20. 98 A. Arnon and J. Weinblatt, “Sovereignty and Economic Development: The Case of Israel and Palestine,” The Economic Journal 111, no. 472 (June 1, 2001): 291–308. 99 Rema Hammami, “Palestinian NGOs Since Oslo: From NGO Politics to Social Movements?,” Middle East Report, no. 214 (April 1, 2000): 16–48.

58 nationalism scholars who assess identity formation when state institutions are either weak or absent.

Leadership dynamics

Leadership dynamics produce the most consistent effect on interactional norms in the stateless national setting. Leaders induce groups to pursue objectives – they “[contribute] to a cohesive organizational structure by clarifying goals and inspiring people to cooperation for their achievement.”100 Game theory models show that leaders set agendas

– an idea consistent with rational legal work on norm-entrepreneurs – and act strategically to influence preferences. And while it would be ambitious to claim that national leaders single-handedly produce pro-social behavior, much research suggests they can generate “an equilibrium of tastes” in otherwise trying settings.101

I draw from Pearlman, but operationalize cohesion across four indicators: vertical coordination, horizontal coordination, popular legitimacy, and articulation of end- goals.102 A cohesive leadership must be organized around a central leadership body, rather than several. Critically, this is not about concentration of power in the hands of a select few, but rather synchronicity between upper, middle and lower levels of leadership, all ideally vital, and working through the same leadership “body”.103 We can also observe relative cohesion through vertical and horizontal coordination: I argue that both must be present for a leadership to be considered “cohesive”. Organizational unity is the most

100 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 9. 101 William H. Riker, “Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions,” American Political Science Review 74, no. 02 (June 1980): 432–46. 102 Pearlman defines cohesion as organizational unity and popular legitimacy. I disaggregate “unity” – a term that does not accurately describe national movements – into horizontal and vertical coordination, and add “articulation of end-goals”. 103 John W. Gardner, On Leadership, Reprint edition (New York: Free Press, 1993).

59 critical ingredient for a national resistance leadership to produce incentives and influence behavior.104

A cohesive leadership must also be legitimate in the eyes of the population. An authoritarian national leadership may be united, politically and militarily, but risk vertical fragmentation. When national leaders rule with a heavy hand but fail to coordinate with middle and lower levels of leadership, they lose legitimacy, and therefore the ability to produce social norms. If vertical integration of leadership is crucial, so too are the results of their actions – national leaders garner legitimacy by acting strategically and endorsing tactics of resistance that produce positive results. Leaders that anticipate the best possible move in a dynamic strategic environment are the most likely to command legitimacy and respect from members of the national group. Responsible, pro-active (rather than reactionary) tactics are most important at critical junctures. During these windows, leaders must signal to their population that they are in charge, and they can do this in two ways. First, they can use rhetoric and action to mobilize otherwise idle masses, a reminder of their relevancy when they are most needed. Second, leaders can enforce norms: a decision to “suppress unruly dissent at a decisive juncture can send a powerful warning to other would-be rebels and consolidate the decision-making authority of the political center.” 105 This is a tenuous battle. Overzealous enforcement can alienate members of the group and produce detrimental fissures, while lax enforcement can signal organizational weakness and lack of commitment.

There is compelling evidence supporting a theory that places leadership dynamics at the root of a causal story explaining shifts in norm coherence and compliance. The first

104 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement. 105 Ibid., 10.

60 intifada illustrates the point. In the first 13 months of the uprising, leadership coalesced around the United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), the PLO, and the popular committees. This decentralized but highly coordinated leadership was vested with a high degree of legitimacy, and the bi-weekly leaflets they issued held the weight of law. The Islamic Bloc, while less influential at the beginning of the intifada, nevertheless coordinated with the UNLU, in an impressive show of national unity. Palestinians internalized new interactional norms, complying even when personal sacrifice was high.

Those euphoric months did not last long. Israel slowly crushed the popular committees, arresting thousands. Israeli agents and infiltrators sewed the seeds of internecine violence, pinning clan against clan and faction against faction. Indigenously produced infighting also took a toll, as Fatah, the dominant party in the PLO abroad, tried to assert dominance over the more popular left-leaning parties on the ground. Authority and legitimacy eroded around the UNLU, gradually shifting to the Islamic bloc. With such deep leadership rifts, interactional norms became unbounded. Compliance with strikes and boycotts ground to a halt, even as enforcement increased. Leadership fragmentation appears to have directly influenced the shift.

Of course, other factors played a role. Palestinians were exhausted from months of protest and civil disobedience, and their sacrifices were not met with commensurate movement on the political front. Exogenous forces impeded compliance with interactional norms, as Israeli actively sowed the seeds of internal discontent.

Nevertheless, leadership dynamics may be a minimally sufficient cause. I have followed the inductive method over the course of 16 months of fieldwork, “working backward from the outcome by sifting through the evidence in an attempt to uncover a plausible

61 sufficient causal mechanism that produced the outcome.”106 No process-tracing theory is ever 100 percent confirmed, but good theories find causes that account for the most significant aspects of the outcome. 107 I find leadership dynamics to be the most compelling source of variation in the outcome.

I also find no reliable preceding cause. Undoubtedly, a number of important variables shape leadership dynamics. The actions of the dominant group, for example almost always affect the degree of cohesion of the subordinate leadership. Whether it be through massive arrest campaigns or careful machinations to sow the seeds of discontent, the dominant group can make or break a leadership, as they often did in the Palestinian case. I consider that effect as part of the strategic environment that shapes whether leadership is united or not, among a host of other variable. But none of those variables affect leadership with consistency. Indeed, the subordinate group’s leadership is sometimes united despite the best efforts of the dominant group, or divided by their own doing. In short, I find that the causes of leadership outcomes are stochastic and haphazard at best. My analysis reflects this – I see leadership as the prime mover, but assess qualitatively and descriptively the forces that determine leadership dynamics.

As is, the causal story remains incomplete: leadership dynamics may account for variation in outcome, but the micro-processes remain unexplained. To clarify how variation occurs, we turn to social purpose, a situational mechanism that sparks clear boundaries and compliance with interactional norms. It lies at the heart of my proposed theory.

106 Beach and Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods, 20. 107 Beach and Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods, Chapter 5.

62 Social Purpose: mediating interactional norms for the national group

I contribute to existing definitions of social purpose, and refine it in ways that I hope increase the validity of the term. Social purpose “refer[s] to the goals that are shared by members of a group.”108 It is an abstract articulation of group ambition and expectation that helps define interests and preferences, and creates “obligations to engage in practices that make the group’s achievement of a set of goals more likely.”109 Pearlman explores a similar concept, collective purpose: a set of shared objectives, developed bottom-up or top-down, that cut across social cleavages.110 Social purpose may also be understood as an activated script, one that prescribes and proscribes behavior and creates collective expectations for members of the national group. We nevertheless remain in the abstract realm with these definitions. If social purpose is an invisible force that, when harnessed, compels an individual to shift identity priorities from the self to the abstract group, how exactly does it work? Much like “culture” or “identity”, social purpose is a force that everyone knows exists – indeed it showed up in dozens of interviews in various guises during the course of two years of fieldwork – but few can clearly define. As a force that explains too little and too much, it can lack analytical bite. But social purpose can be reined in. Following are clarifications and theoretical insights that explain what social purpose is, and how we know it when we see it.

Social purpose is: the horizontally and vertically shared goals of a group that create obligations on members of the group to behave in ways that aim at achieving collective goals.

108 Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott. “Identity as a Variable.” Perspectives on Politics 4, no. 04 (2006): 696. 109 Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable,” 698. 110 Pearlman, 10.

1. Social purpose is a set of horizontally and vertically shared goals. Social

purpose is comprised of goals shared by the group at every level of society. It is

high when leaders and masses align on group ambition. It is low when leadership

itself disagrees on end-goals, or when leaders articulate one set of goals and the

population demands another.

2. Social purpose is produced bottom-up and top-down. It is mutually

constitutive – produced at the level of leadership, reproduced in dialogue with

members of the group, and inputs back into leadership calculus. We might be

enticed to give leadership undue influence over the construction and maintenance

of social purpose. Indeed, nationalist leaders do invest heavily in articulating a

group’s collective goals – they are tasked with such a responsibility by a

population that grants them legitimacy. But leaders do not always do the task

well, and the masses are often quick to correct the course. When leadership-

defined social purpose lacks popular appeal, the people can refuse, revolt, or

demand renegotiation. Social purpose is thus dynamically produced. It is,

ultimately, a dialogue between masses and elites about the identity of the national

group.

3. Social purpose mediates the boundaries of acceptable interactions between

ingroup and outgroup. As a sanctioning force, it helps members of the ingroup

define the boundaries of norms governing interactions between ingroup and

outgroup. Social purpose contributes to socialization, social learning, and

compliance with social norms. Social purpose is thus as a force that urges the

individual to transcend self-identity and prioritize pro-social behavior.

64 4. Social purpose is mechanistic: For the purposed of this study, social purpose is

best understood as mechanistic – when high, social purpose is triggered, creating

the necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for a population to comply with

interactional norms that might stand in opposition to short-term self-interest.

When low, the mechanism is un-triggered, and self-interest norms prevail.

5. Social purpose is a situational mechanism: it links the micro to the macro,

framing individual preferences and needs within the larger socio-cultural

environment.111

Figure 1.2 illustrates the causal story.

Figure 1.2: A theory of purpose-drive boundary maintenance

111 Beach and Pedersen, Process-Tracing Methods, 42.

65 The theory in brief – A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance explains three outcomes in the Palestinian case. In H1, leadership is cohesive and social purpose is triggered, but interactional norms follow two possible trajectories. When national strategy aims at diplomacy, interactional norms are positive – permitting relations with the outgroup (H1a). Compliance is high in this outcome because self-interest more closely aligns with collective interest. People-to-people dialogue groups illustrate the nuance: when the PLO leadership committed to peaceful relations with Israel after Oslo, Israeli, international, and Palestinian activists committed to fostering mutual understanding.

Many Palestinians eagerly joined the initiatives. They were offered the opportunity to travel abroad, be part of the peace process, and receive an otherwise inaccessible education. Self-interest – for personal growth, free trips abroad, future fellowship opportunities to study abroad – matched collective interest – to foster normal, peaceful relations with the erstwhile enemy. Enforcement of such norms is unnecessary.

Leadership cohesion produces a second, distinct result (H1b). When national strategy aims at resistance, interactional norms will be negative – prohibiting interactions with the outgroup – and compliance will be moderate at best. The limited degree of compliance results from two interrelated phenomena, discussed above. First, prohibitive actions, like boycotts or strikes, are costly to the individual. Agents must have internalized the norm or feel tremendously high levels of national pride to make the personal sacrifice for the collective. Second, policing prohibitive norms is costly, and enforcement is often impossible. For these two reasons, we are unlikely to see high degrees of compliance with prohibitive norms, a finding consistent with both rational and symbolic theories of norm-compliance. The case of the cultural boycott illustrates the

66 point. Palestinian film-makers have in the past benefitted greatly from Israeli funding, either from private donors or the Israeli Ministry of Culture. But pushes against normalization have meant that those funds are accessible only to Palestinians willing to risk their popularity at home. Even Emad Burnat, co-director of Oscar-nominated “Five

Broken Cameras”, faced popular backlash for working with Guy Davidi and accepting

112 Israeli state funding. In outcome H1b, self-interest and collective interest often stand at odds, producing only moderate compliance despite triggered social purpose.

There is a third and final possible outcome: when leadership is fragmented, social purpose is low and diffuse, failing to trigger its mechanistic quality. The result is ambiguously defined interactional norms, with a high degree of contestation over their content (H2). Society-wide compliance cannot be expected in this outcome, as individuals align themselves with one of several, divergent and competing national strategies. We are most likely to see members of the nation act in self-interest (rather than pro-socially) in this third outcome.

The following hypotheses summarize the expectations of the theory

H1: Cohesive leadership produces high social purpose, triggering clear interactional norms and encouraging compliance with those norms.

H1a: If national strategy aims toward diplomacy, interactional norms will be

positive, and society-wide compliance high.

H1b: If national strategy aims toward resistance, interactional norms will be

negative, and society-wide compliance moderate.

112 Author’s attendance of screening in Ramallah, September 2012.

H2: Fragmented leadership produces low social purpose, failing to trigger the mechanism. Interactional boundaries will be ambiguous and highly contested, and compliance will be individually-centered.

Norm coherence and compliance: operationalizing the DV

To be sure, this project faces a number of methodological challenges around the dependent variable. How can we know norm coherence when we see it? When is compliance deemed high, moderate and low? First, coherence implies that the average citizen can define the norm. A norm condemning migrant labor, for example, should specify whether the injunction is against work in Israel proper, or the settlements, or both.

A norm condemning political dialogue must specify whether all dialogue is taboo, or whether only dialogue with the Israeli right is forbidden. Second, compliance exists when members of the ingroup coordinate around a particular norm. This occurs when a.) people agree that complying is the most desirable outcome and b.) each person believes everyone else is highly likely to comply with a particular norm. Compliance varies between low, moderate, and high, and is observed qualitatively through field work findings as well as polling data.

Interactional norms: A typology

Palestinians have engaged in innumerable interactions with Israel and Israelis since 1967.

Overnight, almost one million Palestinians learned that they were subject to a new authority. The legal intricacies of the new system remained abstruse to the average

Palestinian, despite posted orders by the military government. But the distilled version

68 was clear – the new law was the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and any law issued by the regional commander was final. Because Israel was obliged under international law to manage the welfare of the residents of the occupied territories, and because chaos was an undesirable outcome, generals, judges, and civil servants quickly moved in to establish order and provide services. Israel inserted itself into the daily lives of Palestinians providing, but also controlling, a tax system, a postal service, currency, telecommunications, motor vehicle insurance, water infrastructure, and electricity. The new authority infiltrated education as well, encouraging post-secondary institutional development while supervising textbook content and curriculum. They also enforced economic relations based on open markets in labor and goods. In short, Israel imposed a new reality on Palestinians, one that obliged daily interaction with the authorities. My test of a theory of purpose-drive boundary maintenance begins in 1987, but the interactional norms articulated during the first intifada and beyond were premised on relations that, for the first 20 years of occupation, were quotidian. These became the basis of attack for national leaders at various points up to 2016. Every form of interaction I list below has at some point been identified as unacceptable, counter to the national cause. The typology I derive from that list explains why certain forms are more egregious (and thus more commonly identified as betrayal) than others.

Economic interactions

1. Labor in Israel: By 1968, Israelis employed 5,000 Palestinians from the occupied

territories. Within six years, that number had risen to 69,000 – numbers fluctuated

since, at times due to nationalist inspired labor strikes, but most often due to

Israeli measures that limited labor inside Israel.

69 2. Labor in Settlements: Tens of thousands of Palestinians worked in the

construction of illegal settlements in the occupied territories from 1967. In 2014,

between 25,000 - 40,000 laborers work in residential, industrial, or agricultural

settlements. The norm prohibiting labor has fluctuated but never gained broad-

based appeal.

3. Private sector cooperation/business-to-business: Palestinian business leaders took

advantage of an Israeli policy that promoted open markets after 1967. While

numerous precedent-setting relations between Palestinians and Israelis occurred

during this time, Palestinian capitalists became more relevant (and controversial

from the national perspective) after the signing of the Oslo Accords and into the

2010s.

4. Intermediaries – (al-wusata’): Intermediaries cooperate with Israeli authorities to

obtain permits for Palestinians, especially work permits and security clearances.

The task is often given to the mukhtar, or village elder. Other intermediaries work

directly with Israeli businesses or farmers to secure labor from their villages. The

position has varied since 1967 but still functions in the 2010s.

5. Land dealers – (al-samaseer): Land dealers help Israelis purchase land in the

occupied territories. They are an uncommon but consistently maligned group.

6. Purchasing Israeli products: Israeli products have flooded the Palestinian market

since 1967. Very few Palestinians consider this a form of interaction, let alone an

unacceptable one, but efforts by the BDS movement since 2005 and the PLO

since 2015 have drawn attention to it.

70 7. Purchasing settlement products: Palestinians have only recently drawn lines

between settlement and Israeli products, especially after the PA’s 2010 campaign

to ban and combat settlement products.

Social/Cultural/Administrative Interactions

1. People-to-people dialogue: The phenomenon of the dialogue group (interfaith,

political, women’s groups etc) became most relevant after 1994, although some

clandestine dialogue did occur in the lead-up to the first intifada. Participants

were socially ostracized for their activities after the outbreak of the second

intifada.

2. Academic collaboration: Academic cooperation began in the 1980s, on a small

scale between individual professors. Official university cooperation grew in

popularity in the 1990s then received negative attention in the 2000s. al-Quds

University was the last to follow through with a national commitment to end

academic collaboration in 2009, although they continue to maintain certain

relations.

3. Co-resistance groups: Throughout the first intifada and well into the 2000s, co-

resistance was the norm of the radical left in Israel, designed to support

Palestinian resistance against the occupation while acknowledging the inherent

power asymmetry between Israelis and Palestinians.

4. Civil servants: Many government appointees or associates, including

intermediaries, nurses, police officers, or civil servants, worked directly for the

Israeli civil administration from 1967-1992. The position was eliminated after

Oslo.

71 Intelligence and Security Cooperation

1. Informants (‘amil al-mukhbarat): Thousands of intelligence agents provide

information to Israeli security services. Numbers are unknown, and have

fluctuated a great deal since 1967, but the position is consistently reviled.

2. Prison collaborators (al-‘asafir): Israelis made extensive use of collaborators

within prisons, who recruited other collaborators and extracted information from

unknowing fellow prisoners.

3. Overt but unofficial security cooperation: The Village Leagues, an Israeli-funded

and supported cadre of Palestinian militants, was the first manifestation of overt

security collaboration with Israel. The organization lasted little more than two

years in the early 1980s.

4. Overt and official security cooperation: As part of the Oslo process, the PA took

on the role of policing its own population in Areas A and B, a task that required

overt cooperation with Israeli security. Many Palestinians in the post-Oslo era

identify PA security cooperation with Israel as a questionable interaction.

Toward a typology of interactional norms:

This study develops a typology of interactional norms that addresses the two most salient problems with existing scholarship: emphasis on motivations, and static red lines. A central theme in typologies of “collaboration” – the normative and variable red line of interactions – is the interplay of actions and motives. For many WWII scholars, collaboration stemmed from calculations of self-interest.113 Andrew Rigby borrows from

113 Michel Henri. Vichy Année 40. Laffont, 1966; Werner Rings. Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler’s Europe, 1939-1945. Doubleday, 1982; and Werner Warmbrunn. The Dutch Under German Occupation, 1940-1945. Stanford University Press, 1963, 261-282.

72 this tradition in explaining Palestinian collaboration, developing a typology centered on motivations.114 It encompasses the core problems with motivation-based theories:

Table 1.1 Rigby (1997) – Motivation-based typology

Collaboration for benefit Cooperation offered of: Willingly Unwillingly

Individual/Self-interest i.) The traitor: iii.) Accommodationist:

Unconditional collaboration Collaboration in order to

for private gain survive

Community Interest ii.) The patriotic traitor: iv.) Conditional

Collaborationism in service collaborator: to serve the

of the occupier’s cause wider community

A number of problems stand out. First and foremost, boundaries between individual and community interest are never clear for group members under alien rule. Consider the

Palestinian policeman working for the Israeli civil administration. He may have taken the position to provide security for his own community, for personal reward, or most likely

114 Rigby, Legacy of the Past.

73 some variation of the two. Can we observe motivation in this case? More importantly, what do we gain analytically from imposing our own judgment of the agent’s motivation, when our assessment is subjectively made, impossible to verify, and quite possibly wrong? Even more problematic is the distinction between “willing” and “unwilling” cooperation. Human rights organizations and journalists have documented Israel’s recruitment strategies extensively, coercive methods that preclude “willful cooperation” on the part of the agent. 115 Can researchers safely delineate between willing and unwilling cooperation when the agent is coerced into cooperation through torture or threat of violence to self or family, or manipulated into cooperation with promises of access to life-saving services like medical treatment?

A promising body of recent scholarship attempts to correct these flaws while investigating war-time informing.116 Individual-level empirical investigation can certainly help get at motivations, and it is a valuable path for future research, but data scarcity in the Palestinian case may preclude reliable findings. More importantly, scholarship in the

Kalyvas tradition, is limited in scope (civil wars and insurgencies) and in the interactional norm it examines (“defecting” to the enemy). My project explains the distinct category of alien rule, and investigates a wider gamut of interactional norms, many which are in the public realm. For these reasons, mine is a study not of individual motivations, but of society-wide guidelines and demands that shape individual behavior vis-à-vis cooperation with the alien other.

115 See Yizhar Be’er and Saleh ’Abdel Jawwad. “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations.” B’Tselem, January 1994; “Inter-Palestinian Human Rights Violations in the Gaza Strip.” Palestinian Center for Human Rights, February 3, 2009. Jason Seawright and John Gerring, “Case Selection Techniques in Case Study Research a Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options,” Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2008): 294–308.; PASSIA. The Phenomenon Of Collaborators In Palestine: Proceedings Of A Passia Workshop. Palestinian Academic Society For The Study Of International Affairs, 2001. 116 Jason Lyall, Yuki Shiraito, and Kosuke Imai, “Coethnic Bias and Wartime Informing,” SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, January 25, 2015), http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2301467.

74 Second, a typology of interactional norms needs to incorporate the fluidity of acceptable and unacceptable interactions. Most analysis incorrectly designates

“collaboration” as clearly defined and unambiguously prohibited; these fail to account for variability. Consider the waseet (intermediary) of the 1967-1987 period as an example:

He played a traditional role, one existing long before the occupation and modified for the exigencies of the new reality, giving his co-nationals a way to maneuver the uncertainty of military governance. A year into the intifada, leaders suddenly cracked down on the waseet, calling him a traitor and demanding his resignation. Rigid typologies cannot account for such shifts, although they are salient in all antagonistic inter-group conflicts.

Typologies like Andrew Rigby’s assume that collaboration today is collaboration tomorrow, a simplification that misrepresents the dynamics of interaction under power asymmetry. My typology addresses these issues in two ways. First, I distinguish between red lines and grey zones of cooperation, allowing for variability in categories. Second, I discount motivations and instead center my categories on actions and outcomes.

75 Table 1.2: A typology of interactional norms

Level of Outcome Action Norm proscription Red Lines of Physically shrinks Simsar al-ard: the land broker Death sentence, public Cooperation population/land call Weakens resistance The “Collaborator”: Consistent • Al-‘ameel al-musallah: the condemnation, armed collaborator variable enforcement • Al-Jasous: the spy / informant 1. Demand resignation • Al-‘Asfor: the prison 2. Offer to collaborator repent/return to cause 3. Social/physical harm 4. Death sentence through leadership – frequent

Gray Zones of Fortifies the Civil Administration (1967-1993) Inconsistent Cooperation occupation, • Police officers condemnation, weakens civil • Tax collectors variable enforcement resistance Appointed village councils 1. Demand resignation 2. Offer to repent 3. Social/physical harm 4. Death sentence Mukhtar and Waseet: through leadership – intermediaries rare

Contested norm PA security cooperation

Contested norm

Gray Zones of Entrenches • Social/cultural dialogue Cooperation power • Academic cooperation Contested norms - normalization asymmetry, weakens civil resistance Gray Zones of Relative economic Economic cooperation Contested norms Cooperation gains for occupier • Economic collaboration - economic (business-to-business) • Intermediaries • *Laboring in Israel • *Laboring in settlements • *Purchasing Israeli products • *Purchasing settlement products

This is not the only available typology of questionable interactions between occupier and occupied.117 But it is the first attempt at explaining variation in the identification and proscription of certain forms of interaction as betrayal. The existing typologies tend to assume that collaboration is a.) consistently interpreted as unacceptable by the population and b.) invariant in definition. My typology is a first cut at understanding why certain interactions are considered betrayal, resulting from the impact they have on a national group’s identity, and helps us understand when we are likely to see compliance.

One final word on typology. Certain forms of economic cooperation, including labor in settlements and Israel, and purchasing Israeli and settlement products, are rarely popularly deplored. This is true even during waves of contention when leadership hubs identify them as unacceptable. Why such a forgiving stance to activities that disproportionately benefit the Israeli economy, while hurting both Palestinian economic development118 and shrinking its land base? I see these actions as distinct because they serve basic survival needs rather than personal motivation for wealth. Palestinians do not work in settlements – land they know should be part of a future Palestinian state – because the work serves their own ambition. They do so in order to feed their families and make ends meet in exceptional economic circumstances. So while leaders do at times

117 See for example “Refworld | Palestine: Information on Palestinians Collaborating or Suspected of Collaborating with Israelis; Treatment of Suspected Collaborators by Palestinian Militant Groups in the Occupied Territories.” Refworld. Accessed December 1, 2013. http://www.refworld.org/cgi- bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=publisher&publisher=IRBC&type=&coi=PSE&docid=41501c4b2d&skip=0; Hillel Cohen. “Society– Military Relations in a State-in-the-Making Palestinian Security Agencies and the ‘Treason Discourse’ in the Second Intifada.” Armed Forces & Society 38, no. 3 (July 1, 2012): 463–85; Rigby, Legacy of the Past, Yizhar Be’er and ’Abdel Jawwad Saleh. “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations.” B’Tselem, January 1994. 118 See especially Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy” and Arnon & Weinblatt “Sovereignty and Economy Development.”

77 condemn such activities, and try to dissuade their co-nationals from engaging in them, this type of “collaborator” is rarely shamed or reprimanded. Such acts might be considered, if you will, as defensible betrayal. Another reason we are less likely to see follow-through with verbal attacks against settlement laborers relates to the sheer number of Palestinians involved in the business. It is far easier for a leadership to name and shame a single businessperson benefiting from Israeli cooperation, than it is 100,000 members of the work-force.

Chapter II: Occupation, Anomie and the Emergence of Interactional Norms

“I will tell you a story I heard, set in Persia, about an axe without a handle that was thrown among some trees. The trees said to each other, ‘This has not been thrown here for any good reason.’ But one perfectly ordinary tree observed: “Provided none of you provide a stick for its arse, you have nothing to fear from it.”119

Emile Habiby, the great Palestinian author and politician, captures in these words the fundamental dilemma facing a people under alien rule: cooperating with the enemy, even through the most mundane daily interactions, is to provide the occupier with the tools necessary to maintain control. Why, knowing that reality, would any member of the subordinate group provide the handle? Consider the following dialectic: Noncooperation is, on the one hand, an act of loyalty to the nation – it serves collective interests and demonstrates defiance to the occupying power. On the other hand, it is a self-inflicted punishment, a daily sacrifice sometimes of the most basic survival needs. Cooperation, on the one hand, benefits the individual by providing him or her with the means to survive the cruel realities of occupation. On the other hand, it harms the collective by making occupation sustainable, and perhaps even profitable. Cooperation also highlights the weakness of local resistance to the alien ruler. Palestinian motivation for cooperation or noncooperation varies a great deal, but this underlying dialectic informed individual calculus from the very beginning of the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and

Gaza in 1967. Israeli military rule evoked an unprecedented moral quandary for

119 Emile Habiby, The Secret Life of Saeed, The Ill-Fated Pessoptimist. (Columbia, LA: Readers International, 1989), p. 39.

79 Palestinians, and demanded no small measure of social and personal reckoning. Could one cooperate with the enemy while simultaneously supporting the national cause? Could one survive the uncertainty of military occupation while practicing total noncooperation?

That Palestinians offered sticks for the arse of the axe in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 occupation should come as no surprise – this is the witting and unwitting reality for any group living under alien rule, in which the daily survival of the subordinate group depends on the whims and design of the superordinate group. What is more puzzling is that sticks are not always freely given, given the personal costs of withholding. How did interactional norms take shape? Who proposed those norms, and when did they stick? What did norm enforcement look like? This chapter tests the theory of leadership and social purpose in the first two decades of Israel’s occupation of the OPt, asking when norms were clearly articulated, and when compliance was most likely. It considers two time frames, marked by critical junctures at each extreme: 1967-1973 and

1973-1987.

From 1967-1973 leadership is divided and floundering, and social purpose is embryonic at best. This is a chaotic time, one in which political and economic cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis is imposed by the occupier and societally unsettling, but seemingly inevitable for the occupied. A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance fits the case predictably well – social purpose went un-triggered in the absence of a cohesive leadership, leading to ambiguous norms and little compliance with those that did exist. I take these findings with a grain of salt. Expecting normative chaos in an environment with all the right ingredients for social anomie is not unlike forecasting rain with dark clouds overhead. Nevertheless, certain norms have their origins

80 in these crucial years, and become important for analyzing subsequent decades. Leaders tested interactional norms in three broad categories: economic, political, and security. In the first two categories, nationalist circles proposed prohibitive norms – in the economic realm through boycotts and strikes, and in the political through total non-cooperation – but swiftly capitulated, encouraging “change from within” policies instead. Security norms had yet to develop by 1973, but Israel had begun recruiting its army of collaborators, who would play a more relevant role in the latter part of the first twenty years. I analyze them in greater detail below. Table 2.1 summarizes the findings.

81 Table 2.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance 1967-1973

Leadership Dynamic Social Purpose Interactional Norms

FRAGMENTED LOW JUMBLED

Vertical Horizontally Direction UNCLEAR Coordination NO Shared Goals

Horizontal Vertically NO NO Coherence NO Coordination shared goals

Popular NO Legitimacy Social Purpose NO Compliance LOW Articulation of Triggered NO end-goals

Leadership dynamics: Leaderless under Alien Rule

Leadership in the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 was, unsurprisingly, chaotic and disorganized. Society had to adjust to military rule and the social ruptures that accompanied it. Most Palestinians anticipated a short-lived occupation, fueled by Israeli statements that appeared to favor some form of land-for-peace agreement.120 Moreover,

120 Joost R Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 40.

82 what organizational structures did exist were not yet nationalist, with many in the West

Bank depoliticized by Jordan and groups in Gaza mostly invested in armed struggle. The first few years of occupation, characterized by a scrambling and devastated national movement, produced little in terms of shared goals and even less in clearly articulated norms around everyday interactions with Israelis.

Resistance and Reprisals in Gaza

Gaza’s leadership posed the most significant challenges to the occupation authorities in the first few years. The PLO supported Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) benefited from a permissive environment under Nasser’s occupation of the small strip of land, allowing the fedayeen and their weapons to proliferate.121 Politicians around the Arab National

Movement (ANM) – a union of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) under the leadership of

George Habash – supported armed resistance and promoted and enforced total noncooperation with Israel. But a major clamp-down under the command of Ariel Sharon in 1971 defeated the local forces and left the Gaza leadership in a shambles. Israel’s counter-insurgency efforts began after a grenade killed two Israeli civilians driving through the Gaza Strip. Military authorities dismissed Gaza’s mayor in February 1971, and dismissed the entire municipality soon thereafter. They imposed 20 hour curfews, and began an arrest and assassination campaign that would eventually see more than 100 fighters killed and 13,000 others deported to Jordan and Lebanon, or held in detention

121 Ann Mosely Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Washington, DC: The Middle East Institute, 1980), 42.

83 camps in the Sinai. Collective punishment drove Sharon’s offensive against Gaza: many of those detained in the Sinai were family members of guerilla fighters. No collective punishment was as brash and devastating as the “thinning out” of the Jabalya refugee camp, which housed 40,000 refugees. The army “bulldozed wide streets through the

Jabalya and Shati refugee camps in order to seal off and separate each section and to prevent the camps from serving as hiding places for the fida’iyin.”122 The final blow against the Gaza guerilla movement was the suicide of the PFLP’s commanding officer on November 21, 1971. Three weeks later, the army killed the deputy commander, effectively quieting the restive strip.

Political leadership in Gaza faced similar opposition. Israel allowed municipalities to function throughout the occupied territories, but watched their activities closely, reserving the right to dismember them at any given moment. The municipalities served an important function for residents and the occupying authorities alike. As administrators of basic services, they made life under occupation bearable, giving residents the opportunity to remain steadfast on the land under trying circumstances. But they also lowered the cost of occupation for Israeli leaders. Ann Lesch describes this dilemma: “The residents had to balance their need for indigenous officials against the circumscribed role these officials could play: there was a fine line between conducting normal business and “collaborating” with the occupier.”123 The Gaza municipality was dismissed in 1971, signaling Israel’s intention to install a more malleable local leadership in Gaza. When Israel revitalized the municipalities in 1972 – through elections in the West Bank and appointments in Gaza –

Gaza’s leaders recognized the threat of cooperation. Gaza’s appointed mayor, Rashad

122 Ibid., 42–43. 123 Ibid., 44.

84 Shawwa accepted the position, but demanded autonomy from Israel in decision-making.

Attempting to balance pressure from Israel and loyalty to Gaza’s residents would lead to his dismissal. Within the year, he faced threats against his life and denunciation by the

PFLP, and pressure by Israel to extend his municipal authority over the Shati refugee camp. Shawwa refused, fearing that such an extension of power might annul the refugee status of camp dwellers. He was dismissed in October 1972. Israel’s need for administrators remained, however, and they organized local committee elections in towns and refugee camps that they hoped would form the basis of a strip-wide governance body. The project went horribly wrong: on February 11th 1972, Israel called a meeting to elect the chair of the local committees. PFLP militants kidnapped and killed the leading candidate the night before. And just prior to the meeting, gunmen attempted to kill

Shawwa, who agreed to chair a Gaza neighborhood committee. Six of the eight committees resigned following the attacks, effectively ending Israel’s effort to manufacture a compliant local leadership in the Gaza Strip.

On the Ground Leadership in the West Bank

Only one movement, the Jordanian Communist Party (JCP), was capable of filling the leadership vacuum in the West Bank following the 1967 war: they had the institutional infrastructure to provide basic services and earn legitimacy in turn. But many of their leaders were still in Jordanian prisons in 1967. More importantly, however, was that the

JCP was not a member of the PLO, severing them from leadership infrastructure and funding across the Arab world and within the Palestinian diaspora. Their ideology reflected that disconnect – the JCP aligned itself more closely with the Israeli communist

85 party, which called for a two-state solution achieved not through armed struggle, but diplomacy. This perspective was, in 1967, still considered treasonous by most PLO supporters. The local leadership around mayors and village notables, were for the most part unsuitable alternatives. They tended to support the Hashemite kingdom, and could not channel nationalist aspirations for residents of the West Bank. They were also fragmented and short on legitimacy following the war.

The first expression of an independent leadership in the West Bank emerged not from the traditional elite, but from local committees made up of religious leaders based in

Jerusalem and activists loyal to the JCP and the ANM. Their activities, which involved a number of successful strikes and protests, were immediately circumscribed, as Israel deported a number of their activists. The model was nevertheless successful. As a response to Israel’s denial of services, villages and neighborhoods across the West Bank mobilized. Community organizations paved roads, cultivated community gardens, set up reading clubs, and set up volunteer organizations for the wheat harvest.124 These types of actions had a ripple effect: born in the YMCA in East Jerusalem, they emanated out to

Ramallah and al-Bireh, and slowly spread out of urban centers into villages. Universities were quick to endorse the strategies – Birzeit University in particular incorporated a

Community Work Program to mobilize volunteers for a three day “olive harvest vacation.”125

The volunteer organizations were born out of a realization that Palestinians in the territories were now on their own. The Arab states had proven poor defendants of the

Palestinian cause, and the PLO was facing major setbacks in Jordan, particularly after

124 Mary E King, A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance (New York: Nation Books, 2007). 125 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 41.

86 Black September. Local leaders thus mobilized to produce social capital and solidarity in a leaderless environment plagued by social anomie. Their methods and message were foundational for future activism – youth groups, women’s groups, and volunteer clubs all became a vital part of the national narrative and demonstrated a way to preserve community under exceptional circumstances. In many ways, this grassroots activism was the birth of the popular movement, “offering a dynamic combination of concrete services benefiting the community and a political context in which nationalist aspirations could be effectively expressed.” 126 That expression, however, lacked clarity. The end-game remained vague, with broad references to resistance but little agreement on overall strategy. National committees represented a broad coalition of activists, many of whom were former Jordanian ministers or pro-Hussein.127 Plagued by ideological disputes, the national committees were unable to produce a coherent national message.

Unsurprisingly, Israel viewed the nationalist activism of the local committees with a great deal of trepidation, and military authorities organized mayoral elections in

1972 in an effort to render the committees useless. Just as municipal restructuring failed in Gaza, so too did it produce unexpected results in the West Bank. Israel had hoped for conservative, pro-Jordanian or pro-Israeli mayors to sweep the councils. Incumbents did win most seats, but they had radicalized in the process. Many radicals, including al-Bireh mayor Abd al-Jawwad Saleh, Hilmi Haloum in Tulkarem, and Karim Khalaf in

Ramallah, would prove frustrating opponents for an Israeli authority seeking pliable allies.128 They also heralded a new phase of pro-PLO nationalism in the West Bank.

Inside-Outside

126 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 43. 127 Abdul Aziz Hajj Ahmad. “Interview with the Palestine National Front.” MERIP Reports, no. 50 (August 1, 1976): 17 128 Emile F Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics since 1967 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988), 40.

87 External actors regarded leadership developments in the West Bank and Gaza with a great deal of interest. Israel initially adopted a policy of noninterference, allowing existing elites to hold on to positions of power. But that policy, prompted by defense minister Moshe Dayan, lasted only a short while, and came to an end soon after voters elected radical mayors in 1972. The occupying power’s influence extended far beyond the political realm, shaping a new society through increased labor flows, the gradual destruction of the agricultural sector, and absolute economic control. Jordan also exerted influence in the West Bank, using its previous control over the economic and political realm to affect political outcomes in their favor. But the most important outside actor affecting leadership outcomes on the inside was, by far, the PLO. Aware that local leadership could easily supplant the organization in its quest for sole representation, the

PLO developed an intricate system of monetary disbursement designed to allocate patronage and extend its influence in the refugee camps and guerilla groups across the

Arab world, to villages and towns in the West Bank and Gaza. Local leadership paid the price of this external meddling

The conflicting interests of [Israel, Jordan, and the PLO] have only served to deepen disunity and fragmentation among the ranks of the local elite. Indeed, the net effect of their policies has been to weaken the position of the traditional politicians without allowing for the emergence of a new, viable leadership. In their attempt to affect West Bank internal political dynamics, Jordan, the PLO, and Israel have not confined their competition to the manipulation of economic resources and inducements. They have frequently used coercive techniques to penetrate and weaken the sphere of influence of the rival actors.129

129 Ibid., 7.

88 That the PLO successfully challenged local leadership in the West Bank stemmed in large part from a legitimacy windfall after the Fatah-affiliated fedayeen replaced the pro-

Arab leadership around Ahmed Shuqayri. The fedayeen, based predominantly in Jordan and made up mostly of Fatah members, envisioned a whittling away of Israeli colonialism. Inspired by the Algerians, Vietnamese, and other anti-colonial armed struggles, Palestinian fighters were the only remaining Arab party actively fighting against he Zionist enemy. Their popularity was reinforced by the Battle of Karameh in

March 1968, when Israeli troops entered the fedayeen base in Jordan, suffering startling losses.130 But the fedayeen could not protect, nor represent, Palestinians living with the occupied territories, in large part because Israel’s coercive apparatus kept them outside the occupied territories. And when the fedayeen gained too much influence or caused too much trouble in their host countries, they were invariably crushed, first in Jordan in 1970, and later in Lebanon during its civil war. The influence of the fedayeen flourished in the realm of legend and martyrdom, and informed a political culture that honored them in song, literature, and folklore. The PLO benefited from this popular legitimacy when the organization replaced the old-guard pro-Arab leadership and reshaped the PLO’s charter into a doctrine for armed struggle. Yasser Arafat was named Chairman of the PLO at the

5th Palestinian National Council (PNC, the legislative body of the PLO) in 1969, heralding the ascendancy of Fatah, the inclusion of the left in the PFLP and PDFLP (later

DFLP), and affirming the national character of the organization.

The rise of Palestinian nationalism within the PLO did not immediately signal an appreciation for diplomacy. Only after Black September in 1970-71, when Jordanian

130 Jamal R. Nassar, “The Culture of Resistance: The 1967 War in the Context of the Palestinian Struggle,” Arab Studies Quarterly 19, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 80.

89 forces crushed Palestinian bases on the East Bank and seriously weakened the armed movement, did the PLO consider alternatives to guerilla warfare. Hiltermann explains:

“Defeat had underlined the fact that the PLO would be unable to liberate Palestine by military means alone. The sights were lowered; there was still talk of “revolutionary armed struggle,” but from 1970-71 on, the PLO began to move from the “democratic secular state” option to the two-state solution.”131

Crushed in Jordan, but definitively national in orientation, the PLO adjusted to its new role. Palestinians under occupation needed a more direct leadership, one capable of encouraging steadfastness on the ground while working diplomatically toward an end to the occupation. From 1970-71 onward, the PLO called for political activism in the occupied territories. The 10th PNC in Cairo in April 1972 was a watershed in this respect.

PLO leadership made an explicit call for activists in the occupied territories to organize into trade unions. The 10th convention also coincided with the revelation of Jordanian and

Israeli designs to affect domestic outcomes: Jordan declared its intentions for a confederacy on the East and West Bank, while Israel called municipal elections to try to engineer a friendly local leadership. Both moves were attempts to side-step the PLO; the organizations call for mass mobilization on the ground reflected strategic awareness of that threat, and signaled its intention to aggressively pursue – in conjunction with armed struggle – a diplomatic track.132 The move would prove crucial to the ascendancy of a national movement coordinating inside and outside interests, more capable of articulating norms appropriate for a people under occupation, but still grasping for moral legitimacy.

131 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 139. 132 See “The PNC: Historical Background,” Journal of Palestine Studies 16, no. 4 (Summer 1987): 149–52.

90 Un-triggered social purpose, low interactional norms

We should not expect clear boundaries around interactional norms in the first few years of a military occupation. Palestinians had very little sense of shared goals following the occupation. Many simply expected another war that would return the West bank to

Jordan and Gaza to Egypt, while others hoped for a land-for-peace type deal. Nationalist leaders, notably the mayors, worked to manage life under the occupation, but they gave little articulation of “what next”. The lack of clarity around shared goals was both vertically and horizontally enforced. The grassroots lacked an articulated message as did leadership hubs, which were divided between Gaza and the West Bank, inside and outside, and pro-Jordanian and pro-PLO forces. Such varied sources of normative guidance explain a great deal about the social anomie that permeated the first few years of occupation. Unsurprisingly, social purpose was low and un-triggered during this time.

Nevertheless, the first few years delineated the realm of the possible, as masses and elites tried to make sense of their new surroundings. Many factors impacted the genesis of new norms, including the strategic environment that, in the case of military occupation, involves not only a potentially leaderless society, but a hostile and effective coercive apparatus. Within these constraints, Palestinian nationalists unwittingly employed a process of elimination, taking note of prohibitive interactional norms that could be reasonably designated and enforced. Table 2.2 summarizes the findings

91 Table 2.2 Interactional Norms 1967-1973

Level of Outcome Action Norm

proscription

Red Lines of Physically shrinks Simsar al-ard: the land broker -N/A Cooperation population/land Weakens resistance “Collaborators”

-Norms not yet present

Gray Zones of Fortifies the • Political/Administrative -Low coherence Cooperation occupation, weakens cooperation -Low enforcement civil resistance

Gray Zones of Entrenches • Professional association boycott Cooperation power -Low coherence - normalization asymmetry, weakens -No enforcement civil resistance Gray Zones of Relative economic Economic cooperation -Low coherence Cooperation gains for occupier • Commercial boycott -Some - economic • Migrant Labor enforcement, abandoned after 1 year

1. Economic Interactional Norms

Ambiguous economic interactional norms: commerce and migrant labor Though not on a wide scale, merchants attempted to punish the occupying economy almost immediately following the occupation. Shop-owners closed their doors and observed strikes organized underground. But Israel’s coercive apparatus was too strong in the West

Bank. Military authorities permanently closed strikers’ shops, and fined and arrested demonstrators and shop-owners. Punitive measures were prohibitive almost immediately.

Organizers faced a $3000 fine for inciting others to strike or spreading hostile

92 propaganda. Shop-owners who closed during work days were fined $300 and/or faced up to a year in prison. Those who closed during an organized strike faced even heavier punishment: a $3000 fine and/or 5 years imprisonment. 133 In short, despite initial attempts by grassroots leaders to enforce non-cooperation norms in commerce, Israel’s coercive apparatus ensured the new norms could not gain traction.

A prohibition on migrant labor was a similarly difficult norm to establish and enforce. Those who crossed the Green Line to work in Israel in 1967-1970 faced quiet condemnation from leadership. PFLP activists labeled them “traitors”, but took no action against them. Communists viewed them as lumpenproletariat, inherently beyond organization.134 But by 1970, more than 20,000 Palestinians crossed the Green Line to work, and leaders in the West Bank did little more than make public statements against the activity – statement that fell on deaf ears as Palestinians went about feeding their families.

The situation in Gaza differed. There, a short-lived but well-armed leadership identified and enforced prohibitive norms around labor flows to Israel, at least until the

ANM was crushed in 1971. Activists around the ANM opposed all cooperation with the military authorities. By the end of 1970 the fedayeen controlled the camps and began enforcing boycotts and declared strikes. They launched grenades into markets to disrupt commerce, and prevented day-laborers from entering Israel for work by attacking post- offices, banks and buses. Yet even with a coercive apparatus, the fedayeen were incapable of producing norms out of a rejectionist ideology. The reasons are two-fold: first and foremost, Palestinians needed work, and work across the Green Line was the

133 Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 36–37. 134 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 66.

93 only available option. The inflexibility of the fedayeen hurt the work force: if not for their attacks, much more than 7,000 migrant laborers would have crossed the Green Line for work by March 1968. The fact that so many residents ignored the ANM’s guidelines, even in the face of violent retribution, is a testament to the challenges of enforcing prohibitive norms under occupation. But it also signals that the ANM had little popular legitimacy in the face of such attacks – they functioned top-down but did not reflect on the impact their actions would have on the population they were meant to represent.

Second, while the ANM was more consolidated than local leadership in the West Bank, it still lacked widespread credibility. It also lacked the overt approval of the PLO, and with the PLO struggling to understand its place in the early years of the occupation, residents were left scrambling for normative guidance. Contributing to this social anomie was the reality of thousands of West Bank laborers working in Israel unfettered, a phenomenon that signaled to Gaza’s labor force that they too should enjoy access to new opportunities.

With Gaza’s leadership low on credibility, and Gaza and West Bank leadership still divided, workers and merchants did what any labor force would do – they found work where they could.

II. Civil and Political Interactional Norms

Ambiguous civic interactional norms: Academic and professional associations There was very little formal cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian professional, academic, or cultural institutions in the first decades of occupation. But professional associations and schools did have to function under the aegis of the military authorities, and they expressed displeasure at this reality almost immediately. Lawyers’ associations organized collectively in the fall of 1967. When Israel moved the court of appeals from Jerusalem to

94 Ramallah (a symbolic move to strip Jerusalem of its Palestinian character), lawyers called it illegal, refusing to serve in the new court system. The strike was feasible in the short term as most lawyers continued to receive their pay from the Jordanian government. But

Israel easily sidestepped the strike, allowing their own lawyers to practice in the West

Bank. Ann Lesch explains that “over time, many lawyers came to believe that they could serve the residents better by defending them than by boycotting the courts.”135 Teachers faced similar constraints and went through a similar process. Their strikes emphasized

“no education under occupation” , but when the occupation dragged on and the international community adopted UNSC resolution 242, they shifted to a more pragmatic

“no Judaization of education”.136 Teachers also found that organized resistance was costly. Israel deported nine teacher strike organizers within the first two years of the occupation, including a principle of an UNRWA school. In short, teachers and lawyers immediately sought ways to resist the occupation, at first demanding non-cooperation.

But they soon discovered that the penetration of Israeli institutions into Palestinian cultural and professional life was inevitable – resistance thus had to happen within those institutions, in ways more nuanced than noncooperation and organized resistance.

Like laborers and merchants, professional societies had no normative guidance from national leadership. They chose cooperation after initial attempts at boycott, paving the way for future civil servants, including nurses, doctors, tax collectors and police officers, a core group I address in-depth in the following section.

Ambiguous political interactional norms: Administrative and political cooperation

135 Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 35. 136 Ibid.

95 Without a doubt, political interactions were at the core of leadership debates in the immediate aftermath of the occupation. Leaders had to decide whether to pursue diplomacy as an overall strategy, and if so, under what conditions. The PLO leadership firmly opposed any form of negotiations with Israel. But certain members of the intelligentsia, namely ‘Aziz Shehad from Ramallah, Dr. Hamdi al-Taji al-Faruqi from al-

Bira, and Muhammad Abu Shilbiya from Jerusalem, proposed negotiations with Israel toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.137 Hebron’s mayor, Sheikh Muhammad ‘Ali al-Ja’bari, suggested negotiations between the West

Bank mayors and Israel, toward some form of Palestinian entity in the West Bank.

Neither of these initiatives gained traction, in part because PLO leadership opposed it so vehemently, and both died out by the early 1970s.

Nationalists also had to determine whether municipal leaders should cooperate with the military government, in effect offering administrative assistance to the occupation. The first major trial of these norms arose out of the 1972 municipal elections.

Jordanians and the PLO immediately called for a boycott of the elections, seeing them as a sinister strategy to tie the hands of Palestinian mayors and align them with Israeli interests. Even more threatening, the leaders deemed the elections as a means to legitimize the occupation. The PLO made veiled threats that they would attack those running for office. Communists on the ground did the same, claiming that Israel had called the elections only to prey on popular hatred of the Hashemite Kingdom, a major patron of the communist party.138 One by one, however, leaders realized that a boycott might not be feasible, and could backfire by allowing Israel to hand-pick the victors.

137 Shaul Mishal and Reʼuven Aharoni, Speaking Stones: Communiqués from the Intifada Underground (Syracuse University Press, 1994), 12. 138 Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 46.

96 Jordan reversed its recommendation for a boycott before the elections, throwing its backing to incumbent mayors who had been friendly to the Kingdom. Elections took place in two waves, and in the first wave in March 1972, Palestinians came out to vote en masse. Seeing this result, the PLO changed tracks by urging Palestinians in the south to vote for mayors who would challenge Israeli authorities.139 With such mixed messaging from a fractious leaders, Palestinians essentially chose for themselves, and opted to exercise some agency in an occupation that stripped them of most. Administrative and political cooperation thus remained an ambiguous norm at best, a direct result of fractious leadership and un-triggered social purpose.

Municipalities, their role set in the 1972 elections, also had to demarcate the parameters of cooperation with the military government. In essence, they adopted a policy of controlled radicalism, throwing their support behind nationalist protest but maintaining constant interactions with the Military Government. The game was necessary to safeguard the provision of goods and essential services at the local level, especially in welfare, education, and commerce.140 The PLO and Jordan conceded as well, using the economic and political infrastructure of the municipalities for their own organizational goals. As Mishal and Aharoni argue, “the PLO was willing to acquiesce in Israel’s continued presence in the territories, assisting it to ensure normalization in day-day- life.”141

Gaza’s residents reacted in a markedly different fashion to the electoral process.

Unlike in the West Bank, Gaza’s residents had no history with elected municipal councils

– their leaders had been appointed by Egyptian authorities during its occupation between

139 Ibid. 140 Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, 13. 141 Ibid.

97 1948-67. With little popular demand for elected officials, and a far less organized municipal structure, Gaza’s population appeared indifferent to elections. Gaza’s leadership condemned the electoral process, abducting and killing candidates before they could take part, effectively dissuading those who had intended to take part in the electoral process. When Gaza’s leaders were appointed, they assumed the same degree of reticent cooperation that West Bank mayors had, setting a trend that would eventually normalize relations between radical mayors and the military government.

III. Security Interactional Norms

While Israel made use of informants immediately after the war, the phenomenon only became salient in the mid-1970s. Clandestine and overt cooperation with Israeli security agencies is analyzed in the following time frame.

Analysis

Unsurprisingly, fractured leadership during the first few years of occupation produced miniscule amounts of social purpose, resulting in tremendous ambiguity in the economic and political realm. Residents acted in the interests of self, family, and clan, relying on traditional roles and a long-established system of patronage. For many, that meant working across the Green Line or serving as a middleman selling Israeli goods in the

Palestinian market. For most, it meant electing officials who could provide services even if only by working with Israel. Unlike certain elements of the leadership, most notably the ANM, Palestinian residents were pragmatic. Idiosyncratic, decentralized, and unrealistic demands by ideological leaders may have deterred a few Palestinians from

98 crossing the Green Line for work or for voting in elections, but most chose the less sacrificial path of reticent cooperation. In short, we see ambiguity in interactional norms in 1967, with a gradual shift toward permissive encounters by 1973. In both moments, norms are predominantly unclear. Yet norms that leaned toward the unacceptable in 1967 eventually acquiesced, moving, almost out of necessity, toward the permissive. Even as certain permissive encounters became “normal”, they lacked purposive messaging.

Palestinians did not work in large numbers in Israel because their leaders encouraged them; they did so because it was the only game in town. They did not vote in municipal elections because inside and outside factions agreed that they should; they did so because they inclusion in the political process was favorable to further isolation. For this reason, those norms remain ambiguous, albeit leaning toward permissive.

1973-1987: The Ascendency of the National Movement

The national movement got a real boost in 1973 with the emergence of the

Palestine National Front (PNF), a coalition of trade unions, professional societies, women’s groups, and student groups. The PNF was the first coordination across ideological and factional lines, uniting the diverse ideologies of the two biggest players at the time, the Jordanian Communist Party (JCP) and the Palestine Liberation Organization

(PLO). From this point on, Palestinian nationalists experienced punctuated moments of cohesion, and with those the emergence of new interactional norms. During brief moments of relative unity, social purpose awakened pro-social behavior in many

Palestinians, explaining compliance with norms that had yet to gain traction. Norms in the three broad categories of interaction become most clear from 1973-76 with the emergence of the PNF, and 1978-1982 with the foundation of the National Guidance

99 Committee (NGC). Ambiguity followed the replacement of the elected municipalities with the civil administration in 1981, as a number of new forms of interaction took shape.

It is from 1973-1987 that certain prohibitive and permissive norms took shape, accompanied with the first instances of limited compliance, setting in place a normative framework for strategies of resistance during the first intifada. Table 2.3 summarizes the findings.

Table 2.3 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 1973-1987

Social Purpose Leadership Dynamic Interactional Norms

LOW FRAGMENTED (punctuated moments of JUMBLED (punctuated moments of unity) medium)

Vertical Horizontally SOME Direction UNCLEAR Coordination LOW Shared Goals

Horizontal Vertically MODERATE SOME Coherence SOME Coordination shared goals

Popular LOW Legitimacy Social Articulation Purpose NO Compliance LOW LOW Triggered of end-goals

The seeds of true leadership

The victory of radical incumbent mayors in Ramallah, al-Bireh, and Tulkarem in the

1972 municipal elections coincided with the foundation of a united local leadership in the

West Bank. The Palestine National Front (PNF), an amalgam of trade unions,

100 professional societies, women’s groups, and student groups, was the first coordinated front crossing ideological and factional lines, uniting inside and outside leadership. The

PNF was formed “after extensive consultation with the PLO, with the different resistance groups, and with the different political parties” and eventually agreed upon a “unified political program.”142 The Jordanian Communist Party proved instrumental in founding the PNF, in large part because its members had yet to be jailed by Israeli authorities.143

They worked closely with Fatah and the PFLP, as well as with Baathists and independents.144 Its thirteen-point manifesto declared itself an inseparable part of the

Palestinian national movement represented in the PLO. Contradictions in JCP and PLO ideologies signaled a remarkable flexibility – and foreshadowed factional competition – in the national movement. The PLO charter continued to reject the two-state solution, something the JCP had explicitly supported for years. The alliance thus demonstrated a subtle and cautious PLO shift toward a two-state solution, and tepid JCP support for armed struggle with some acceptance of Resolution 242 as a temporary move. But as

PNF member Abdul Aziz Hajj Ahmad stated in a 1976 interview, the conditions of the occupation allowed both sides to circumvent final status disagreement in favor of unified action.145

The PLO, in the meantime, was evolving internally and making strides toward greater international legitimacy. Arab states recognized the organization as the sole representative of the Palestinian people at the Rabat Conference in October 1974, and the world joined in that recognition a year later when the United Nations invited Yasser

142 Abdul Aziz Hajj Ahmad. “Interview with the Palestine National Front,” 17-18. 143 The JCP had accepted resolution 242, and limited its activities to the distribution of leaflets. Israel collected Jordanian files on JCP members, but left cadres alone until 1974, when the JCP, along with the PNF, adopted armed struggle as a valid form of resistance. 144 Abdul Aziz Hajj Ahmad. “Interview with the Palestine National Front,” 17-18. 145 Abdul Aziz Hajj Ahmad. “Interview with the Palestine National Front,” 18.

101 Arafat to speak at the UN General Assembly. One year after the 1973 war at the 12th

PNC, members adopted a number of resolutions that signaled a shift from dogmatic militancy toward a cautious diplomacy. They modified certain aspects of the “all-or- nothing” ideology that called for a secular, democratic state in all of Palestine, and began veiled acceptance of resolution 242. Motivated by the Rabat Summit and the rise of political rivals on the ground, the 12th PNC signaled the beginning of an important tactical shift – it was the first step in the inevitable march toward acceptance of diplomacy and the two-state solution.146 It was also the most important critical juncture that allowed political actors to pursue various forms of social and political encounters with Israelis, a process described in greater detail below.

By embracing a quasi-state structure, the PLO tacitly embraced political struggle in the territories. Supporting the PNF was a clear indication of that shift. The move was tactical, designed to produce cadres loyal to the PLO on the ground who could counter

Israel’s “self-rule” and “autonomy” proposals. Mass demonstrations in 1973-1974 reflected the unity produced by the PNF-PLO alliance. Although the PNF provided the framework for collective action, local committees continued to function independently, playing a large role in the civil unrest. Schoolchildren were the vanguard, forming voluntary committees and cleaning up neighborhoods after major clashes, as well as joining demonstrations against the army.

Factionalism would eventually take its toll on the PNF. Fatah distrusted the communist presence, partly because the JCP controlled the trade unions, an influence not commensurate with its relatively limited standing in the national movement.147 Before

146 For more on reading the evolution of the PLO through PNC resolutions, see Hussam Mohamad. “PLO Strategy: From Total Liberation to Coexistence.” Palestine-Israel Journal 4, no. 2 (1997). 147 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 46.

102 infighting could rend the united front from within, however, Israel deporting most of its leaders, effectively crushing it. The 1976 municipal elections, however, signaled that the pro-PLO elements of the PNF were still major players. Pro-PLO mayors swept the elections, winning in every major town except Bethlehem. All nationalist leaning, these players rejected outright Israel’s attempts at cooptation. A sweeping victory for radical elements in the national camp, the mayors faced an immediate challenge with the Likud victory in the 1977 Knesset elections. Israel quickly pushed a new autonomy plan after

Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem in December 1977. The culmination was the Camp David

Accords, which saw Egypt accept a land for peace agreement that hung Palestinians out to dry. Perhaps the biggest threat to the national aspirations of the Palestinians, the autonomy plan proposed in the Camp David Accords was nevertheless the impetus for a further revival of the national movement.

Camp David and its aftermath

Sadat’s initiative neutralized Egypt as the main player in the struggle to end the Israeli occupation, setting off a series of lasting reactions for the PLO and the leadership on the ground. West Bank and Gaza Mayors reacted swiftly to the autonomy plan by organizing the Jerusalem Conference, and in November 1978 they formed the National Guidance

Committee (NGC), an organization that openly defied Israel’s attempts at forcing resistance underground.148 Their executive committee was made up of six mayors, representatives from Gaza, and representatives from all the major mass organizations and national institutions. Unlike the PNF, the NGC had a more conservative orientation,

148 Ibid., 43.

103 reflected in growing representation of pro-PLO Fatah members and a relatively diminished role for the JCP. The NGC also continued in the direction of accepting a two- state solution, moving further than any previous PNC statements. Like the PNF, they organized protests that reflected a growing capacity on the ground for collective action.

A second immediate effect of Camp David was the PLO’s realization of an urgent need to strengthen its relationship with pro-Jordan notables in the West Bank and the

Hashemite Kingdom more broadly, a goal it moved towards at the November 1978 Arab

Summit, when Arab states pledged $250 million to the PLO, $1.25 billion to Jordan, and

$150 million to help fund steadfastness activities in the occupied territories.149 The PLO, meanwhile, resumed its official cooperation with Jordan, founding the Palestinian-

Jordanian Joint Committee, its purpose to support activists on the ground. The NGC was immediately wary of the coordination, suspecting that Jordan, who controlled distribution of the funds, would disburse or withhold funding with their own interests in mind, a fear confirmed early on.150 The left leaning PFLP, DFLP, JCP (renamed the Palestinian

Communist Party-PCP in the early 1980s) and the conservative camp around Fatah and the Muslim Brothers, all had to compete for funding and membership, leading to salient divides. Ideological differences, especially between the PLO and PCP, also took a toll.

The PLO felt threatened by the PCP’s control over unions in the territories, and used joint committee monies to fund competing organizations.

On the whole, the joint committee had a mixed but lasting effect on the national movement. Active between 1979-1985, it received only 40% of its promised budget,

149 Amal Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement: Politics of Contention, 1967-2005 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 64. 150 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 44.

104 delivering JD 138 million in those seven years. For those who supported Fatah’s

“steadfastness” campaign, Jamal explains:

In the joint committee’s own estimation, its impact was positive, despite its limitations. On the one hand it freed the national public and popular institutions from reliance on financial help from the occupying authorities. It provided financial resources that enabled them to function without being controlled by the Israeli authorities and connected them to developments in the policies of the PLO. The committee contributed to the development of the Palestinian community and enabled it to plan its activities according to priorities that served the national interest.151

But the committee had no shortage of critics. Most activists from the left charged that the joint committee was not only unproductive, but also harmful. Arafat and the PLO were disorganized and lacked a long-term strategic vision, they argued, and in the end, the joint committee merely encouraged widespread bribery and theft. Indeed, funding was mostly political, an arena for pro-PLO and pro-Jordan leaders to jostle over political territory and rapidly expand their patronage networks. The PFLP and other activists on the ground accused the PLO and Jordan of playing politics, whitewashing their own internal battles under the headline of “steadfastness”, while more urgent projects to combat the occupation remained unfunded and underdeveloped. Jordan and the PLO did align in one area; the majority of their funding went to the conservative merchant class, leaving the broader population with relatively less support. 152 Whether the joint committee helped or harmed the national cause, its outcome was clear – the definitive ascendency of Fatah in the occupied territories: “Fatah’s policies of selective support served to establish its power as the main political force in the occupied territories, while

151 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 70. 152 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 71-72.

105 preventing the local national elite, especially the leftists, from gaining too much power.”153

While inside and outside factions jockeyed for influence in what would be termed the “war of institutions” – its main players being the communists and the PLO – 154 the popular movement continued to mature. One reason for their success, perhaps ironically, rested in factional antagonism, which upped competitive recruitment efforts in volunteer work associations, professional societies, trade unions, and youth groups. Hiltermann notes the symbolic power of the groups: “Like their precursors in colonial Africa and

Asia, these organizations are aimed primarily at educating and providing basic services and protection to a population living in lawlessness and deprivation. By doing so they have sought to keep the Palestinian national heritage alive and provide fresh leadership to a community kept leaderless by the military authorities.” 155 All four of the main grassroots blocs156 set a nationalist political agenda while providing concrete services in the West Bank. Their role was all the more vital in the 1980s, as the PLO leadership abroad licked its wounds from the Camp David Accords in 1978 and its devastating defeat in Lebanon in 1982. Inside leadership also faltered in the early and mid-1980s. The

NGC, which had proven an effective mobilizing tool for nationalists on the ground, was crushed by the military government in less than four years. They made mass arrests of grassroots activists in the late 1970s, and deported two mayors in 1980. They deported two others in 1982, formally banning the NGC at the same time, replacing the municipalities with the civil administration. In the end, internal factional competition,

153 Ibid., 72. 154 Ibid., 49. 155 Ibid., 50. 156 Hiltermann’s taxonomy lists 1.) the Fatah-affiliated Youth Movement 2.) DFLP-affiliated Unity Bloc 3.) Communist-affiliated Progressive Bloc and 4.) The PFLP’s Action Front. See Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 50.

106 outside financial meddling, and Israeli coercion collapsed the NGC, robbing the

Palestinians once again of a united leadership capable of shaping clear interactional norms. Leadership was comparatively more fragmented between 1982-1987 for these reasons.

Leadership dynamics fluctuated wildly from 1974-1987, in large part because the

Israeli military so effectively crushed nationalist threats. But we can observe two broad frames. From 1974-1982, inside and outside leaders overcame ideological differences, uniting at first in the PNF, and later in the NGC. These bodies, while hardly the paragon of a cohesive nationalist movement, did produce punctuated moments of unity and social purpose, reflected in increased protest and a greater clarity around interactional norms.

These golden years would end in 1981-82. In combination with the near decimation of the PLO in Lebanon, the year 1982 signaled a shift to greater fragmentation. It was in large part because of calls for unity by the growing popular movement, and the PLO’s need to reassert its influence, that factions inside and outside reconciled at the 18th PNC meeting in 1987. This move would be critical to the increased clarity of prohibitive interactional norms during the first intifada.

The rise of social purpose, new and shifting interactional norms

The national movement made significant strides toward a united leadership from 1973-

1987, producing moments of social purpose and achieving greater clarity around interactional norms. National goals did not, however, align horizontally and vertically.

The grassroots maintained a stronger inclination toward a two-state solution while the

PLO continued to officially eschew it. In addition, moments of agreement between leadership were short-lived and not vertically or horizontally integrated, limiting the

107 degree to which shared goals impacted social purpose. Still, many norms gained strength because of steadfastness efforts by the PLO and its factions on the ground. The national movement invested heavily in steadfastness activities by the late 1970s, funding voluntary committees that could alleviate the socio-economic effects of the occupation.

The Arab Summit in Baghdad in 1978 systematized four mechanisms of steadfastness: connecting Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to their national history and cultural heritage; preventing Israel from dominating the “spiritual domain”; providing residents with the tools necessary to maintain a connection to the land; and to challenge Israel’s economic policies by linking Palestinians in the occupied territories to the rest of the

Arab world.157 Note that the official leadership in the PLO had made overt its desire to preserve Palestinian identity, not by drawing red lines between Palestinians and the occupier, but by educating and organizing residents around national consciousness. The strategy did not mean that the PLO, or the many factions under its umbrella, condoned cooperation, only that they recognized the inevitability of interactions with the alien ruler, explaining why certain questionable interactions went unchallenged. Table 2.4 summarizes the findings.

157 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 63.

108 Table 2.4 Interactional Norms 1973-1987

The Village Leagues -High coherence -High compliance -Prohibitive Dialogue around “autonomy” -High coherence -Some compliance -Mostly Prohibitive Gray Zones of Fortifies the Mukhtar -Low coherence Cooperation occupation, weakens -Tolerated/Permissive - civic/political civil resistance Civil Administration -Low coherence -Mostly tolerated/permissive Gray Zones of Entrenches Political dialogue -Low coherence Cooperation power -Mostly - normalization asymmetry, weakens tolerated/permissive civil resistance

Gray Zones of Relative economic Commercial boycott -Medium coherence Cooperation gains for occupier -Mostly permissive, - economic some punctuated moments of prohibitive -Some compliance when prohibitive Migrant Labor -Medium coherence -Permissive/Tolerated The Waseet -Low coherence -Permissive/Tolerated

109 1. Economic Interactional Norms

Permissive Economic Interactions: Commerce Throughout most of the first 20 years of occupation, commercial ties and labor flows to Israel remained unimpeded, a reluctant permissive norm that turned prohibitive only in short bursts and with limited results.

Prohibitive commercial interactional norms emerged at moments of heightened contention from 1974-1987, with some compliance when leadership demonstrated unity.

Combining the organizing power of the PNF with the emotional clout of Arafat’s speech at the United Nations, Palestinians embarked on a new phase of civil disobedience in

1974. That year, a commercial boycott crippled the old city of Jerusalem, spreading quickly to al-Bireh and Ramallah. Israel’s response was swift and exact – they deported five organizers to Lebanon, including the president of Birzeit university, a member of the

Ramallah municipal council, and the leader of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce.158

PNF organizational capacity continued to impress, despite the crackdown. A massive civil disobedience campaign ran throughout the winter of 1975-1976, with demonstrations and strikes provoking another heavy-handed Israeli reaction. Mayors and all PNF factions supported March 30, 1976 strikes and demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza, in solidarity with Land Day protestors in Israel. They were among the largest since 1967. Commercial strikes continued sporadically through the 1970s and 1980s.

They demonstrated the growing power of leadership on the ground, and gave Israel reason to worry. They were one reason for increasingly repressive Israeli tactics, including Rabin’s Iron Fist policy in 1985. They also signaled to Palestinians that commercial non-cooperation represented a powerful nationalist strategy when employed at the right time, a signal that would have potent effect during the first intifada.

158 Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 60.

110 Nevertheless, as a norm, commercial interactions were high throughout the 1970s and

1980s. Leaders and masses alike accepted that economic interpenetration was an inescapable reality of the occupation, and an irreplaceable source of financial security.

Permissive Economic Interactions: Migrant labor Nationalist leaders also acquiesced to migrant labor flows across the Green Line – the disruption of traditional economic sectors was too devastating to expect laborers to sacrifice their meager salaries. Activists also saw how rapidly the migrant labor sector was growing. In 1970 according to Israeli statistics, more than 20,000 Palestinians crossed the Green Line, working predominantly in construction, industry and agriculture. That number had more than tripled by 1975 to

66,000, to 75,000 in 1980, and to 150,000 in 1987.159 These numbers tell only part of the story – many thousands more worked under the table, with some sources estimating that one-third of workers across the Green Line in the mid-1980s were unregistered.160 In the first few years of the occupation, both the PLO and PFLP decried migrant laborers as collaborators. The Communist Party opposed this view early on, and gradually all factions, including those who had previously reserved strong words for migrant laborers, came to view the massive force as possessing “great nationalist potential.”161 The

Progressive Workers’ Bloc (PWB), the Communist Party’s wing of the union movement and up until the early 1980s the chief labor union in the West Bank, set to represent and protect a population deemed the most vulnerable segment of the work force.162 In the late

1970s, the Workers’ Unity Bloc (WUB), identified with the DFLP, shared this role. But rather than organize the workers toward noncooperation – a move unions knew would

159 “Selected Statistical Tables on the Economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (West Bank and Gaza Strip).” UNCTAD. New York: 1989, 3; Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 43. 160 Toby Shelley, “Palestinian Migrant Workers in Israel From Repression to Rebellion,” in Palestine: Profile of an Occupation. Ed Zed Books, London: 1989, p. 33. 161 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 66. 162 Shelly, “Palestinian Migrant Workers in Israel,” 50.

111 punish far too many active members of the economy – the WUB and PWB invested in workers’ rights: realizing equality in wages, rights and working conditions; the transfer of funds from the Histadrut to Palestinian labor unions; the exemption of Arab laborers from

Israeli tax laws; an end to discrimination against Palestinian workers in Israel; and the right to unionize in the West Bank.163 The content of their representation is significant, most notably because it signals to workers that by working in Israel, they commit no foul against the Palestinian national movement. Instead, unions organized migrant workers as an infrastructure of resistance, nurturing social purpose but storing it away for future activism.

It is worth noting here that migrant labor strikes were never a viable option during the 1970s and 1980s, despite the brief unity produced by the NGC and the formidable infrastructure of the unions. First and foremost, effective labor strikes would have to include both Jews and Arabs. But neither would join strikes organized by the other group

– the Histadrut represented only Jews, and Palestinians organized in the West Bank could not place pressure on their employer when Jewish laborers and the Histadrut declined involvement. Second, Palestinian laborers working in the same factory in Israel came from different geographic regions of the West Bank, making them more difficult to organize. Geographic diffusion also meant that laborers gave their allegiance to different unions, each representing different factions.164 In short, facing obstacles to mobilization and a scarcity of employment alternatives in the occupied territories, nationalists accepted migrant labor as an unfortunate reality of the occupation, all the while organizing for mobilization down the road.

163 Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada, 67. 164 Ibid., 96-97.

112 Permissive Economic Norms: The Waseet A final obstacle to organizing laborers lay in the extensive network of wusata’, middlemen who brought Palestinians to work inside the Green Line regardless the level of political unrest. Many wusata’ explicitly ignored calls for strikes, prioritizing their own daily survival and the financial gain of the

Palestinians they organized for work inside Israel.165 Still, middlemen were not viewed as traitors. Many middlemen helped secure work permits for residents in their village, providing a service that certain laborers could not do on their own. Others were, no doubt, unsavory characters who took advantage of workers and others who needed their services, making the occupation work for them.166 These grew in number in the mid-

1980s with the advent of the civil administration.167 But the position as a whole would only be singled out as an egregious violation of national interactional norms after the outbreak of the intifada, and even then, the prohibition was toward specific wusata’ whose ties with Israel bled into the security realm.

Prohibitive economic interactions: Land brokering A less common form of economic interaction received consistent denunciation, with guilty parties labeled traitors of the worst kind. Land brokers, commonly referred to as simsar (pl: samasirah), were at the center of some of the first prohibitive interactional norms. Land sales constituted a major threat to the future of a Palestinian political entity, and it caused great alarm in

Palestinian national circles in the 1920s and 1930s. By the mid-1930s, land transactions involving Palestinians accounted for more than 89% of all land sales to Jews (Stein

1984). In 1934, for example, just two years before Jewish-Arab and Arab-British tensions

165 Author’s interview with four middlemen, active since the mid-1980s, from the Jordan Valley, August 2013. 166 In one Jordan Valley village, laborers spoke with admiration of the middlemen who treated them well, and with disdain of the middlemen who took advantage of them. Toby Shelley’s research demonstrates a similar variation, although he comes close to equating middlemen with land-sellers, something my research did not corroborate. See Shelley, “Palestinian Migrant Workers in Israel,” 38. 167 Yizhar Be’er and ’Abdel Jawwad Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations” (B’Tselem, January 1994), 76.

113 reached a boiling point, Arabs transferred over 60,872 dunums of land to Jews, constituting 1,178 separate transactions.168 The samasirah were branded as heretics in nationalist circles and by the population at large, a reflection of the centrality of land in

Palestinian identity. Despite facing social ostracism, the samasirah continued to broker land deals throughout the British Mandate, although their activities became increasingly clandestine as nationalist elites defined their activities as unacceptable.169 Jordanian law in the West Bank later provided the death penalty for those charged with selling land to

Jews, a law that became obsolete after the 1967 war, but revitalized by the PA after the signing of the Oslo Accords. Land dealings slowed after 1967, but picked up again after the Likud government lifted the ban on land acquisition in the West Bank in 1979, a move that corresponded with active encouragement for Israeli developers to purchase land.170 A number of Palestinians saw opportunity in the lifting of the ban. Those who crossed the red line often hailed from positions of influence, including makhateer (see below), and civil servants with ties to Israeli authorities. Many dealings were secured by fraudulent documents and forged signatures, leading to high profile investigations into

Israeli police and military corruption, as well as probes into suspected corruption in the

Israeli Lands Authority.171 One case outlined in a 1994 B’Tselem report exemplifies the typically deceitful practices of land dealers:

During the 1980s, the mukhtar of the village of Bidya, Mustafa Abu Bakr (also known as “Abu Zeid”), was accused of fraudulent land purchases from Palestinians in his village and other villages in the district, and of transferring the deeds to the land dealer Ahmad 'Odeh, who then sold them

168 Ted Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt: The 1936–1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (Fayetteville, Ark: University of Arkansas Press, 2003). 169 Continued land sales likely reflect not the rejection of the nationalist call, but the victory of personal incentive over costly collective action. 170 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 72. 171 Ibid., 72.

114 to Jewish dealers. Abu Bakr's name had also been linked to the big “land scandal” of 1984-1985, but the military prosecutor suspended the proceedings against him.

On January 11, 1986, a-Sh'ab reported that one of the residents of Bidya, whose wife had died, asked Abu Bakr, in his capacity as mukhtar, to deal with the registration of the death and with the burial. Abu Bakr deceitfully made the man sign a large number of forms, including ones which had not been completed, which it later transpired were documents testifying that the man had sold his land and had received the appropriate payment.

On October 6, 1988, Abu Bakr was shot and killed by a number of villagers, who subsequently mutilated his body and set it on fire. Following this incident, security forces demolished five houses in the village and sealed another on the suspicion that they belonged to those responsible for the murder.172

We can glean a number of insight from the Abu Bakr case. First, Israeli authorities, including courts, considered Palestinian land dealers to be indispensable allies. Second,

Palestinian factions treated known land dealers in the harshest terms. Corpse mutilation is not merely a gruesome act designed to terrify – it is also religiously prohibited. When nationalists mutilate and immolate a body, they are stripping him of dignity in this world and the next, a symbolic act that demonstrates the utter abhorrence reserved for land dealers. One last point on land brokering: while the act lies at the extreme edge of prohibitive interactions, it is only occasionally central to the Palestinian normative discourse, in large part because the norm is unambiguous and unchanging. We will observe this puzzling outcome in analyzing the first intifada leaflets, which mentioned land dealers only a handful of times. This is because dealers were always small in number compared to the number of collaborators. Those numbers declined even more in the mid-

172 Ibid., 80.

115 1980s when Israel began seizing land as “state land”, making the broker increasingly irrelevant.

II. Civic and Political Interactional Norms

Permissive civic encounters: al-mukhtar Essentially apolitical, the position of the mukhtar (pl: makhateer) has long held an important place in Palestinian society.

Functioning as a sort of village elder, the mukhtar mediates between authorities and residents. The makhateer remained apolitical up to the first intifada, serving a predominantly administrative role for members of the clan, village, or neighborhood. A mukhtar might, for example, arrange for work or travel permits for villagers in his domain, or act as liaison between residents and the authorities over municipal matters.

Innocuous enough, the position does vary. While most makhateer were elected by the hamulah (clan), many others were appointed by Israel, particularly after Military Order

No. 366 in late 1969. Among the appointees, some began taking advantage of the position, gaining favors with the authorities for providing intelligence or helping with land sales.173 Still, nationalists allowed the time-honored position of mukhtar to continue unfettered, considering it essential for the running of municipal services. But positions of power, even if localized, provide incentives and opportunities for questionable interactions. With the establishment of the civil administration in 1981, many more makhateer were appointed, turning an otherwise apolitical position into a pool of potential collaborators. By the mid-1980s, about 826 people served as makhateer, receiving stipends from the military government and fees from Palestinians looking to

173 Ibid., 82.

116 secure permits or authenticate papers.174 It was not until the first intifada that leaders began to distinguish between the good mukhtar and the bad mukhtar, transforming an otherwise permissive norm into a conditional prohibitive one.

It is important to note a distinctive feature about the mukhtar, one shared with the waseet; both are part of the traditional fabric of Palestinians society which encompasses a complex network of patron-client relations. For most Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza during the first twenty years of the occupation, loyalty lay with the hamulah.

Even before the occupation, brokers and go-betweens mediated relations between and within clans, keeping in place a system centered on the exchange of favors.175 In this light, the mukhtar and waseet played an acceptable traditional role. Israel – and opportunistic Palestinians – took advantage of this traditional structure over time. But for most of the occupation, lasting through the 2010s, these traditional positions have remained intact.

Ambiguous civic encounters: Civil Administration Military order No. 947, issued

November 1981, created the civil administration in the West Bank, placing Menahem

Milson at its head. The military government remained in place despite this innovation, holding onto security responsibilities and some administrative tasks. Palestinian municipal councils, until that point elected and made up largely of nationalists loyal to the PLO, immediately boycotted the civil administration. In response, Israel deported nine mayors, essentially suspending the activities of the municipalities. Yet scores of other white collar Palestinians found the civil administration to be the sole source of employment. The civil administration was a massive bureaucracy, employing thousands

174 Adrien Katherine Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule,” Yale Journal of International Law 18 (January 1993): 87–103. 175 See Rigby, Legacy of the Past , 44-46.

117 of individuals in four major spheres – civilian security, education, health care, and tax collection. By 1985, the administration employed 11,614 civil servants – mostly

Palestinians – including police officers, teachers, nurses, doctors, and tax collectors.176 At the outbreak of the intifada, 98% of the bureaucracy’s staff were local Palestinians.177

Considering that the civil administration held the occupation in place while carrying out coercive actions like administrative detention, house demolitions, and deportations, it seemed an easy target for a prohibitive interactional norm. But the mostly white-collar workers went to work unimpeded in the first six years of the civil administration’s existence, leaders on the ground recognizing that they provided a service that even the factions’ extensive grassroots charitable organizations could not replace. A major reason the norm was tolerated rests in the coincidental collapse of national leadership; the destruction of the NGC, the deportation of mayors and dismissal of the elected municipalities, and the PLO’s losses in Lebanon all factored in to ambiguous norms around cooperation with the civil administration. Elements of this large force would be targeted during the first intifada, however, in one of the more dramatic shifts in interactional norms. Police officers lay at the core of the shift – I assess their role separately below.

Permissive political encounters: Flirting with dialogue A small number of Palestinian elites made contact with Israeli elites in the first few years of the occupation: pro-

Jordanian politicians reached out to Israeli politicians, but only in order to pursue a

Jordanian federation on the East and West Bank; and certain Palestinian academics met with their Israeli peers through academic sponsorship, mostly in the United States and

176 F. Robert Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War by Other Means (University of California Press, 1991), 19. 177 Martin Edelman, Courts, Politics, and Culture in Israel (University of Virginia Press, 1994).

118 Europe. These were done quietly and without official support in the first years of the occupation. A far more substantive and intense phase of encounters commenced only after the 12th PNC in 1974, when the PLO made its first steps towards recognition of the two-state framework. Indeed, examination of PNC resolutions from 1974-1988 tell us a great deal about the evolution of the norm of political dialogue, since PNC resolutions became a legitimizing instrument for political cooperation.178 The 12th PNC proved an important critical juncture, and established for the first time cautious permission from the highest echelons of Palestinian leadership toward political dialogue with certain Israelis.

Part of the shift was discursive: the PLO had shifted ideologically away from “total liberation of Palestine” to establishing a state-like structure on “land liberated from

Israel”. This shift was met with overt permission from Arafat and other high level leaders, like Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) for certain intellectuals to meet with sympathetic Israelis. Outside the occupied territories, this meant that PLO representatives like Said Hamami and Isam Sartawi could more freely hold dialogues they had already secretly initiated. In the West Bank, Arafat gave the green light to PLO representatives

Hanna Sinora and Fayez Abu Rahmeh to make initial contact with Israelis interested in ending the occupation. 179 Permission from the top trickled down to individual

Palestinians who began to recognize allies on the Israeli left. Daniel Amit, founder of the

Committee for Solidarity with Birzeit University, was particularly influential. Amit condemned the deportation of Birzeit University President and physics teacher Hanan

Nasr in 1974, offering to teach Nasr’s classes in his absence. His call was an eye-opener

178 Fouad Moughrabi et al., “Palestinians on the Peace Process,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 1 (1991): 36–53, doi:10.2307/2537364. 179 Edy Kaufman, Walid Salem, and Juliette Verhoeven, eds., Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2006), 21.

119 for many Birzeit teachers, who had yet to encounter a sympathetic Israeli voice.180

Together with similar-minded Israelis, they marched against Israel’s closures of the university throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Solidarity activism, even in the mid-1970s, was deemed an acceptable form of cooperation. Political dialogue, on the other hand, remained a quiet activity, often taking place in secret, since public sentiment considered dialogue with a great deal of suspicion.

The trend toward Palestinian-Israeli encounters would continue after the 13th PNC in 1977, when the PLO made greater advances toward accepting negotiations for a two- state solution. PLO representatives made contact with the Israeli Communist Party in the years that followed, and throughout the 1980s fostered relationships with members of the

Israeli peace camp. Academics at Birzeit University, notably Rita Giacaman, Salim

Tamari, Khalil Mahshi and Nabil Cassis, bolstered by the PLO’s quiet permission, took dialogue a step further, meeting with peers at the Weizmann Institute in 1982 and

1983.181 The early 1980s saw a blossoming of activities in East Jerusalem: Hanna

Siniora, editor of al-Fajr newspaper, worked with Simha Flapan of Israeli magazine New

Outlook, organizing the first ever conference of Palestinians and Israelis in East

Jerusalem, while Gaza leader Fayez Abu Rahmeh and Ziad Abu Zayyad starting leading open dialogue groups in Jerusalem.182 With some exception, these initial flirtations with dialogue took place almost exclusively with left-leaning Israelis, those who condemned the occupation and supported a two-state solution.

While officially sanctioned, encounters with Israelis were not universally welcomed. Left-leaning members of the PLO harshly criticized the Birzeit/Weizmann

180 Former Birzeit teacher who later took part in joint solidarity activities, Interview with author, November 2012. 181 Kaufman et al, Bridging the Divide, 26. 182 Ibid., 26.

120 Institute encounters in leaflets and editorials.183 Other, more severe attacks delineated the outer boundaries of political encounters. Sari Nusseibeh, then a professor of philosophy at Birzeit University, engaged in a number of activities that demonstrate ambiguity around the norm of political dialogue.184 Nusseibeh had long held an interest in dialogue, and in the early 1980s, he attended a number of organized, intentional, and public encounters with left-leaning self-described Zionists, exploring the future of Israel and

Palestine. His first such encounter in the early 1980s, organized by Herbert Kelman at

Harvard University, posed a particular challenge. Recognizing that his attendance would ruffle feathers among his colleagues, Nusseibeh preemptively resigned from his post as president of the Birzeit University teacher’s association. He attended nonetheless, believing that political dialogue was good for the Palestinians in the long run, even if unpopular among his constituency at the time. He faced the consequences upon his return. Marwan Barghouthi, co-founder of the Fatah Youth Movement (Shabiba), and

Ghassan Abu Hijleh, a member of the PFLP, condemned Nusseibeh’s actions in separate leaflets. Both had been Nusseibeh’s “good colleagues” prior to the gathering. This was the first suggestion that political encounters, while sanctioned by Arafat and Abu Jihad at the very top of the leadership, remained unpopular with many leaders on the ground throughout the 1980s.

Nusseibeh continued to build political bridges with Israelis throughout the 1980s, often in cooperation with Faisal Husseini, the Jerusalemite activist and notable, and at the behest of Abu Jihad. Another major step occurred when Abu Jihad backed the founding of the Arab Council, made up of Nusseibeh, Ziad Abu Zayyad, Hanna Siniora, Zuheir al-

183 Ibid., 26. 184 First Intifada activist, interview with the author, Jerusalem, May 2013.

121 Rayyes from Gaza, and the mayor of Hebron, Mustafa Natsheh. The Council was tasked with nurturing formal contacts with Israeli Knesset members sympathetic to a two-state solution. It was this council that led Nusseibeh to initiate a series of meetings with Herut members Moshe Amirav and Ehud Olmert in 1987, both members of the Zionist right.

Although corresponding with the mainstream Fatah leadership’s vision of dialogue with

Israelis who favored a two-state solution, encounters with the Zionist right proved too much for many Palestinians. A series of leaflets attacked Nusseibeh for the meetings once they had been made public, and a few days later, four masked men attacked the professor on the Birzeit University campus. He was hospitalized with a broken arm and a head wound.

Sari Nusseibeh’s activism throughout the 1970s and 1980s is a good barometer for the evolution of the boundaries of this particular interactional norm, although he was by no means the only activist pushing the envelope. His activities tell us that dialogue with Israeli leftists, while questionable in the late 1970s and early 1980s, had become the norm by the dawn of the first intifada. We need look no further for evidence than the 19th

PNC in Algiers in 1988, when the leadership stated that they “[appreciated] the role and courage of the Israeli peace movement in their fight and uncovering of the fascist and racist and aggressive powers in Israel, and also for their support to the struggle of our people and the courageous intifada.”185 Similar statements in 1978 would have brought ire on the PLO. By the late 1980s, however, emboldened by PLO leaders abroad and on the ground, as well as by the actions of leading intellectuals, political cooperation with the Israeli left had become a fairly widespread political norm.186 Dialogue with the Israeli

185 Rashid Khalidi, “The Resolutions of the 19th Palestine National Council.” Journal of Palestine Studies 19, no. 2 (1990): 29-42. 186 Further evidence of the norm can be seen in popular outrage at the assassination of Said Hammami, Wa’el Z’eitar, Na’im Khader, and Isam Sartawi, Palestinians who, with Arafat’s permission, took part in meetings with left-wing Israeli personalities in the mid-

122 right, however, remained contentious well into the intifada, a boundary that Nusseibeh’s activities brought to light.

Prohibitive political encounters: “Autonomy”: The immediate reaction to the autonomy plan embedded in the Camp David Accords was resounding and unanimous condemnation. Activists were already wary of anything short of complete independence, suspicious of prime minister Begin’s intended “self-rule”. When the Camp David

Accords were signed, leaders jumped to express their aversion. Some nationalists and pro-Jordanians in the West Bank, notably Elias Freij in Bethlehem and Zafir al-Masri, a

Nablus elite, pointed out the inherent danger of the ambiguity of the accords. But they found room for some cautious optimism, saying that the accords could be a basis for negotiations.187 The pro-PLO leaders took a much stronger stance, rejecting it outright.

They considering “autonomy” to be a duplicitous means of legitimizing the occupation and installing powerless administrative councils who would do little more than lower the costs of the occupation for Israel. In many ways, acceptance of the autonomy plan was considered treason, and a declaration issued in October 1978 stated that autonomy was

“legitimization of the occupation, the continuation of oppression of the [Palestinian] people and the stealing of their legitimate rights, and an open plot to curb the hopes of our people to have our right to our land and our self-determination.”188

Leaders coalesced around their disapproval of the plan, and over the course of a year, views hardened. A petition circulated clandestinely in September 1978 protested

Camp David: it was signed by sixty members of municipal councils, included the seals of

1970s. All four were assassinated by the Abu Nidal group on the claim of collaborating with the enemy. Actions by the Abu Nidal group, however, should not be considered representative – most Palestinians, including leaders from all factions, were appalled by the assassinations and condemned them loudly. 187 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 51. 188 Unpublished statement, quoted in Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 12.

123 the municipalities of Qalqiliya, al-Bireh, Bir Zeit, Silwad, and Deir Debwan, as well as seals from societies in six refugee camps and other NGOs. The view on the street matched condemnation from elites. One resident interviewed in 1977 by Ann Mosely

Lesch, said in response to the notion of self-rule:

Why don’t the Israelis understand that it is very difficult for the people of the territories to undertake such a task? During World War II, when France was conquered by the Germans, Marshall Pétain did negotiate with Hitler. How was Pétain defined by his own people, if not as a traitor? So also we define such people who organize themselves on the conquered territories in order to negotiate with the conquering authorities.189

The historical analogy is fitting; it underscores the calculus of leaders willing to make concessions on self-determination to occupying powers. Still, condemnation was reserved for those willing to work with Israel to realize the autonomy plan. Mayors were quick to announce their willingness – in line with the norm established by the PLO in 1974 and further articulated in 1977 – to enter negotiations with Israel aiming at full self- determination and the implementation of UN resolution 242. Both Mayor Karim Khalaf of Ramallah and Rashad Shawwa of Gaza publicly stated their desire to discuss full independence, promising peaceful coexistence. 190 In conversation with members of municipal councils, Lesch heard that leaders would be willing to accept an interim agreement if the following preconditions were met: “freeze on settlements during the interim period; and Israeli commitment to eventual withdrawal of its armed forces; a statement of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination; efforts ton reach an equitable

189 Quoted in Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 3-4. 190 Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 20-21.

124 accord on Jerusalem, and provision for gradually implementing the refugees’ right to return.”191

Enforcing the norm took on two forms, the violent and the nonviolent. Nonviolent enforcement took place predominantly within the NGC, founded in 1978 partly as a reaction to Camp David. The NGC placed immense pressure on supporters of the plan:

PLO sources published the names of supporters, publically ostracizing them and urging other leaders to mobilize against them. Those who continued to support the plan even after public shaming were left out of NGC meetings, and essentially made irrelevant.192

Violent enforcement was perhaps unnecessary – the public consensus was strongly against autonomy, and very few leaders stepped forward to offer a cooperative hand to

Israel. Still, those who did faced severe consequences. Earlier in the year, ‘Abd al-Nur

Jenho, a politician in Ramallah with close ties to the military authorities, was assassinated in part because he was seen as amendable to Begin’s self-rule plan.193 Militants made a number of attempts on Mustafa Dudeen’s life, the founder of the Village Leagues (see below) and on November 17, 1981, PLO militants shot and killed Yousuf Khatib, the head of the Ramallah Village League – both of these politicians were eager Israeli partners, and had expressed willingness to supplant the PLO as representative of the

Palestinians in negotiations.194 One assassination, however, alarmed both leaders and masses, and appears to have deviated slightly from the norm. Shaykh Hashem Khuzundar of Gaza was not classically viewed as a collaborator. He did support Camp David and the

“Gaza-first option,” and had planned to bring a delegation of Palestinians to meet with

Sadat to discuss autonomy, but he was not in league with Israel like the three politicians

191 Ibid., 22. 192 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 52-53. 193 Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 11. 194 Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2003).

125 previously mentioned. PFLP activists nevertheless considered him a traitor, and after warning him in a number of leaflets, stabbed him to death in June 1979. The PLO immediately condemned the attack, and residents expressed anger.195 Still, perhaps to demonstrate distance from his political views, not a single public dignitary attended his funeral.196

Prohibitive political encounters: The case of the Village Leagues Remarkably, despite factionalism and structural constraints on leadership in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel never succeeded in producing a loyal fifth column in the occupied territories. Zionists had succeeded in building bonds with members of the indigenous population elsewhere and at other times: with the Druze in the Galilee before and after 1948, the Bedouin in the

Negev, and militias in South Lebanon. From 1967-1982, however, the military government was incapable of recruiting anything more than individuals to do their political and military work. Much of the failure had to do with the incompatibility of

Zionist and Palestinian nationalism, but it was also likely a result of the relative homogeneity of the population. Salim Tamari suggests that the emergence of a genuine national leadership on the ground played an important part in preventing Israeli machinations: “Whatever the failings of Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories, it is a tribute to its organizational abilities that it has successfully confined Israel’s sponsorship of such collaborative elements to a few isolated quislings.”197

The military government did make efforts, however. Zionists had, after all, recruited and organized Arab partners in British Mandate Palestine prior to 1948. The successes of the Muslim National Associations (MNA) and the farmers’ parties in the

195 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 53. 196 Ibid., 53. 197 Salim Tamari. “In League with Zion: Israel’s Search for a Native Pillar.” Journal of Palestine Studies 12, no. 4 (July 1, 1983): 41– 42.

126 1920s were moderate,198 but they nevertheless represented a strategy that Israel could draw on in their collaborationist project in the early 1980s: Harakat al-Rawabit al-

Filistiniyya, or the Village Leagues. Just as in the 1920s, the Zionist strategy was to drive a wedge in traditional Palestinian social structures, by pinning village notables against the urban elite. Mustafa Dudeen started what would become the Village Leagues in the Mt

Hebron region in August 1978, when he innocuously announced his intention to resolve local problems in a peaceful manner, without the help of nationalist leaders or institutions. At the time, the Village Leagues had backing from the Jordanian government, the Kingdom’s attempt to counter PLO infiltration of rural West Bank. The

Leagues likely also drew funds from the Israelis as early as 1978,199 and eventually shifted loyalties entirely. Dudeen became influenced by a rising power in Israeli politics,

Menahem Milson, an orientalist scholar who countered Dayan’s “non-interventionism” with a Maoist-inspired strategy to encircle the urban elite with conservative peasants.200 It was Milson who aggressively promoted the Village Leagues, a vision he realized when he became head of the Civil Administration in 1981. By 1982, the Village Leagues had institutional capacity in seven districts in the West Bank, and with the help of defense minister Ariel Sharon and the Likud government, had their own budgets, weapons, uniforms, prison cells, interrogation centers, and a bi-weekly newspaper.

Orchestrated by Milson and articulated by Village League leaders like Dudeen, their mission was simple – to supplant the pro-PLO nationalist hegemony that had swept the West Bank in 1976, and provide Israel with a friendly leadership amenable to some version of “self-rule”. Israel paved the way for their success:

198 For extensive treatment of the subject of collaborators prior to 1948, see Hillel Cohen, Army of shadows: Palestinian collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 199 Lesch, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 11. 200 Tamari, “In League with Zion: Israel’s Search for a Native Pillar,” 44.

127

“The thrust of [the] policy, contrary to the Dayan tradition, was one of active intervention in the daily life of the West Bank population by cultivating village potentates whose abilities to provide services and patronages rested directly in power delegated by the Civil Administration. Simultaneously, the Civil Administration began to punish, and later administratively disqualify, any local leadership or municipal head who did not collaborate with the new regime.”201

Milson had hoped for a growing role for the Village Leagues. In the first year, his vision looked feasible. The Leagues held several rallies attracting thousands of protesters, the only public manifestations authorized by Israel since 1967. Leaders received lucrative patronage from Israel, including much-coveted bridge-crossing permits to visit relatives or conduct business in Jordan. The civil administration, meanwhile, handed powers over to the Village Leagues, including the “right to recommendation” for family reunification cases and the power to release some detainees.202 Members received weapons directly from Israel, forbidden to all other Palestinians in the occupied territories, and received military protection.203 Such benefits and a growing patronage network seemed promising.

But the Village Leagues never came close to usurping pro-PLO elements in the

West Bank. The reasons are numerous. First, the Village Leagues lost whatever legitimacy they had gained when they switched patrons, from Jordan in the late 1970s to

Israel soon after. That move infuriated leaders on the ground, who immediately demanded an explanation from Jordan, whom it was rumored still supplied funds to the unpopular militias. The PLO also demanded answers from Jordan, and King Hussein’s response was swift condemnation of Village League leaders. Over 50 members of the

201 Tamari “In League with Zion: Israel’s Search for a Native Pillar,” 45. 202 Ziad Abu-Amr, “The Palestinian Uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Arab Studies Quarterly 10, no. 4 (October 1, 1988): 384–405. 85. 203 John Kifner. “Palestinians Turn Ire on Collaborators.” The New York Times, March 27, 1988.

128 Leagues resigned immediately following the condemnation.204 Second, Israeli leaders could not agree on the exact role the Leagues were meant to play. Menahem Milson had fallen out of favor with defense minister Ariel Sharon, and resigned from the Civil

Administration in September 1982, ostensibly in protest of Israel’s involvement in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Milson’s successor, Col. Yigal Karmon, continued developing the Leagues, but was replaced just months after he was installed by Shlomo

Ilya, who quickly cut the number of Arabs permitted to carry weapons from 400 to

260.205 Ilya was skeptical that the Leagues could have the effect Israel desired, in large part because they lacked standing with the population.

Most meaningful in explaining the Leagues’ failure, however, was their utter lack of credibility. For the most part, Village League members were uneducated and thuggish, many with a spotty criminal history. Their violent and undisciplined behavior infuriated many Palestinians, who viewed them as little more than opportunists and collaborators.

Most importantly, the Village Leagues had little to offer residents beyond the occasional favor – their patronage network simply could not compete with that set up by the PLO and Jordan, and they were incapable of demanding and receiving land guarantees from

Israel. Quite the contrary, they were powerless to protest confiscations even of land belonging to members of the Village Leagues.206

Nothing reflected the legitimacy void more than the frequent attacks and occasional assassination of its members, a trend that continued throughout the first intifada, long after the Village Leagues had collapsed.207 Militants made a number of

204 Edward Cody. “Palestinian Violence Fails to Shake Israel’s Grip on West Bank.” The Washington Post. April 6, 1982. 205 Edward Walsh. “Israel Still Pursues Leadership Role for West Bank ‘Leagues.’” The Washington Post (1974-Current File). May 20, 1983. 206 Tamari, “In League with Zion: Israel’s Search for a Native Pillar,” 45. 207 Kifner, “Palestinians Turn Ire on Collaborators.”

129 attempts on Dudeen’s life, and on November 17, 1981, PLO militants shot and killed

Yousuf Khatib, the head of the Ramallah Village League. 208 Few other forms of interaction received such harsh enforcement. The assassination of Khatib certainly reinforced the norm that Village League membership was treason, although popular censure of the Leagues was nearly unanimous even before his death.

This brief interlude, of a quisling leadership incapable of supplanting an already fractious national leadership, demonstrates an important trend. Despite leadership disunity, Palestinians in the early 1980s had developed strong interactional norms around overt collaboration with Israel. Along with land-selling and clandestine collaboration, these three actions were unequivocally condemned and subject to violent reprisals. The national movement also coalesced in its condemnation of one particular form of political cooperation: acceptance of “autonomy”, “self-rule”, or any variation thereof.

III. Security Interactional Norms

Prohibitive security interactions: Collaborators, informants and spies There is no clearer case of the “enemy within” than that of military collaborators, Palestinians who, whether coerced or not, work for one of the branches of the General Security Service

(GSS), the military, or the police. But understanding who is included among

“collaborators” is a far more challenging task, in large part because collaboration is in the eye of the beholder. I follow the definition in a 1992 B’tselem report: “various types of intelligence agents who furnish security information from within institutions, detention facilities, organizations, and towns and villages; or who assist the security forces in identifying, arresting, and physically harming wanted individuals.”209 Palestinians refer to

208 Gazit. Trapped Fools. 209 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 16.

130 these individuals interchangeably as ‘amil (collaborator), kha’in (traitor), or jasus (spy).

There are yet other positions that elicit a charge of collaboration. Characters of questionable moral standing can be accused, including prostitutes, drug dealers and addicts, or purveyors of pornographic material. Nationalists identify such individuals in part because they are considered a threat to the moral fabric of Palestinian society, but also because they are prime targets for recruitment by the GSS. I omit such individuals from my definition not to disregard the Palestinian perspective, but because these individuals do not necessarily interact with Israelis, their actions thus outside the scope of this study. Other collaborators include land dealers, intermediaries, and government appointees and associates. My analysis recognizes these as variable positions, at times acceptable and at others reprehensible. While they can hold a strong security element, I analyze them separately as economic and political interactional norms.

Supply and Demand for Collaborators

One view of collaborators is that they “defect” from their identity group, 210 a misperception that does disservice to the extenuating circumstances under which individuals wind up working for the adversary. I provide a brief introduction here to the demand side of collaboration, with special emphasis on Israeli recruitment, to better assess how collaborators are identified and treated by nationalist leaders in the Palestinian case.

Israel’s demand for intelligence in the newly occupied territories was immediate.

On November 10, 1967, defense minister Moshe Dayan outlined the strategic logic of recruitment: “Let the individual know that he has something to lose. His home can be blown up, his bus license can be taken away, he can be deported from the region; or the

210 Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War.

131 contrary: he can exist with dignity, make money, exploit other Arabs, and travel in [his] bus.”211 This foundational recruitment principle – to create an uncertain environment in which benefits can be taken away, arbitrarily and at any time – guided the GSS in their efforts throughout the first two decades of occupation. Testimonies gathered by B’Tselem indicate two main methods of recruitment: making vital services conditional on collaboration, and recruiting suspects or those charged with a crime through torture and pressure, or promising lighter terms, erasing indictments, and/or improving prison conditions. 212 A third, less common method, involves individuals being “made to collapse”, what Palestinians term isqat, and refers to extortion through sexual means, including blackmail and entrapment.213 This recruitment technique preys on individuals who are d‘oof an-nufasa, or “weak of spirit”.214 While central to national mythology,

B’Tselem found little evidence that the technique was as widespread as popular culture believes. Nevertheless, the enforcement arms of a number of factions continually warn of the practice. Finally, certain agents work for the GSS willingly, but such cases are exceedingly rare. Following are three representative testimonies to B’Tselem that capture recruitment efforts.

Withholding Vital Services: In 1993, the collaborator ‘A.T. stated:

Since 1967, there is no one in the territories who has requested a service or permit of some kind from the Military Government who did not receive an offer from the GSS to act as a collaborator in return for his request being fulfilled. That is the nature of the occupation. Whoever wants to get ahead a little in life, whoever has ambitions, encounters the dilemma at a certain stage. A resident of the territories who wants to bring his wife from Jordan has to choose between making an annual payment of 100 dinars for a

211 Quoted in Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 26. 212 Ibid., 32. 213 For a gendered perspective on the abuse of women in the practice of isqat, see Rabab Abdulhadi. “The Palestinian Women’s Autonomous Movement: Emergence, Dynamics, and Challenges.” Gender and Society 12, no. 6 (1998): 649–73. 214 A term commonly used by interview subjects in 2012-2013 describing the nature of collaborators.

132 summer visitor’s permit, finding another wife, or collaborating in order to obtain [approval for] family reunification.215

Recruitment of suspects, defendants, and individuals convicted of criminal and security offenses: M.’A. an active collaborator in the Nablus are confessed in 1993:

At the end of the 1970s, I worked in a factory in the Netanyah area. I was accused of sabotaging the machines in the factory and of causing a great deal of damage. The police informed me that I could go to jail for eight years. While I was in detention, someone from the GSS came to see me and said there were enough witnesses to incriminate me and that I was in trouble, and that only he could help me. He offered to cancel the indictment if I would agree to collaborate. His request was a modest one: “If you hear something that might interest us, you will have to report it to us.” The principle of recruiting collaborators is first of all to get the recruit to agree in principle to do something. After that, it develops. And in fact, after I was released, meetings were arranged for me with the GSS coordinator, and I began to work and to pass on information.216

Other testimonies from collaborators recruited in prison are more sinister, and include physical and psychological harm, including torture.

Isqat: The commander of the Fatah Hawks in the Rafah area told B’Tselem in 1993:

There are clothing stores in which the isqat process takes place. The cameras are hidden in the women’s fitting rooms, and the women are photographed in the nude. Yes, there are beauty salons where women were photographed in immoral positions, and the same is so in video supply stores that sell pornographic films that tempt people into immoral crimes.217

215 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 33-34. 216 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 37-38. 217 Ibid., 40.

133 The widespread phenomenon of security collaboration is less surprising in this context. Recruitment strategies also highlight why this invariably prohibitive norm is only sometimes enforced – most adult residents of the occupied territories were approached to collaborate in the first twenty years of occupation, each facing very real threats. Given the scale of the activity, and the extenuating circumstances of recruitment, nationalist leaders reserved enforcement of the norm for moments of heightened contention, or egregious cases that had become public.

The work of the collaborator

The Intelligence Agent (‘amil al-mukhabarat): By some estimates, thousands of intelligence agents – recruited by the GSS, police, civil administration, or Israeli army – functioned at any given time from 1967-1987, and well into the first intifada.218 Their tasks included: recruiting new agents; infiltrating nationalist institutions including political factions, newspapers etc; and providing intelligence or tactical support to the

GSS in operations against wanted suspects or activist cells. 219 The majority of collaborators during the first twenty years of occupation operated clandestinely, although some were open collaborators, armed by the GSS and protected by the army. Dr Saleh

Abdel Jawwad describes two kinds of security collaborator: the armed collaborator, and the informant. Armed collaborators were small in number during the first twenty years of the occupation, and were mostly isolated to activity in the Village Leagues. But their role, which often involved participating in Israeli night-time raids, was prized by the military government. One famous collaborator, Ahmed Nattur, provided Israeli authorities with

218 Ibid., 59. 219 Ibid., 59.

134 intelligence and accompanied Special Forces in raids throughout the Jenin area in the

1980s. Indispensible to Israeli intelligence operations, Nattur would become the head of the collaborator village known as Fahmeh, established after the outbreak of the intifada to protect Israel’s network of spies. Its counterpart in Gaza, Dihiniyeh village, served the same function. 220 Informants and spies (jasous) provide information to military authorities on the whereabouts or activities of activists and militants. Often their task is trivial: they may describe who spends time with whom, which coffee shops attract which activists, and so on. Informants function, by definition, outside inner leadership circles, providing background information on the day-to-day activities of individuals of groups that Israeli authorities deem suspicious. The information they provide may still be dangerous, however, and has been used to orchestrate extrajudicial killings.

Finally, infiltrators are those who work from within Palestinian national organizations and provide inner circle knowledge to Israeli authorities. Many infiltrators were previous members of organizations who were “turned” in prison through coercion, torture, and/or blackmail. In Abdel Jawwad’s estimation, the infiltrator is “the most

‘dangerous’ kind of collaborator because he can give accurate information from the inside, which can endanger the lives of others, and might sabotage an entire operation, or organization.”221

Collaborators in Prisons and Detention Facilities (al-‘asfor): Many other collaborators are employed in prisons, tasked with extracting confessions or valuable information from

Palestinian prisoners or detainees, and sometimes recruiting other collaborators. Named

220 See Saleh Adbel Jawwad, “The Classification and Recruitment of Collaborators” in The Phenomenon of Collaborators in Palestine, Jerusalem: PASSIA, 2001, 20. 221 Ibid., 21.

135 for the way they spread information, the birds (al-‘asafeer) have been functioning in

Israeli detention facilities and prisons since at least 1979, when then Prime Minister

Menachem Begin banned the use of physical torture against Palestinians under interrogation.222 Al-‘asafeer extract information in two different ways: first, by posing as activists, offering patronage and protection to the detainee while gradually pulling information; and second, by accusing the detainee of being a collaborator, tricking him into revealing his crime.223

Data on the number of intelligence agents and prison “birds” is, for obvious reasons, scarce. We are also in the dark about whether those accused and subsequently killed for collaboration in the 1970s and 1980s were in fact guilty of the crime. But it is clear that an army of collaborators, numbering in the thousands, marked the outer boundaries of acceptable interactions with Israelis, a national crime almost as egregious as land brokering. Despite the clear and consensual prohibition against the norm, there are very few reported incidents of norm-enforcement prior to the intifada. Certain

222 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 63. 223 This B’Tselem testimony illustrates the method: “Palestinian detainees are sent to the “birds’” cells in cases when the interrogators prove unsuccessful in extracting confessions, or when the confessions are only partial […] the detainees are usually brought to the cell in a state of exhaustion and weakness following their interrogation. The residents of the cell, who are provided with prior information concerning the organizational affiliation of the detainee and other details, greet the new arrival warmly at first, make sure that he has a place to sit and to sleep, prepare food and warm drinks and give him clean clothes, all in order to make him feel at ease and begin to trust his cellmates after days of difficult interrogation. The testimony shows that the “birds” often present themselves to the detainee as “activists in the struggle,” and as devout Muslims (in cases where the person under interrogation is suspected of belonging to an Islamic organization), who have been given heavy sentences for attacks on Israelis. They also tell the detainee of their close contacts with well-known prisoners or with the leadership outside the prison, and they demonstrate an intimate knowledge of various operations. The atmosphere of trust that arises between the detainee and his cellmates sometimes encourages him to tell about his own exploits. Sometimes one of the collaborators functions ad the leader (“chief bird”) talking to the detainee in private in order to establish secrecy and strengthen the detainee’s trust in him […] The agent presents himself as the prison leader of the organization to which the detainee belongs and promises him that he can make contact with the organizational leader outside the prison and smuggle out essential information, such as the location of weapons, ammunition, or printed material for distribution that the detainee wants to deliver. In order to do this, the detainee will be asked to provide details about where they can be found and information about what he did that led to his arrest. The detainee may also be asked about other members of his cell, ostensibly so that the “leader” can assist them. Sometimes the agent asks the detainee to write down these details, so that they can be smuggled out, as it were, to the prison leadership. This report is then transferred to the prison administration and is presented to the prisoner at an interrogation. If the attempts at persuasion fail, the “birds” resort to intimidation and threats to accuse the detainee of being a collaborator, and also to violence. The threat of this accusation can have an immediate effect on the detainee. In order to refute the charges, he may confess to the actions attributed to him, whether he actually performed them or not. See Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 63-65.

136 collaborators were killed, and some notorious, armed collaborators were assassinated, especially those associated with the Village Leagues. But it would take an uprising, and the united leadership around it, to wage war against Israel’s army of collaborators, making enforcement of the norm a national priority.

Testing of my theory proves exceptionally difficult in the case of collaborators, for obvious reasons. While I can observe variation in the degree to which the norm is clearly articulated and enforced, I cannot measure compliance. Short of infiltrating the

GSS myself, I must be satisfied with analyzing compliance with a paucity of data. The phenomenon might also transcend the mechanism in my theory, namely that united leadership triggers social purpose. It is conceivable that more would-be collaborators might shun recruitment in the midst of an uprising, moved toward pro-social behavior because of an inspired united leadership. But collaborators are very often drawn from those who are “weak of spirit”; given that many elements of the occupation are designed to break the spirit (or simply wear it down over time), supply may be available regardless the degree of leadership cohesion.

Ambiguous security encounters – Police: Of the more questionable positions in the civil administration are Palestinian police officers, many who were active from the early

1970s. Appointed by municipalities and later approved or vetoed by the military government, police officers were tasked with providing law and order, a position most nationalists accepted. But like the makhateer, officers also had considerable power, and many flexed that while surreptitiously acting as collaborators or land dealers. One police officer from Qalqilya had become notorious during the 1970s and 1980s, allegedly summoning residents to his office, charging them with committing various criminal

137 offenses. B’Tselem explains: “He would then demand that they sign documents that were actually sales documents for their land, while leading the villagers to believe that the documents merely stated that they had no connection to the acts of which they were supposedly suspected.”224 Police officers were, despite such violations, permitted to function throughout the first twenty years of occupation. But they would become an easy target for leaders shaping prohibitive norms during the first intifada.

Analysis

Leadership from 1973-1982 experienced punctuated unity – moments of cohesion in which new norms emerged and others could be enforced. But that unity was never sustained, in part because of factionalism and in part because of the structural conditions of the occupation. Interactional norms made some significant shifts, however. Migrant labor and commercial ties became cemented as acceptable interactions. We do see intermittent strikes and boycotts, as predicted when leadership briefly united around the

PNF and the NGC, and these were remarkable given the constraints on mobilization. But they did not signal definitive shifts away from the permissive norm. This period also saw the emergence of the waseet as an economic actor and essential player in social life.

While many wusata’ took advantage of their position, the position remained well within the permissive. Land brokering also came to the fore during this period, and continued to be identified and punished as a treasonous interaction.

Political norms also proliferated and gained clarity. Municipal interactions remained “normal”, especially as mayors found that they could simultaneously promote a nationalist agenda while cooperating with the Israelis on practical matters. The mukhtar was permitted to function, despite certain unsavory characters who took advantage of the

224 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 87.

138 position. One of the more dramatic shifts from the 1967-1973 period was the gradual introduction of acceptable dialogue with the Israeli left, a move that directly corresponded with leadership dynamics and a shift toward the two-state solution.

Dialogue was heavily circumscribed – those who met with the Israeli right faced public censure for their actions, resulting for some activists in physical and psychological harm.

This time frame also saw the rise of unambiguously prohibited political norms, articulated and enforced by the NGC, the PLO, and factions in Gaza. Leaders unequivocally condemned and sometimes attacked politicians who dared flirt with

Egypt’s autonomy plan. Finally, nationalists unequivocally condemned the Village

Leagues, a norm that would continue to hold weight even after the NGC was disbanded, the mayors dismissed or deported, and the PLO crushed in Lebanon.

Leadership cohesion lacked one critical element, however, namely agreement on end-goals. Social purpose was high in brief moments, and had a significant impact on the relative clarity around norms from 1973-1982, but it was never sustained or triggered.

Interactional norms did arise, but agreement was never complete. As leadership faltered after 1982, so too did whatever clarity existed. This is most noticeable in the acceptance of a number of positions that allowed Palestinians to work freely with the Israeli civil administration; tax collectors, teachers, police officers, nurses and doctors all received their pay from the civil administration. Given that the newly minted administration had replaced nationalist municipalities and functioned to cement the occupation, these positions may have otherwise been easy targets for a cohesive leadership. No greater ambiguity existed during this time than that around police officers, many who were known, but protected, collaborators.

139 Certain modes of interaction remained unambiguously and consistently intolerable throughout the first twenty years. Intelligence agents, prison “birds”, and land brokers held a special place in the national ethos as traitors. The Village Leagues also could not escape condemnation, and the norm against overt collaboration was coherent and enforced. The fact that enforcement of the norm was sporadic, and that certain known collaborators went unpunished during these first twenty years, is a testament to the degree of protection they had from Israel. But it also reflects leadership fragmentation, a lack of enforcement capacity, and weak social purpose, a dynamic that would change dramatically with the onset of the intifada.

140 Chapter III: The First Intifada

Few periods were as divisive for the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza as the mid-1980s. They had been left floundering by a fractured PLO, ignored by Jordan and the other Arab states, dismissed as irrelevant by US leadership, and faced an increasingly suffocating system of control by an intransigent Israeli government. Palestinians outside leadership circles shared in the malaise, increasingly frustrated after 20 years of occupation. The first intifada, which erupted spontaneously in December 1987, was sparked by a combination of structural and proximate causes. But it developed into a full- fledged uprising only because inside and outside leadership was able to cut across factional, ideological, gender, and class lines, to coordinate resistance activities and generate a shared sense of purpose. Much has been made of the first intifada leadership – some accurate, some overly laudatory – but beyond debate is that leadership cohesion during the first 18 months of the uprising contributed to never-before-seen levels of social purpose, which in turn led to the clearest interactional norms the West Bank and

Gaza had known, and a degree of compliance few could have imagined. Table 3.1 summarizes the findings from those first 18 months, prior to the unraveling of leadership and social purpose:

141 Table 3.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 1987-1989

Interactional Norms Leadership Dynamic Social Purpose

CLEAR, PROHIBITIVE, HIGH FRAGMENTED HIGH COMPLIANCE

Vertical Horizontally HIGH Direction PROHIBITIVE Coordination HIGH Shared Goals

Horizontal Vertically HIGH HIGH Coherence YES Coordination shared goals

Popular HIGH Legitimacy Social Purpose YES Compliance SOME Triggered Articulation HIGH of end-goals

Structural causes of the uprising

PLO fragmentation framed leadership crises on the ground in the mid-1980s. Crushed in

1982 in Lebanon, the PLO had reached its nadir, depleted and scrambling for credibility.

Armed struggle had been reduced to mere sloganeering. Internal divisions had, in part of because of faltering PLO legitimacy, come to the fore – the PFLP and DFLP boycotted the 17th PNC in 1984, marking a troubling decline in the relevance of the Palestinian

“parliament-in-exile”. Jordan, for long the only realistic alternative advocate for the

Palestinians in the West Bank, appeared weak and uninspired, much to the chagrin of leaders on the ground. Rather than confronting the occupation directly, the Jordanians were content with patching up the many wounds that it caused, proposing a band-aid solution in the “Jordanian Development Plan”. Arab leaders, the rhetorical champions of

142 the Palestinian cause, also appeared to have grown tired of engagement. The Final

Declaration of the Arab Summit in Amman in November 1987, just one month before the intifada erupted, discussed Israeli treatment of the Palestinians and recommended an international peace conference under the auspices of the United Nations and with the

PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians. But the Palestinian issue was overshadowed by concerns over the Islamic Republic of Iran and its influence on the region. For the first time, Arab leaders relegated Palestine to a secondary issue, a shift that signaled to Palestinian leaders the degree to which they had to fight alone.225

American diplomacy in the mid-1980s similarly offered little hope. Secretary of State

George Shultz was guided by a short-sighted mission to “improve the quality of life” of those living under occupation, encouraging Israel to offer “good will gestures” that might ease tensions and inspire Palestinian leadership toward greater compromise. 226

Palestinians viewed the US position in the same light as the Jordanian Development Plan, a band-aid solution to a problem far bigger than economic development.

Nor did the Israeli political scene hearten Palestinians. Israel’s National Unity

Government (NUG), formed after the 1984 elections, caved to American pressure to offer

Palestinians “carrots”. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the re-opening of an-

Najah University in Nablus, relaxed press censorship, enacted measures to improve industrial development in the West Bank, and opened an Arab Bank in Nablus.227 Noting a decline in militancy toward the Civil Administration, Israel also took steps to replace

Israeli officials who had been running the municipalities since 1982, with pliable

Palestinians. The first appointment was of notable Zafir al-Masri to mayor of Nablus.

225 Ziad Abu-Amr, “The Palestinian Uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” 384–405. 226 Don Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 1 (1991): 22. 227 Ibid.

143 Palestinian factions reacted with hostility. They argued that appointed mayors were serving Israeli interests, and were part of a larger scheme to implement the much-reviled autonomy plan. Al-Masri countered that an Arab mayor was better than an Israeli officer, and claimed to have been “selected” not by Israel, but by Nablus residents. His stated purpose, however, was to make the occupation “less unbearable”; factions who had fought against the Jordanian, Israeli, and American efforts at “confidence building” and

“development” viewed al-Masri’s cooperation as a clear form of betrayal.228 They assassinated him at the entrance to the Nablus town hall two months after he took office in December 1985. The event marked a changing of the guard, a rejection of the notables in favor of a younger, and more militant grassroots leadership. It also proved that noncooperation remained the norm.

Finally, despite what many Palestinians considered significant concessions – namely a tacit warming up to the two-state solution – Israel was ever more entrenched in

Judea and Samaria. Settlements grew unabated, and many Israelis openly expressed support for an alternative home for Palestinians in Jordan. When Yitzhak Shamir took over as Prime Minister in 1986, he openly declared his intention to consolidate “the

Jewish presence in all parts of the Land: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, the Galilee and the Sharon.”229 His government matched the rhetoric with action: they declared the establishment of forty-eight new Jewish settlements, committing state funds for their development. A survey conducted in late 1986 found that per capita funding of towns in the West Bank was 143 percent higher than in towns across the Green Line in Israel, a clear indication of territorial and demographic priorities.230

228 Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” 22. 229 Quoted in Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” 27. 230 Ibid., 27.

144 On the ground leadership, alone and frustrated, recognized that the situation was untenable. And because more than 90 percent of the population in 1986 still recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the first steps toward unity had to take place within the PLO.231 Following pressure from the DFLP and

PFLP, the 18th meeting of the PNC in April 1987 reunited the various factions, ending four years of fractured politics. For the first time, the parliament in exile admitted the

Palestinian Communist Party into the executive committee, a critical historic step that signaled two developments: first, the PLO was moving even further toward the two-state solution, a resolution the PCP had long advocated for; and second, the PLO had acknowledged communist strength on the ground, relying on it for a much-needed legitimacy boost. The Islamic factions, strong in the Gaza Strip and composed mainly of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad, saw PLO reconciliation as an opportunity to cooperate on certain matters with the mainstream leadership, despite clear ideological differences.232 As with other periods, unity abroad encouraged cooperation on the ground.

When the uprising erupted later that year, underground leaders were ready.

Daily Life

With the occupation largely unchallenged in the mid-1980s, cultural, economic, and social interpenetration matured. Israeli goods flooded the market, from soap and clothing, to canned goods and beer. Israeli businesses relied on the Palestinian market for a substantial share of their sales, advertising their goods in the Palestinian press.233 In the meantime, over 100,000 Palestinians worked in Israel, earning a livelihood while being exposed to the daily luxuries and challenges of a more familiar Israeli society. Palestinian

231 Hanna Siniora, “An Analysis of the Current Revolt,” Journal of Palestine Studies 17, no. 3 (1988): 3–13. 232 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 101. 233 Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” 32.

145 youths were exposed to Israeli culture, mimicking hair-styles and listening to Israeli pop music. But contact did not bring the two cultures together in shared purpose: rather than producing bridges of trust, it highlighted stark differences in physical security and political rights. Yes, Palestinians could enjoy the same food, music, and style as many

Israelis. But their physical security was threatened on a daily basis. Contact also helped

Palestinians see cracks in the Israeli system. Jerusalem Post correspondent Joel

Greenberg explained how Palestinians were no longer besieged by the myth of Israeli power, and could “see through the dazzling façade into Israel’s weaknesses, faults and divisions.”234 Interactional norms, in the lead-up to the first intifada, were thus firmly on the side of permissive. But the troubling reality of those tangled interactions laid the groundwork for normative shifts after the outbreak of the uprising, in the direction of wide-scale proscription.

Leadership Out of the Ashes

Seething discontent in the Gaza Strip was the spark that lit the kindling. For much of the year, Israeli officials had been engaged in a low-scale battle with the newly emerging

Islamic Jihad. The rise of Muslim fundamentalists in the Strip concerned Israeli officials, especially when it became clear that they were cooperating to some degree with the Fatah youth movement, Shabiba.235 By September 1987, the army had broken up several

Islamist cells, and in October, in two separate instances, killed seven Islamic Jihad militants. But Gaza’s residents found motivation in the repression. They were inspired by the daring prison escape of Islamic Jihad militants that May, and the point-blank assassination of Lieutenant Ron Tal, commander of military police in Gaza in August.

234 Quoted in Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” 32. 235 Anita Vitulo, “Uprising in Gaza,” in eds. Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation (South End Press, 1989) 46.

146 Finally, on November 25, 1987, two PFLP militants flew in motorized hang gliders toward an Israeli military base near Lebanon. One landed in the base, and before being shot himself, killed six soldiers and injured seven others. The daring operation charged nationalist sentiment, a rare psychological and tactical victory for a discouraged population. All this would come to a head in December 7, 1987, when an Israeli merchant was stabbed to death in Gaza’s main square. Twenty-four hours later, an Israeli army tank transporter drove into a truck carrying Palestinian migrant laborers who had just returned from Israel. Four laborers were killed, three of them from Jabalya refugee camp. That night, a crowd of 10,000 gathered in Jabalya – the camp that would gain the name “camp of the revolution” (mu’askar al-thawra) – marking the first day of the uprising.

A main feature of the uprising was the emergence of new actors. This was not an uprising guided by the inheritors of the PNF or NGC, who were mostly men in high and public positions. New leadership was youthful, educated, mostly lower and middle class, and stemmed from professional bodies and associations. Leaders reflected demographic trends – by 1987, 80% of Palestinians were under the age of 30, and 65% under 20.236

Many were university educated – in 1985 there were eight institutions of higher learning in addition to four UNRWA vocational training centers.237 This was a population that knew nothing but life under occupation. They had become disenfranchised by Arab leaders abroad, and had seen no real rewards from traditional leadership.

Factions, committees, and the UNLU

236 Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule.” 237 David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond (London: I.B.Tauris, 1990), 104–105.

147 After nearly a month of protest, grassroots leaders coalesced into the United National

Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU). The clandestine body was made up of the four main nationalist factions – Fatah, the PFLP, DFLP and PCP. In Gaza, it also included Islamic

Jihad. Organization was horizontal and decentralized: each faction ran its own network, but liaised with the UNLU, each with a delegate that represented their party’s interests and views. Most high-level cadres had been trained in clandestine organization while serving time in Israeli prisons for security related offenses.238 Factional differences did not, of course, disappear. The leftist factions accused Fatah of “muscling in” to the uprising – whereas the leftist factions had invested for years in grassroots organizing and provision of goods, Fatah’s work had been limited to Shabiba activities, which were less pervasive by comparison. Ideological differences made cooperation between the nationalists and Islamic Jihad a serious challenge in the Gaza Strip. And the PCP accused the PFLP of placing unreasonable demands on the population. These differences, and many others related to operation and ideology, would persevere throughout the intifada.

But for most of the first two years, social solidarity superseded factionalism.

Popular committees (lijan sha’abiya) kept the UNLU intact and legitimate. If the

UNLU made up the executive and legislature, committees governed. From the very beginning of the intifada, committees ran day-to-day life in the West Bank and Gaza

Strip, including the preservation of existing norms and enforcement of new ones. Most of the committees came from pre-existing grassroots institutions: labor unions, student councils, women’s committees, and youth clubs.239 Local committees, usually village or neighborhood based, elected representatives to larger coordinating committees. These

238 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 20. 239 Daoud Kuttab, “A Profile of the Stonethrowers,” Journal of Palestine Studies 17, no. 3 (1988): 14–23.

148 made regional ties that coordinated with the UNLU. Most critically, popular committees were decentralized. Membership fluctuated since many cadres were arrested or detained, and many regions had what appeared to be an excess of committees. But as Wing describes, the surplus played an important role: A “deliberate redundancy in local command structures such as UNLU branches, unions, relief, action, and youth committees enabled a local leadership system to remain intact despite arrests.”240

While committees eventually became the driving force behind protest activities, their initial role was the provision of goods and services to besieged camp residents.

Their role grew out of necessity, as Israeli curfews strangled camps that had erupted in protest. Committees were formed outside camps to collect donations of food, medicine, and other vital goods on their behalf. They became especially necessary as the intifada moved forward and Israel restricted freedom of movement on a large scale and closed schools. Neighborhood committees allowed for geographically constrained collective action, making suppression all the more difficult. Some estimates put the number of committees at 100 in each major town, and roughly ten in each camp and village.241

In function, the committees were the inner workings of an embryonic state.242

Made up of various alternative institutions, they allowed Palestinians to wage a war of non-cooperation with Israeli authorities. The Palestinian Center for the Study of Non-

Violence describes eleven different types of committees. Women’s committees played a central role in the steadfastness campaign during the intifada, providing self-sufficiency and serving as core of the home economy.243 Guard Committees often overlapped with

240 Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule,” 119. 241 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 103. 242 See Rigby, Legacy of the Past and Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule.”. 243 See especially Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada and Rita Giacaman and Penny Johnson, “Palestinian Women: Building Barricades and Breaking Barriers,” Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation, 1989, 155–69.

149 strike forces, but served the more direct role of protecting property from vigilante settlers and petty criminals. They filled the gap when Palestinian police resigned en masse in

March 1988. Four committees – Popular Education, Food and Supply, Medical, and Self-

Sufficiency – provided a much-needed social safety net, while the Social Reform

Committees provided traditional mediation services for interpersonal conflicts with the breakdown of law and order. Information Committees disseminated details of the uprising when media outlets were shut down or otherwise limited in their distribution.

Finally, the intifada produced three committees to maintain and enforce interactional norms. Strike Forces, also termed shock squads (majmu’at al-dariba) made up the enforcement arm of the UNLU. They were the vanguard against Israeli troops and settlers, protecting villagers and at times organizing stone-throwers. But they also served an internal function, forcing shop closures on strike days, punishing collaborators, or preventing laborers from entering Israel. For much of the first year and a half, strike forces showed surprising disciplined, demonstrating the relative cohesion and legitimacy of the UNLU. Committees to Confront the Tax shunned Palestinian tax collectors who refused to resign, and encouraged residents to observe the injunction against paying taxes. Finally, merchant committees played a vital role enforcing the boycott of specific products while helping coordinate the production and distribution of local alternatives.

Factions, the UNLU, and committees coordinated vertically and horizontally; it was this characteristic that gave the intifada leadership popular support. Wing explains that the intifada leadership, diffuse, decentralized, and ideologically diverse, nevertheless maintained legitimacy: “a situation in which people accept authority without coercion on the basis of their belief that the authority and its processes are valid.”244 What made the

244 Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule,” 100.

150 leadership legitimate was precisely the manner in which decision-making proceeded.

Unlike the PNF or NGC, the grassroots leadership of the uprising derived their actions from the bottom-up. Strikes illustrate the dynamic. UNLU leaders believed that extended strikes would exact too strong a toll on the population. But popular committees, made up of grassroots organizers, saw that the streets desired and indeed could withstand, ongoing strikes. Committees communicated the will and capacity of the street to factions within the UNLU, who reacted accordingly by designating specific strike days and hours in their communiqués. The leadership thus functioned as an organic whole, taking cues from the street while issuing orders back, orders they knew would be received favorably. Kristen

Urban explains the dynamic: “In its efforts to promote solidarity, then, the UNLU had to reflect this understanding of its role as “leader,” both in its exhortations and in the calls it selected for each communiqué, discarding ideas which would not be picked up by the public and reinforcing actions that already had support.”245

A second source of legitimacy came from the manner in which factions overcame their differences, a feat given the years of factional competition that preceded the uprising. The intifada did not undo party affiliations, or bring together the ideological differences that divided them. But factions rallied behind the greater “cause”: an end to the occupation. Andrew Rigby explains:

What was new was the compulsion [the factions] felt to remain within the “national consensus”. There developed amongst Palestinians a real sense that they were laying the basis of a democratic and pluralist political system for the future. One within which people and parties could argue and disagree, each trying to promote their own particular point of view. Thus, at the end of the day, once a decision had been made, it was accepted as binding, even though some might continue to disagree. It was

245 Urban, 71.

151 as if the political rivalries that had always existed were still there, but they were being played out according to new rules, and within new parameters that acknowledged a basic unity and common interest underlying the factional differences.”246

Communication with the outside

The indigenous Palestinian uprising could not have thrived without the involvement of the PLO, which, despite its relatively weakened state in 1987, remained the undisputed representative of the Palestinian people. By no means the initiators of the intifada, within a month their influence was clear. Communiqué 3 started with: “No voice can overcome the voice of the uprising, no voice can overcome the voice of the Palestinian people – the people of the PLO”. Issued 18 January 1988, it was the first mention of the PLO in the bi- weekly leaflets, and demonstrated their growing role in tactical and ideological support for the uprising. Still, this was not the PLO of the mid-1980s, one riddled with infighting and hardline ideological positions. A profound shift in the balance of power had taken place with the advent of the intifada. “Insiders” now directly shaped policy. This was most clear when the intifada forced Jordan to relinquish its claim over the West Bank on

31 July 1988, cementing the PLO’s position as sole, legitimate representative. Further evidence of “insider” influence stems from shifts in the balance of power within the PLO, away from radical hardliners toward a more moderate leadership. On 22 August 1988, the

UNLU issued a communiqué asking the PNC to “adopt a comprehensive and clear political program” for the realization of Palestinian national rights.247 Just months later at the 19th PNC, the PLO issued the Declaration of Independence.248 Formal and informal

246 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 24. 247 Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, Leaflet no. 24. 248 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 28.

152 communication between the inside and outside cemented the uprising leadership’s legitimacy.

Leaflet legitimacy

The first 18 months of the uprising boasted an executive and legislative in the form of the

UNLU (and for some, Hamas and Islamic Jihad), and a governance structure centered on the committees. But the “embryonic state” never enjoyed a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, a problem that dogged the uprising from the very beginning. Drawing the population into prolonged confrontation with Israeli authorities required a great deal of strategic thinking and potent messaging. The national leadership confronted the challenge by issuing nearly bi-monthly communiqués, or bayanat. Issued predominantly by the

UNLU and Hamas, but also by the other factions, the bayanat formed the basis of a moral codebook with the force of law, a way for leaders to formulate policy and legislate to the masses. They were the source of guidance for intifada participants, and a tool that helped activists achieve a critical mass. They also represented and reaffirmed the importance of a united front against internal and external forces that threatened to dismantle the uprising.

The majority of UNLU leaflets affirmed coordination between the UNLU and PLO, and encouraged mass-level cooperation. For example, leaflet no. 10 in March 1988 declared:

“Unity of our masses is the certain guarantee to preserve the impressive achievements of the uprising. Therefore, we call for further cohesion, unity, support, and manifestations of consideration for others.”249 An equal number of communiqués, especially toward the latter half of the uprising, condemned infighting and warned against Israeli attempts to divide the movement. Leaflet no. 30 issued at the end of 1988 states that “the [UNLU] is one and indivisible and that there are no rifts”, affirming that the PFLP, despite its

249 Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, Leaflet no. 10, 69.

153 rejection of resolution 242, remains an active member of the united leadership.250 Leaflet no. 45 warns against Israeli attempts to issue fraudulent leaflets to sow the seeds of discord by “exploiting and fanning clan and personal disputes”251 In effect, the leaflets were a consistent reminder to participants of the uprising that success would be measured by the degree to which leaders coordinated activities and aligned goals, just as failure would be produced through fragmentation.

Leaflet production reflected coordination between inside and outside leadership.

A number of communiqués were sent to Tunis to be reviewed by the PLO. Drafts were returned via facsimile and distributed by leaders on the ground. This followed a process of inter-factional negotiatons.252 Given the complexities of clandestine production and distribution, it is remarkable that so few leaflets had doubles. In the first two years, the

UNLU issued only four or five doubled communiqués. Some of these may have reflected differences in policy, others successful attempts by Israel to distribute fraudulent leaflets.

Still, these represent around 1% of the 50 or so leaflets issued before January 1990.

Control over production and distribution both reflected and reproduced legitimacy.

UNLU directives governed rules of behavior, but compliance overall was

“problematic and far from universal”, an expected result given the challenges of collective action.253 Nevertheless, Palestinians complied with surprisingly high levels throughout the first two years; long after the uprising had peaked in mid-1987. This is owed to the consistency of UNLU messaging – each leaflet delineated political guidelines, offered practical instructions on modes of resistance, and gave a clear action agenda for individuals and committees to implement, usually spanning a two-week time

250 Ibid., Leaflet no. 30, 153. 251 Ibid., Leaflet no. 45, 170. 252 Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule,” 129. 253 Ibid., 128.

154 period. Urban describes the bayanat as the “codification of socio-political values within the context of an evolving social and political reality.”254 To the extent that the intifada produced concrete results and mobilized large numbers of Palestinians, they were markedly successful.

Social purpose in the first 18 months

The success of the first intifada owes much to the pervasiveness of social purpose; merchants, laborers, capital owners, students and teachers, tax collectors and police,

Muslims and Christians, all mobilized under a common goal – an end to the occupation.

UNLU leaflets included merchants and laborers in dozens of leaflets, by far the most frequently called upon force. But thousands of others were brought to task: leaflets 16,

21, and 36 called on teachers to take the lead in offering popular education; leaflet 19 called on students to take part in sit-ins and marches in solidarity with detainees while leaflet 21, lauded the students who “hold the pen in one hand and the stone in the other”; leaflet 10 called for the resignation of the employees of the civil administration, a call heeded almost immediately and amended later to demand that the remaining police and tax collectors resign without haste. In short, masses and leaders coordinated strategies and demands to wage a massive and sustained civil disobedience campaign.

Evidence of high social purpose in the first two years can be seen in the degree of norm-coherence and compliance at every level of society. Palestinians went far beyond expected compliance, sometimes to untenable extremes. In the first two months of the uprising, merchants in Jerusalem’s Old City conducted a 21-day strike, exceeding the three-day strike called by the UNLU. Leaders had to curtail their fervor by demanding

254 Urban, J. Kristen. “Blueprint for a Democratic Palestinian State: UNLU Communiques and the Codification of Political Values for the First Two Years of the Intifada.” Arab Studies Quarterly 16, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 69.

155 that merchants open their shops 2-3 hours per day, except when all-day strikes were called.255 Children internalized the norm as well. School children eagerly awaited the arrival of new leaflets and helped disseminate them.256 Enforcement of boycott took place in the subtlest of ways and for the most ubiquitous products. Hanna Siniora, an activist and editor of al-Fajr newspaper, noted that even his son actively enforced boycott norms:

Today people are asking each other what brand of cigarettes they are smoking. And people are rebuking Palestinians who are smoking Israeli cigarettes. One incident occurred in my own household. I asked my twelve-year-old son to go buy yogurt. He went to the grocery store next door and scolded the market for carrying Israeli products. Instead, he bought a brand from a Palestinian factory in Hebron […] If Palestinians only twelve years old are trying to observe the boycott and generalize it to other products, it shows the idea has taken root.257

One organizer from the town of Beit Sahour described the beginning of the intifada as a time of “collective consciousness.”258 Ziad Abu-Amr noted in his writing at the time that the “uprising has created a strong sense of community, solidarity and cooperation among the population, symptoms of new values crystallizing.”259

My theory of social purpose and interactional norms suggests that leadership cohesion played a vital part in the production of social purpose – a necessary but insufficient condition. By virtue of their governance tactics and a correspondingly high degree of legitimacy, leaders on the inside and outside motivated Palestinians who had grown tired of factional and ideological bickering. Of course, causality in moments of massive social upheaval is never so tidy. Leadership cohesion triggered social purpose,

255 The 21-day strike had an unexpected and unwanted result: it forced Palestinians living in East Jerusalem to shop in Jewish shops in West Jerusalem. See Daoud Kuttab, “A Profile of the Stonethrowers,” 14–23. 256 Palestinians who were children at the time of the uprising, multiple interviews with the author, Ramallah, 2012-2014. 257 Siniora, “An Analysis of the Current Revolt,” 7-8. 258 Palestinian activist, interview with the author, Beit Sahour, October 2012. 259 Abu-Amr, “The Palestinian Uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” 385.

156 but social purpose was replicated – and eventually attenuated – by the results that it produced, a dynamic captured in the analysis of interactional norms below. Table 3.2 summarizes the interactional norms present during the height of the intifada.

Table 3.2 Interactional norms 1987-1989

Level of Outcome Action Norm proscription Red Lines of Physically shrinks Simsar al-ard: the land -High Coherence Cooperation population/land broker -High compliance -Prohibitive -Death penalty Weakens The “Collaborator”: resistance • Al-‘ameel al- -High coherence musallah: the armed -High compliance collaborator -Some deviation, strong • Al-Jasous: the spy / enforcement informant • Al-‘Asfor: the prison collaborator

Moving Fortifies the Mukhtar -High coherence Toward Red occupation, -Tolerated - civic/political weakens civil Civil Administration -High coherence resistance (police) -Prohibited -Enforced Appointed Village -High coherence Councils -Prohibited -Enforced Moving Entrenches Political dialogue -Low coherence Toward Red power -Rare, mostly clandestine - asymmetry, activity, little enforcement normalization weakens civil resistance

Moving Relative economic Commercial boycott -High coherence Toward Red gains for occupier -Prohibitive - economic -High compliance Migrant Labor -Medium coherence -Mostly tolerated, medium compliance when prohibitive The Waseet -High coherence -Tolerated

157 Interactional Norms

Breaking economic dependence - Boycott and strikes

In defining and enforcing new economic interactional norms, the intifada leadership emphasized not the most egregious forms of transactions, like land dealing, but the most common, namely migrant labor and commerce. The tactical move was a necessary first step to pull as many Palestinians into the uprising as possible while punishing Israel’s economy. As such, the first calls were for mass-level civil disobedience, what Gene

Sharpe has termed a ‘nonviolent blitzkreig’.260 Actions included commercial strikes, withdrawal of the migrant labor workforce, a selective boycott of Israeli goods and services alongside the expansion of local alternatives, withdrawing funds from Israeli banks, and selective refusal to pay taxes.261

The commercial strike was the most pervasive tool used by the uprising. As early as January 1988, Palestinian merchants were given specific instructions on when to shutter their doors. For the first few months, shops were open between 9am and 12pm, except on full strike days, exacting a heavy toll on businesses, but providing a daily reminder to Israel that the situation was not normal. Most obeyed, and some even exceeded the call. Israel noted the danger of a commercial strike immediately, both as a threat to her economy, but also as a worrying demonstration of Palestinian leadership strength. In the first few months of the intifada, Israeli soldiers tried to coerce shopkeepers to keep their doors open.262 They simultaneously welded shut the doors of shopkeepers who followed calls, preventing them from working on off-strike days.263

Israeli authorities abandoned these efforts within four months. By mid-May 1988,

260 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 114. 261 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 2011. 262 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 30. 263 Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule,” 98.

158 Palestinians could close their shops for strike days without Israeli interference. Despite the impressive degree of compliance with this new norm, some Palestinians opted out, refusing to take part in the collective program. The minority who disobeyed were shamed or physically coerced by masked members of shock squads. As Wing notes, forced compliance played a role “in securing obedience not only from those targeted, but from the broader community as well […] Palestinians who wish to be regarded as honorable members of the community are likely to obey the decisions of respected local leaders.”264

Commercial strikes like these were not new. Indeed, Palestinians shuttered their doors in successive waves of contention from 1974-1976 under the short-lived leadership of the

PNF. But the coherence and compliance of the norm was exceptional.

Of the more punishing tactics was a commercial boycott of selected Israeli goods.

Bayan no. 3 in mid-January 1988 declared a boycott of “Israeli merchandise and products that our industry also manufactures,” emphasizing Israeli chocolates, cigarettes, and milk.265 Israeli loss on production was significant, amounting to over $40 million. Small businesses in Israel that relied on the Palestinian market suffered more acutely, especially those in textiles, food products, and soap powders.266 Prior attempts at a wide-scale boycott in the mid-1970s had met with little success. But as part of a comprehensive campaign targeting the Israeli economy, this boycott inspired and mobilized otherwise latent sectors. In the first year alone, sales from Israeli products in the occupied territories fell by $278 million.267

Migrant labor proved a more challenging phenomenon to tackle. When the intifada began, more than 115,000 Palestinians crossed the Green Line for work, upwards

264 Ibid., 100. 265 Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, Leaflet no. 3. 266 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 115. 267 Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” 148.

159 of 43% of the total Palestinian workforce.268 UNLU leadership rallied migrant laborers immediately; within the first few weeks, 70% of the workforce did not attend to work.269

Not all who obeyed did so out of national duty. Many were prevented from working due to curfews or from having their work papers confiscated. Others stayed back because shock squads enforcing the norm had firebombed buses carrying laborers.270 In other cases, ad hoc youth groups set up flying checkpoints to prevent Palestinians from crossing into Israel. 271 Regardless, Israel felt the hit of a massive labor strike immediately. The intifada coincided with the annual citrus harvest, and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza made up 30% of the picking and packing team. When they failed to show up, Jewish Israeli student volunteers and imported laborers filled the gap, but losses amounted to $500,000 in December 1987 and January 1988 alone.272

That Palestinians did not heed the call en masse, and that enforcement was even necessary, may seem surprising at first: working inside Israel in the midst of an uprising designed to break the back of the occupation was a clear deviation from popular expectations of collective responsibility. As Toby Shelly explains, “The uprising […] has provided a guarantee that there is a fate worse than unemployment – isolation from a community paying for its discontent with blood.”273 Social purpose was strong enough to significantly limit the number of laborers, but economic imperative trumped communal duty for most laborers, especially as the intifada progressed and personal costs increased.

Never was the dilemma of enforcing a ban on migrant labor clearer than during

268 Exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, as tens of thousands of Palestinians worked as unregistered laborers in the mid-1980s. See Shelley, “Palestinian Migrant Workers in Israel From Repression to Rebellion,” 55. 269 See Abu-Amr “The Palestinian Uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip”; Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 115. Peretz puts the number at 40-60% Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” 148. 270 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 115. 271 “The Palestinian Uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” 389. 272 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 115. 273 “Palestinian Migrant Workers in Israel From Repression to Rebellion,” 54.

160 “Operation Plastic Card”. On 17 May 1989, then Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin issued an order that all Gazan males over the age of 16 would be required to carry magnetic cards to enter Israel to work. Only Palestinians who had paid taxes and maintained a clean record could get the cards. The move served a dual purpose. First, it aimed to cement Palestinian dependence on Israeli institutions. Second, it was a way for Israel to reward Palestinians who had not taken part in the civil disobedience campaign, and punish those who had, a sample of its larger mission to create fissures in Palestinian society and leadership. The UNLU countered with an immediate ban on the cards. Much like the ANM ban on migrant labor in Gaza in 1967, initial attempts to enforce the norm were whole-hearted. Shock squads collected the names of those who accepted the cards, and visited homes at night to confiscate them. UNLU leaflets throughout the summer lauded those who refused the cards, and chastised those who didn’t. Bayan no. 44 called for a strike in solidarity with Gaza’s striking workers, labeling work in Israel as treasonous. But the enthusiasm for the new norm quickly tapered off. Bayan no. 46 in

September called for a one-day strike in support of the “heroic” Gazans. Bayan no. 49 didn’t mention Gaza, but asked West Bank Palestinians to prepare themselves for the fight against magnetic ID cards. By the end of December, magnetic cards had disappeared entirely from leaflet instructions.274

This episode illustrates the challenges of compliance with prohibitive interactional norms that demand high personal sacrifice for large numbers of people.

Even the most cohesive leadership and correspondingly high levels of social purpose could not re-shape the economic man. Over 40% of the Gazan workforce relied on work in Israel for the health and security of their families. Gazans had demonstrated support

274 Urban, “Blueprint for a Democratic Palestinian State,” 71.

161 for boycotts and periodic strikes. But a total ban on migrant labor was untenable, forcing many workers to choose social ostracism over unemployment. The episode also demonstrates leadership flexibility. After weeks of unpopular forced compliance, the committees reassessed. Rather than lose the support of tens of thousands of potential allies in the struggle, the UNLU eventually retracted their call for a total boycott.

Magnetic cards that had been confiscated were placed in local mosques, and cardholders were told they could retrieve them without fear of reprisal.275 Paradoxically, the episode produced more legitimacy for the UNLU leadership. If demanding a total boycott of migrant labor weakened the UNLU’s position, retracting it showed that it was in touch with popular sentiment and flexible in its tactics.276

Commercial and labor strikes, boycotts, and other strategies of economic warfare no doubt hurt Israeli business and gave the government cause for concern. But as Peretz notes, “Their real impact has been to raise morale and national consciousness rather than to develop a long-lasting alternative economy.”277 This statement captures the dynamic and multi-causal nature of social purpose. Advances in leadership cohesion in the lead-up to the intifada, and the rapid crystallization of an organic local leadership, produced unprecedented social purpose. Tactical successes in turn fueled collective consciousness.

Were it not for a united leadership, however, costly economic interactional norms could not have taken root.

Breaking administrative reliance - Civil Administration and appointed village councils

275 Ibid., 71. 276 See Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 31. 277 Peretz, “The Impact of the Gulf War on Israeli and Palestinian Political Attitudes,” 99.

162 Israel’s matrix of control rested upon the maintenance of an intricate patronage network centered on the civil administration and appointed intermediaries and village heads.

Palestinian leaders recognized that breaking this system would severely weaken Israel’s stranglehold on the territories, and strip it of a massive body of potential collaborators.

By February 1988, the UNLU called on those who worked in the civil administration – via leaflets, phone calls, letters, and graffiti – to resign. Similar orders were issued to appointed members of the village and refugee councils. Middlemen, appointed since

1967 were treated more ambiguously, in part because they filled a traditional role mediating vertical relations between rulers and ruled.

The crux of the new prohibitive norm was the civil administration, which had employed thousands of Palestinians from 1981 on without any concerted boycott. Indeed, work with the civil administration, while initially repugnant, had become an undisputed norm by 1987. This changed as the uprising took hold. After initial attempts to break entirely with this Israeli institution, the UNLU and PLO shifted energies toward police and tax collectors. Shlaifer notes: “While it is true that the PLO wanted to destroy the systems it believed were working against it, it did not pressure white collar workers to give up their jobs. Medical staffs, for example, continued working since the alternative system could not supply a comparable level of medical services.”278 Schoolteachers also stayed on. Tax collectors and police, however, were given no choice but resignation; they were deemed unequivocal agents of the occupation. Unlike land dealers (discussed below), however, police and tax collectors were given the opportunity to repent and join the struggle. Despite Israel’s best efforts – they offered protection to their many employees, secured their offices with metal doors, gave Palestinian workers emergency

278 Ron Shlaifer, Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 111.

163 beepers in case their lives were threatened – the boycott of the civil administration was a resounding success. Two-thirds of the police and tax collectors resigned within weeks of the call, handing in their uniforms and weapons. Some of them shifted employment to the shock squads or the popular army (jaish sha‘abi filistini), filling the security lacuna created by their resignation.279 Prohibition of this previously acceptable norm was nearly absolute, and those who deviated from the national consensus were dealt with severely.

In March 1988, activists killed policeman Nabil Jum‘a Farah near Jericho, mutilating his corpse. Most policemen who had yet to resign did so after this execution.280 Jawad al-

Tamaizi, however, stayed on even after Farah’s execution. After attempts on his life, and the forced removal of 70 of his family members from their homes, Fatah activists succeeded in killing him. Police officers who stayed on after the national call were far more likely to be collaborators, and they were viewed as such by the uprising leadership.

In all, B’Tselem estimates that activists killed seven policemen during the intifada, all of whom were broadly considered to have collaborated with Israeli security forces.281

The campaign against appointed municipal heads was no less severe, despite the fact that they had functioned without sanction from 1981-1987. Multiple UNLU leaflets demanded their resignation. Those who stayed on after that call in early 1988 were beaten, threatened, and in a small number of exceptional cases, executed.282 Bayan no. 12 called for the blood of appointed municipal heads, stating, “the masses of the Uprising will trample whoever opposes the positions of the national consensus or refuses to answer the call of the Uprising.”283 March 26, 1988 was declared a day of struggle against

279 F. Robert Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War By Other Means. London: I.B. Taurus and Co., 1991. 280 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 87. 281 Ibid., 88. 282 Ron Shlaifer, Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict. 283 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 81.

164 appointed village and municipal heads. Some of the better known appointed council leaders were named in a UNLU leaflet as those who had “deviated from the will of the people”,284 and numerous other leaflets called for their execution. Bayan no. 40 clarified why the war against appointed council heads was so vital and uncompromising: “pursuit of the agents is carried out not because they are political opponents with particular opinions, but because they are a tool of oppression of the occupation.”285 Much like police officers, appointed leaders resigned en masse, although their numbers were small in comparison. That consensus was reached in defining their formerly permitted activities as fundamentally counter the national cause, is a testament to PLO and UNLU strength – appointed leaders represented not only collusion with the occupying authorities, but an alternative leadership to the “sole legitimate representatives”.

Some government workers managed to escape an absolute prohibition on their activities. The waseet (middleman) and mukhtar (village elder) played similar roles – both mediating relations between the people and the military government. Many of these activities were innocuous: the provision of work permits, negotiating salaries for laborers in settlements, procuring travel visas. Until 1987, middlemen were not widely viewed as traitors. Some were, no doubt, unsavory characters that took advantage of Palestinians who needed their services, making the occupation work for them.286 These grew in number in the mid-1980s with the advent of the civil administration.287 But the position as a whole would only be singled out as an egregious violation of national interactional norms a year into the intifada. Toward the end of 1988, the Israeli military government

284 Leaflet no. 15. 285 Leaflet no. 40, quoted in Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 84. 286 In one Jordan Valley village, laborers spoke with admiration of the middlemen who treated them well, and with disdain of the middlemen who took advantage of them. 287 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 76.

165 issued an order hinging provision of services on a clean record, requiring authorization from the civil administration, the police, the GSS, tax authorities, and appointed village councils. This “increased the need for the assistance of the intermediaries and also enabled them to raise their fees.”288 The upshot of an increased role for the wusata’ in the midst of a popular uprising was a shift in how they were perceived by other Palestinians.

As middlemen took on more active roles, exploiting fellow Palestinians from their positions of relative power, some activists viewed them as collaborators. Still, unlike security collaboration, the middleman escaped harsh sanction, and were rarely mentioned in UNLU or Hamas leaflets. Many wusata’ explicitly ignored calls for strikes. Ahmad A., a middleman from the Jordan Valley, reported that his cousin, the leader of a PFLP shock squad, had threatened to kill him if he brought workers into the nearby settlement for work during the designated strike day. Undeterred, he continued work as usual, and the following evening his house was graffitied with the word “traitor” (kha’in). But work was imperative for him and the twenty or so laborers he represented. He painted over the graffiti and continued work. The shock squad was never seen again.289

Ahmad represents the norm – middlemen made life bearable under exceptional circumstances. When they took advantage of their co-nationals, they risked social ostracism, and under rare circumstances, physical harm. One reason why the norm remained ambiguous throughout the intifada was because there was so much variation in middlemen activities. For the most part, punishment was reserved for those makhateer or

288 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 77. 289 Wasit, Interview with the author, Jordan Valley, May 2013.

166 wusata who used their position to became active collaborators or land sellers, a subject to which we now turn.290

Shrinking land, shrinking people – the war on collaborators and land sellers

No crimes were more severe than those that threatened the running of the uprising, the lives of fellow Palestinians, or the physical shrinking of Palestinian land.

Unlike commerce and labor or administrative cooperation, the norm against collaboration and land selling did not vary from pre-intifada to intifada. But punishment did. For much of the first twenty years of occupation, land sellers and collaborators, despised as they were, functioned with relative impunity. Many known collaborators walked about openly, armed and flanked by Israeli soldiers. Land sellers also received Israeli protections. In only rare circumstances were these deviants killed, and even then, perpetrators were often meting out personal revenge rather than defending a national consensus. This changed in

December 1987, when collaborators became the ultimate target of nationalists building a national consensus.

Land dealing, an infrequent occurrence during the first intifada but consistently reviled crime throughout the history of the Palestinian struggle only came to the fore of leadership attention when sales became public. The transfer of land to Jewish individuals or the Israeli state by a simsar – a land broker – is considered the highest act of betrayal, and was treated as such by first intifada leadership. Indeed, the UNLU issued the first public death warrant of the intifada in Bayan no. 55 against Mardus Matusian, a land dealer who helped transfer ownership of land belonging to the Orthodox Patriarchy in the

290 Interviews with first intifada intermediaries in the Jordan valley also revealed a striking phenomenon – middlemen in remote areas were far less likely to comply with nationalist norms that demanded pro-social behavior. This is because they were physically and psychologically distant from more active leadership hubs like Beit Sahour, al-Bireh, Hebron, or Nablus. Just as Jordan Valley wusata and makhateer reported their disdain for leadership and their ongoing commercial ties with Israeli settlers, so too did activists in Beit Sahour complain that the periphery was never successfully brought into the uprising. The geographic diffusion of nationalist norms during the intifada is undoubtedly worthy of further study, but is beyond the scope of this paper.

167 Old City of Jerusalem to ‘Ateret Cohanim yeshiva. Matusian fled the region and avoided the penalty.291 Others would not be so fortunate. Abu Zeid, a well-known mukhtar from the Salfit region, had been accused of nefarious land dealings in the mid-1980s. In 1986, he deceived a grieving widower into signing his land over without payment. Two years later, at the height of the intifada, a number of villagers shot and killed Abu Zeid, mutilating and burning his body in a symbolic act meant to deter other land brokers.292

Still, the simsar was not a frequent subject in the bayanat issued by the UNLU or Hamas, predominantly because the act was so rare and the number of violators so few. Moreover, from the mid-1980s Israel began seizing Palestinian land and declaring it state land, curtailing Israel’s demand for the simsar.293 No matter how infrequent, land-dealing sits unambiguously at the top of a list of forbidden interactions, even more so than collaborators working for Israeli intelligence or the army.

Unlike land dealers, but similar to the police, collaborators were dealt with conditionally. That is to say, the prohibitive norm against open or clandestine collaboration remained constant, but norms regarding treatment of known collaborators varied. The UNLU’s initial response to collaborators was to demand resignation and provide amnesty. Bayan no. 11 declared March 29 a “day of penitence” for collaborators, and gave an “opportunity for all those who have deviated from the will of the people to return, and over their weapons, and cleanse their conscience.”294 Many responded to the call, whether out of respect for the national consensus, genuine repentance, or fear of reprisal. Fear undoubtedly played an important role. A collaborator from Qalqilya was killed by fellow villagers that February, and the corpse of a Jericho policeman was

291 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 72-75 292 Ibid. 293 Ibid. 294 Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, Leaflet no. 11, 75.

168 discovered ten days later.295 Resignations were often public, held in mosques, churches, or village squares, and allowed collaborators to “return to the fold”.296

The magnanimous treatment of collaborators during this early phase was likely informed by leaders’ recollection of the 1936-1939 rebellion against the British, which concluded with more inter-Palestinian deaths than deaths of Palestinians by British forces. Leaders were also wary that killing collaborators might be used by Israel to propagate their claim that the intifada was nothing more than a war of terror by the PLO on its own people. For these reasons, as Rigby notes, “there was a real desire to provide the collaborators with every reasonable opportunity to forsake their treachery and join the national struggle.”297 When known collaborators did not heed the call, pressure gradually increased: They were treated as outcasts; people refused to have any social contact with them, except to hurl verbal abuse. Their house would be attacked with stones. They risked being beaten up and physically assaulted by the local strike forces. If these measures proved ineffective, then the next stage might be a fire-bomb attack on their house and premises. If the collaborator still refused to repent and give up his old ways, or failed to flee, then the death sentence would be passed, in consultation with the leadership outside, and would be carried out by special hit squads.298

Such a measured response to a nefarious and widespread phenomenon met with success – by June 1988, Israeli’s collaborator network was in disarray. With the wholesale resignation of the police force and tax collectors in March and April, and the recanting of hundreds of collaborators, Israel had lost both coercive and institutional control. Never could such an immense task have succeeded without the consistent

295 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 43. 296 Salim c: Israel’s Strategy of Collaborators and Forgeries.” Middle East Report, no. 164/165 (May 1, 1990): 39–45. 297 Rigby Legacy of the Past, 44. 298 Ibid.

169 messaging and internal discipline of a cohesive leadership. The victory was not only in the mass resignation and repentance of collaborators, but also in the fact that so few collaborators – clear traitors of the national cause – were killed outside leadership guidance.

Palestinians would have little time to relish the tactical victory. Just as soon as the network collapsed, Israel commenced building it anew. With the civil administration stripped of a body of potential collaborators, Israeli intelligence switched to its prison system. Thousands of Palestinians was jailed or detained in the first months of the uprising, providing a new body of vulnerable and potentially swayed informants. ‘Asfor – or birds – as they were known, had the main task of assisting prison interrogators in extracting information or confessions from fellow cellmates.299 In return, they received more lenient sentences, financial reward, and/or protection once released from the facility. Many ‘asafir also played a role in recruiting intelligence agents. Outside the prison system, Israel preyed on Palestinians seeking work permits, building permits, travel visas, and the like from the military government, whose system was premised on forcing administrative reliance for daily needs. By early 1989, Israel had succeeded in building a new army of collaborators, this time providing them with more security in the face of Palestinian attacks.300 This new body differed in important ways from the previous incarnation. First, new recruits were very consciously breaking the national consensus, even ion the face of threat to their lives. Many won financial or political reward in a blatant display of self-interest. It is no surprise then that leaders dealt with them in a markedly different fashion. These informants were not given the opportunity to

299 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 63. 300 Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule,” 1993.

170 repent, and many leaflets declared them traitors demanding they immediately halt activities. But the leadership also made efforts to prevent an all-out war against them.

By mid-1989, the unraveling of the norm calling for a measured response to collaborators was evident. Gangs and individuals meted out justice against alleged collaborators, sometimes with little evidence backing their claim. Worryingly, charges of collaboration were being used to settle old feuds and factional disputes. Palestinians killed 35 alleged collaborators from April to mid-July. By contrast, only ten were killed in the three preceding months.301 Rigby describes the personalistic turn: “It became clear that the fate of suspected collaborators was no longer being referred up to the leadership, and that local strike forces were increasingly taking matters into their own hands as judges and executioners.”302 The UNLU attempted to channel the violence into tribunals tasked with gathering information on suspected collaborators for eventual assessment by the PLO and its factions.303 Arafat responded with a personal plea to end violence against the collaborators in October 1989, but the spiral of internecine violence could not be attenuated. By spring 1990, the ghosts of the 1930’s revolt had returned – more

Palestinians were being killed by fellow Palestinians than by the Israeli army.

Again, leadership proved crucial in producing a clear norm around traitors to the national cause. Land dealers, the most egregious violators, were to be shown no mercy.

Collaborators, on the other hand, were given ample opportunity to repent and join resistance. That so many resigned is a testament to the clarity of the norm and the high level of social purpose. That thousands more joined Israel in the following months, however, should not be taken to signify a breakdown in leadership cohesion or a decline

301 Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War By Other Means, 203. 302 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 44. 303 Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War By Other Means, 1991.

171 in social purpose. On the demand side, every occupation requires its collaborators, and

Israel’s illegal recruitment strategies were notoriously effective. But supply, too, can never be eliminated. Every society contains the “weak of spirit”304, even more so under the duress of prolonged occupation and revolution. Decentralized violence against collaborators, however, did signal worrying leadership fragmentation, and the war on collaborators mirrored the gradual weakening of the UNLU, the PLO, and nationalist- religious bloc cooperation.305

Unraveling leadership, unraveling norms

Forces conspired to fracture on-the-ground leadership from the very start of the intifada.

No force was more efficient in this regard than Israel, whose presence in the occupied territories had always rested on producing economic dependency, administrative control, and security, the very three things that intifada activists succeeding in challenging in the first year. To counter the trend, Israel engaged in a comprehensive campaign against

Palestinians engaged in the struggle. They punished striking workers by preventing them from returning to work on non-strike days, or permanently shuttering the doors of merchants who had joined the boycott. On the administrative front, they doubled their efforts to force reliance on magnetic cards (an upgrade on identity cards that were already required for anything from marriage certificates to employment). But their more insidious work took place in the security realm. Under Likud Defense Minister Moshe Arens, the

Israeli Army shifted from predecessor Rabin’s ‘might and beatings’, to extensive covert operations, targeting intifada activists aligned with Hamas and the UNLU.306 To do this,

304 Da‘ouf an-nufasa’, a term used by numerous interview subjects describing the typical informant recruit. 305 For more analysis on the war against collaborators and its causes, see Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War By Other Means, 202-204. 306 Graham Usher, Palestine in Crisis: The Struggle for Peace and Political Independence after Oslo. London: Pluto Press, 1995, 5.

172 they recruited a new army of collaborators to gather information and sew the seeds of factionalism.307 Many were tasked with producing the illusion of factionalism. One night, they would torch a Fatah activist’s car, the next the home of a PFLP activist. It was only during ad hoc mediation sessions to deal with the infighting that leaders realized the campaign was a deliberate one by Israeli agents.308

From Bayan no. 40 on, we see an increasingly urgent tone calling for unity and coordination, warning against Israel’s tactics. One passage lays bare the UNLU’s fears:

The occupation authorities are trying to execute their mission by means of an extensive campaign, which includes rumors and “planted” leaflets, by exploiting and fanning clan and personal disputes … in the hope that you will be consumed by frustration and will preoccupy yourselves with personal and local disputes and will deviate from your principal mission and your sacred goal; and then the uprising will begin to collapse from within, after Israel has failed to destroy it from outside.309

This passage hints at another of Israel’s strategies, the production of forged leaflets aimed at producing horizontal rifts (between factions) and vertical rifts (between the leadership and its base).310 Some of the forgeries placed unreasonable demands on the merchant class, trying to strip the leadership of support from a base that was paying heavily for its role in the uprising. Forged leaflet no. 23 is a good example: “the UNLU calls on landlords to stop pressuring tenants to pay their rents; wholesale merchants and

307 Graham Usher, “Israel’s Undercover Army,” New Statesman/Society, 4 September 1992. 308 Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War By Other Means, 204. 309 Leaflet no. 45, quoted in Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones. 310 Tamari, “Eyeless in Judea,” 40.

173 shopkeepers are to reduce their retail prices substantially; industrialists are to pay workers full wages on strike days.”311

Finally, Israel engaged in a massive arrest campaign, breaking up popular committees and seriously weakening resistance efforts. Concerned mostly with the nationalist bloc around the UNLU, they also gave Hamas more freedom of movement and influence, producing a counterweight to a movement that was beginning to see international diplomatic support shifting in its favor. Remarkably, despite these efforts, leaders stayed the course. As factionalism increased during the war on collaborators in the summer of 1989, so too did efforts to stay united. At the end of 1989, Hamas and the

UNLU made one last ditch effort to coordinate, agreeing to end factional infighting and facilitate coordination on strike days.312

The summer of 1989 nevertheless signaled the beginning of the end. By March

1990 Israel’s arrest campaign had left the UNLU in tatters, and it ceased to function as a cohesive movement. Internal collapse also opened the door for PLO leadership in Tunis to exert more control over its factions, the net effect being rapid fragmentation under

Arafat’s system of patronage, along with outside control over messaging that showed ignorance of the realities on the ground.313 Arafat’s fatal mistake may have been his support for Saddam Hussein in the Gulf Crisis. As a result, the PLO lost support from key allies, including the international community, the Israeli left, and Arab countries that had helped fund the organization throughout the uprising, costing Arafat $120 million in annual donations from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.314 The collapse of the Soviet Bloc proved equally fatal – it meant not only the loss of an important counter-balance to the

311 Ibid., 42. 312 Ibid. 313 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 116-118. 314 Usher, Palestine in Crisis, 1.

174 pro-Israel camp around Israel, but also the influx of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews and non-Jews to Israel and the settlements. Meanwhile, the PLO struggled to maneuver in its previous spheres of influence – icy relations between the PLO and Assad and enduring mistrust between King Hussein and Arafat further isolated the PLO in the region. With billions of dollars of lost funds over the final years of the intifada, the PLO was in disarray, and it impacted the precarious factional unity that characterized the first eighteen months of the intifada.315

On the ground, the intifada began to spiral. Israel’s imposition of a curfew during the Gulf Crisis caused a widening sense of hopelessness. By the time the curfew was lifted, rage spilled over, and violent acts against Israel increased manifold. The UNLU was incapable of containing the violence, with their compliance mechanism now devolved into factional-based armed units. Between 1990 and 1992, violence between

Hamas and Fatah hit the streets. A Fatah leader was shot and injured in clashes in June

1991, prompting the UNLU to declare the first ever strike against internecine violence.316

By then, the split had made its way into other institutions. In a sign of popular and professional discontent with the UNLU, Hamas won six of a possible eleven seats in the

Hebron Chamber of Commerce elections in June 1991.317 Around this time, Hamas began calling its own strikes, a departure from the coordination that characterized most of the first two years. In recognition of their own dwindling influence, the UNLU urged

Palestinians, in bayan no. 70, to observe strikes by Hamas and the UNLU only, a sign not only of Hamas’ meteoric rise, but of UNLU concerns diverse other sources of tactical guidance.

315 Ibid. 316 Economist, “Palestinians: and now the boomerang” June 8, 1991, 46. 317 Wing, “Legal Decision-Making during the Palestinian Intifada: Embryonic Self-Rule.”

175

Abstruse interactional norms, decline in compliance

In December 1991, for the first time, residents in Nablus did not observe a strike day. Not only did shops remain open, but shopkeepers also beat activists who tried to enforce it.318

Momentum for civil resistance had ground to a halt, and the UNLU knew it. In April

1992, in response to widespread noncompliance with strikes and boycotts, they reduced the number of strike days. They allowed restaurants to stay open all day to ease social and economic hardships. “By the summer of 1991 the internal sense of strength and faith in the ultimate success of the Intifada […] had begun to wane as [Palestinian] sufferings increased.”319 Bayan no. 81 called for only one strike day per month, and allowed shops throughout the West Bank and Gaza to stay open 2 hours longer each day. Jerusalemite shops could stay open till 5pm. Previously prohibitive economic norms had shifted, in large part because compliance with them, and the ability to enforce the norm, had deteriorated.

It is clear that social purpose was no longer strong enough to produce pro-social behavior in the economic realm. My argument suggests that leadership cohesion is a necessary but not sufficient cause of social purpose, and the period of social anomie from

1990-1993 certainly coincides with the disintegration of an indigenous, cohesive leadership. But economic explanations should not be dismissed. Palestinians were tired, not only from two years of civil disobedience and Israeli counter-measures, but also from the aftermath of the Gulf Crisis, after which outside funding was noticeably reduced. But economic explanations do not sufficiently explain the timing of a decline in social

318 Ibid. 319 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 16.

176 purpose. Palestinians paid a heavy toll for their role in the uprising for two full years, during which compliance was relatively high. It was only with the rapid fragmentation of leadership that economic norms started slipping away. Wendy Pearlman also sees leadership fragmentation as a major source of norm-deterioration, arguing that cohesion is a necessary condition for successful non-violent protest, of which boycotts and strikes are central components.320 Rigby agrees: “Whilst the economic situation could explain a part of the increasing lawlessness, it was also linked to the declining ability of the leadership of the Uprising to enforce its rulings and control the wilder acts of gangs of masked youth.”321

Of the more dramatic and telling shifts in interactional norms was the unraveling of a measured response to collaborators. While this began in the summer of 1989, it continued with greater force in the last few years, when the term “collaborator” took on a widened definition. Collaborators were now more than simply spies, informants, or thugs armed by Israeli intelligence. They also included drug dealers, distributors of pornography, prostitutes, and others accused of corrupting Palestinian society. For example, throughout the first two years, only 24 women had been killed on the charge of collaboration, which included so-called immoral behavior. In the four years that followed, this was the annual average, with 83 more being killed.322 “Violence against collaborators represented a switch from mass-based mobilization to individualized lethal acts,” writes Pearlman.323 The relatively measured norm against collaborators during the first two years reflected leadership cohesion, just as the deterioration of that norm reflected leadership fragmentation.

320 See Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 118-123. 321 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 16. 322 Be’er and Saleh, “Collaborators in the Occupied Territories: Human Rights Abuses and Violations,” 92. 323 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 120.

177 The first intifada is an exceptional test for a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance. In the first 18 months of the uprising, leadership coalesced around the

UNLU, the PLO, and the popular committees. This decentralized but highly coordinated leadership was vested with a high degree of legitimacy, and the bi-weekly leaflets they issued carried the weight of law. The Islamic Bloc, while less influential at the beginning of the intifada, nevertheless coordinated with the UNLU, in an impressive show of national unity. Leadership was this cohesive vertically and horizontally, held high levels of legitimacy, and agreed on national aims. Cohesive leadership triggered social purpose, higher during the first 18 months of the intifada than at any other point in the Palestinian struggle. Moved to engage in pro-social behavior, Palestinians complied even when personal sacrifice was high, and. Material incentives, both carrots and sticks, played an important role in enforcing prohibitive norms. But material incentives could not sustain norm-compliance over time - without the advantages of state institutions (a police force, courts, a legislature), the national movement relied on careful cultural framing and the production of emotional incentives, enforced at every level of society.

Those euphoric months did not last long. The military slowly strangled the popular committees, arresting thousands. Israeli agents and infiltrators sewed the seeds of internecine violence. Indigenously produced infighting also took a toll, as Fatah, the dominant party in the PLO abroad, tried to assert dominance over the more popular left- leaning parties on the ground. Authority and legitimacy eroded around the UNLU, gradually shifting toward the Islamic bloc. With such deep leadership rifts, social purpose withered away, and interactional norms became unbounded. Compliance with strikes and boycotts ground to a halt, even as enforcement increased. Collaborators were no longer

178 dealt with in a measured fashion. Leadership fragmentation directly attenuated social purpose, leaving Palestinians grasping for guidance under a political system designed to leave them without clear normative boundaries.

Two other factors played central roles in the strength and later weakness of social purpose during the intifada. The uprising immediately pinned Palestinians against the

1989 may not be attributable exclusively to leadership fragmentation. To be sure,

Palestinians were exhausted – the uprising demanded self-sacrifice and came at a high cost to participants and non-participants alike. Nevertheless, we can’t explain the timing of that exhaustion. Why did clear norms last for 18 months and not three months? And why did the precipitous decline in clear norms happen just as leadership withered? I consider exhaustion as a strategic condition affecting the outcome, but like intergroup competition, do not consider it to be a sufficient cause.

179 Chapter IV: Oslo and the Rise of Normalization

On the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) in September 1993, the

PLO was in “the worst crisis of its 29-year history.”324 It suffered from a lack of funds, increasing factionalism, and internal debate over the future of the movement. But with careful maneuvering, Arafat managed to pull enough support from his loyal cadres to sanction the Oslo process, considering it the best possible option in a terrible situation.325

Leadership was far from cohesive in the first few years after Oslo. But Arafat’s personality and patronage network was robust: it stymied opposition and garnered popular backing. Indeed, optimism was high following the signing, and remained so throughout much of the Oslo years, despite strong factional disagreements. The bedrock of the Oslo Accords, and a big reason for its popularity among Palestinians, was mutual recognition, which included for the first time Israel’s recognition of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In exchange, the PLO renounced

“violence and all other acts which endanger peace and stability”.326 In their 9 September letter to Rabin, one of four documents making up the Oslo Accords, the PLO states that the Accords constitute the beginning of “a new epoch of peaceful coexistence.”327

From the perspective of interactional norms, this was a defining moment.

Prohibitive norms, the hallmark of the first intifada and a great reason for its successes, had now become permissive, not only as a tactic, but as an expression of national interest.

Oslo represented the birth of PLO-sanctioned “normalization”, a comprehensive program aimed at economic integration, security coordination, and social, cultural, and academic dialogue – in essence, the realization of normal relations between Palestinians and

324 Usher, Palestine in Crisis, 1. 325 Usher, Palestine in Crisis. 326 Letter, reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies 23, 1 (Autumn 1993), 114-124. 327 “Letter,” reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies 23, 1 (Autumn 1993), 114-124.

180 Israelis. 328 A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance suggests that these guidelines should be met with popular compliance, regardless the degree of leadership cohesion. Permissive norms do not carry the high costs of popular boycott and broad noncooperation. On the contrary, cooperation between unequal partners provides net benefit to individual members of the subordinate in the short-term, even when the long- term benefits remain obscure. Oslo aligned individual self-interest – desire for a normal life – with group interest – the realization of independence. The 1990s thus codified cooperation at every level of society, shifting the boundaries of the permissible to new extremes. When the process began to collapse with the election of Netanyahu in 1996, and later with the failure of Camp David, those norms were firmly entrenched, making popular noncooperation during the second intifada contingent upon a renewed popular leadership. That leadership was not forthcoming. The Oslo years also offer an opportunity to test the effect of institutions on interactional norms. We might expect the proliferation of national institutions – an education board, courts, a parliament, financial institutions, and the litany of agreements that governed relations between Palestinians and

Israelis, to have mediated interactional norms. The analysis below demonstrates that institutions helped mediate certain norms but failed to produce coherence around others. I assess those reasons below.

Table 4.1 demonstrates the theory from 1993-2000.

328 PLO official, Interview with the author, April 2013.

181 Table 4.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 1993-2000

Leadership Dynamic Social Purpose Interactional Norms

MODERATE COHESION MODERATE JUMBLED

Vertical Horizontally SOME Direction PERMISSIVE Coordination LOW Shared Goals

Horizontal Vertically MEDIUM SOME Coherence SOME Coordination shared goals

Popular MEDIUM Legitimacy Social Purpose NO Compliance HIGH Articulation Triggered HIGH of end-goals

Arafat and the New Normal: 1993-2000: Leadership Dynamics

Internal opposition to the DOP ripped through the national movement from the very outset, and included rejection within Fatah, the PLO, the Islamic bloc, and important cultural figures. Arafat did manage to gain majority support from within his own party,

Fatah, but not without raising the ire of core members of the Central Committee, including Farouq Qaddumi, Hani al-Hassan, and Abbas Zaki. He likewise garnered majority support from the PLO Central Council, who voted 68-8 in favor of the DOP in an October 1993 vote.329 These successes overshadowed opposition rising from the rejectionist bloc, which included the leftists and the Islamic bloc. The PFLP and DFLP, boycotted the October vote and immediately suspended activities in all PLO bodies in

329 Usher, Palestine in Crisis, 1995.

182 protest of the ‘agreement of shame’. Marxist retreat from the PLO marked the end of the delicate weaving together of contending groups in the national movement, affirming

Fatah’s control over national institutions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad rejected every element of the agreement, a message consistent with their condemnation of a two-state solution and mutual recognition first proposed in 1988. Popular cultural icons in the national movement also voiced their dissent. Mahmoud Darwish resigned from the PLO

Executive Committee the day after the signing, lamenting that Palestinians “woke up to find they had no past.”330 And Edward Said warned, presciently, that “the interim stage may be in effect the final one.”331

One reason for the disarray in the national movement lay in the divide between outside and inside leadership. Arafat was notoriously disconnected from the reality of

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; it was Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) who connected the inside with the outside, issuing directives during the first intifada in close coordination with the UNLU. Marwan Barghouti, a young guard Fatah activists and former head of the student council of the Birzeit University (1983-1987), bemoaned Abu

Jihad’s assassination in 1988: “When the Israelis killed him, they also killed a concept, a strategy, if you like, that held the [inside and outside] together.”332

How did the Oslo process survive with such internal fragmentation and vocal opposition? First, the rejectionist camp suffered from its own legitimacy crisis. Marxists and Islamists could not coordinate their campaigns against Fatah and the DOP – the ideological chasm between the leftist PLO opposition and Hamas was simply too wide,

330 Sinan Antoon, “Mahmud Darwish’s Allegorical Critique of Oslo,” Journal of Palestine Studies 31, no. 2 (January 1, 2002): 66–77. 331 Edward W. Said, Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, 1st edition (New York: Vintage, 1996), 11. 332 Interview with Marwan Barghouti in Graham Usher, “Arafat and the Opposition.” Middle East Report, no. 191 (November 1, 1994): 22.

183 despite a brief aborted attempt at short-term tactical cooperation.333 Nor were they capable of presenting a viable alternative to Oslo.334 The Marxists, in particular, had little moral authority to challenge Fatah, weakened ideologically and financially by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and

Survey Research from 1994-1996 showed that the PFLP and DFLP never garnered more than 8.5 and 2.2 percent support respectively. By April 2000, those numbers had dropped to a dismal 2.8 and 0.5 percent.335

Hamas, the main challenger to Fatah, never enjoyed more than 16.6 percent support – those numbers are twice their low point in 1997 and reflect a boost in popularity after the revenge attacks that followed the Ibrahimi mosque massacre in 1994.

Their relative unpopularity lay in a weak historical connection to the national movement

– the Muslim Brotherhood precursor was a social movement, and Hamas only infused it with national content at the end of the intifada. Such a fledgling national movement had limited “nationalist capital” to compete with Fatah. Hamas also had to walk a precarious line as spoilers – a well-timed suicide bomb could vitalize their base, but poorly timed attacks could alienate those who wanted to give Oslo a chance. Hamas’ greatest strength, however, lay in the independence they had from Oslo and its institutions: the movement had opposed Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait, and in return, received massive financial support from the Gulf States,336 funds that fueled their social programs in Gaza and the West Bank. Independence from the PA meant they were free to criticize Fatah and Arafat at their discretion, holding the charge of “collaborator” over the PA’s head if

333 Interview with Ghazi Abu Jayad in Usher, “Arafat and the Opposition,” 24. 334 Wendy Pearlman, “Spoiling Inside and Out: Internal Political Contestation and the Middle East Peace Process,” International Security 33, no. 3 (2008): 79–109; Connell, “Palestine on the Edge.” 335 See CPSR Public Opinion Polls 1-48, available online at http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/151. 336 Azzam Tamimi, Hamas: A History from Within (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2011), 75.

184 the government opted to arrest their cadres.337 But Hamas could only remain shielded from PA security coordination with Israel as long as they remained popular: when their bombing campaigns reached an unpopular crescendo in 1996 following Israel’s assassination of Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash,338 Arafat took the opportunity to shut them down, arresting 1200 members and closing their offices.339

A second explanation for Oslo’s survival despite interfactional and intrafactional fragmentation lay in the popular exhaustion that followed the intifada. Palestinians in the

West Bank and Gaza remained deeply skeptical of the agreement, but they were willing to give it a chance, desperate for some degree of normalcy after the upheaval of the previous few years. CPSR polls through 1993-1994 showed that Palestinians were most concerned about their economic situation, particularly job availability.340 The same polls indicate that they believed Oslo could deliver on their economic needs, with 65% expecting the DOP to better the economic situation. 341 Fatah’s support was thus contingent upon harnessing popular hope, and reviving it along the way with tangible advances in the peace process.

Most importantly, however, was the governing style of Yasser Arafat. Informally crowned the undisputed king of Fatah after the assassinations of Fatah leaders Abu Jihad in 1988 and Salah Khalaf in 1991, Arafat ruled with a wary eye on internal opposition and an increasingly authoritarian hand. He ran the new leadership on the ground through a carefully-crafted neopatrimonial network designed to manage internal fragmentation, a network he could maintain with the resources and recognition granted him in the Oslo

337 Pearlman “Spoiling Inside and Out,” 101. 338 70 percent of the population opposed the February-March 1996 bombing campaign. CPSR Public Opinion Poll 25, December 1996, available at http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/151. 339 Pearlman “Spoiling Inside and Out,” 102. 340 CPSR Public Opinion Polls 1-25, available online at http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/151. 341 CPSR Public Opinion Poll 12, September 29-30 1993, available online http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/151.

185 process.342 Clientalism and patronage were the hallmark strategies he gained while at the head of the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s, and they became his greatest asset as Fatah transitioned from head of the PLO-in-exile to head of the new governing authority in the

West Bank and Gaza.343 Emboldened by international support, he once again found almost unlimited funds to placate his enemies and reward his loyalists. Neopatrimonial management demands no small measure of autocratic decision-making, and opponents warned almost immediately of the coming dictatorship.344 But Arafat preferred a strong presidency, and exercised that in every institutions founded after the Accords, including the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the one institution designed to provide checks and balances to the executive.

Free and fair PLC elections in 1996 validated the Oslo process and Arafat’s governing style. With 90% turnout in Gaza and 68% in the West Bank, Arafat and Fatah were given a strong mandate to pursue negotiations and continue building PA institutions. Arafat earned 88% of the vote, and the PLC became stacked with Fatah loyalists: of 88 members, between two-thirds and three-quarters were either Fatah members, Arafat loyalists, or PA officials. 345 Independents lacked the funds and organizational capacity to mount a credible opposition, and Hamas, the only opposition bloc with numbers and organizational capacity, boycotted the elections.

But the legislature was never granted the opportunity to check the executive.

Arafat showed disregard and disrespect for the institution, refusing to ratify a number of important pieces of legislation, including al-qanun al-asasi, the Basic Law which was to

342 Brynen, Rex. “The Neopatrimonial Dimension of Palestinian Politics.” Journal of Palestine Studies 25, no. 1 (1995): 23–36. 343 Ibid., 24. 344 See Said, “Peace And Its Discontents” and Salim Tamari, “Fading Flags: The Crises of Palestinian Legitimacy,” Middle East Report, no. 194/195 (May 1, 1995): 10–12 345 Pearlman Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 130.

186 serve as constitution of the new PA.346 In some estimations, Arafat simply ignored legislation that threatened his hold on power.

Despite the favorable make-up of the PLC, it did challenge Arafat on governance, threatening a vote of no-confidence on a number of occasions. The damning June 1997

Corruption Report appeared at first to present a serious challenge to the president. Three of his ministers and close associates – Yasser Abed Rabbo, Nabil Sha’ath, and Jamil

Tarifi – were charged with mismanagement of state funds. But PLC opposition was tepid and fragmented. In the wake of the report, Arafat reshuffled the cabinet, adding eight new ministries and re-appointing the three accused ministers. The PLC approved the move, and gradually became meaningless. It passed hundreds of new laws that Arafat did not ratify. Instead, the executive issued over 800 presidential decrees, sidestepping democratic institutions.347 From 1996-2000, the PLC passed a meager 30 laws. Arafat ratified only 24 of these.

Finally, Arafat quashed internal opposition. Only Hanan Ashrawi and Abdul

Jawwad Saleh (Abu Saleh) refused re-appointment in the 1998 cabinet shuffle. The latter’s treatment in the aftermath exhibits Arafat’s approach to opposition and internal criticism. A long-time independent critic of Arafat, and former mayor of al-Bireh, Abu

Saleh became a vocal opponent of corruption. In November 1999 he signed a leaflet, along with 19 other academics and politicians, implicating Arafat in PA corruption. A number of the signatories were arrested and beaten. A month later, while demonstrating the detention of three signatories, seven PA security force members severely beat the 70

346 Nathan J. Brown, Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 70-83. 347 Ibid., Chapters 3 and 4.

187 year-old Abu Saleh.348 The culture of retribution caused alarm among Palestinians: 57% felt they could not criticize the PA without fear of retribution in June 1999 polls.349

Cohesive or Concentrated?

Pearlman characterizes the first seven years of the PA’s tenure as cohesive,

“attributable more to the centralization of power than to the institutionalization of authority.” 350 Polling data over this timeframe confirm that, despite concerns over

Arafat’s governance, corruption, settlement growth, dwindling optimism, and widespread mistrust of Israeli intentions, the political leadership around Arafat maintained surprisingly broad support. Support for Fatah (Figure 4.1) and Arafat (Figure 4.2) declined from 1994-2000, reaching a nadir on the eve of the second intifada, but their strength relative to the opposition was never in question.

Figure 4.1 Political party support 1994-2000 Figure 4.2 Support for presidential candidate

*Source: Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Public Opinion Polls 5-48.

348 Palestinian politician, interview with author, Al-Bireh, November 2012. 349 CPRS Public Opinion Poll 41, 3-5 June 1999, available online at http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/151. 350 Pearlman, 130.

188 But calling the first few years of Oslo an era of leadership cohesion is misleading. My theory of purpose-driven interactional norms operationalizes cohesive leadership as one possessing vertical coordination, horizontal coordination, popular legitimacy, and articulation of end-goals. To the extent that Arafat ruled by presidential decree in blatant disregard for pluralistic institutions, and to the extent that he suppressed opposition through force and arrest, “vertical and horizontal coordination” is a tenuous descriptor.

Arafat did not “coordinate” with the PLC or with the opposition. He did not even coordinate with the PLO’s representative body, the PNC. Instead, we observe a pattern of patronage that produced loyalty in the absence of organizational coordination. This was hardly the leadership of the first eighteen months of the intifada, characterized by cross- factional cooperation, inside-outside coordination, and extensive popular involvement in day-to-day governance.

The degree of vertical disintegration is notable. One of the hallmarks on the first intifada, and an important reason why social purpose was so high then, was the politicization of cross-segments of the population. Women, workers, students, secular nationalists, pious people – all were given an opportunity to engage in the political landscape through the various informal institutions that made up the leadership of the uprising. Oslo undid the mobilizing potential of the population, in part by design of its architects, and in part because of Arafat’s authoritarian tendencies. This was most pronounced in the de-politicization of civil society through NGOs.

By 1991, the mass movement had channeled much of its energy into “an NGO community of elite, professional, and politically autonomous institutions.”351 The NGO community became the home for disaffected leftist activists who had survived Israel’s

351 Hammami, “Palestinian NGOs Since Oslo,” 17.

189 arrest campaign, and were a potential source for social activism after the signing of the

DOP. But the Oslo years saw the deterioration of NGO autonomy under Arafat. In essence, Arafat worked hard to divest Palestinian NGOs of any political meaning just as the NGO community worked to circumvent political control.352 A 1995 World Bank initiative that created a $15 million Palestinian NGO fund raised the stakes of the game.

An independent umbrella for NGOs called the Palestinian NGO forum (PNGO), Arafat’s chief opponent in the grass-roots, took on an advisory role for the fund in December

1996, a clear threat to Arafat’s control over civil society patronage. To counteract, Arafat set up the Higher Council of NGOs in Gaza, and later in the West Bank, made up of

Fatah loyalists and others left out of the PNGO. Hammami’s study of Palestinian NGOs describes the strategic logic: “By creating ‘governmental NGO networks’ [the executive] attempted to organize ‘loyal’ institutions to compete with the PNGO over control of the

World Bank fund. This was consistent with the general PA policy of funding new NGOs in order to widen the regime’s patronage base.”353

NGO de-politicization proceeded with the Charitable Associations and

Community Organizations Law, prepared by the Ministry of Justice, and passed by the

PLC in 1998. Arafat returned the law in March 1999, with an important amendment: all new NGOs had to apply and be approved by the Ministry of the Interior, which was firmly under Arafat’s control. 354 Members of the PNGO were furious about the stipulation, but they were unable to summon a 44-member quorum in the PLC to overturn the president’s amendment, and it passed in January 2000. The game shows Arafat’s ability to “exploit the constitutional vacuum in order to manipulate laws passed by the

352 Ibid. 353 Ibid., 18. 354 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 8.

190 PLC and modify them in a way that strengthens his grip on civil society.”355

In many ways, the PA was successful in castrating the politically-charged, civil society led NGO sector, although the internationalization of the NGO sector certainly helped. Palestinian youth were drawn to the relatively high salaries of international or internationally-funded NGOs, positions that allowed for upward mobility and academic or professional opportunities in the West. Most who sought the NGO path demonstrated little interest in “national liberation”. They viewed the grassroots as patrons in need of assistance, rather than partners in the political process.356 What emerged by the end of the decade was a de-politicized but selectively professionalized civil society, dependent upon international aid and stripped of political clout. The effect, by design, was a vertically disintegrated leadership that struggled to produce social purpose.

Nevertheless, the Oslo years did see a fairly high degree of popular legitimacy.

Complaints against his authoritarianism notwithstanding, Arafat and Fatah were granted a popular mandate, both in the 1996 elections and in subsequent public opinion polls (see

Figure 1 and 2). The decade also saw crystallization around broadly-accepted end-goals, namely Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, Jerusalem as the capital of a new

Palestinian state, a nominal return of refugees, and mutual recognition between

Palestinians and Israelis. Most importantly, the majority of Palestinians agreed that diplomacy was the best way to achieve these aims, at least as long as negotiations produced tangible results.

The inter-intifada years are best understood as an era of moderate leadership cohesion. Arafat’s dictatorial style certainly positioned the PA as a powerful norm-

355 Jamal, The Palestinian National Movement, 9. 356 NGO employees, interviews with the author, April 2012-August 2014.

191 entrepreneur, and he made full use of Oslo institutions to push a highly articulated agenda around permissive interactional norms, with only sparing exceptions to the rule. But deficiency in horizontal and vertical coordination limited the production of social purpose, in ways that would negatively affect popular involvement in the Oslo process.

When Social Gets Personal

Social purpose proves slippery to observe in the 1990s. On the one hand, most

Palestinians agreed on tactics and objective: the majority of the population backed the stated goals of the PA leadership, and participated in the institutions that made

Palestinian-Israeli cooperation “normal.” A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance considers social purpose “high” when the population shares goals both vertically and horizontally, realized when the script of behavior is manufactured both bottom-up and top-down. The Oslo years stand in stark contrast to social purpose during the first intifada, when leaders coordinated horizontally and vertically on tactics and goals, encouraging mass participation in the activation of the script. Throughout the

1990s, directives emanated from the top, and remained in place whether the population approved or not. We thus see a script activated from the top-down, enforcing new norms without a social element.

One reason for the weakened position of society during Oslo relates to the crumbling of social relations at the end of the intifada. As impressive as mobilization was during the revolutionary years of the uprising, it was short-lived and weakly institutionalized, culminating in a war on collaborators that intensified mistrust. Arafat’s task of depoliticizing society was not as challenging as one might expect. But as Tamari warns, “the transition from a revolutionary situation (1988-1992) to a routinized regime

192 of self-government […] occurred far too quickly,” stripping civil society of an active role in the supposed decolonizing process.357

Because society was de-politicized during Oslo, their acceptance of the activated script was conditional upon advances in the peace process: so long as the PA was able to produce results, the population would comply. Despite the many disappointments of the

1990s – rapid settlement expansion, restrictions on access and movement, a tightened security regime, dwindling economic opportunities – Arafat did produce agreements that were deemed major victories at the time: the Paris Protocol (later incorporated as Annex

IV of the Cairo Agreement and as Annex V of the Interim Agreement); the Cairo

Agreement (or Gaza-Jericho Agreement) in May 1994; the Agreement on Preparatory

Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities in August 1994; the Protocol on Further Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities in August 1995; the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (or Oslo II Agreement) in September 1995; the

Hebron Protocol in January 1997; and the Wye River Memorandum in October 1998.

These injected hope in the population, reflected in ongoing support for negotiations even as settlements expanded and right wing governments took the Knesset.

My theory predicts broad-based compliance with the script despite only moderate and un-triggered social purpose. This is because permissive interactional norms align personal interest (ie: economic and academic opportunities, a reasonably normal life, security) with collective interest (ie: the realization of a Palestinian state with mutual recognition and normal relations with Israelis). But leaders could not produce the same degree of compliance with prohibitive interactional norms when they found themselves frustrated with Israeli violations of the Accords. The occasional calls for boycott were

357 Tamari, “Fading Flags,” 12.

193 disingenuous and half-hearted, and could not muster public support from a de-politicized base. As Sara Roy notes, Oslo obviated the possibility of non-cooperation: “gone is the notion of resistance, which has lost its philosophical and strategic anchor as an act of political will. In the current period, it has grown increasingly unclear whom or what should be resisted.”358 Nevertheless, so long as norms remained in the realm of the permissive, Palestinians complied, setting the stage for a number of future gray zones.

Making Nice, Making Normal – Interactional Norms during Oslo

“Once we signed the Oslo Accords, we expected [it] to roll on until full peace is achieved, and therefore there was absolutely no reason to behave as though we are still enemies. [This] is the time to act as partners in a peace process that will eventually […] bring about full normalization of a relationship. Which in my mind was the objective of the whole exercise.” – PLO negotiator, interview with author, Ramallah, April 2013.

“I am for dialogue between cultures and coexistence between people: everything I have written about and struggled for has pointed to that as the goal. But I think real principle and real justice have to be implemented before there can be true dialogue. Real dialogue is between equals, not between subordinate and dominant partners.” – Edward Said, Peace and its Discontents, 38.

Norms continued to evolve with the signing of the DOP. Grey zones that shifted toward red lines in the first 18 months of the intifada returned to grey zones as the uprising deteriorated. Those same norms took new shape in 1993, shifting from the ambiguously prohibitive to the permissible. Most new interactional norms were enshrined in the Oslo

II agreement, specifically in the Annex on Cooperation (Annex VI).359 I continue an evaluation of three realms: economic cooperation (articles IV and V), cultural and educational cooperation (article VII) including the people-to-people program (article

358 Sara Roy, “‘The Seed of Chaos, and of Night’: The Gaza Strip after the Agreement,” Journal of Palestine Studies 23, no. 3 (April 1, 1994): 89. 359 Oslo I also contained articles pertaining to cooperation, including Annex III on Economic and Development Programs and Annex IV on Regional Development Programs. Oslo II provided more guidance and detail about implementation.

194 VIII), and security cooperation enshrined in Article IV, Annex I of the Interim

Agreement of 1995. Table 4.2 Summarized the Oslo years:

Table 4.2 Interactional norms 1993-2000

Level of Outcome Action Norm proscription Red Lines of Physically shrinks Simsar al-ard: the land broker -High Coherence Cooperation population/land -High compliance -Prohibitive -Relevant after 1979 -Death penalty Weakens resistance The “Collaborator”: -Moderate coherence • Al-‘ameel al-musallah: -Moderate compliance the armed collaborator -Blurring of red line • Al-Jasous: the spy / informant • Al-‘Asfor: the prison collaborator Gray Zones of Fortifies the PA Security Cooperation -High coherence Cooperation occupation, -High Compliance - civic/political weakens civil -Permissive, much resistance opposition Gray Zones of Entrenches People-to-people dialogue -Moderate coherence Cooperation power -Moderate compliance - normalization asymmetry, -Permissive, much weakens civil opposition resistance Academic Cooperation -High coherence -High compliance -Permissive, much opposition Gray Zones of Relative economic Commerce -High Coherence Cooperation gains for occupier -Permissive - economic -High Compliance Migrant Labor -High Coherence -Permissive -High Compliance

195 Economic norms during Oslo

This was especially true of economic transactional norms, which were spelled out in the

Protocol on Economic Relations between Israel and the PLO, signed in Paris and incorporated into Annex V of the Oslo Agreement (II) signed in September 1995. The

Protocol was created to regulate economic relations in labor, trade, fiscal issues, and monetary arrangements. It promised economic development to the Palestinians, and was hailed by Palestinian leaders at the time as an historic opportunity to combat the inequalities they were fighting against in the first intifada. But the Protocol could not deliver on its promises, in large part because the agreement left labor and goods flows up to the discretion of either side. 360 In reality, this meant that the dominant Israeli economy had an inordinate degree of power over the subordinate Palestinian economy. This was on full display with a modified pass system established alongside the PA in 1994, with heavy input from the Israeli Shin Bet.361 The PA now mediated the flow of Palestinian laborers, but had no control over how much of its work forces could have access to coveted Israeli jobs. Amira Hass explains:

The pass system turned a universal basic right into a coveted privilege—or portion of a privilege—allotted to a minority on a case-by-case basis. For the privilege was not whole: it had gradations. Some passes permitted an overnight stay in Israel, others required return by dusk, a few were for an entire month. Some restricted means of transport to the special group taxis parked outside the Erez checkpoint in the Gaza Strip; a handful allowed the use of private cars from door to door. The hand that giveth also taketh away: some months as many as 1,000 businessmen might be granted passes, other months only 300; sometimes the passes for Gazans would be

360 From article VII of the Protocol: “both sides will attempt to maintain the normality of movement of labor between them, subject to each side’s right to determine from time to time the extent and conditions of the labor movement into its area. If the normal movement is suspended temporarily by either side, it will give the other side immediate notification.” “Gaza-Jericho Agreement Annex IV- Economic Protocol.” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Article VII. Accessed February 6, 2014. http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Peace/Guide/Pages/Gaza-Jericho Agreement Annex IV - Economic Protoco.aspx. 361 Edward W. Said, Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, 1st edition (New York: Vintage, 1996), 11.

196 for Israel and the West Bank, sometimes only for the West Bank. It was thus that an entire society was stratified and segmented on the basis of whether one had access, and in what portion, to the “privilege” of freedom of movement.362

The pass system was one way that Israel manipulated the Protocol to further their own economic priorities. But closures made it all the more unpredictable. Between 1993-

1997, Israel imposed hundreds of days of comprehensive closures of the West Bank and

Gaza Strip, significantly lowering the standard of living in the territories.363 In the meantime, Israel gradually replaced Palestinian labor with foreign workers predominantly from Asia.364 All this translated into an attack on freedom of movement and a policy that further crippled the Palestinian economy.

If the first intifada demanded personal sacrifice for the nation – often in the form of boycott and economic noncompliance – the Oslo years gave overt approval to economic cooperation with Israel. This was not only a reversal of strategy, but a seismic shift in social discourse around transactional norms. In short, the Protocol institutionalized cooperation with an erstwhile enemy while dissuading economic resistance. But Palestinians looking for guidance in this newly defined social world faced a great paradox. At the height of the intifada, more than 100,000 Palestinians worked within Israel – even as they were told their work was counter national ambitions. In 1992, as the uprising tapered off, 115,600 Palestinians worked inside Israel or the settlements.

By May 1996, as a result of Israel’s replacement of Palestinian labor with Asian workers in conjunction with an increasingly strict permit regime and frequent closures, less than

362 Ibid., 8. 363 “The Palestinian Economy during the Period of the Oslo Accords: 1994-2000,” B’Tselem, January 1, 2011, http://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/economy_1994_2000. 364 Arnon and Weinblatt, “Sovereignty and Economic Development,” 299.

197 36,000 laborers worked in the Israeli market.365 Labor flows remained volatile and unpredictable – Israel imposed total closures a total of 218 days between 1995-1996.

Despite a recorded rise in Palestinian labor inside Israel and the settlements from 1997-

2000, the Oslo years effectively saw Israel break from their reliance on Palestinian labor.366 Yet norms remained positive: between the Paris Protocol, the promise of peace, and scarce economic opportunities in a constrained political space, Palestinians attached no stigma to work inside Israel or the settlements.

Trade relations were no better, damaged by a customs union that preserved unequal structural relations and left trade, while theoretically wide open, severely circumscribed. 367 Arnon and Weinblatt highlight that the customs union not only preached economic cooperation while stunting Palestinian trade, it also strained

Palestinian society, “[inflicting] a heavy cost on their social fabric, their political stability, their national pride, and their overall national identity.”368

Because of the commitments outlined in the Paris Protocol, the PA’s hands were tied when it came to challenging the status quo. In September 1997, in protest of Israel’s closure policy and their withholding of millions of dollars in tax revenue, Arafat announced a boycott of certain Israeli products.369 Fifty-six percent of Palestinians supported the call, but a startling 39 percent opposed it, a reflection of the degree to which Palestinians had divested from the everyday means of resistance so popular during

365 Leila Farsakh, “Palestinian Labor Flows to the Israeli Economy: A Finished Story?,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 1 (2002): 13. 366 Ibid., 13. 367 Sara Roy, “De-Development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society Since Oslo,” Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 3 (1999): 72. 368 Arnon and Weinblatt, “Sovereignty and Economic Development,” 306. 369 Jerrold Kessel, “Palestinians Boycott Israeli Products,” CNN, August 17, 1997, http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9708/17/mideast/.

198 the first intifada. 370 The boycott, unsurprisingly, went nowhere, and the unequal cooperation built into the Paris Protocol continued unobstructed.

Compliance with Economic Norms

The Oslo years met with initial success, largely because the 1990s saw Palestinians converge on goals and means – normalization in a two-state framework, and normal economic relations toward those ends.371 One tragic irony of the Oslo years was the cause of later fragmentation: just as the PA urged its citizens to maximize economic transactions with Israel, the Israeli system of closure ensured that compliance was impossible. The result was that few benefited from greater transactions with Israel even as cross-border cooperation was encouraged. The PA’s new norms, ostensibly designed to normalize relations, crippled the working class while enriching a select few. One

Hamas spokesperson explained that this caused “a crack in the Palestinian society which had been accustomed, during all the occupation years, to common support and solidarity.”372

Some Palestinian business leaders did manage to comply with and benefit from the new transactional norms, especially those who maintained close relations with Yasser

Arafat’s inner circle. Palestinian capitalists made use of PA relations with Israel to enrich themselves and establish monopolies in core sectors. Their compliance with Arafat’s neoliberal development strategy aligned self-interest with the social purpose around normalizing relations. But their actions, which involved currying favor with Israeli business leaders and military authorities to secure personal contracts and permits,

370 CPSR Public Opinion Poll 29, September 1997. 371 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 127. 372 Quoted in Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 129.

199 amounted to questionable relations with the enemy, despite being officially sanctioned by the leadership. Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian policy network, in a scathing rebuke of the Oslo and post-Oslo neoliberal paradigm, protest that:

a number of former Israeli political and military officials became, after their retirement, business partners of some Palestinian capitalists and PA political elites. In return, Israel offered the Palestinian businessmen and politicians special privileges such as access to permits, more freedom of movement and trade and the VIP pass status […] The open espousal of neoliberalism by the PA has helped to create an institutional framework that enables economic interest groups to manipulate policies in the service of private ends.373

Cultural and Academic Cooperation

Cultural cooperation, broadly speaking, made up a large part of the Oslo process’ drive for mutual recognition and civil society peace-building. There was an important psychological underpinning to cultural cooperation on both sides. For the Israeli left, the intifada evoked a reckoning, a motivation to discover Palestinians anew. For Palestinians, cultural cooperation was an opportunity to carry forward the sense of pride and confidence that the intifada had inspired, for the first time on what felt to be equal footing. Cultural cooperation was viewed by Palestinians as a way to share their suffering, and convince Israelis of the moral wrongdoing of the occupation.374

People-to-people (P2P) organization was by far the most developed of these initiatives, receiving funding from international donors and logistical support from a number of technical bodies. Broad P2P programs permeated the new cultural landscape.

In this section, I highlight those that worked through the official People-to-People

373 Tariq Dana, “The Palestinian Capitalists That Have Gone Too Far.” Al-Shabaka The Palestinian Policy Network, January 14, 2014. http://al-shabaka.org/node/708. - emphasis added. 374 Mohammed Dajani and Gershon Baskin, “Israeli–Palestinian Joint Activities: Problematic Endeavour, but Necessary Challenge” in Kaufman, Salem, and Verhoeven, Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 88.

200 Program, co-sponsored by Norway, Israel and the PLO, and facilitated through the Fafo

Institute for Applied Social Science. The Program’s mission is set out in Article VIII of

Annex VI:

1. The two sides shall cooperate in enhancing the dialogue and relations between their peoples in accordance with the concepts developed in cooperation with the Kingdom of Norway.

2. The two sides shall cooperate in enhancing dialogue and relations between their peoples, as well as in gaining a wider exposure of the two societies to the peace process, its current situation, and predicted results.

3. The two sides shall take steps to foster public debate and involvement, to remove barriers to interaction, and to increase the people-to-people exchange and interaction within all areas of cooperation described in this Annex and in accordance with the overall objectives and principles set out in this Annex.375

Most projects worked through the NGO sector, and included NGO cooperative projects in youth, adult dialogue and seminars, culture, environment, and media and communication.376 The Program, which requires that both an Israeli and a Palestinian organization implement projects, funded 130 cooperative NGO projects from 1995-2000.

By far the more common cooperative projects were those in ‘adult dialogue and seminars.’ A culture of dialogue grew from these initiatives, and included wide-ranging discussion: interfaith seminars, transformative dialogue, interfaith women’s dialogue, and environmental campaigns.377 The Program, enshrined in Oslo II, had far reach. Projects attracted a large number of participants, and worked throughout the Palestinian territories

375 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Washington DC, September 28, 1995. 376 Lena C. Endresen, “Contact and Cooperation: The Israeli-Palestinian People-to-People Program” (FAFO, March 2001), 11-16, http://www.fafo.no/index.php. 377 For a full list, see Annex I of Endresen, “Contact and Cooperation,” 28-35.

201 and Israel. A Program-sponsored bi-national seminar was held in Gaza City in 1997, a considerable feat given restrictions on Palestinian movement, reflecting the influence that the Program had with Israeli ministries.

But the People-to-People program, and other such programs that worked outside the official framework, suffered from a number of restrictions. First and foremost, they functioned in an environment that preceded a peace agreement. Dialogue groups were meant to work alongside the peace process, to strengthen civil society’s role in negotiations and build support for a future agreement. Ghassan Andoni, a first intifada activist who later co-founded the international solidarity movement (ISM) argues that the logical basis for people-to-people programs crumbled as Oslo failed to produce results.378

Article VIII was premised on the desire to diminish the degree of enmity, build confidence, and produce an environment in which Palestinians and Israelis could agree on an agreement that would invariably involve concession. Instead, the P2P programs

“replaced practical confidence-building measures, rather than being a supplement to them.”379 In short, the process that produced the new norms did not do its part in honoring the spirit of the agreement. Annex VI states that “The two sides shall take steps to foster public debate and involvement, to remove barriers to interaction, and to increase the people-to-people exchange and interaction within all areas of cooperation”

(my emphasis), but Palestinians found themselves working within an increasingly restricted environment.

Throughout the 1990s, Israel created and sustained a complex system aimed at a secure environment for Israelis, but resulting in tightly controlled Palestinian movement.

378 Ghassan Andoni. “The People-to-People Programmes: Peacemaking or Normalization.” EuroMeSCo, 2003. http://www.euromesco.net/euromesco/media/eur_brief1.pdf. 379 Andoni, “The People-to-People Programmes.”

202 Those wishing to travel to Israel, or between the West Bank and Gaza, had to apply for permits. Approval was at the discretion of Israeli officials, and aside form denial, many were approved the day before travel, making planning difficult. On days of full closure, no movement was permitted, including for those with permits. In 1995, the year the

Program was founded, Israel imposed 102 full closure days, and another 116 the following year. By 1999 the number had declined to only 16, but the restrictive permit regime made travel even more difficult.380 FAFO’s internal evaluation of the Program in

2001 noted that the permit system posed “practical as well as psychological and principal challenges for the Program. Most Palestinians see the system as part of a strategy of

Israeli control in which privileges are granted as part of a policy of dominance.”381

There were, of course, significant benefits. 382 People-to-people programs increased cultural understanding, allowed for greater empathy and understanding of mutual suffering, and improved the capacity of everything from peace education, NGO capacity-building, and technical cooperation on vital issues like water, health, and academic research. But because power imbalances remained, and in some respects got worse, the philosophical foundation of cultural normalization failed to penetrate the

Palestinian ethos. Andoni’s critique summarizes the dilemma well:

“Equality and reciprocity are difficult to fulfill between a community with an annual per-capita-income of US $16,000 and another with an annual per-capita-income of US $500-700! In such cases, cooperation is easily confused with dependency. In addition, as was evident in most of the projects, the well-established, highly experienced, and technically advanced Israeli NGO community, dominated the cooperation agenda as

380 Report on the Palestinian Economy, United Nations Office of the Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories (UNSCO), Gaza: Spring 2000. 381 Endresen, “Contact and Cooperation,” 20. 382 For an in-depth evaluation of the Seeds of Peace program, see Ned Lazarus, Evaluating Peace Education in the Oslo-Intifada Generation: A Long-term Impact Study of Seeds of Peace 1993-2003. Dissertation. 2011.

203 far as the inexperienced and often newly established Palestinian NGOs were concerned.”383

Palestinians gradually became suspicious of dialogue. Participants struggled when communicating the logic of dialogue with their friends and families, finding a disconnect between the rhetorical logic of cooperation and facts on the ground.384 Many report that, by the end of the 1990s, they avoided speaking of joint activities with their families – a safe way to avoid inevitable disagreement on the value of their participation. 385

Palestinian participants of the Seeds of Peace summer camps held an increasingly instrumental evaluation of dialogue as Oslo proceeded: the legitimacy of their activities, they argued, rested on their ability to advance the Palestinian cause.386 But because civil society had been stripped of its autonomy, they had no guidance on how to respond to a confusing system that demanded cooperation on equal footing but produced ongoing structural inequality. The result was a negative feedback loop in which low social purpose fed normlessness, which in turn further lowered social purpose. At the root was a leadership low on credibility because of its deep horizontal and vertical fragmentation, but high on authoritarian tendencies. Manuel Hassassian of Bethlehem University, and a long-time civil society advocate, notes this dynamic in the late-1990s:

“The Palestinian street is unsure of where to take its emotions: Toward support of the Authority? Toward the NGOs? Toward the Israelis? The lack of consensus, the constipation of the “peace process,” the fateful hopes that something positive may come about sometime, somewhere, all

383 Andoni, “The People-to-People Programmes,” 5. 384 Shalom Dichter and Khaled Abu-Asba, “Two Peoples, One Civil Society,” in Kaufman, Salem, and Verhoeven, Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 171-190. 385 Various interviews with the author, 2012-2014. 386 Lazarus, Evaluating Peace Education in the Oslo-Intifada Generation, 284.

204 compounded with an overall exhaustion of the struggle, have cause the political demobilization of large sectors of Palestinian society.”387

As a form of top-down generation of new interactional norms, people-to-people programs were only nominally successful. Many participants gained access to exciting new resources, and felt pride in sharing their suffering, hopeful that it might change the hearts of the dominant group. But they did not receive the backing of the majority, not even the nominally independent PNGO. Of the many NGOs covered by the umbrella organization, not one is a “peace organization” – indeed, in 2000 the PNGO prohibited its members from taking part in people-to-people activities, citing Israeli violations of the peace process.388 But involvement in such programs by Palestinians continued throughout the Oslo process – cautiously when peace talks faltered – but consistently through 2000.

This despite its growing unpopularity, social pressure against participants, and the occasional PA call to desist. We can understand this boundless environment through the lens of un-triggered social purpose.

Academic cooperation took place in a more restrictive environment. A decree by the Palestinian Council for Higher Education in the 1980s, made up of rectors from the seven Palestinian Universities, banned direct contact between Palestinian and Israeli

Universities. The ban remained in place throughout the 1990s, despite optimism that academics might take center stage in the peace-building efforts. 389 But academic cooperation did get the go-ahead from the PA, who sponsored a number of joint research projects. In all, from 1995-1999, Palestinians and Israelis cooperated on 133 research

387 Manuel Hassassian, “Civil Society and NGOs Building Peace in Palestine,” in Kaufman, Salem, and Verhoeven, Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 80. 388 “Palestinian NGO Network Conditions Cooperation with Israeli Organizations.” BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. Accessed July 1, 2016. http://www.badil.org/en/publication/press-releases/14-2000/191-press134-00.html. 389 It was the FAFO-hosted talks between Israeli academics Ron Pundak and Yair Hirschfeld, and high-ranking PLO officials Ahmed Qurei and Hasan Asfour, that led to the DOP. See Walid Salem and Edy Kaufman, “Palestinian-Israeli Peacebuilding: A historical perspective,” in Kaufman, Salem, and Verhoeven, Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 30-31.

205 projects. Most were sponsored through the Truman Institute of Hebrew University, the

Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), and the Charles R.

Bronfman Center.390 Research topics were predominantly apolitical, including medicine, agriculture, and environment, with some politically-driven projects around water. In all, most Palestinian academics viewed cooperation as instrumental: it afforded them access to new technologies, better-funded labs, and new methodologies. Many traveled abroad in tripartite research agreements with European or American universities. Scham’s review of academic cooperation from 1995-1999 found that very few Palestinians joined projects for ideological reasons.391

Unlike P2P, academic cooperation was limited. An-Najjah and Birzeit

Universities maintained an official boycott, although some of their academics took part in joint research on an unofficial level. Al-Quds and Bethlehem Universities were more actively engaged. Sari Nusseibeh, President of al-Quds University, maintained a strong ideological stance in favor of academic cooperation throughout the 1990s, and frequently pushed back against his detractors who charged him of normalization. Ultimately, academic cooperation faced the same challenges that did cultural dialogue groups; power asymmetries and restrictions on access and movement made cooperation difficult, and increasingly hard to defend.

Security Cooperation: Village Leagues Revamped

There was no bigger shift in interactional norms than in the security realm. Prior to 1994,

“security coordination” was the realm of informants and spies. Only the short-lived

Village Leagues had dared openly cooperated with Israel on security matters, their

390 Paul Scham, “Arab-Israeli Research Cooperation, 1995-1999: An Analytical Study,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 4, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 2. 391 Scham, “Arab-Israeli Research Cooperation, 1995-1999.

206 notoriety and inevitable demise reflecting popular consensus. With the signing of the

Oslo Accords, of which security was a cornerstone, that norm shifted dramatically.

Article IV, Annex I of the Interim Agreement of 1995 outlined the role that security was to play in the new order: Palestinians would coordinate with Israel on security matters to maintain internal security, combat terrorism and violence, and prevent incitement to violence, tasks that ostensibly served Israel in its quest for security and the Palestinians in their quest for national liberation. The role was infused with contradictions from the outset. Security forces were tasked with maintaining security but had jurisdiction only in

Area A, three percent of the West Bank and Gaza, and none in in Jerusalem. Forces were also geographically constrained, limited in their movement between noncontiguous PA- controlled territories.

Article IV of Annex I of the Interim Agreement outlined the parameters of PA security forces. They would be made up of six operational branches: Civilian Police,

Public Security Forces, Preventative Security, Presidential Security (formerly Force 17),

General Intelligence, and Civil Defense. Those ballooned to 11 branches within less than two years.392 All were firmly under Arafat’s control, and as such, were made up mostly of

Fatah loyalists. Most, especially at the officer rank, hailed from the Palestinian National

Liberation Army (PLNA); shaped by guerilla and conventional warfare, they were untrained in police work. But they were also unfamiliar with life in the West Bank and

Gaza, and having not taken part in the uprising, produced resentment among lower ranking officers from the inside. Tensions between insiders and “returnees” frustrated operational dynamics at various points throughout the 1990s.393

392 As ’ad Ghanem, Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 112. 393 Ibid., 111.

207 Contributing to the shift in norms were contradictions in the PA’s purported aims: to act like a state by providing security and safety for residents under its control; to preserve the peace process by quashing opposition and preventing hostile acts against

Israel; and to work through the Oslo agreements to achieve national liberation.394 They would have to achieve these tasks with two formidable obstacles. First, PA institutions were only nominally autonomous, a design of the self-rule paradigm that shaped Oslo.

Constrained by reliance on international aid and Israel’s control over tax revenues, PA security forces had to walk a fine line. Second, they had no monopoly on the use of force:

Hamas and Islamic Jihad refused to turn in their weapons and Israel continued to control security in 97 percent of the territory. The result was a quandary that would dog the PA throughout the Oslo years: could security forces credibly cooperate with Israel under conditions of ongoing military occupation?

Unsurprisingly, the PA’s fledgling security forces stumbled through some of the contradictions in their mandate. In order to preserve the peace process, they had to take on internal opposition. They did so without hesitation, resulting in human rights abuses and contravention of the democratic principles built into the PA. Arrests of opposition activists started in May 1994, but increased rapidly after Arafat created the State Security

Court by decree in 1995.395 According to Amnesty International, PA forces held more than 800 political prisoners through 1994.396 Arrests mostly followed suicide attacks inside Israel, and focused on members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the DFLP and PFLP.

After the February-March 1996 suicide bombings, security forces rounded up an

394 See “Squaring the Circle: Palestinian Security Reform under Occupation - International Crisis Group.” Middle East Report, September 7, 2010. http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/israel-palestine/98-squaring-the-circle-palestinian- security-reform-under-occupation.aspx.

395 Hillel Cohen, “Society–Military Relations in a State-in-the-Making: Palestinian Security Agencies and the ‘Treason Discourse’ in the Second Intifada,” Armed Forces & Society, July 27, 2011. 396 Amnesty International’s report, quoted in ‘‘Documents and Source Material,’’ Journal of Palestine Studies 27, 1 (1997): 146–8.

208 estimated 1,000 to 1,500 Palestinians, often arbitrarily. Hundreds were held in administrative detention for months, most of whom were never charged with a criminal offense.397 The practice continued throughout the 1990s. In August 1998, PA forces held about 200 political prisoners in the West Bank and 180 in Gaza.398

A statement by a member of the General Intelligence Services to a detainee in

Ramallah in 1996 highlights the degree to which such round-ups were shaped by PA-

Israel relations: “You are here because you’re divided into three types: type one are people that Israel wants arrested; type two are people that the Authority wants arrested; type three are those arrested to placate Israel, and most of you belong to that type.”399

The arrest campaigns were viewed with apprehension by Palestinians. In March

1996, 89 percent supported ending violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and 74 percent were concerned that PA measures against opposition would lead to internal violence.400 Ambivalence about the role of resistance continued, however, highlighting the contradictions that dogged PA security forces: In February 1995 46 percent supported armed attacks against Israel, and only 33.5 percent opposed it, numbers that remained more or less constant throughout the 1990s despite continuous majority support for the peace process.401

What Red Lines?

With the PA taking over the duties of many clandestine collaborators, red lines of cooperation naturally shifted. This was most evident in the treatment and perception of collaborators. Justice Minister Freih Abu Meddein made a largely symbolic call to bring

397 “The Israeli-Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip” (Human Rights Watch, 1996), https://www.hrw.org/reports/1997/WR97/ME- 06.htm#P317_128438. 398 Ghanem, Palestinian Politics after Arafat, 125. 399 Quoted in Ghanem, Palestinian Politics after Arafat, 126. 400 CPRS Public Opinion Poll 22 March 1996. 401 CPRS Public Opinion Poll 15 February 1995.

209 collaborators before the courts in 1995. His threat was symbolic because Israel had insisted in negotiations that there be no persecution or prosecution of those with previous

“contacts” with Israel.402 The amnesty clause that was signed as part of the Oslo Accords protected the thousands of collaborators who had been active during the first intifada – many who resettled to Israel – but it also forced the PA to accept transitional justice without a real transition. Moreover, it seems clear that Palestinian negotiators had the clause thrust upon them, but that it did not reflect the wishes of the people or even of PA officials.403

The amnesty clause, in combination with the fact that the PA had control over only 3 percent of the land, meant that the Preventive Security Services (PSS)’s ability to arrest and bring collaborators to court was highly circumscribed. As a result, very few informers or alleged collaborators were killed after the signing of the Oslo Accords. In all, less than 100 were killed on suspicion of collaboration, and more were arrested, but there was no wave of vigilante justice after the withdrawal of Israeli troops. The PSS, comprised mostly of Fatah Hawks and other strike squads of the intifada, thus engaged in a minimalist campaign against collaborators at the outset of the Oslo years. They arrested small numbers of known collaborators, and urged others to pledge allegiance to the PA and the peace process. Many informants, unemployed after the end of the intifada, came to work for the PSS, providing the PA with invaluable information, skills, and personnel.404 Some were integrated back into society. The “friendly” attitude toward

Israel’s army of collaborators is corroborated by a former Deputy Chief of Security

Forces in the West Bank who explained that “returnees” like himself did not consider the

402 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 60. 403 Ron Dudai and Hillel Cohen, “Triangle of Betrayal: Collaborators and Transitional Justice in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Journal of Human Rights 6, no. 1 (February 1, 2007): 48. 404 Ribgy, Legacy of the Past, 60.

210 vast majority of informants and spies as traitors.405 Instead, they were weak of spirit, coerced into cooperation by the dominant power. Real traitors, he argues, numbered in the dozens, and included only land dealers and those few collaborators who were responsible for information that led to Israeli assassination of Palestinians.

The integration of former collaborators into the PSS and the continued recruitment of collaborators by Israel, “strengthened the collaborationist image of the

Palestinian security services.” 406 In Hillel Cohen’s words, “Palestinian intelligence officers were trapped in a dilemma of an undercover collaborator whose activities have been exposed: his handler pressures him to find ways to carry on with his mission, while his community demands him to prove his loyalty.”407 Hamas took advantage of the PA’s entrapment, employing the treason discourse to their advantage. In response to successive crackdowns against their members in the 1990s, Hamas accused the PA of collaboration with Israel and the United States, framing Oslo as a Zionist-PA conspiracy to destroy the

Islamist movement.408 PA and Hamas disagreement on the meaning of “collaboration” highlights the ways in which non-cohesive leadership blur the lines of even the most egregious forms of cooperation.

Land dealing remained the only reviled and consistently punishable offense despite the drastic blurring of red lines around collaboration. In 1997, as the peace process stalled and Netanyahu announced further settlement expansion, Palestinian security forces, behaving more like the strike squads of the first intifada, killed three alleged land dealers. They left their bloodied corpses on a West Bank highway.409 The

405 Former Deputy Chief of Security Forces in West Bank, interview with author, al-Bireh, March 2013. 406 Cohen, “Society–Military Relations in a State-in-the-Making,” 11. 407 Ibid., 11. 408 Tamimi, Hamas: A History from Within, 195. 409 Rigby, Legacy of the Past, 63.

211 killings followed the announcement by Justice Minister Freih Abu Medein that the PA would seek the death penalty for those selling land to Jews, evoking a Jordanian law already in place. Giving the green light to vigilante justice, he stated after the May 9 murder of an alleged land dealer: “As I have said before, expect the unexpected for these matters because nobody from this moment will accept any traitor who sells his land to

Israelis.”410 Attacks by the PA security forces against land dealers was a natural victory for the leadership, who struggled with nationalist credentials as the peace process bumbled along.

The shift toward prohibitive norms during the first intifada was drastic, but the pendulum swing toward permissive interactional norms in 1993 was even more so. A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance predicts high degrees of compliance with permissive norms regardless the cohesion of leadership or whether social purpose is triggered. This is because permissive norms under alien rule align with self-interest. The gains from cultural dialogue, academic cooperation, commercial ties with Israel and labor flows into Israel and the settlements is substantial. And because the national leadership allowed for all such previously prohibited activities to happen unfettered, Palestinians had little reason to protest them.

Nevertheless, some curious developments did take place – despite national leaders promoting academic cooperation, a number of Palestinian universities objected to the norm. Similarly, despite official sanction for people-to-people dialogue groups and other forms of cultural cooperation, Palestinians began to reject the norm, especially as the peace process produced few tangible results. The findings from the Oslo years are

410 Quoted in “Israel and Israel Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Human Rights Watch World Report. Human Rights Watch, 1998. https://www.hrw.org/legacy/worldreport/Mideast-07.htm#P827_141152.

212 consistent with the expectations of a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance: leadership lacked horizontal and vertical cohesion, had only moderate levels of legitimacy, and failed to trigger social purpose, despite some degree of agreement on shared goals. This is predominantly because the leadership around Arafat failed to integrate shared goals with the population. Instead, he actively stripped civil society of its autonomy and used the clout of the Oslo Accords to crush his opponents, rather than renegotiate the terms of acceptable cooperation. By acting like a dictator, Arafat isolated the population and took them out of the negotiations for interactional norms. Norms therefore remained ambiguous. Still, my theory does not adequately explain why

Palestinians rejected permissive norms that clearly benefited them personally. The Oslo years offer an important reflection on the theory: namely, even permissive norms that benefit the individual can be rejected in the absence of social purpose, a finding that gives greater weight to the mediating power of my causal mechanism. Disagreement around permissive norms during this time frame can best be understood in the context of ongoing power asymmetry – if cooperation led to a gradual erosion of the unequal power between

Israelis and Palestinians, as Oslo seemed to promise, then “normal relations” could be embraced. When it became clear that unequal relations would go unchallenged, the logical premise behind normalization fell apart. That would continue through the 2000s.

The importance of social purpose in mediating interactional boundaries is even more pronounced when we consider an alternative hypothesis, namely institutional robustness. The Oslo years are a perfect lab to test the power of institutions, which can make use of symbols, laws, curricula, etc. Many such institutions existed and flourished during these years. The Paris Protocol demanded economic cooperation, the “Rome

213 Declaration” opened up academic cooperation, Article VIII of Oslo II created space for people-to-people dialogue groups, while Article IV, Annex I set the parameters of PA security coordination with Israel. Despite all of these, however, and despite the fact that each of these institutions created permissive norms that benefitted the individual, ambiguity around them was pervasive. The Oslo years offer a fairly robust repudiation of the institutional hypothesis. Instead, social purpose proves to be the prime mover – without it, even permissive norms with institutions backing them up fail to take hold.

214 Chapter V: The Second Intifada and the End of Normal

When PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ehud Barak met with President

Clinton to hammer out the details of a final resolution in July 2000, they did so knowing that the peace process was increasingly fragile. Both came home empty-handed, and detractors of the peace process immediately signaled their discontent. For Palestinians, it was as though the veil had been suddenly torn off. They saw the disappointments of the

Palestinian national movement in the 1990s, a movement that failed to appreciate the costs of negotiating on unequal terms. That power asymmetry had made life much harder for Palestinians, and it engendered a growing mistrust of cooperation that did not explicitly aim at evening out the asymmetry. Most Palestinians felt that Israel had been using the peace process as a shield for ongoing colonial expansion in the West Bank and

Gaza, and Judaization of Arab East Jerusalem. When construction of the wall commenced in 2003, it was confirmation that Israel planned on moving forward with its plan to annex large swaths of territory in anticipation of a final status agreement that would be dictated by Israel’s negotiating team. Tensions after Camp David were high, but disappointment was even more so.

In a brazen provocation, opposition leader Ariel Sharon, accompanied by a Likud delegation and hundreds of Israeli riot police, visited the Temple Mount, a symbolic move that would prove the necessary spark for the Palestinian tinder box. Sharon was long considered a reviled figure in Palestinian national discourse for what the Kahan

Commission deemed “personal responsibility” for not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon.411

His visit signaled to Palestinians that Israel would preserve sovereignty over Jerusalem.

411 Ze ’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War (S.l.: Touchstone, 1985), 284.

215 What erupted was a full-scale militarized uprising and a harsh Israeli response that would last five years.

The second intifada offers a unique test for the theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance. On the one hand, periods of heightened national contention tend to produce high degrees of social purpose. Resistance raises national pride and potentially social purpose, while repressive measures by the “other” whip up national solidarity. Like the first intifada, the second uprising presented an opportunity structure that common sense would predict as fuel for social purpose and a container for clear interactional boundaries with high compliance. Unlike the first intifada, however, leaders achieved no such clarity, and Palestinians set their own guidelines, often placing personal interest above national interest. Table 5.1 summarizes the findings.

216 Table 5.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 2000-2005

Leadership Dynamic Social Purpose Interactional Norms

LOW COHESION LOW JUMBLED

Vertical Horizontally LOW Direction Unclear Coordination LOW Shared Goals

Horizontal Vertically LOW LOW Coherence None Coordination shared goals

Popular LOW Legitimacy Social Purpose Very NO Compliance Triggered Little Articulation of LOW end-goals

The Tinder Box

While Sharon’s visit was the catalyst for the uprising, Palestinian frustrations had been building for years. None was more acute than the rapid growth of settlements. In the six years since Arafat and Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn, settlement construction increased by 52 percent, while the settler population grew by 85,000 people.412 With an increase of 27,000 settlers in occupied East Jerusalem, the total number of settlers in the Palestinian territories grew to 371,904 by 2000.413 Throughout the Oslo years, in order to protect settlers and preserve their presence in the occupied territories and to control the Palestinian population, Israel built a comprehensive

412 Graham Usher and Chris Searle, “Commentary: The Intifada This Time,” Race & Class 42, no. 4 (April 1, 2001): 74. 413 “Comprehensive Settlement Population 1972-2011,” Foundation for Middle East Peace, accessed January 28, 2016, http://fmep.org/resource/comprehensive-settlement-population-1972-2010/.

217 demographic and physical separation network that included a bureaucratic pass system, hundreds of checkpoints, and separate road networks, each with dire consequences for

Palestinian economy and society. With the collapse of peace talks at Camp David,

Palestinians came to understand that the “peace process” was merely “occupation” under another name.

The uprising that followed was exceptionally violent. According to the Palestinian

Red Crescent Society, by the end of November 2000, just two months into the uprising,

250 Palestinians had been killed by soldiers or settlers with 9,640 wounded. Another 33

Israelis were killed, and 230 wounded. The toll amounted to 80% of the total number of fatalities in the six years of the first intifada.414 Throughout 2000, Israeli shelling left

3,000 homes damaged and 4,000 people homeless. Artillery fire hit approximately 23 schools in the West Bank and Gaza. From September 2000 to March 2001, 88 Palestinian children were killed and another 4,000 injured.415 Israel also ramped up its closure policy in response to violent attacks by Palestinians. In the first four months, the government imposed ninety-three days of total closure and routinely restricted movement within the

West Bank and Gaza Strip.416 Through to 2006, Palestinian endured 989 comprehensive closure days, amounting to nearly 200 days of severely restricted movement per year.417

The effect on the economy was devastating. In the first two years alone, losses were estimated at $4.8 billion dollars, more than 70 percent of expected GDP in 2002.418 The principle effect of Israeli measures during the second intifada was a drastic rise in

414 Graham Usher and Chris Searle, “Commentary: The Intifada This Time,” Race & Class 42, no. 4 (April 1, 2001): 75. 415 Sara Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy: The Continued Denial of Possibility,” Journal of Palestine Studies 30, no. 4 (2001): 14. 416 Ibid., 15. 417 “Figures on Comprehensive Closure Days,” B’Tselem, May 25, 2015, http://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/siege_figures. 418 Salem Ajluni, “The Palestinian Economy and the Second Intifada,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 3 (2003): 69.

218 unemployment, from 11 percent in early 2000 to more than 41 percent in late 2002.419

Labor flows also took a big hit; after recovering from low numbers in the first three years of the Oslo period, a total of 135,000 Palestinian laborers worked in Israel or the settlements. Those numbers shrank considerably after the outbreak of the second intifada, with less than 40,000 Palestinian laborers working for Israelis in June 2001.420

In all, the violence of the second intifada gave Israel carte blanche to exploit a separation policy in place since 1967, and championed by Prime Minister Ehud Barak in

1999 in a series of proposals aimed at the physical and demographic separation of

Palestinians from Israelis and Palestinians from Palestinians. The intifada allowed Israel the opportunity to build more checkpoints, walls, road blocks, and fences, deep within

Palestinian territory, and in some cases, like in Bethlehem and Hebron, straight through central parts of the city. Sara Roy explains:

With the new intifada, Palestinian national identity, already under assault, is being violated further by the reality of separation and by the geographic boundaries used to impose it. The cantonization of people and their land, a fundamental objective of Oslo, has severed the collective into physically and demographically isolated and dysfunctional parts.421

In the midst of an uprising that would claim 3,331 Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers, 996 Israelis killed by Palestinians, and 167 Palestinians killed by Palestinians,

Palestinian leaders scrambled to set an agenda.422 But they were hampered by long- simmering rivalries and fundamental disagreements on tactics, strategies, and goals. This was true not only of official leadership, but also on the ground, where a depoliticized

419 Ibid., 69. 420 Leila Farsakh, “Palestinian Labor Flows to the Israeli Economy: A Finished Story?,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 1 (2002): 15. 421 Roy, 14. 422 “Fatalities before Operation ‘Cast Lead,’” B’Tselem, accessed February 11, 2016, http://www.btselem.org/statistics/fatalities/before-cast-lead/by-date-of-event.

219 civil society found themselves shunted aside in the predominantly armed intifada. While some scholars predict that uprisings unite leaders and people on common goals, this was not the case in the second intifada.423 Instead, despite the unifying call of an uprising against one’s oppressor, Palestinians found themselves lost amid a dizzying array of leadership options, with no unifying national strategy. An uprising should produce strong feelings of national unity and shared vision, but the critical fissures in Palestinian leadership, and divergent messages from both grassroots and official leadership, meant social purpose was low. The result was a chaotic period during which noncooperation norms were poorly articulated, hotly contested, and rarely complied with.

Fragmentation amidst Revolution: Leadership during the second intifada

When the dust settled on the initial outburst at the al-Aqsa mosque, the leadership landscape was chaotic. The defining element of the second intifada was a tension between the PA, bound by various articles of the Oslo Accords, and those who sought alternative routes to independence, including various forms of violence and non-violence.

This tension, perhaps more than anything else, distinguishes the second intifada from the first intifada: in the latter, indigenous activists took the lead, but coordinated with the official leadership in the PLO, who maintained a degree of autonomy. In the former, indigenous activists found themselves at odds with the official national leadership, whose hands were tied by its previous commitments. The result was a scattered leadership landscape devoid of national strategy, and a demobilized popular base. This tension shaped the intifada, and contributed to the fractious nature of the uprising and its correspondingly low levels of social purpose. One Palestinian analyst and youth

423 Lewis A Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict. (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1956).

220 organizer in the West Bank, says the lack of guidance was a major source of popular demobilization during the first intifada, leaving the uprising in the hands of warring factions rather than the people.424 A first intifada activist who helped found ISM, similarly notes that while the majority of Palestinians supported the intifada, those without a gun didn’t know their role.425 As Pearlman states: “The uprising did not direct coherent collective action. Rather, it opened space for the fragments constituting the national movement to respond to fluctuating circumstances in their own way.”426

Fatah vs Fatah

Second intifada leadership was made up mostly of three groups: the PA and Fatah old guard, the younger Shabiba/Tanzim, and armed factions – notably Fatah’s al-Aqsa

Martyr’s Brigade (AMB) and Hamas’ Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades (EQB). None of the groups could agree on a mutually compatible strategy.427 The PA and Fatah old guard tip- toed into the second intifada, bound by its commitments to Oslo, its reliance on international aid, and deep internal disagreement on ways forward. Tanzim, on the other hand, stepped in full force, and from the very beginning. The organization had its beginnings in the Fatah youth who helped lead the indigenous popular resistance during the first intifada. With Oslo, Arafat took steps to coopt tanzim leaders, whom the new president viewed as a threat to his control. His efforts were successful – tanzim offered

Arafat legitimacy from the inside, and gave the PA and PLO the air of a national movement, despite its now largely administrative functions. But tanzim, headed by

Marwan Barghouti after his return from exile in 1994, asserted itself in ways that

424 Palestinian activist, interview with author, Ramallah, October 2, 2012. 425 Palestinian activist, interview with author, Birzeit, October 4, 2012. 426 Wendy Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 153. 427 Graham Usher, “Facing Defeat: The Intifada Two Years On,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 2 (2003): 21–40.

221 concerned Arafat. They took part in protests against corruption in the PA, and were vocally critical of the Oslo Accords by 1998. With the failure of Camp David, they made three demands that would shape their involvement in the second intifada: an end to negotiations and the resumption of activism, both violent (against military outposts and settlements) and non-violent; to seek legitimacy from the international community for a resolution based on UNSC 242 in order to disentangle the national movement from

Israeli and American constraints; and finally, an end to security coordination. 428

Individual members of the PA could get behind the demands, but the government as a whole could not.

Just as he did upon his return from exile, Arafat went to containing tanzim with the outbreak of the intifada, using them to keep the PA relevant among the people while carefully monitoring their activities. A first step in that process was to allow them to set up the National and Islamic Forces Higher Committee for the follow-up of the intifada

(NIFHC), a dual strategy of containing tanzim while channeling the Islamist forces. He also gave tacit permission for the formation of small militant cells in the West Bank and

Gaza, cells that became the foundation for Fatah’s militant wing – the al-Aqsa Martyr’s

Brigade in the West Bank – and the cross-factional Popular Resistance Committees

(PRC) in the southern Gaza Strip. A number of fighters in the AMB and about half from the PRC came from the PA’s Preventative Security Forces and Arafat’s own elite Force

17. But the PA’s strategy in the second intifada, funneled through Arafat’s decisions, was never well articulated, and this reflected in his diffuse control of AMB and PRC activists.

428 Ibid., 24.

222 The clearest example of this came in April 2001 when Arafat asked PA forces in the PRC to return to their respective security agencies; they refused.429

Islamists vs Nationalists

Fatah’s internal divisions were marked by difference in strategy and tactics, but the battle between the Islamists – notably Hamas and Islamic Jihad – and the nationalists – the PA and PLO factions – was much deeper. Some rapprochement between the camps seemed possible after Camp David, since Arafat had refused to concede on two of Hamas’s prized objectives, the status of Jerusalem and the right of return. Indeed, at the outset of the uprising, it seemed like factional unity was possible: on October 8, 2000, all factions within the PLO met to discuss the situation in the West Bank and Gaza. For the first time, an official Hamas representative was invited and attended. Ismael Abu Shanab, a Hamas

Political Bureau member in Gaza told the press after the meeting that he had called for reconciliation of internal relations.430

Whatever unity was achieved in that meeting was short-lived and superficial. In

Arafat’s balancing act – to shore up popular support while satisfying the Israeli and

American demand that the PA steer clear from terrorism – the President would consistently side with the latter. He arrested a number of Hamas militants throughout

2001. But the PA only took serious action in December 2001 after Hamas carried out two attacks that killed 25 and wounded over 200. Arafat had Hamas members arrested. He even attempted to put Hamas’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest. The ill-planned move led to the first open gun battles between Hamas and PA forces in the streets of Gaza, with Hamas forces winning a decisive victory.431 A similar

429 Ibid., 27-28. 430 Azzam Tamimi, Hamas: A History from Within (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2011), 199. 431 Ibid., 200-201.

223 event took place when the PA tried to detain Abdal Aziz al-Rantisi. Islamist-Nationalist infighting followed a clear pattern in the second intifada – Israel would assassinate a

Hamas leader, Hamas would retaliate with deadly attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, the PA would crack down on Hamas, and deadly infighting maintained.432

Nevertheless, some degree of solidarity permeated the ranks of nationalist and

Islamist leadership. This was especially the case when Arafat, under siege in his compound since September 2002 and under pressure from the United States, appointed

Mahmoud Abbas as Prime Minister in March 2003. Consistently opposed to what he termed “the militarized uprising”, Abbas became the patsy that Arafat needed to deflect attention away from his own mismanagement of the intifada. His appointment (and falling out with Arafat) led to a brief warming of relations between Arafat and Hamas.

Khaled Mesh’al called Arafat repeatedly in his besieged compound in Ramallah to express his support and solidarity. After a number of failed crackdowns on Hamas, Arafat came to realize that he could not contain the organization without suffering major setbacks in domestic support.433 Arafat stepped back from governing the intifada in the final years, allowing the factions to vent their frustrations on Israel. In preparation for a proposed disengagement from Gaza, Sharon took the bold steps of assassinating both

Yassin and Rantisi in the spring of 2004.

Flirting with Unity – the NIFHC

In November 2000, just two months after the start of the uprising, Fatah called for the creation of the NIFHC, a committee consisting of every faction of the PLO in addition to the Islamic bloc, consisting of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas’s political party, Hizb

432 Ibid., 202. 433 Ibid., 205.

224 al-Khalas.434 A powerful body for the sheer diversity of its constituent members, the

NIFHC never approximated the UNLU of the first intifada. To begin with, it called itself a “follow-up committee”, and not a “unified leadership”, a semantic difference that reflected real differences. Its leaflets harkened back to the first intifada, invoking much of the sloganeering and tactical guidance of the UNLU, but lacking the popular credibility to inspire mobilization. As Rabbani and Hammami state, “few of the committees fifteen constituent groups have on-the-ground organizational ability; […] most have long since lost their mass support , being perceived as having fossilized leaderships that have been absorbed in various ways into the PA system of rule.435 By November 10th the committee had issued a number of leaflets, with directives calling on Palestinian to focus their attacks on settlers and occupation forces.436 The first leaflet sets out a number of distinctions from UNLU leaflets. It describes the committee’s role as a guide rather than a leader. The PA is mentioned twice, but only as a governing body to economically support victims of the uprising. There is no sense of unity across factions, nor of a unity between the grassroots and the top leadership, a critical component of the relative success of the UNLU during the first intifada. Similarities did exist with respect to tactical calls, including the formation of defense committees, the promotion of national commodities alongside a boycott of Israeli ones, a call to include women in the uprising, and general calls for unity,437 but aside from large turn-out on “days of rage”, those did not generate consensus.

434 Rema Hammami and Salim Tamari, “The Second Uprising: End or New Beginning?,” Journal of Palestine Studies 30, no. 2 (January 1, 2001): 19. 435 Ibid, 19-20. 436 “16 August - 15 November 2000,” Journal of Palestine Studies 30, no. 2 (2001): 191–217. 437 Hammami and Tamari, 19.

225 The NIFHC also lacked the mystique – a major source of pride and reverence – of the UNLU;438 leaflets were publically distributed and directives were issued in the PA’s newspaper, al-Hayat al-Jadida. Because directives filtered through the PA, they were mostly for peaceful processions, with some calls for escalation to break Israeli sieges of towns and villages. Unlike the UNLU, the NIFHC – a committee that existed only because of the blessing and initiative of Arafat and other Fatah members loyal to him – lacked the autonomy, authority, and credibility of a genuine popular movement. Finally, the committee was not granted any authority to dictate strategy or national policy – that was the exclusive purview of the PA. The closest semblance of strategy found in NIFHC leaflets was in their emphasis on attacks against settlements, ostensibly to force a withdrawal. But the committee was more of a forum for dialogue than a source of strategic vision.439

A final limitation of the NIFHC was its inability to strip Hamas of its autonomy and bring it in line with the PA’s strategic vision. Hamas operatives took part in meetings and allowed their members to attend demonstrations, but they remained suspicious of the organization – and of the uprising – from the start; most considered it a PA ploy to increase its bargaining power in negotiations that Hamas considered illegitimate to begin with.440 Their involvement was hampered by PA back-peddling on a rapprochement, releasing Hamas members from PA prisons only to arrest them days later under Israeli pressure.441 In August 2002, Hamas and Fatah tried to overcome these differences and agree on a broad strategy through the NIFHC. But Fatah’s end-goal – a state as

438 Tanzim activist, interview with author, Ramallah, July 3, 2013. 439 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 154. 440 Tamimi, Hamas, 199-202. 441 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 155.

226 envisioned by the peace process – was Hamas’s starting point, on the longer road to the liberation of all of Palestine.442

Disunity from above, disunity from below

While the second intifada did see the rise of new forms of grassroots mobilization, there was little-to-no coordination between the PA, NIFHC, and popular committees leading the grassroots. Indeed, many grassroots activists felt silenced by the second intifada,443 for three broad reasons: fragmentation and outbidding at the top, the predominance of arms in the uprising, and the localized nature of grassroots activism. The latter point meant that popular mobilization remained hemmed in by specific issue areas (ie: the wall, checkpoints, house demolitions) and geographic districts. The Palestinian Grassroots

Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (also known as Stop the Wall) coordinated protests against the wall after 2003, for example, but they were constrained by massive arrest campaigns, Israeli-imposed closure days, and the hundreds of checkpoints throughout the

West Bank. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) gained media attention during the second intifada for their direct action campaigns and international orientation, but they struggled to pull the kinds of numbers that the first intifada did.444 Likewise, the

Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), an umbrella organization, was given little room for maneuverability. Most critically, the PSCC, ISM, and Stop the Wall, did not coordinate with the official leadership in the PA or the main factional actors in the

NIFHC. On the contrary, grassroots leaders mistrusted the PA leadership, and felt that PA ministers took part in village demonstrations as publicity stunts and not in true solidarity

442 Usher, “Facing Defeat: The Intifada Two Years On,” 36. 443 Julie Norman, The Second Palestinian Intifada: Civil Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2010), 75. 444 Palestinian activist, interview with author, Beit Sahour, September 17, 2012.

227 with the struggle.445 Also telling is that popular committees, many protesting from Area

C, had more interactions with the Israeli government and civil administration than with the PA, who had no authority in their villages. Julie Norman explains that in addition to coordinating direct action campaigns,

popular committees also typically handle the village’s communication with Israeli authorities and sometimes settlers, maintain records and maps of land closures and seizures, act as spokespersons with the media, offer support to other villages, and coordinate actions, conferences, and events with other committees.

While grassroots campaigns would grow into an important hub for activism and norm- generation over the course of the following ten years, they remained outside official institutions and incapable of presenting a unifying national strategy during the second intifada.446 As such, they suffered from the same long-term strategic ambiguity that afflicted all actors in the second intifada. In the end, only five percent of the Palestinian population participated in the intifada.447 There were few women on the front lines, few

Israeli partners, and no social safety net in the form of boycott alternatives or peace gardens.

The Cairo Agreement

With Arafat’s death in November 2004, Abbas’s immediate succession as PLO

Chairman, and the appointment of Faruq al-Qaddumi as Chairman of the Fatah Central

Committee, the national movement was given the opportunity to reshape itself. On

January 9 2005 Abbas was elected President with 62 percent of the vote and by February had secured an unofficial mutual ceasefire between the factions and Israel. Decimated by

445 Grassroots leader, interview with author, Ramallah, November 28, 2012. 446 Nathan J. Brown and Daniel Nerenberg, “Palestine in Flux: From Search for State to Search for Tactics - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 19, 2016), http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/01/19/palestine-in-flux-from-search-for-state-to-search-for-tactics/ist5. 447 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 161.

228 Israel’s strong hand during the uprising, and concerned with deepening fissures among factions, the leadership made one last-ditch effort at unity. The March 2005 Cairo

Agreement between Hamas and the PA was the greatest show of unity between the two parties since Hamas’s rise in 1988. They agreed to: a formula for decision-making between the PA and Hamas after parliamentary elections in 2006; establish a committee to reactivate the dormant institutions of the PLO, allowing Hamas to participate in them; and a commitment by the Islamists to take part in the elections. Among the 18 points, six spoke directly to the need for national unity, emphasizing the PLO’s role as sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people while allowing Hamas a place at the

PLO table.448 The Cairo Agreement represents a critical juncture in the Palestinian national movement – it signaled the end of the uprising (although attacks against Israel continued throughout 2006), and presented a window of opportunity for leaders to agree on a way forward.

No strategy, no purpose

Coser’s Functions of Social Conflict argues that external conflict tends to unite a group, but that that group’s ability to generate consensus and centralize control depends on the parties involved and the previous degree of consensus.449 The second intifada follows that insight – it certainly inspired national fervor, and it resulted in the first genuine dialog between the major Palestinian factions in November 2000, but ideological differences and a battle over legitimacy meant that unity was brief and superficial, devoid of social purpose. Former Israeli MK Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian from the Galilee, lamenting the lack of strategy in the second intifada, made a general plea for a unified vision in 2003:

448 “Text of Agreement Reached by Palestinian Factions,” The New York Times, June 28, 2006, sec. International / Middle East, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/world/middleeast/28mideast-text.html. 449 Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict.

229 “The population does not necessarily need to know every detail of strategy, but they need to know the broad steps being taken and where they lead, so as to increase their capacity for sumud (steadfastness). If they are aware of what is being done, they know that they are in the hands of a responsible leadership and can grasp, despite certain ebbs and flows, where they are and where they are going.”450 As Chapter 3 demonstrates, that strategy was articulated and broadly agreed-upon, despite opposition from the Islamist camp, during the first intifada. The result was a strong sense of social purpose that permeated civil society. Fractured leadership during the second intifada had the opposite effect, in large part because the uncoordinated and contending leadership hubs presented very different national goals.

Arafat’s vision for the intifada no doubt mattered most – he was, in late 2000, still the undisputed symbolic and physical manifestation of the Palestinian national movement. But the intifada took him by surprise, and he spent much of the uprising trying to negotiate contending demands from Israel, the United States, the Fatah old guard, tanzim, Hamas, and to a much lesser extent, the grassroots. His position was a careful strategic ambiguity, to use the uprising as a means of resurrecting Oslo.451 But he was terribly inconsistent in messaging – one day freeing Hamas prisoners to pursue unity, the next arresting them to satisfy Israel and international donors, on whom his patronage network relied. One day he would condone the violent actions of the AMB to shore up his nationalist credentials, the next he would condemn them. That Arafat failed to present a clear national strategy for the uprising reflects an opportunistic personal agenda. At the time of the uprising, the PA was facing a series of corruption charges –

450 Azmi Bishara, “The Quest for Strategy,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 2 (2003): 46. 451 Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy: The Continued Denial of Possibility,” 15.

230 particularly those brought to light in 1997 and 1999 – cases that had drawn public scrutiny and turned many in tanzim against him. After the outbreak, those cases all but disappeared. They surfaced briefly again in 2002, and Arafat addressed them by making promises for reform and finally ratifying the Basic Law in May 2002, but the intifada undoubtedly deflected attention away from his personal involvement.452 Arafat was also aware that he had become hog-tied by Oslo, committed to a process that had diminished the quality of life of his constituents and distanced them from the promise of independence. Allowing the intifada to proceed gave Arafat distance from a population that was increasingly dissatisfied with his leadership style and his failures on the diplomatic front: In April 2000, for the first time since 1994, his popularity had dropped to 39 percent.453 In short, Arafat was preoccupied by personal survival, and remained throughout the intifada incapable of settling on a national strategy.

Others in the Fatah old guard took a clearer stance against the violence, as part of a long-term tactical vision. Abu Mazen, the expected successor of Arafat, wrote in Al-

Hayat al-Jadida in November 2002:

We are not calling for an end to the intifada, but for setting it back on the right path and ridding it of its negative aspects, especially its militarization. We can march or demonstrate. As for the phrase “a cascade of blood,” I do not like it. Whose blood will be cascading? Our children’s blood, the blood of your children. I said this in a seminar in Ramallah attended by Fatah cadres and leaders. They were angry, told me that these were red lines, and criticized me. . . . But every Jewish person in Israel now is with Sharon because they all believe that he protects them. I want to deprive him from this pretext, based on the principle that we want our rights and do not want war. Once this is clear, the number of Israelis who will side with us will

452 As’ad Ghanem and Aziz Khayed, “In the Shadow of the al‐Aqsa Intifada: The Palestinians and Political Reform,” Civil Wars 6, no. 3 (September 1, 2003): 31–50. 453 “CPRS Public Opinion Poll 46” (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, April 1, 2000), http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/615.

231 increase.454

Abbas’ strategic outlook permeated the ranks of the moderate PA leadership, who believed in leveraging Israeli support for an independent Palestine by waging a popular non-violent uprising. Abbas’ vision was met with very little popular support, in large part because he failed to address the underlying grievances or tap into popular frustrations with the diplomatic process.

If one body had the credibility to guide the Palestinians along a strategic path, it would have been the NIFHC. But they were riddled with insurmountable internal schisms. NIFHC leaflets stated that the intifada’s goal was to liberate Palestine by forcing an Israeli withdrawal of settlers from the West Bank and Gaza. This contrasted with the official PA strategy – to resume Oslo, and negotiate a withdrawal.455 Hamas members in the committee tacitly accepted the short-term position, but they did so only as a first step in liberating all of historic Palestine. These critical differences undermined the credibility and functionality of the committee, and meant they could not generate the kind of social purpose that the UNLU did in the first uprising.

Finally, the second intifada saw no national guidance coming from the grassroots.

Civil society was a ghost of its former self during the uprising, stripped of the autonomy it enjoyed during the late 1980s. Activism was localized and issue-specific, concentrating on protests against the wall, house demolitions, checkpoints etc. More critically, they were divorced from the national leadership, so lacked a unifying mouthpiece to promote a strategy.

454 “Mahmud Abbas’s Call for a Halt to the Militarization of the Intifada,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 2 (2003): 74–78. 455 Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy: The Continued Denial of Possibility,” 19.

232 The lack of a clear, unifying message was reflected in the average results of six polls conducted between June 2001 and October 2003, in which 46 percent believed the goal of the intifada was an end to the occupation, 43 percent believed it was the liberation of all of Palestine, and six percent believed it was a bargaining chip in negotiations, a position respondents associated with the PA.456 Such low social purpose would have dire effects on the articulation of clear interactional norms, and the ability of the leadership to encourage compliance.

Interactional Norms

Despite the advent of a national uprising, the second intifada failed to usher in a new phase of boundary maintenance. On the contrary, interactional norms were more blurry during the uprising than they had been in the late 1990s. The PA continued its questionable security relationship with Israel to weed out rivals all while embracing a resistance frame. Economic cooperation continued unfettered, with few prohibitive directives emanating from leaders, though Israel made business as usual nearly impossible. And collaborators were able to work more freely, in large part because the

PA’s own cooperation had blurred the lines of loyalty and betrayal. One norm did continue to take shape despite the formidable obstacles; normalization activities became more clearly articulated and “co-resistance” replaced “co-existence” as a permissive norm. Table 5.2 shows the interactional norms during the second intifada.

456 Pearlman, Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement, 156.

233

Table 5.2 Interactional norms 2000-2005

Level of Outcome Action Norm proscription Red Lines of Physically shrinks Simsar al-ard: the land broker -High Coherence Cooperation population/land -High compliance -Prohibitive -Death penalty Weakens resistance The “Collaborator”: -Moderate coherence • Al-‘ameel al-musallah: -Moderate compliance the armed collaborator -Blurring of red line • Al-Jasous: the spy / informant • Al-‘Asfor: the prison collaborator Gray Zones of Fortifies the PA Security Cooperation -Low coherence Cooperation occupation, -Low Compliance - civic/political weakens civil -Permissive and resistance Prohibitive Gray Zones of Entrenches People-to-people dialogue -Moderate coherence Cooperation power -Less cooperation, - asymmetry, exogenous explanation normalization weakens civil -Prohibitive resistance Co-resistance - High coherence - Moderate compliance -Some ambiguity Gray Zones of Relative economic Commerce -Low Coherence Cooperation gains for occupier -Unclear - economic -Less cooperation, exogenous explanation Migrant Labor -Low Coherence -Unclear -Less cooperation, exogenous explanation Consumer boycott of -Moderate coherence settlement products -Low compliance

Consumer and labor boycott

In the arc of Palestinian resistance, the second intifada, surprisingly perhaps, proved an unwelcome environment for popular tactics like a consumer and labor boycott. In large

234 part, this was a result of the structural conditions in place since the Oslo Accords were signed, and specifically, since the Paris Protocol was put into effect. Israel and the PA’s economic agreements made economic resistance all but impossible at the level of PA leadership, and it stripped civil society of the mechanisms needed to wage an effective grassroots campaign. Not only that, but the norm in favor of economic cooperation had become entrenched since 1993, promoted from the highest levels of leadership, making the transition to a negative norm all the more challenging. While the NIFHC and popular committees did promote new economic boycott norms, their successes were limited and their duration short.

Labor strikes were particularly few. By mid-2000, more than 135,000 laborers worked inside Israel and the settlements, outpacing pre-Oslo numbers for the first time.

By June 2001, they had fallen to 40,000.457 The decrease came not from a popular campaign to end cooperation, but from Israel’s persistent sieges and a permit regime designed to control the movement of Palestinians. Leaflets distributed by the NIFHC made few mentions of a labor boycott, and the PA likewise remained silent on the issue.

Many laborers would have continued working in the settlements and Israel were it not for

Israeli restrictions. This was especially true for laborers in Area C, whose alternatives for employment were nil. Fadi, an agricultural worker in the nearby settlement of Argamon, said that he worked every day that the settlers permitted him to work. He faced no sanction from local or national leadership.458 Ibrahim, a wasit from a neighboring village remarked similarly that his ongoing work was determined not by national leadership or national sentiment, but by the effects of the Israeli siege or the concerns of his Jewish

457 Farsakh, “Palestinian Labor Flows to the Israeli Economy: A Finished Story?,” 16. 458 Fadi, interview with author, Zbeidat, West Bank, July 23, 2013.

235 business partner. With respect to his participation in the uprising, he exclaimed “I might as well have been living in Jordan or America”, describing how detached his village was from the national struggle.459 Another wasit explained that he was informed of strike days during the first intifada and occasionally followed them, but heard no messaging from the leadership in the second.460 While some labor strikes did occur throughout the Occupied

Palestinian Territories, the Israeli people, now reliant on migrant labor predominantly from Asia, felt no impact.461

The only economic resistance that came close to approximating a newly proposed norm was the boycott of settlement products by the NIFHC. Nationalist factions in the umbrella group, notably Fatah, set their sights on settlements, and hoped a consumer boycott might produce symbolic pressure on the Israeli government.462 They used the same techniques the UNLU had used – issuing pamphlets, devising a calendar of actions, determining which products to boycott. But unlike the UNLU, they were internally divided and separate from both the population and the leadership. They could not offer alternatives, and lacked the kind of creativity that marked the organization of the first intifada, which included freedom gardens, alternative employment for strikers, and funds for those who sacrificed their livelihood for the uprising. Popular committees independent of the NIFHC also held local consumer boycotts, but they remained local, never able to pierce the national discourse.463 With only 5% of the population taking part

459 Ibrahim, interview with author, Zbeidat, West Bank, July 23, 2013. 460 Omar, interview with author, Fasa’il, West Bank, July 20, 2013. 461 Julie Norman, “Introduction” in Maia Carter Hallward and Julie Norman, eds., Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada: Activism and Advocacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 7. 462 Mouin Rabbani, “Fields of Thorns,” The Nation, February 22, 2001, http://www.thenation.com/article/fields-thorns/. 463 Julie Norman, “Introduction” in Hallward and Norman, eds., Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada: Activism and Advocacy, 2011, 6.

236 in the uprising, and a fractured leadership incapable of enforcing norms, negative economic norms were bound to fail.464

Normalization and anti-normalization – cultural and academic boycott

Perhaps the most challenged Oslo norm during the second intifada was academic and cultural dialogue, particular joint activities that aimed at achieving peace, goodwill, and understanding without explicitly demanding an end to the occupation. Those included

P2P programs, track II activities mainly aimed at brainstorming, shared identity issues, professional meetings, professional training, formal education activities, cultural activities, grassroots dialogue groups, and religious dialogue.465 As Chapter 4 explains, these types of activities were well-funded and explicitly aimed at normalizing relations with the other. But the second intifada reframed the normalization debate – still the goal of Israeli participants, normalization was now understood by Palestinian participants as the reward for a final peace treaty. With the collapse of talks at Camp David, joint activities could no longer be accepted as a step toward peace. Hundred of Palestinians continued to take part in join activities in the first few years of the intifada, but the work became increasingly unpopular, and for the first time, Palestinian thought leaders started naming and shaming fellow Palestinians taking part in the activities. By 2003, joint activities had ground to a halt.466

To be sure, there are a number of reasons for this collapse, including restrictions on freedom and movement. But Palestinians engaged in such activities were aware that their participation was increasingly unjustifiable in the context of extreme violence.

Palestinian participants were stigmatized after Camp David as being agents of the enemy

464 Roy, “Palestinian Society and Economy: The Continued Denial of Possibility.” 465 Mohammed Dajani and Gershon Baskin, “Israeli-Palestinian Joint Activities,” in Kaufman, Salem, and Verhoeven, Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. 466 Ibid., 93.

237 – many stopped attending activities to keep their reputations intact and shield their families from ostracism.467 While Arafat never condemned dialogue groups outright, opponents waged a war against joint activities in the public space. In 2003, an anonymous student at Birzeit University posted a list of names of fellow students who had attended joint activities with Israelis. The names were taken down by the end of the day, but the message was clear; joint activities were no longer acceptable.468 That same year, a Palestinian intellectual published a book titled Intellectuals in the Service of the

Other: The Communiqué of the 55 as a Model. Many in the public condemned the book as slanderous, but it was a critical component of the war against normalization, and its stigmatization as treason. That would crystallize, in a far more nuanced manner, when the

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement outline their guidelines for the

Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). By 2005, with the failure of negotiations, the extreme violence of the second intifada, and restrictions on freedom of movement by Israel, joint dialogue had become socially and physically near impossible.

What does the significant decline of participation in joint activities say of a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance? My theory predicts blurred normative boundaries in the absence of unified leadership and strong social purpose. But the second intifada was characterized by fractured leadership and low social purpose. In the case of cultural and academic dialogue, it would seem as though physical barriers to the norm – limits on freedom of movement - proved more detrimental to joint programs than the social campaign against them. Indeed, a number of self-described “peace activists” I

467 Seeds of Peace participant, interview with author, Ramallah, November 2013. See also Lazarus, 2011. 468 Birzeit University student, interview with author, Ramallah, April 2013.

238 interviewed mentioned that they would gladly have continued meetings if they had been given permits by Israel – their concern for social ostracism was real, but not enough to shift their view of dialogue. Evidence is anecdotal – although it opens this study to an exciting research agenda – but the trend of lessened academic and cultural dialogue matches the trend of lower economic interactions, shaped more by the physical barriers of occupation than the social barriers set by norm-entrepreneurs.

Co-resistance: A new way of cooperating

One result of the tightening social restrictions on co-existence was the rise of new forms of cooperation. “Co-resistance” grew from Palestinian grassroots organizing that found allies in Israeli activists committed to ending the occupation and fighting for Palestinian rights. At the core of co-resistance is the premise that power asymmetries need to be eroded if peace is to be achieved. The result is a social activism led by Palestinians but supported by Israelis who defer to the Palestinians in tactics and strategy. Co-resistance protest movements proliferated after the outbreak of the intifada with internationally- focused groups like the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), but they expanded in

2003 after Israel began construction of the separation barrier.469 A number of village protests against the separation barrier became internationally recognized movements, including those at Bil’in, Budrus, Naa’lin, Nebi Saleh, Umm Salamouna, Battir, and others. Organizing was built around popular committees, not unlike those that characterized the first intifada, who organized direct-action tactics like demonstrations, marches and sit-ins. The popular activism of the second intifada came not as choice, but as necessity, an urgent need to re-route the separation barrier to preserve the contiguity of

469 Brown and Nerenberg, “Palestine in Flux: From Search for State to Search for Tactics - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”

239 village land and access to agricultural land. Committees did more than direct-action nonviolence. They “also typically handle the village’s communication with Israeli authorities and sometimes settlers, maintain records and maps of land closures and seizures, act as spokespersons with the media, offer support to other villages, and coordinate actions, conferences, and events with other committees.” (37).470

Popular committees were an impressive show of micro-level unity, and many movements cut across social cleavages. Budrus, for example, saw a cross-factional, intergenerational, and gender-inclusive movement.471 As remarkable as the village-based protests were, they were incapable of presenting a united front across villages, due to factional disagreements at the official level and strategic ambiguity endemic to the second intifada. In short, Budrus, Bil’in and others remained isolated local movements, without ever penetrating the national space.

What village protests did do is offer the Israeli left an opportunity to continue peace activism ion a new strategic environment. Israeli involvement in the protests was mostly channeled through four groups: Ta’ayush, Gush Shalom, Anarchists Against the

Wall and Peace Now. One Israeli Ta’ayush activists described his presence at the gatherings as “humbling.” He described a shift in attitude among Israeli participants in joint activism, remarking that they used to go in with a colonial mentality, believing in their superior organizing and messaging skills. After 2003, those Israeli activists who remained committed went in with a greater deference to the Palestinian leaders.472

Ta’ayush also stopped organizing their own protests – instead, they joined in on those organized by Palestinians.

470 Norman, The Second Palestinian Intifada: Civil Resistance, 37. 471 Julia Bacha, Budrus, Documentary, Action, Biography, (2010). 472 Ta’ayush participant, interview with author, Jerusalem, May 2013.

240 The co-resistance norm took hold fairly quickly. In her 2011 research of the second intifada, Julie Norman notes that “although Palestinian organizers have difference opinions on the role of Israelis and international activism most popular committees welcome their participation in a supportive capacity.” 473 Unlike people-to-people dialogue groups, however, Palestinians welcomed Israelis not so that they could understand their worldview better, but because they were afforded a certain degree of protection with Israeli presence. The army tended to be less violent when Israeli and international protesters were present, and they also brought with them a media spotlight.

A Palestinian leader of the ISM, active during both intifadas, said that he personally wrote to Israelis who had marched with him during the first intifada, and invited them to join the current struggle. He disavowed those who declined because of a new Israeli law that forbade Israelis from entering Area A: “From the beginning I cut all relations with people who said they would abide by Israeli law. But those who crossed their own community’s line, these were interested in a just peace, and were fair game for cooperation.” The activist also noted that he faced no backlash from his community for allowing Israelis to join in protests: “We haven’t faced any problem. We cracked all the taboos in the Palestinian society and culture. But if you crack the taboo in the right way, people will understand. If you crack it in order to establish an NGO to put money in your pocket, nobody will understand.”474

Nevertheless, the trend away from co-existence did butt up against the trend toward co-resistance. Combatants for Peace – a non-profit made up of former Israeli and

Palestinian combatants advocating for an end to the occupation and Jerusalem as the

473 Norman, The Second Palestinian Intifada: Civil Resistance, 44. 474 ISM activist, interview with author, Birzeit, October 2012.

241 shared capital of an independent Palestine and Israel – used a number of joint direct- action nonviolent tactics to counter the occupation. But they also took part in dialogue, speaking jointly throughout Israel and Palestine in a call to end the cycle of violence.

Palestinian participants had some credibility, since they came from a militant background. But for some, their shared work placed Palestinian and Israeli members on equal footing. While Palestinian members disagree with this characterization, some in their community were vocally critical, arguing that Combatants for Peace made a dangerous equivalency in their work, since Israeli soldiers were occupying while

Palestinian militants were resisting. 475 Asymmetry was a serious challenge for the organization, and at several points it threatened to break the organization apart.476

Combatants for Peace is not unlike a number of other dialogue-cum-resistance groups, including the Women’s Link and Bereaved Families Forum, who struggled to find an identity in the midst of shifting but unclear normative boundaries. Palestinians feared that meetings and dialogue that do not address power imbalance, “inadvertently perpetuate the existing negative stereotypes and deep-seated mistrust that typically cloud the interactions of Israelis and Palestinians.”477

Red Lines of Cooperation: Land Selling and collaboration

Very little shifted in terms of red lines of cooperation during the second intifada – collaborators remained reviled, but security forces – official or unofficial – had no consistent policy to handle them. Rhetoric against collaboration certainly increased, and charges of betrayal were more present in the public space. But unlike the latter years of the first intifada, during which more than 1000 Palestinians died at the hands of their

475 Combatants for Peace activist, interview with author, Ramallah, February 2013. 476 Robert R. Saunders, “Partners for Peace: Cooperative Popular Resistance and Peace-Building in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in Hallward and Norman eds, Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada, 63. 477 Ibid., 64.

242 brethren, only 90 were killed for the crime in the second intifada,478 a number comparable with the total number killed from 1994-2000. What explains this variation? At first glance, we might expect a rapid violent reaction against collaborators during the second intifada. A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance, however, suggests this would only be true with united leadership and high social purpose. With the chaos of leadership in the second intifada, however, a cohesive norm around punishing collaborators never crystallized.

There is a second, and more important factor in play here. The PSS, in the lead-up to and during the second intifada, cooperated with Israel almost daily to weed out competition and produce a secure environment for Israel in the lead-up to negotiations.

Their dual role, as officially-sanctioned collaborators against their internal rivals, and nationalist forces fighting the occupation, blurred the lines of unacceptable cooperation beyond recognition. Any assessment of the new red lines must be viewed through this prism.

Recruitment: That lines were blurred only helped Israel’s recruitment, which ramped up massively in 2000. Human rights groups estimated as many as 15,000 collaborators were active during the second intifada, many who prevented suicide bombs, others who played a more mundane role.479 Israel’s recruitment exploited both supply and demand. On the supply side, they pulled thousands of Palestinians off the streets in successive incursions, turning as many as they could into their new army on the ground.480 Indeed, the work began before the uprising in anticipation of violence.481

478 Chris McGreal, “Informer in Pay of Israel Unbowed by Brother’s Bloody Fate,” The Guardian, August 3, 2004, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/aug/04/israel. 479 Catherine Taylor, “How Israel Builds Its Fifth Column,” Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 2002, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0522/p01s04-wome.html. 480 Birzeit University professor, interview with author, Birzeit, March 2013.

243 Much of the actual recruitment took place in prisons, with a newly revamped asafir program that proved highly effective, using many of the same coercive techniques described in previous chapters.482 On the demand side, Israel needed a new kind of collaborator, one who could provide information detailed enough to feed its assassination policy, the hallmark of Israeli anti-insurgency tactics from 2000-2006.483 Illegal under international law, Israel’s assassination policy had a dual effect – it helped cut the head off factions committing terrorist attacks against the state, but it also created a culture of suspicion that further divided Palestinians in the midst of their uprising. As Gross describes: “Once facilitated by spies, informers and compromised friends and family members, assassination subverts strongly held beliefs about integrity, trust, honour and loyalty that hold together traditional societies. And, it creates a vicious cycle of violence within Palestinian society.”484

The response: With 15,000 collaborators on the streets, and assassinations becoming more and more frequent, responses were still severe, even if not on the level of the first intifada. This was on display after every assassination or assassination attempt on

Palestinian leaders, which led to mass hysteria and a culture of suspicion – most collaborators were killed in the aftermath of a high-profile assassination, whether evidence was present or not.485 In some cases, the killing of a collaborator followed some form of protocol. Alam Bani Odeh, for example, was paid $2000 in November 2000 to arrange for is car to be used to pick his cousin up from prison, a high profile bomb- maker. In collaboration with his Israeli handler, he had a bomb inserted in the headrest of

481 Peter Beaumont and Virginia Quirke, “Last Minutes of Traitor Who Betrayed His Cousin to Israel,” The Guardian, January 13, 2001, sec. World news, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jan/14/israel. 482 Dudai and Cohen, “Triangle of Betrayal: Collaborators and Transitional Justice in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” 50. 483 See Michael L. Gross, “Fighting by Other Means in the Mideast: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Assassination Policy,” Political Studies 51, no. 2 (June 1, 2003): 350–68. 484 Ibid., 359. 485 McGreal, “Informer in Pay of Israel Unbowed by Brother’s Bloody Fate.”

244 the car, which killed his cousin instantly upon detonation. Arafat ratified the court’s decision for capital punishment, a rare occurrence, and he was killed by firing squad just two months later. Majdi Mikkawi was similarly convicted for his part in the assassination of a Fatah official and several of his fighters near Gaza, and in January 2001, a court in

Bethlehem convicted four other collaborators for the death of Hussein Abayat.486 These legally sanctioned executions were met with a great deal of public support. Hundreds attended the execution of Bani Odeh in Nablus, most believing that such actions would deter future collaborators.487

There were, to be sure, a number of frenzied witch-hunts against collaborators during the second intifada, but they were calm in comparison with those during the first intifada. There are three broad reasons for this. First, Hamas was very cautious responding to the phenomenon. Sheikh Yassin believed during the first intifada that collaborators should be given the chance to repent, and that philosophy carried forward to the second intifada, even after his assassination in 2004. One Hamas member publically declared that collaborators should “engage in soul searching and come back to the bosom of the nation.”488 The official Hama line, articulated by Khaled Mesh’al in 2004, was that

Hamas should deal with collaborators in coordination with all other factions to avoid intra-Palestinian disputes. Second, the court system seemed to have a mitigating effect.

With Arafat ratifying the occasional capital punishment, Palestinian turned to the PA for justice, and felt some satisfaction in the system when executions were made public.

Third, Palestinians no doubt held the memory of the first intifada close to their hearts, slowing the hand of those who might otherwise crave swift revenge.

486 Beaumont and Quirke, “Last Minutes of Traitor Who Betrayed His Cousin to Israel.” 487 Ibid. 488 Dudai and Cohen, “Triangle of Betrayal: Collaborators and Transitional Justice in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” 42.

245 These all had the effect of curtailing the total number of deaths. But they cannot explain why no consistent policy was adopted. For this, we have to turn to a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance. Leadership was highly diffuse during the second intifada, with norms emanating from the PA, the NIHFC, Hamas, and the grassroots.

None of these groups coordinated on national strategy. As a result, social purpose was almost non-existent, despite the expectedly unifying effects of an uprising. Nothing blurred the lines more than the role of the PSS in the uprising. As I argued in the previous chapter, the PSS amounted to a nationalist version of the Village Leagues. After so many years of cooperation at the official level, across a number of different sectors, society could hardly distinguish between acceptable collaboration and unacceptable collaboration. Hamas, for its part, helped blur these lines by frequently employing the treason discourse against the PSS, labeling them traitors and collaborators almost daily.489

So while the red line of collaboration remained intact, the specific parameters were never clear. Hamas, for example, argued that security coordination with Israel amounted to collaboration, and rightfully so, as many of their leaders had been arrested or killed because of PA cooperation with Israel during Oslo. The PA limited their charge against collaborators who were suspected of involvement in the assassination of Fatah leaders, but tried only a hand full of those. Society, in the meantime, stripped of an active role during the uprising, took a back seat, allowing the court system and the occasional militant to define and punish suspected collaborators. This ambiguity continued well after the intifada, especially after President Mahmoud Abbas revitalized the PA’s security coordination with Israel.

489 Cohen, “Society–Military Relations in a State-in-the-Making.”

246 The second intifada serves as an important test of an alternative hypothesis, namely that intergroup competition mediates normative boundaries. This would be consistent with SIT scholarship that finds that agents turn to a social identity when intergroup competition is high, but defer to a personal identity when intragroup competition is high. The effect of intergroup competition (ie: direct conflict between

Palestinians and Israel) should be two-fold: first, nationalist leaders should outline the rules for pro-social behavior; second, Palestinians should comply with the call out of national duty. In short, increased competition between ingroup and outgroup should be enough to produce some degree of social purpose. Indeed, some norms did appear to be more coherent than expected during the second intifada, namely those around normalization and anti-normalization. This can be attributed at least partly to the mediating effects of increased intergroup competition. But compliance with these norms was far from complete – most Palestinians who stopped people-to-people dialogue groups, for example, did so not out of respect for a norm, but because restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by Israel made meetings less possible. The same can be said for prohibitive economic norms, which were ambiguously defined and hardly respected when leaning toward prohibition.

A comparison between the first and second intifada, however pokes holes in the intergroup competition hypothesis. The first intifada saw coherent articulation of interactional norms and a moderately high level of compliance with norms that demanded a great deal of personal sacrifice. That same degree of coherence or compliance was absent in the second uprising, begging the question: if intergroup competition produces different results in these two cases, what is doing most of the work? A look at leadership

247 dynamics confirms that social purpose is doing most of the work. National leadership during the second intifada was fragmented vertically and horizontally. They were split between the NIFHC, the PA and Hamas, while the grassroots was left out of the uprising and resisted separately from the national leadership. End-goals were also never well- articulated – was the aim of the uprising to force Israel back to the negotiating table? To reclaim all of historic Palestine? To inflict damage without any long-term political objective? With a fractured leadership and unclear aims, social purpose was exceptionally low. And the norms governing interactions between Palestinians and Israelis were predictably jumbled, leading to no small measure of ambiguity. That condition would continue to dog Palestinians long after the second intifada.

248 Chapter VI: The Inqisam and Beyond

The violence that broke out between Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip from June 10-14,

2007 reflected a long deterioration in the Palestinian national movement. But 2007 was not the beginning of Palestinians fragmentation; it was, rather, the culmination of decades of factional competition, held together only by the PLO’s and later the PA’s institutionalization around Arafat. The seeds of internecine violence were planted at the very beginning of the Oslo process, with Fatah’s gamble that Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy in the midst of ongoing occupation might liberate the land. When the historic gamble failed at Camp David in 2000, factions scrambled to redefine the national movement, torn between the competing functions of representatives, peacemakers, and militants.

Haidar Eid, a professor at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University, argues that the entire spectrum of the Palestinian political system lost legitimacy during the Oslo years – from the Left, embodied in the Palestinian People’s Party, PFLP and DFLP, to the Right embodied in the secular Fatah and religious Hamas – in large part because of the two- state gamble.490 Drawn into a diplomatic quagmire with Israel, and tied to a two-state framework that has produced no tangible results, Palestinian leaders have dropped “the capacity for creative, effective resistance.”491 As the second intifada whimpered to a close, leadership was more divided than ever. It was not just the usual secular vs. Islamist divide – there were also serious fault-lines between political and military wings in each faction. Beyond divisions in the national movement were serious schisms between the

490 See Haidar Eid. “al-Yameen al-Falasteeni wa al-thana’iyaat al-jadeeda.” Rai al-Youm. November 1, 2013. Accessed March 29, 2014. http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=17548 and Haidar Eid. “Palestinian Left: Neede Overdue Critique.” Alternative News. November 3, 2013. Accessed March 29, 2104. http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/politics/opinions/7301-palestinian-left-much- needed-overdue-critique. 491 Haidar Eid. “Dis-Participation as a Palestinian Strategy?,” December 10, 2013. Accessed March 31, 2014. http://al- shabaka.org/node/699.

249 grassroots and the official leaderships. The civil society-led Boycott Divestment and

Sanctions national convention (BNC) and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) made up an intellectual counter to leadership trends and norms starting in 2005, while popular committees active during the second intifada continued to represent their villages in the PA’s absence. Committees were all the more important in Area C, where the PA had no sway and Hamas had little to no influence. An expected effect of horizontal and vertical leadership divides is low social purpose. Palestinians, from 2005-2015, had little cohesive guidance from above or below.

Even support for the national program was diffuse, with Hamas and Fatah presenting very different visions of “Palestine” (some form of two-state solution vs, some form of one-state solution), different strategies of getting there (diplomacy vs. resistance) and the grassroots increasingly ambivalent about final status. A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance expects diffuse norms under such conditions. My interviews with grassroots leaders, government officials, artists, academics, laborers, and more, suggest this was the case. In fact, a common refrain among Palestinians after 2007 was that society was munfalitah – boundless. Others repeated the phrase inqisam shakhsiyye – or popular schizophrenia.

This chapter outlines the leadership context of popular schizophrenia, tracing leadership divides and the effect of low social purpose. It also explores the rise of new norms outside the official leadership, those stemming from the BDS movement and

PACBI, and assesses why they have risen so rapidly, but why they are unlikely to produce consensus. Table 6.1 summarizes the findings:

250

Table 6.1 Purpose-driven boundary maintenance: 2005-2016

Leadership Dynamic Social Purpose Interactional Norms

LOW COHESION LOW JUMBLED

Vertical Horizontally LOW Direction Unclear Coordination LOW Shared Goals

Horizontal Vertically LOW LOW Coherence Low Coordination shared goals LOW Popular (occasional Legitimacy spikes) Social Purpose NO Compliance Low Triggered Articulation LOW of end-goals

A shattered national movement

Abbas soared to victory in the January 2005 elections, in large part because all other factions boycotted the process. Hamas tactically rejected the presidential elections because they recognized that Abbas was the only candidate with a chance to win. But they saw an opening in three rounds of municipal elections, and eagerly fielded candidates. In the second round, the Islamist camp won big, 78 of 118 seats in seven of ten municipal councils in Gaza. Buoyed by the victory, they opted to participate in upcoming legislative elections, announcing they would be fielding candidates in March

2005. The Islamists also made ideological inroads through the Cairo Agreement in

March, demanding that Fatah recognize the right to resist the occupation, and gradually

251 allow Islamic Jihad and Hamas to join the PLO.492

Hamas’ party – Change and Reform – won the January 2006 legislative elections by a wide margin, taking 74 of the 132 seats; incumbent Fatah won only 45. Voters opted for Islamists in part to punish the status quo leadership, who had failed to deliver on Oslo or stem the march of military occupation. But they also voted because Hamas offered a serious alternative; their popularity had been on the rise for years, and a core group of supporters had turned out in union, university and municipal elections since 1996.493

Hamas also gained from the Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the Strip, a move that

Hamas attributed to its armed resistance. The results were devastating for Fatah, but also presented major challenges for the United States and Israel, both who considered Hamas a terrorist organization. For its part, the victors extended a hand to Fatah to form a political coalition, a proposal Jibril Rajoub and others in Fatah rejected immediately.

The Fatah Coup

Not to be stripped of all they had built since 1993, Fatah set about ensuring their control despite the Hamas victory. In February 2006 the outgoing Fatah-dominated PLC gave

Abbas sweeping powers, including the power to appoint a new constitutional court that could serve as the final arbiter in executive-legislative disputes. 494 The PLC also appointed Fatah loyalists to key posts of influence, including the head of the government anti-corruption commission, a hint that Fatah would be countering Hamas’ election promises to battle corruption. The Fatah rebellion raged on in the Fatah Revolutionary

Council, which declared its intent to boycott the Hamas government. When the new government was sworn in March 29, 2006, violent confrontation was on the near horizon,

492 Azzam Tamimi, Hamas: A History from Within (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2011), 216. 493 Ibid., 219. 494 Ibid., 227.

252 and Abbas ensured the Islamists would have little power. He stripped Hamas of control over governing institutions in a series of presidential decrees that gave the executive control over the media, the police forces, and the department in charge of the hajj and

‘umma. In the end, “the Hamas-led government had no police force at its disposal, no government-controlled media, little control over land sales and registration, and no authority whatsoever over the frontier crossings.”495 Hamas’ woes did not stop there; banks had maxed out lending capacity in the previous government, the international community had cut off funding, and all channels connecting Hamas to Russia and the

Gulf states had been cut off.

Fragmentation after the elections was extreme, manifesting in political schisms, and now more than ever, in geographic division. Hamas maintained control over the Gaza

Strip, but their hold was tenuous, and their rivals made sure it was limited. Gaza in 2006 was a security disaster. To address the issue, the Hamas-led government had Interior

Minister Sa’id Siyam appoint Jamal Abu Samhadana, Chairman of the Popular

Resistance Committees and Fatah member as the coordinator of the Interior Ministry’s

Security Forces, a 60,000 strong force. His mission was to set up a new police force, but

Abbas immediately demanded his forces ignore the appointment. Khaled Meshal excoriated Abbas for obstructing the new government - Fatah countered by accusing

Hamas of fomenting civil war.

Last ditch effort: The Prisoners’ document

In an attempt to stem the tide, PLC speaker Aziz Duwaik called for a conference of national reconciliation. Abbas shocked participants at the start by giving Hamas an ultimatum – accept the Prisoner’s document as the basis for national reconciliation by 25

495 Ibid., 229.

253 May 2006, or risk a referendum on the Hamas government’s legitimacy in 40 days.496

The document had the seeds of genuine national unity; it was signed by Marwan

Barghouti in Fatah, Abdul Khaliq al-Natshah from Hamas, Bassam al-Sa’di from Islamic

Jihad, Abdul Rahim Mallouh from the PFLP, and Mustafa Badarma from the DFLP. One

Hamas official stated that the factions could accept 90 percent of the document. But it was premised on a number of Oslo-inspired demands – namely acceptance of the Arab

Peace Initiative, submission to international legitimacy, and recognition of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians. All three asked that Hamas accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel, something it – or its base – could not ideologically accept.497

National conciliation was also hampered by Israeli actions during the deliberations, notably the arrest and imprisonment of dozens of Hamas cadres, including ministers and PLC members. Hamas demanded that the release of Hamas members be a prerequisite for a unity government agreement, a move the PLO Executive Committee called “irresponsible.”498 The spiral of violence began in earnest after Israel assassinated

Jamal Abu Samhadana in June 2006, after which Hamas called off their truce. On June

24, 2006, Israel kidnapped two Hamas members in Gaza. Hamas retaliated with a tunnel operation that killed two Israeli soldiers, wounded four, and ended with 19 year-old

Corporal Gilad Shalit in Hamas’ custody. In the end, the parties failed to come to an agreement. Differences between the two parties had deep roots, but ultimately stemmed from irreconcilable ideological divides and strategic disparities, including the role of the

496 As’ad Ghanem, Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 165. 497 Tamimi, Hamas, 229. 498 Ghanem, Palestinian Politics after Arafat, 168.

254 PLO, the short-term use of armed resistance, social policy in government, the status of religion in public life, and financial corruption.

The proceeding year saw rapprochement and rapid deterioration between Fatah and Hamas. In September 2006, president Abbas and Prime Minister Haniyyeh agreed in principle to form a national unity government based on the Prisoner’s Document. It was the first time Hamas had recognized previous agreements between the PLO and Israel.

But just ten days later, Abbas reframed the agreement as Hamas’ tacit recognition of

Israel, and Hamas’ more radical elements protested. What followed were a series of clashes at the end of 2006 into January 2007, when over 80 Palestinians died in internecine violence in the Gaza Strip.499 Muhammad Dahlan was at the head of each of these clashes, a warning of the brief civil war that would follow.500 One last ditch effort proceeded in February 2007, when Fatah and Hamas agreed to the Mecca Agreement after eight days of talks, calling for a “ban on the spilling of Palestinian blood,” the formation of a national unity government, reforming of the PLO, and acceptance of the

PA with a call for greater political pluralism in the government.501 They signed the agreement in February 2007, but Abbas declared the agreement null and void after violence broke out on June 10, 2007.

Inqisam and the Fayyad Years

By the end of 2006, Israel, in collusion with the Bush administration in the United States and Fatah strongman in Gaza, Muhammad Dahlan, took the opportunity to destroy

499 “After Mecca: Engaging Hamas,” Middle East Report (Amman/Jerusalem/Brussels: International Crisis Group, February 26, 2007). 500 Analysts disagree whether the violence in 2006-2007 be considered a civil war or merely. See Hussein Sirriyeh, “Is There a Palestinian Civil War? The Concept and the Impact,” Israel Affairs 17, no. 2 (April 1, 2011): 247–58. 501 “B2. PA President Mahmud Abbas and Hamas Political Leader Khalid Mishal, Mecca Accord, Mecca, 7 February 2007,” Journal of Palestine Studies 36, no. 3 (Spring 2007): 189.

255 Hamas.502 Ignoring the results of the indisputably free and fair 2006 elections, the United

States gave $84 million in military aid to the PA to improve the Presidential Guard, while

US Marine Lt. General Keith Dayton trained Palestinian security forces. In an ironic reversal of its 1987-1988 strategy, when Israel allowed Hamas to strengthen its base, in

2006 it permitted the Palestinian forces loyal to the PA to re-arm. The situation exploded in June 2007, following the signing of the February 2007 Mecca Agreement and the formation of a national unity government. Hamas preempted the Fatah coup, and gained control of the Strip, but only after 600 Palestinians were killed in one of the worst episodes of internecine violence in Palestinian history.503 The Mecca agreement lasted until June 14, when Abbas announced the dissolution of the short-lived unity government, a state of emergency, and the dismissal of Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh, installing Salam Fayyad, a US-trained International Monetary Fund technocrat favored by the international community. Hamas rejected the moves.

Abbas’ actions effectively separated the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the first time the two territories would function under a separate legal system since 1967. The

West Bank government had the full backing of the international community: the Middle

East Quartet resumed normal relations with the Fatah-led government; The United States immediately recognized the Abbas government, despite its questionable legality, and ended its fifteen month boycott of the PA; and Israel announced it would release tax revenues it had been withholding since the 2006 election.

From 2007-2013, Salam Fayyad undertook an ambitious transformation of the

Palestinian economy. His mandate, supported by Tony Blair of the Quartet, successive

502 See David Rose, “The Gaza Bombshell,” Vanity Fair, March 3, 2008, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804. 503 Total fatalities are for March 2006 to June 2007. Sirriyeh, “Is There a Palestinian Civil War? The Concept and the Impact,” 249.

256 Israeli governments, the United States and the EU, was to achieve an economic peace born out of “good governance,” while the Dayton Brigades and Israel destroyed Hamas in

Gaza and contained them in the West Bank. While many commentators lauded

Fayyadism as a new way for the Arab world,504 others found it to be worryingly myopic, prizing short-term economic growth at the expense of a national strategy.505 A 2009

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report places some blame on the international community:

The role of the international community in this respect has not been especially bold, generally favouring neoliberal economic policy formulas and generous funding of a political-economic relation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel that does not challenge prolonged occupation, address its deep impact, or enable Palestinian economic self- determination.506

Most importantly, the Fayyad government made little to no effort to unite the two warring governments in Gaza and the West Bank, allowing for a widening gap in national strategic direction. The Fayyad years did produce some economic growth, but the gains were mitigated by the ongoing occupation, a condition that the World Bank and others warned would only worsen with time if Palestinians could not gain access to critical resources in Area C, something Abbas and Fayyad invested little in achieving.507

Hamas, and Gaza’ residents, suffered dire consequences in the years following the inqisam. The PA, now in control of the coffers, made it impossible for Hamas to govern.

The international community condemned the Islamists and closed off financial channels

504 Thomas L. Friedman, “Green Shoots in Palestine,” The New York Times, August 4, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/opinion/05friedman.html. 505 Nathan J. Brown, “The Hamas-Fatah Conflict: Shallow but Wide,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 34, no. 2 (2010): 37–51. 506 Raja Khalidi and Sahar Taghdisi-Rad. “The economic dimensions of prolonged occupation: Continuity and change in Israeli policy towards the Palestinian economy.” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. August 2009. 507 “Palestinians Access to Area C Key to Economic Recovery and Sustainable Growth,” Text/HTML, World Bank, accessed May 15, 2016, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2013/10/07/palestinians-access-area-c-economic-recovery-sustainable-growth.

257 to the group. Meanwhile, Israel and Egypt commenced an economic blockade that would continue for over a decade. In September 2007, Israel declared Gaza “hostile territory” tightening its blockade with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.508 Israel’s attacks against Hamas in

2008-2009, 2012, and 2014 lifted Hamas’ popularity among Palestinians, particularly in the face of increased corruption with Fatah, successive failures in negotiations, and the ever-weakening standing of Abbas among Palestinians as he continues security coordination with Israel in the midst of Israel’s campaigns against Palestinians in Gaza.

Isolating Hamas failed to produce the result that the international community,

Israel, and indeed the PA had hoped it would – the gradual depletion of its ranks, the dwindling of its popularity, and its eventual demise. The result has been devastating for

Palestinians and the prospects for a future peace.

Reconciliation attempts and failures

From April to September 2014, some inroads were made in achieving a comprehensive reconciliation agreement between Palestinians leadership. But like previous attempts in

2006, The Cairo Agreement in 2011 and the Doha Agreement in 2012, it failed to produce results. Each failed because “it was not possible to fit the square peg of Hamas’s strategy of armed struggle to secure the liberation of all of historical Palestine into the round hole of the PA/PLO strategy of seeking to establish an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories through diplomacy, nonviolence and, especially, an agreement with Israel.”509

Importantly, the 2014 attempt was not driven by a desire to reformulate a national strategy or craft some degree of social purpose. Instead, both Fatah and Hamas came to

508 “The Siege on Gaza,” B’Tselem, January 2011, http://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/siege. 509 Hussein Ibish, “Indispensible but Elusive: Palestinian National Reunification,” Middle East Policy 21, no. 3 (September 1, 2014): 31–32.

258 the agreement from a place of weakness: Hamas had lost its patron after siding with the opposition in the Syrian civil war, and Fatah was depleted of all credibility after failing to produce diplomatic advances. Fatah also suffered economically, losing three-quarters of

US aid, over half of its EU aid, and all of its tax revenues from Israel after its 2011 bid for statehood with the UN Security Council, its successful 2011 bid to join UNESCO, and its successful 2012 UN upgrade with the UN General Assembly. Attempting reconciliation through weakness belied a more deeply troubling reality, that both parties approached reconciliation in order to unseat the other from the national movement.510

When three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped near a West Bank settlement in June 2014,

Israel used its hunt for the boys as a pretext to destroy Hamas in the West Bank. The violent 50-day conflagration in Gaza that erupted soon after left 2,200 Palestinians dead, the majority civilians, and 64 Israeli soldiers and 6 civilians dead.511 It also left the 2014 reconciliation process in shambles, crumbling finally in June 2015.

Palestinian National Institutions

Beyond the Hamas-Fatah divide lies a deeper fissure in the national movement, characterized by a total lack of grand strategy in the national institutions long meant to represent the Palestinian cause. The PA presidency has exceeded its electoral mandate, and runs a quasi-dictatorship to hold on to whatever power remains. In successive mini- intifadas in 2014 and 2015, Abbas displayed a dumbfounding inconsistency, in one breath celebrating protestors, and in the next, rounding them up in waves of mass arrest.

As analyst Sam Bahour has stated: “Onlookers trying to understand the strategy are left

510 Ibid., 38. 511 Lizzie Dearden, “Israel-Gaza Conflict: 50-Day War by Numbers: 2,139 Palestinians Dead,” The Independent, August 27, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-conflict-50-day-war-by-numbers-9693310.html.

259 with the same sense of loss felt by Palestinians looking for coherent leadership.”512

Meanwhile, the PLO is alive and well on the international stage, recognized in 2012 at the UNGA as the sole body responsible for the new State of Palestine. But the PLO is gasping for legitimacy: Article 14 of the PLO bylaws stipulates that the PNC must convene and choose new officers if one-third of the members of the Executive

Committee resign. The resignations happened in August 2015, when PLO Executive

Committee members Mahmoud Abbas, Hanan Ashrawi, Ahmad Majdalani, Saeb Erekat,

Ghassan al-Shakaa, and Mahmoud Ismail all stepped down. But elections did not follow.

Indeed, the PNC has not gathered since 1988 to refine its strategy. Abbas’ call for – and subsequent cancellation of – a PNC meeting at the end of 2015 was largely symbolic, and most observers called the move a desperate attempt to gain legitimacy.

The PA government in the West Bank, meanwhile, is a shell of a state, “more of a national non-governmental organization (NGO), forced to align with the donors that keep it alive, than an executive body implementing properly legislated policy.” 513 Its commitments to Israel and the international community make it wholly incapable of developing a strategy aimed at ending the occupation. And its control over the grassroots means that a once vibrant civil society is now more a network of aid-reliant NGOs incapable of challenging the “state” or proposing new strategies.

The Rise of an alternative leadership?

As Fatah and Hamas squabbled, and the PA and PLO slowly withered into irrelevancy, a grassroots independent of the donor community was mobilizing. They were revitalized during the second intifada with the anti-wall protests in 2003, and grew up with the

512 Sam Bahour, “Layers of Confusion Choke Internal Palestinian Affairs,” Middle East Eye, January 29, 2016, http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/layers-confusion-internal-palestinian-affairs-1792283242. 513 Ibid.

260 international rights focus of the BDS movement. A loosely organized network, they became a moral vanguard, pitching ethical standards to a diverse audience of consumers, laborers, politicians, educators, artists, farmers, and business leaders.514 While they eschewed any involvement in official politics, and avoided offering a clear grand strategic vision, they did become an important part of the new normative environment.

As leadership continues its internal battles, the new moral vanguard appears to be making inroads, shaping public discourse even if they are currently incapable or unwilling to enter the political fray.

Social purpose post-second intifada – no leadership, no strategy

The general anomie that characterized the second intifada continued after Mahmoud

Abbas came to power in 2005, and predictably deepened with the inqisam. This era may best be described as one of popular schizophrenia,515 a descriptor used by numerous interview subjects over the course of research in 2012-2014. Not since before the first intifada had Palestinian social purpose been so blurry. Various leadership hubs vied for legitimacy, each incapable of presenting a coherent message. The PA, concerned with organizational survival, was unwilling to fundamentally alter the status quo. Committed to a two-state solution, their message dwindled in legitimacy since the end of the second intifada. Hamas, for its part, remained politically isolated in Gaza, and by necessity, staunchly rejectionist. Their official stance on Israel is against cooperation, reflected in part by new anti-normalization legislation passed on April 2013.516 Organizationally

514 Brown and Nerenberg, “Palestine in Flux: From Search for State to Search for Tactics - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.” 515 Inqisam shakhsiyya in Arabic (elaborate). 516 Qanun at-ta‘aleem al-jadeed bi-ghaza Accessed February 8, 2014. http://www.msar.ps/8174.html

261 pragmatic, they have cooperated with Israeli on security, albeit clandestinely,517 but are rhetorically inconsistent with their final status message.

BDS and the grassroots have not fared much better in articulating social purpose, despite increased popular attention – their message is rights-based, calling on Palestinians to halt all relations that do not meet the following criteria: Working toward an end to the

“occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall”; “Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality”; and

“Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”518 The BDS wording is ambiguous enough to be open to interpretation. Ending the “colonization of all Arab lands” could of course include all of historic Palestine. But the very next stipulation speaks of the existence of Israel as a fait accompli and merely demands equal rights for its Arab citizens. The third stipulation reflects not merely the consensus position among

Palestinians that the rights of individual refugees from 1948 and their descendants should be honored but does so in a way that Israeli leaders have rejected as threatening to a

Jewish state. Some observers argue that the BDS call rejected Israel as a Jewish state but saw no problem with it existing as a secular, democratic state. How such conflicting demands fit in either the one-state or the two-state discourse is unclear, perhaps intentionally. The diverse set of end goals implicit and explicit in the rights-based vanguard goes far in explaining why BDS activists have yet to initiate a genuine political program or produce social purpose for Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza.519

517 “Israel, Hamas Caught in ‘the Gaza Trap’ - Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East.” Al-Monitor. Accessed February 8, 2014. http://www.al-monitor.com/pulseen/originals/2013/12/israel-idf-gaza-strip-hamas-violence-escalation.html. 518 “Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS.” BDSmovement.net. Accessed February 8, 2014. http://www.bdsmovement.net/call. 519 Brown and Nerenberg, “Palestine in Flux: From Search for State to Search for Tactics - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.”

262 In short, leadership divisions, horizontally between Hamas and Fatah and vertically between the grassroots and official leadership, has produced frighteningly low social purpose.

End-goal ambiguity and social purpose

A second indicator of the social anomie characterizing the post-second intifada era is the decline in support for variations of the two-state solution, and an increasing (although far from unanimous) support for the one-state solution. Throughout the Oslo years, and even well into the second intifada, Palestinians heavily supported a two-state solution, even as negotiations produced no results. However, in the past few years many Palestinian opinion leaders have deepened their interest in the one-state solution, a shift that signals an overdue realization that the two-state framework is moribund at best and deceased at worst.

Support for a one-state solution among Palestinians on the street is also on the rise. According to a December 2015 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll, 29 percent of Palestinians in the occupied territories support a one-state solution, up from only 12 percent in October 2003, at the height of the second intifada.520 Although

45 percent of Palestinians still favor a two-state framework, this number is down from 56 percent in 2003. Discussions of a one-state solution have also become more vibrant among researchers and activists on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, featured in all major Palestinian news outlets. There might not yet be majority support for an alternative, but the trend is undeniably heading in that direction.

520 “Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No (58),” Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, December 15, 2015, http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/623.

263 Even as trends move slowly toward acceptance of a one-state framework,

Palestinians are far from consensus, a reality that became pronounced in the fall 2015 wave of contention. A West Bank activist interviewed in November 2015 said of the uprising: “The goals are the same! End the occupation. The occupation as a context and a goal is back.”521 Another activist based in the West Bank disagreed:

There is no announced or agreed upon goal for this uprising. The PA leadership will try to spin and co-opt it so they achieve their own goals (diplomatic action … etc.), but they have failed. The Israelis and Jordanians have tried to frame it and shift its trajectory towards “returning status quo to al-Aqsa,” and now making it about “getting back the bodies of the martyrs.” The youth on the streets are sacrificing for freedom, but they don’t have a grand strategy, at least one that is announced. And that is key as it gives it space to grow while keeping the occupation in the dark. I would see this uprising mainly as a sign that a new generation of Palestinians are vying for their place in politics and are sick of the PA’s bending over policies and of the international community’s actions. It is creating fertile grounds for new young leaders to take their place, and the main question is will these leaders survive Israel and the PA, or will they, like in previous Palestinian uprisings, be squashed or co-opted by the status quo.522

That Palestinians are unclear about a strategic end-goal belies deep internal divisions.

Leadership is not merely divided, it is wholly discordant when it comes to the purpose of the national movement. As we will see in the proceeding section, a lack of social purpose has had devastating effects on the propagation of interactional norms.

521 West Bank activist, email correspondence with author, November 19, 2015. 522 West Bank activist, email correspondence with author, November 18, 2015.

264 Interactional Norms – Munfalitah

Interactional norms were predictably ambiguous in the post-inqisam years. Leadership was horizontally and vertically uncoordinated, end-goals were poorly articulated, and social purpose was correspondingly low. For the most part, this translated into abstruse interactional norms, with Palestinians grasping for guidance but receiving very little in the form of a consistent message. Nevertheless, the post-inqisam years did produce some surprising results, especially in the realm of the anti-normalization discourse, a consumer boycott of Israeli and settlement products, and PA security coordination with Israel.

Those norms were far from consensual, but they held far more legitimacy than a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance might predict. PA security coordination, for example, became a reviled form of cooperation by Hamas and the grassroots, with over

60% of the population calling for an end in 2015. Anti-normalization, while still unclearly defined, continued to gain traction as a prohibitive norm. And consumer boycotts grew in fits and starts, in part due to Israeli assaults on Gaza and in part because of PA frustration with stalled negotiations. I explain the rise of these norms at the conclusion of the chapter. Table 6.2 captures the findings:

265 Table 6.2 Interactional norms 2005-2016

Gray Zones of Fortifies the PA Security Cooperation -Moderate coherence Cooperation occupation, -Low Compliance - civic/political weakens civil -PA: permissive resistance -Hamas: prohibitive -Grassroots: prohibitive Gray Zones of Entrenches People-to-people/cultural -Moderate coherence Cooperation power dialogue -Prohibitive - normalization asymmetry, -Less cooperation weakens civil resistance Academic cooperation -Moderate coherence -Mostly prohibitive -Minimal cooperation Co-resistance - High coherence - Moderate compliance -Some ambiguity Gray Zones of Relative economic Private sector cooperation -Low Coherence Cooperation gains for occupier -Unclear - economic -High cooperation, grassroots efforts at prohibitive Work in settlements -Low Coherence -Unclear -Permissive Work in Israel -High coherence -Permissive Boycott of settlement -Moderate coherence products -Prohibitive -Moderate compliance Boycott of Israeli goods -Moderate coherence -Punctuated prohibitive -Moderate compliance

266 Consumer and Labor boycott

The post-second intifada era saw sporadic labor strikes and boycotts in the West Bank, but no consistency in messaging behind the norms from leadership and the grassroots.

For that to have happened, Mahmoud Abbas would have had to address the inequalities built in to the Paris Protocol. But the new president did little to alter the economic status quo. The Paris Protocol remained the predominant structure of relations, despite its growing unpopularity and the fact that its mandate had expired in 2000. Part of the commitment to the Protocol and “normal” relations with Israel stems from PA reliance on international donors, many of whom believed in a neo-liberal project of economic peace between Israel and the PA. A 2009 United Nations Conference on Trade and

Development (UNCTAD) report places some blame on the international community:

That Abbas and others in the PA failed to appreciate popular disdain for normalization no doubt contributed to the Hamas electoral victory in 2006, and the rise of the civil society movement around Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). The BDS movement is an especially potent example of popular disagreement around transactional norms in the post-intifada era. Hearkening back to first intifada strategies of nonviolent resistance, the

2005 BDS call asked Palestinians and internationals to boycott all things Israeli. More

523 Raja Khalidi and Sahar Taghdisi-Rad. “The economic dimensions of prolonged occupation: Continuity and change in Israeli policy towards the Palestinian economy.” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. August 2009.

267 than 100 civil society organizations signed on to the 2005 statement, and the movement appears to be gaining in popularity, particularly amongst activists internationally. Most importantly, the BDS National Committee (BNC) has directly challenged the PA leadership on a number of issues, generating a great deal of public debate around economic interactions. At the 2013 BDS Conference held in Bethlehem on 8 June 2013, for example, an audience member in favor of the BDS vision publically harangued the

Palestinian Minister of National Economy, Dr Jawad Naji, for maintaining the structure of economic relations outlined in Oslo. The Minister cursed the participant and stormed out of the conference hall, to the jeers of hundreds of other audience members. The event made news headlines around the Palestinian territories. In those same months, dozens of protests erupted in the West Bank against the Paris Protocol.524

Even PLO executive committee member Nabil Shaath recognizes that the BDS voice has merit. Disenchanted with the PA’s guidelines since the second intifada, he was one of the first Oslo-era politicians to back BDS:

Now, when the intifada ended, Abu Mazen tried to bring back normalization and security, and there was a bit more [cooperative] activities between 2006 and today. But with the coming back of [Israeli Prime Minster] Netanyahu, it became very obvious that all our negotiations are futile, and the man is just using it as a cover-up for colonization. And therefore, this move back to the BDS is of a different nature than the lack of normalization before. The BDS is not a movement that wants to destroy the peace process. The BDS is a movement that wants to put pressure on the Israeli government to move back to a real peace process. That’s the difference.525

524 “Fixing the Paris Protocol Twenty Years Later: Frequently Asked Questions for Diehard Reformers.” Accessed February 8, 2014. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10023/fixing-the-paris-protocol-twenty-years-later_frequ. 525 Interview with author April 2013.

268 Others in the PA leadership disagree. A former Minister of National Economy believes the BDS movement goes too far with their boycott. This minister helped pass the April

2010 Law to Ban and Combat Settlement Products. For the PA, Palestinians need to draw clear red lines around economic cooperation in the settlements, not in all of Israel. A wholesale boycott, he says, suggests to Israel that Palestinians reject the two-state solution, and therefore the very idea of the Israeli state.526 Mahmoud Abbas echoed this vision in February 2014 when he told reporters in South Africa that he supports a boycott of settlements, but not of Israelis. “We have relations with Israel, we have mutual recognition of Israel,” he said.527 From the PA’s perspective, economic resistance against

Israel proper lampoons the peace process.

But movement in the direction of a coordinated consumer boycott has increased in recent years, making their way from the grassroots to the highest levels of the national movement. One reason for this success lies in BDS tactics of naming and shaming people they believe are engaging in unacceptable cooperation with Israel. Boycott campaigns can often take a personalizing, and sometimes ugly, turn. “BDS names and shames the act, not the individual,” insisted one activist in the West Bank.528 But public shaming plays an important role in the BDS entrepreneurial spirit, and the movement has at times overstepped its own boundaries. Some individuals have become figurative punching bags for the movement, public examples pilloried for the movement’s cause. Among the victims have been Palestine’s private sector hotshots: Bashar al-Masri has been accused of advancing “personal interests and profit making at the expense of Palestinian rights” for his Rawabi project, an ambitious new Palestinian city being built north of

526 Interview with author November 2013. 527 Yoel Goldman. “Abbas: Don’t Boycott Israel.” The Times of Israel. Accessed February 8, 2014. http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-we-do-not-support-the-boycott-of-israel/. 528 BDS activist, interview with author, Ramallah, April 2013.

269 Ramallah;529 and Munib al-Masri has been called out for taking part in “one of the worst forms of normalization” for his bizarre alliance with settlement grocery store chain owner

Rami Levy.530 One Palestinian business leader has complained that the BDS’s charges, many of which he rejected as mischaracterization and hyperbole, are tantamount to incitement in a culture that pays close attention to reputation.531 Others have claimed that the BDS runs the risk of alienating large segments of the population when its attacks get personal. Yet its supporters see such actions as an important rallying cry, raising awareness of the numerous ways Palestinians ostensibly promote the occupation in their cooperation with Israel.

Whether individual attacks like these violate BDS principles is up for interpretation. But it is clear that they form the basis of a vibrant debate on the parameters of economic cooperation with Israel, motivating boycotts outside the BDS movment. In

August 2014, in the midst of Operation Defensive Shield in Gaza, Palestinian grassroots organizers started a campaign to boycott all Israeli products. The strategy was clearly articulated by Naser Abdul Karrem, an economic analyst at Birzeit University.

Recognizing the limited economic impact a Palestinian boycott of Israeli products might have, he argued that: “The campaigns to boycott Israeli products go beyond the economic repercussions because this is a patriotic and moral duty that contributes, even if only partially, in eliminating the economic dependence on Israel.”532 This boycott, unlike its predecessors, did seem to have a degree of rhetorical coordination between the PA and

529 Palestinian BDS National Committee, “Palestinian Civil Society Denounces Bashar Masri’s Normalization with Israel as Undermining the Struggle for Palestinian Rights,” BDSmovement.net, accessed March 28, 2014, http://www.bdsmovement.net/2012/bnc-denounces-bashar-masri-normalization-9500. 530 Jalal Abukhater, “BNC condemns Palestinian billionaire Munib Masri’s dealings with Israeli settler tycoon,” Text, The Electronic Intifada, (August 11, 2012), https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jalal-abukhater/bnc-condemns-palestinian-billionaire-munib-masris- dealings-israeli-settler. 531 Palestinian business leader, interview with author, Rawabi, September 2013. 532 Ahmad Melhem, “Sales of Israeli Goods in West Bank down 50% due to Boycott - Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East,” Al- Monitor, August 21, 2014, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/west-bank-economic-boycott-israeli-products.html.

270 the grassroots. Director-general of Policy and Economic Studies and spokesman for the

Ministry of Economy, Azmi Abdul Rahman, stated her support of the boycott, claiming it was in line with the PA’s long-standing position to increase national production. Abdul

Rahman did not, however, explain why the PA did not adopt the boycott as a matter of law. Khaled Mansour, a leading activist in the boycott movement, called out the PA for its inaction, demanding it drop its commitment to the Paris Protocol. Indeed, Mansour understands that normative guidance needs to come from both the bottom and the top, and that institutionalization of a boycott at the government level is the only way to ensure its realization: “Citizens should vow to boycott Israel and turn this into a culture rooted in people through integrating it in the school and university curricula and in the mosque sermons.”533 No concerted effort was made, however, and the 2014 boycott fizzled out with little long-term implications.

It may, however, have paved the way for the 2015 ban, when members of the national leadership moved to ban products from six Israeli companies: Tnuva, Strauss,

Osem, Elite, Prigat and Jafora. The move came from The Palestinian Supreme National

Committee, made up of representatives of the PLO, private sector, unions, and PA customs, a body that claimed some degree of connection to the PA.534 The committee implement the ban on February 9, 2015, and it went into effect two days later. The move stands in contrast to the April 2010 Law to Ban and Combat Settlement Products. First, the 2010 law was signed and implemented (with limited success) by the PA. The 2015

“law” was not an official government decree, although members of the PA and PLO came out supporting it. Second, the 2015 ban signals that elements of the national

533 Ibid. 534 Ahmad Melhem, “PA Considers Ending Economic Ties with Israel,” Al-Monitor, February 23, 2015, http://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/gaza-ban-israel-goods-pa-paris-protocol.html.

271 leadership believe Palestinians need to make a more radical break from the Israeli economy, expanding for the first time a boycott from settlements to targeted business from Israel proper.

The ban appeared to be more of a pressure tactic by the leadership, but politicians and activists took it seriously. Shopkeepers were given two weeks to empty their shelves of the products, and customs agents worked to prevent deliveries of Tnuva products, which were destroyed publically in Ramallah’s central square in March 2015 as a show of public enforcement. Other parts of the West Bank have followed suit, and schools and mosques have joined the fray to raise awareness of the boycott.535 Like its predecessor, the ban fizzled out. Also like its predecessor, however, the 2015 ban opened up the normative landscape for another push.

In March 2016, after Israel banned the sale of products made from five

Palestinians companies in East Jerusalem, the PA finally entered the boycott wars. For the very first time, the PA government in the West Bank officially resolved to prohibit the entry of products made by five Israeli companies - Tnuva Dairy, Tara Dairy, Strauss

Ice Cream, Tapuzina Juice and Zoglobeck Meats.536 Lest one considers the move to be a shift in norms, PA sources confirmed that the ban was in place only as a tit-for-tat measure, and that it would be repealed as soon as Israel ended its ban on Palestinian products. The government resolution was still in place as of May 2016.

There is an undeniable shift in the direction of a boycott norm in the West Bank, emanating from both the grassroots and elements of the leadership. But its impact has so far been limited, in large part because the fractured leadership inconsistently applies the

535 Daoud Kuttab, “West Bank Boycotts Six Israeli Companies,” Al-Monitor, April 9, 2015, http://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/04/palestnian-boycott-israel-products-economy-occupation.html. 536 Ahmad Melhem, “Will PA Continue Enforcement of Israeli Products Ban?,” Al-Monitor, April 1, 2016, http://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/palesitinian-government-ban-entry-israel-products-west-bank.html.

272 boycotts it nominally supports. More importantly, the PA makes no claim that a boycott is a national duty. Instead, it serves as a very small stick against the occupation when

Israel decides to punish Palestinian businesses. The grassroots, for its part, has made inroads promoting a boycott norm in cities and on university campuses, but it is entirely absent in Area C, and seems strongest among the intellectual elite.537 The groundwork is laid for a significant boycott movement, but my theory suggest that a successful boycott norm will only take place, and Palestinians will only comply en masse, when the

Palestinian national leadership unites while embracing an independent grassroots.

Labor as a (mostly) permissive norm: In the five years that followed the second intifada, very few activists or politicians took on the issue of labor in Israel or labor in settlements.

Indeed, until 2016, labor in Israel has remained a perfectly acceptable norm – debates about the practice center around whether Israel issues enough permits or around the treatment of Palestinian laborers.538 Using a labor boycott as a tactic of resistance, at least inside Israel, appeared to have died with the first intifada. Labor in illegal West Bank settlements, however, started to garner attention in the normative realm in 2010, when then Prime Minster Salaam Fayyad and Minister of National Economy Hasan Abu

Libdeh took on the topic. As part of their push to boycott settlement goods, the government proposed banning work in settlements and setting up a fund to compensate the 35,000 laborers (in 2009) who chose to work in the settlements, with a plan to make the practice illegal by 2012.539 Abu Libdeh and Fayyad strongly favored the ban, but

537 Over the course of 2 years of fieldwork in various parts of Area C, not one interview subject followed or cared to follow either PA bans on settlement products or activist suggested bans of Israeli products. 538 See especially reports by labor rights group Kav LaOved at http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/en/ 539 Avi Issacharoff, “PA Lightens Ban on Working in Settlements to Ease Palestinian Unemployment,” Haaretz, December 28, 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/pa-lightens-ban-on-working-in-settlements-to-ease-palestinian-unemployment-1.333439.

273 Labor Minister Ahmed Majdalani had misgivings, concerned that the government would not be able to compensate laborers or find them work in the West Bank or Israeli markets. Majdalani had reason for concern: in 2010, 14.2% of the Palestinian work force was employed in the settlements, nearly 10,000 without valid work permits.540

But Fayyad disagreed with Majdalani and others in the government, and blames the failure of the initiative on a lack of political will. In a November 2012 exchange with the author, a high level PA official involved in drafting the law said:

If the Palestinian regime was on board, if the factions and unions were on board, it would have been very easy for us to set up a national fund and find an alternative for those people. It wouldn't hurt if the PA brings them in and says, ok, for one year you are receiving unemployment subsidy while you look for a job. This year you will save this much monthly, and you are requested to go for training so that you are integrated somewhere else in the Palestinian economy and the Palestinian economy can absorb them in 2-3 years time. That would have had a big impact.

Author: Where would the fund have come from?

International donors, the private sector. If you go and tell the private sector, ok, go absorb ten workers from the settlements and you'll be subsidized for one year for 50% of their salary, I think that they could do that easily. In the meantime, if they are absorbing 4-6,000, that's not a hard challenge to meet. Even if we have to put them on temporal salary from the PA until they find another job. And it didn't work, and I think it is wrong that it didn't work.

The official’s remarks reflect a number of striking things. First and foremost, the PA itself was not united on this law. Fayyad and the Abu Libdeh stood virtually alone in their support of the ban. Even the grassroots scoffed at the ban as a privileged opinion.541 BDS members are also forgiving of settlement laborers, believing that shaming the most

540 “2010 Increase in Palestinian Workers in Settlements,” Alternative Information Center, April 28, 2011, http://alternativenews.org/archive/index.php/features/economy-of-the-occupation/3557-2010-increase-in-palestinian-workers-in- settlements-3557. 541 Labor organizer, interview with author, Jordan Valley, June 2014.

274 vulnerable segments of Palestinian society does not serve their cause.542 Abbas never backed the Prime Minister’s initiative, and the norm never made it passed a select few intellectual elites.

Normalization and anti-normalization

An April 2014 Arab Word for Research and Development (AWRAD) poll found that

70% of Palestinians are opposed to actions they deem to be normalization, including

“people-to-people” dialogue, and cultural and sporting activities between Palestinians and

Israelis.543 A 2013 al-Quds Open University poll similarly found that 74% of Palestinians believe Oslo created “political normalization” between Israel and the PA, but produced no gains for Palestinians or the Palestinian cause.544 Those numbers reflect far greater unanimity around anti-normalization than economic cooperation. From a cost-benefit analysis, the numbers make sense: the cost of a labor or commercial boycott is high in the short-term and unknown in the long-term, and short-term benefits of economic cooperation are high. But normal social and academic relations with the occupier come with few benefits, especially when held up against the expectation of peace. The costs of normalization, meanwhile, are high, at least in the assessment of those promoting the norm – namely, that normalization activities offer a fig leaf to Israelis who want normal relations without addressing the occupation or self-determination for Palestinians.

Nevertheless, the fact that an anti-normalization norm appears to have crystallized in the aftermath of the second intifada – at least in polling numbers – presents a challenge to a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance. In the previous chapter, we found that

542 BDS activist, interview with author, Ramallah, March 2013. 543 “Government Performance, Reconciliation, Elections, BNC Movement and Normalization,” AWRAD, April 1, 2014, http://www.awrad.org/page.php?id=7hfeBu81Cja9852360ANesvSXXieG. 544 “Poll: Oslo Brought ‘Political Normalization’ but No Benefits,” Maan News Agency, November 18, 2013, http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648624.

275 anti-normalization gained traction during the second intifada despite fractured leadership, a result of physical barriers to gathering, due to restrictions on freedom and movement.

This section explores why the norm continued to take hold, factoring in both physical impediments and a growing normative movement against “normal relations” with Israel.

In the course of fieldwork, I found more disagreement on the definition of normalization than any other major Palestinian issue. On paper, all seems clear. PACBI, which claims to represent a large swath of Palestinian civil society, defines normalization as:

the participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people.545

Nevertheless, disagreement continues, and rather vehemently. The fault lines were clear in an October 2013 debate on Watan TV between Ashraf al-Ajrami, former minister of

Prisoner Affairs, and Khalil Shaheen, a policy analyst and journalist.546 Al-Ajrami, part of the PA and PLO establishment, argued that certain forms of dialogue were an important form of Palestinian resistance. People-to-people, he conceded, was a negative form of interaction, but dialogue with Israeli thought-leaders and politicians present an opportunity to control the media narrative and educate Israelis on Palestinians’ needs and desires. Failing to do so for fear of normalization was a missed opportunity that could harm the Palestinian cause. Al-Ajrami also argued that norms around cooperation were munfalitah – “unbounded” – but that they needed to be regulated. In his view, the PA and

545 “Israel’s Exceptionalism: Normalizing the Abnormal,” PACBI, October 31, 2011, http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1749. 546 “Meetings with Israelis.”

276 PLO needed to play a leadership role in shaping the bounds of acceptable cooperation, pointing to the work of the Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society, a body we will turn to below. But al-Ajrami’s chief omission was a requirement that dialogue be premised on a rejection of the occupation and discrimination by both sides. PLO dialogue with Likud members, for example, would be perfectly acceptable to al-Ajrami if it showed the Israeli members a way forward and educated them on possible political solutions. Shaheen, a BDS supporter and an activist who works from the grassroots, tended to align more closely with the PACBI position, namely that dialogue was necessary and useful only if predicated on a condemnation of the occupation and discrimination.547

These two fault lines represent the core difference between PACBI and its activist supporters and the official Fatah/PLO leadership, but they also reveal fissures within the

PLO. The Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society appears to be the leadership’s response to PACBI and other norm entrepreneurs working outside the official leadership to regulate normalization activities. Established in 2012, the committee was meant to mobilize Israelis in support of a two-state solution. To this end, they have held lectures with Israeli students, broadcast their message on Israeli radio, and welcomed dozens of

Israeli delegations, among them women’s groups, Mizrahi Jews, and interfaith dialogue groups. As a norm-regulating body, however, they have been an utter failure, in large part due to a credibility deficit. Among many scandals, the committee faced intense scrutiny in 2016 after Abbas sent Muhammad al-Madani, the head of the Committee, to offer his respects to the family of Brig. Gen. Munir Amar, the former head of the Israeli civil

547 Ibid.

277 administration in the West Bank. 548 The response from members of the PLO and the grassroots was swift. Omar Shehadeh, a member of the PLO’s Central Council said the committee had no accountability for their actions, and as such were harming the

Palestinian cause, further consolidating normalization. The BDS National Committee demanded that the Committee be dissolved, and PACBI quickly followed suit.549

The case may be extreme, but other meetings between the Committee and Israeli delegations demonstrate the same degree of disconnect between the Committee and

Palestinian society. In March 2016 the Committee met with the Abrahamic Reunion, an interfaith initiative set up in 2005 to “promote love, peace, communication, cooperation and dialogue among the people of the Holy Land” through a religious lens.550 But the

Abrahamic Reunion has never successfully tackled polarizing political issues, and most members simply prefer to ignore politics or nationalism, especially around the right of return. 551 In PACBI’s own definition, the group fits the classic definition of normalization, but Committee members did little to address political issues in the meeting.

Case Studies: A number of dialogue groups have maneuvered the anti- normalization norm with varying degrees of success. In her 2011 book, Maxine

Kaufman-Lacusta found that most organizations with variations of “joint” projects began to reckon with the anti-normalization debate as early as the late 1990’s.552 The most common concerns crystallized during the second intifada and were articulated in the

548 Ahmad Melhem, “Will Palestinian Interaction with Israel Be Stopped?,” Al-Monitor, April 6, 2016, http://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/04/committee-israeli-interaction-dissolved-possibility-bds.html. 549 Ibid. 550 “The Abrahamic Reunion | Bringing Harmony to the Holy Land,” Abrahamic Reunion, accessed May 30, 2016, http://www.abrahamicreunion.org/. 551 Full disclosure: the author was a founding member of the group in 2005, but has not been active since 2008. 552 Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta et al., Refusing to Be Enemies: Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation (Reading: Ithaca Press, 2011).

278 aftermath. They include: challenging the Israeli policy of separation; the primacy of struggle against the occupation; avoiding reproduction of the oppressive relationship; complimentary but different roles for Israeli and Palestinian participants; and redressing the power imbalance. Related is a reframing of the description, and running, of organizations that do joint activities, namely that Palestinians lead and Israelis support. In essence, Israelis involved in joint activities had to be junior partners.553

This section provides a brief analysis of three entities that contended with the new norm, with varying degrees of success: the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace (IWC), the Israel-Palestine: Creative Regional

Initiatives (IPCRI – formerly Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information), and al-Quds University.

IWC: Abandoning dialogue: the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace was established in 2005 as an extension of the

Jerusalem Link, a women’s collective born in the activism of the first intifada, established as a political dialogue forum in 1994. The IWC was founded under the auspices of the United Nations Development Fund for Women - UNIFEM - in New York with the aim of upholding and strengthening UNSC Resolution 1325 calling for a stronger role of women in the peace process, from negotiations to post-conflict reconciliation. The Commission was made up of a number of influential Israeli,

Palestinian and international women who agreed on the basic premises of a two-state solution, including the end of the occupation, the Palestinian right to self-determination,

Jerusalem as a shared capital, and respecting the right of return along the lines of UNGA resolution 194. Their founding statement reflects a left-leaning political position, and

553 Ibid., 131–187.

279 spoke centrally about challenging power asymmetries that framed the conflict.554 Coming on the tails of the second intifada, and entering a phase of heightened tension in Gaza and growing anti-normalization sentiment, members immediately started disagreeing on political positions.

Among the first tests was a statement on the Beit Hanoun killings of 2006, in which Israel bombarded a civilian area of the Gaza Strip killing 19 civilians. The group condemned the bombing with little disagreement.555 A challenging session in 2007 produced a similar statement condemning Hamas rockets in civilian areas. Some

Palestinian participants hoped that concession of condemning armed resistance would soften the Israeli view on the BDS movement, and Palestinian members of the IWC asked their Israeli counterparts to support the BDS call soon after. Israeli members said they could support a boycott of settlements, but not of Israel proper, a move that frustrated Palestinian members, though it was not prohibitive for the survival of the group.556

The 2008-2009 Gaza war proved far more contentious. In January 2009, the IWC came out with a strong condemnation of Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip, strategically omitting a parallel condemnation of Hamas rocket fire, a move meant to prevent drawing symmetry between the two sides.557 The debates nearly tore the Commission apart, and many Israeli members left. Some Palestinian members also saw the debate as the straw that broke the camel’s back. One founding member expressed her frustration this way: “It

554 “International Women’s Commission Charter of Principles” (UNISPAL, July 27, 2005), https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/CFF3010232159E5585257737006B9386. 555 “Israeli and Palestinian Women Demand an End to Attacks on Civilians” (International Women’s Commission, November 11, 2006), https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/81BAB174EEF6C84B852572EB0047834C. 556 Member of IWC, interview with author, al-Bireh, November 11, 2012. 557 “International Women’s Commission (IWC) For A Just And Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace,” Womensphere, January 12, 2009, https://womensphere.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/international-womens-commission-iwc-for-a-just-and-sustainable-palestinian- israeli-peace/.

280 only makes them feel better. Individually. And only polishes the view of Israel and the

Israeli left and mainstream left that they are good, but in practice it leads to nothing. And we are paying the price. So why should we continue with this international commission?”558 Though she stayed on until the Commission disbanded in 2010, she said that the very fact that some Israeli members supported the bombardment of Gaza motivated her to give up on the group down the road.

In the end, the Gaza flotilla raid rang the death knell for the IWC, as members could not agree on a political statement condemning Israeli actions. Another member explained why the group couldn’t go on:

It’s just the times, the times, did not allow for the IWC to continue. The right has grown in Israel and become more and more aggressive, more powerful. There is no language for peacemaking or coexistence. No place for that. It became dangerous for the Israeli women. We felt like the energy and emotions should be invested in their own constituency, and our emotions and energy should be invested in our own constituency.559

Another member was less sympathetic to the Israeli members, saying they ultimately lacked the courage to stand up against right-wing elements of their community. When asked whether the IWC ran into any problems with the BDS movement, members interviewed said they did not, in large part because the IWC’s message was so overtly political. They said the condemnation of the bombardment of Gaza lent the Commission credibility, and made Palestinian activists ambivalent to their work. In short, the IWC arrived on the scene just as anti-normalization sentiments were on the rise, but they continued dialogue in large part because Palestinian members forced Israeli members to

558 Founding member of IWC, interview with author, Ramallah, November 10, 2012. 559 IWC member, interview with author, al-Bireh, November 12, 2012.

281 issue strong political statements. Normalization was at the forefront of Palestinian members’ minds (although all members I interviewed stated their disagreement with BDS on how normalization is defined), but it was not the force that fractured and ultimately destroyed the group. Instead, much like with dialogue groups during the second intifada, political context played a far greater role.

IPCRI – internal reckoning: In an October 31, 2011 statement, in an effort to further clarify their definition of normalization, PACBI issued a statement condemning

OneVoice and IPCRI. On the latter they claimed that:

IPCRI adopts the ubiquitous “conflict paradigm” while ignoring the domination and oppression that characterize the relationship of the Israeli state with the Palestinian people. IPCRI conveniently neglects a discussion of the roots of this “conflict,” what it is about, and which “side” is paying the price.560

They later charge that the organization “privileges co-existence over co-resistance.”561 A leading activist in the organization explained that the normalization IPCRI is guilty of “is serious as it tries to colonize the minds of Palestinian youth, in particular, and Palestinian professionals, exploiting the resource-starved environment most Palestinians live in under

Israel’s occupation and apartheid and the severe restrictions on movement imposed on

Palestinians by the occupation.”562

IPCRI’s initial response was self-defensive, and led to an op-ed by the Israeli co- chair, Gershon Baskin, in the Jerusalem Post, that argued against accusations of

560 “Israel’s Exceptionalism: Normalizing the Abnormal.” 561 Ibid. 562 BDS activist, email correspondence with author, December 25, 2012.

282 normalization and made a case for ongoing dialogue.563 Later that month, however, the organization went through a leadership transition, placing Dan Goldenblatt and Riman

Barakat as co-CEOs. Their response to BDS activism was far more self-reflective, and led almost immediately to a policy statement by the organization specifically addressing normalization in March 2012. In it, the organization acknowledged the validity of normalization debates, and laid out their own definition. Recognizing the joint work was no longer a valuable tool for ending the status quo, they also announced a tactical shift for the organization, namely to conduct separate but coordinated activities. Addressing

PACBI directly, the statement said:

It should also be noted that IPCRI has been identified, wrongfully we believe, as a “normalizer” by the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel/BDS movement which gives us extra motivation to examine this topic. The feeling that led us, at IPCRI, to examine this more deeply is the confusion and lack of clarity for us, as a bi-national organization operating in this space and for other NGOs and for the international donor community. There is a strong need for a clear strategy for cross-border activities that would challenge the occupation in every respect.564

IPCRI’s statement reflects a desire on the part of the organization to maintain credibility within Palestinian society while holding on to their own values around their work. One

IPCRI staff member argued that PACBI’s attacks on IPCRI we more about character assassination than values, and pointed to IPCRI’s own anti-status quo stance as a counter.565 The IPCRI example demonstrates a number of important trends. First and foremost, it establishes that PACBI has influence among Palestinians and Israelis, enough

563 Gershon Baskin, “Encountering Peace: Normalizing Anti-Normalization,” The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com, December 17, 2011, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Encountering-Peace-Normalizing-anti-normalization. 564 “Anti-Normalization = Anti-Status Quo” (Jerusalem: Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, March 2012). 565 IPCRI staff member, Interview with author, al-Tireh, October 8, 2012.

283 to force one of the more established “peace NGOs” to debate normalization and come to terms with it in their own work. Second, the organization faced such a credibility crisis in

Palestinian society that they changed tactics away from political dialogue toward separate but coordinated activities. Their joint Israeli-Palestinian gatherings have all but disappeared, with far more attention on media literacy, trade facilitation, and entrepreneurship. Based on interviews with IPCRI members and a review of press statements, it seems clear that public pressure by BDS activists had some effect.

Al-Quds university in the cross-hairs: Like IPCRI, al-Quds university, and specifically its president, Sari Nusseibeh, have battled extensively with the anti- normalization camp. Nusseibeh, a long-time activist, is one of the staunchest supporters of open dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis, a position he has held onto despite threats against his life, bomb scares in his classroom, and shifts in the political environment. The debate heated up on his campus in 2005 after al-Quds became the only

Palestinian university to maintain a joint MA program with a number of Israeli universities. The program in question was set up in 2004 as a “Declaration of Principles of Palestinian-Israeli International Cooperation in Scientific and Academic Affairs” and was signed by the rector of an Italian university, five Israeli universities, and four

Palestinian institutions. But one year after signing, three of the four Palestinian institutions withdrew their support, holding the line of a long-standing principle of academic boycott at the university level. Al-Quds University, however, stayed the course, a move that a high level administrator claimed was a principled decision guided by Sari

Nusseibeh.566 Nusseibeh even went so far as to condemn a British Union decision to boycott Haifa University over its treatment of Ilan Pappe, calling the boycott “wrong and

566 Al-Quds university administrator, interview with author, Jerusalem, June 6, 2013.

284 unjustified.”567 Both moves frustrated the Palestinian Union of University Teachers and

Employees who accused Nusseibeh of normalizing relations with the Sharon government and demanded his resignation. The Higher Education Council, founded in 1977 to represent Palestinian academic institutions, also condemned Nusseibeh’s position.

Nusseibeh’s support for cooperation appeared to have hit its limit in 2009 with the

Israeli bombardment on Gaza. In the aftermath, in February 2009, the al-Quds University board voted to cut all forms of cooperation with Israeli academic institutions. Nusseibeh claimed the move was a challenging one to make – he still held the belief that dialogue is preferable to separation. But recognizing the overwhelming support for a boycott among his colleagues, and angry with Israel’s actions in Gaza, he eventually capitulated.568

Despite the statement, al-Quds University continued its cooperation with the joint MA program in Rome, and allowed its members to have private cooperation with Israeli universities, moves he says are meant to preserve academic freedom. In 2012, he initiated a program with a German university and Hebrew University, and faced another backlash from Palestinian academics, activists, and the Higher Education Council. The program continues to function through May 2016.

That al-Quds university continues cooperation despite a strong norm against academic cooperation appears to relate to two factors. First, al-Quds university is in Abu

Dis outside Jerusalem, and outside the PA’s sphere of influence. Its geographic location has influenced views held by students, many who have far more interaction with Israelis than students at Palestinian universities deep inside the West Bank. Second, Sari

Nusseibeh stands out as an anomaly in his continued support of academic cooperation

567 Khaled Amayreh, “Palestinian Teachers Union Calls for Sari Nusseibeh’s Dismissal,” Text, The Electronic Intifada, (May 24, 2005), https://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-teachers-union-calls-sari-nusseibehs-dismissal/5599. 568 Sari Nusseibeh, interview with author, Abu Dis, May 7, 2013.

285 with Israelis. One academic at Al-Najah University in Nablus told me that his colleagues unanimously support a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The small minority that have taken part in individual scientific cooperation have faced condemnation from activists, colleagues, and the university. Al-Najah has also held several workshops on

BDS principles and in 2013 undertook a mission to make the campus an “Israel-free” zone.569 A professor at Bethlehem University shared a similar impression of the state of academic boycott, claiming it was the strongest anti-normalization norm among

Palestinians.570

Cultural and academic boycotts pose a small but important challenge to a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance, one worth considering. Despite a deeply fractured leadership and dwindling social purpose, the prohibitive norm around cultural and academic cooperation is fairly robust. A large majority of Palestinians support it, and protesters routinely shut down activities deemed unacceptable.571 Like any prohibitive norm, full compliance is unlikely, especially in the absence of clear guidelines from a united leadership. But the norm is certainly more robust, and compliance more widespread than my theory would predict. There are a few reasons for this. First and foremost, anti-normalization runs parallel to Israeli efforts to divide Israelis from

Palestinians. Whereas as the 1990s saw a flourishing of such groups, with PA and Israeli government support, the 2000s saw an aggressive separation campaign by the Israeli government. Physical impediments made it nearly impossible for Palestinians and Israelis to regularly gather, quashing the actions of those groups most associated with

569 Professor at al-Najah University, interview with author, Nablus, June 21, 2013. 570 Professor at Bethlehem University, interview with author, Bethlehem, August 15, 2015. 571 See for example Amira Hass, “Fatah Official Quizzed for Blocking Meeting Between Israeli, Palestinian Activists,” Haaretz, December 30, 2011, http://www.haaretz.com/fatah-official-quizzed-for-blocking-meeting-between-israeli-palestinian-activists- 1.404481 and Khaled Abu Toameh, “Protests Again Thwart Israeli-Palestinian Meeting,” The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com, December 21, 2011, http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Protests-again-thwart-Israeli-Palestinian-meeting.

286 normalization.572 Those same physical barriers meant that Israelis who continued to support Palestinian-led activism against the occupation did so at their own risk, entering the West Bank often illegally to demonstrate alongside Palestinians. Second, the political context made cooperation less and less acceptable for individual Palestinian participants.

Activists, including those who had become politically aware due to people-to-people activities, came to realize the futility of “peace camps” or dialogue groups while bombs dropped on Gaza. The successive wars on Gaza proved to be the turning point for many

Palestinians who had otherwise benefited from activities typically associated with normalization.

Red lines: same proscription, different enforcement

Red lines remained constant from the second intifada through 2016: collaborators and land sellers were deemed traitors of the nation, and were treated as such by members of society. But punishment of tried or accused collaborators varied a great deal from the PA government in the West Bank and the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. In the West

Bank, collaborators were occasionally arrested and tried, some even give the death penalty for the crime. But Abu Mazen did not sign a single execution order since 2005, so

West Bank collaborators (and others on death row) have so far been spared. Not so in the

Gaza Strip, where Hamas has executed a number of collaborators, while armed vigilantes have summarily executed dozens more. The varying responses reveal a great deal. For the

PA, a lenient position reflects a broader acceptance of security coordination with Israel, a policy the PA has had in place since 1995. Being lenient on collaborators does not mean the PA condones the act, only that they do not see punishment of the crime as a necessary

572 Namely, Seeds of Peace, The Bereaved Families Forum, and OneVoice.

287 deterrent. For Hamas, on the other hand, deterrence is still very much a tactic. As an active resistance movement (unlike the PA), Hamas is tasked with “cleansing” the nation of dangerous elements so that resistance can be most effective. This philosophy has underpinned Hamas’ response to collaborators since it took control of the strip in 2007.

Hamas - cleansing as deterrence: Since 2007, Hamas has handed down 61 death sentences and executed 24 individuals.573 Nearly half of these were collaborators. But more troubling are extrajudicial killings, notably during Israel’s bombardments of the strip, which are carried out by masked vigilantes. The Hamas government oscillates between vocal condemnation of extrajudicial killing and silent acceptance. That Hamas contends with the phenomenon more than its counterparts in the West Bank relates to the ongoing security crisis in the Gaza Strip and the recurrent wars between the militant group and Israel. Israel, for its part, has had to adjust its recruitment strategies in the Gaza

Strip. Since the siege began in 2007, interactions between Gazans and Israeli security forces have diminished significantly. Less Gazans entering Israel for work, or in transit to the West Bank, has meant that Shin Bet recruiters have had to dig deeper. That was on display in 2009 and 2010 when three Palestinian medical students claimed they had been denied permits for reentry for refusing to serve as Israeli informers.574 With ongoing wars and less interactions, Israel began online recruitment, ensnaring young men with online chatting with presumptive young women, an act that eventually led to blackmail.575

The result was a fairly robust collaborator network that would be activated – and punished – when wars broke out. Indeed, Gaza saw a cycle from 2007-2014:

573 “Statistics on the Death Penalty in the Palestinian Authority and under Hamas Control in Gaza,” B’Tselem, accessed June 2, 2016, http://www.btselem.org/inter_palestinian_violations/death_penalty_statistics. 574 Amira Hass, “Shin Bet Recruiters Enticing Palestinian Medical Students With Jerusalem Entry Permits,” Haaretz, May 12, 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/shin-bet-recruiters-enticing-palestinian-medical-students-with-jerusalem-entry-permits-1.289805. 575 Fares Akram, “Hamas Urges Collaborators With Israel to Surrender,” The New York Times, March 14, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/world/middleeast/hamas-urges-collaborators-with-israel-to-surrender.html.

288 collaborators are summarily executed in the heat of war then granted amnesty in the aftermath. The cycle began in 2008-2009, when over a dozen accused collaborators escaped Hamas jails, only to be rounded up and publically executed.576 The move was meant as a deterrent, but similar treatment did not follow in the relative calm of 2010, when the Hamas Interior Ministry gave collaborators 60 days to surrender in exchange for amnesty. 577 Dozens purportedly accepted the offer, though those numbers are unverifiable due to Hamas promises of secrecy for those who turned themselves in. Still more collaborators appeared on the scene in the November 2012 war, during which 6 men were summarily executed in Gaza’s streets. Those public executions followed another three days prior. Like in 2009, a spokesperson for the Hamas political bureau condemned the acts, saying that collaborators should be tried and executed, but never killed summarily. 578 A Hamas Interior Ministry spokesperson, Islah Shahwan, also condemned the treatment of the accused, but insisted that his Ministry worked within the law, citing the nine regulatory bodies in place to ensure the fair treatment and trial of prisoners.579

The cycle replicated itself in the aftermath of the 2012 war, when Hamas began a

“cleansing” of the strip of all traitors.580 The Interior Ministry once again offered amnesty to collaborators, this time for two months. Shahwan insisted that those who turned themselves in would be dealt with absolute secrecy, and would be given a chance to repent and reintegrate into society. Dozens turned themselves in, though numbers are

576 Fares Akram and Jodi Rudoren, “Executions in Gaza Are a Warning to Spies,” The New York Times, August 22, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/world/middleeast/israel-gaza.html. 577 Saed Bannoura, “Palestinian Collaborators Fess up during Hamas’ 60 Days of Amnesty,” IMEMC News, July 11, 2010, http://imemc.org/article/59108/. 578 “Alleged Spies in Gaza Are Tortured to Death, Dragged through Streets,” The France 24 Observers, November 23, 2012, http://observers.france24.com/en/20121123-killing-spies-gaza-israel-video. 579 Asmaa Al-Ghoul, “Gazans Witness Crackdown on Alleged Collaborators with Israel,” Al-Monitor, January 27, 2013, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/01/israeli-informants-gaza.html. 580 Akram, “Hamas Urges Collaborators With Israel to Surrender.”

289 once again unverifiable. Immediately following the amnesty deadline, in June 2013,

Hamas executed two alleged collaborators. The move was clearly symbolic – statement that the Gaza government would keep its promise for amnesty, but punish those who refused to repent.581 And again, as war broke out in 2014, vigilantes took it upon themselves to punish collaborators. After Israel assassinated three top Hamas commanders, vigilantes gathered 18 alleged collaborators and killed them in the streets.582

Hamas’ norms around collaboration are consistent with those of a party actively trying to generate and enforce a norm. Punishment is both swift when necessary and lenient when possible. Public executions serve as a visual reminder to the public of the dangers of working with the enemy, while amnesty signals that the government recognizes the seduction of Israeli recruitment and forgives those who have strayed without condoning the actions. As for the vigilantes, they take it upon themselves to terrify the population into following the norm. Bodies are paraded about town squares, dragged behind motorcycles, mutilated beyond recognition, and left as a display for onlookers. The norm is of course deeply internalized, as it has been for decades. And society plays a strong roll in reinforcing it. Families of collaborators are shamed years after their family member has been accused, tried, or executed. Many lose work and struggle to get married.583 Public shaming is an important part of the norm enforcement, and is part and parcel with Hamas laws and vigilante executions.

581 “Hamas Govt ‘Executes 2 Collaborators,’” Maan News Agency, June 7, 2013, http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=607257. 582 Akram and Rudoren, “Executions in Gaza Are a Warning to Spies.” 583 Rasha Abou Jalal, “Spies’ Families Marginalized in Gaza,” Al-Monitor, February 16, 2015, http://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/gaza-spies-israel-resistance-execution-families-shame.html.

290 PA collaboration revisited: Charges of treason against the PA intensified and became more common in the aftermath of the inqisam. Determined to keep Hamas down, particularly in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas’ PA developed the reputation of a revamped Village Leagues. The reputation rested on the robust and unwavering security collaboration that began with General Dayton’s training of PA police. A 2010 Crisis

Group report warned that “unparalleled security cooperation with Israel and crackdown on opposition groups – notably but not exclusively Hamas – [is] affecting civil society broadly. Without serious progress toward ending the occupation and intra-Palestinian divisions […] PA legitimacy could further shrivel, and ordinary Palestinians’ patience – without which none of this can be sustained – will wear thin.”584 Indeed, between 2007-

2011 the PA had arrested more than 10,000 Hamas supporters, and damning findings from the Palestine Papers revealed a US-influenced policy meant to keep Abbas and

Fayyad in place and Hamas far from the political realm.585 In the midst of the summer

2014 violence, when Israel cracked down on Hamas in the West Bank after the kidnapping of three Israeli teens, the PA faced even great popular backlash for its assistance to Israel. A June raid by the Israeli army in Ramallah had protestors throwing stones at Israeli jeeps, then turning their ire to the PA police headquarters. The raid was followed by a series of marches, each slowed and eventually shut down by the PA.586

Anti-security cooperation is a curious development. On the one hand, countering

Palestinians security cooperation with Israel has deep roots, and the Village League remain an important reminder. But the PA’s promise of self-determination during Oslo

584 “Squaring the Circle: Palestinian Security Reform under Occupation - International Crisis Group” (Crisis Group, September 7, 2010), http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/israel-palestine/98-squaring-the-circle-palestinian-security- reform-under-occupation.aspx. 585 Adam Horowitz, “‘Palestine Papers’ Reveal PA Collaboration with Israel, under US Tutelage,” Mondoweiss, January 25, 2011, http://mondoweiss.net/2011/01/palestine-papers-reveal-pa-collaboration-with-israel-under-us-tutelage/. 586 The author attended one of these demonstrations in which hundreds of protestors marched against conditions in Ofer prison, but were halted by PA security forces.

291 allowed Palestinians to relax that red line. But it returned with a vengeance in the aftermath of the inqisam, and was reaffirmed when the PA continued security coordination with Israel even as it killed civilians in Gaza. For now, it appears as though the line remains red for the majority of the population – a 2014 Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in found that 67% are opposed to continued security coordination with

Israel as a precondition for a peace treaty – but firmly permissive for the official leadership in the West Bank. With leadership so fractured, agreement on the norm that permeates the bottom and the top is unlikely.

A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance answers a fair deal of norm coherence and compliance in the post-inqisam years. Leadership was deeply fragmented horizontally and vertically, and end-goals continued their decline into obscurity. Both

Hamas and the PA suffered from legitimacy crises – the PA for exceeding its mandate and failing to produce results (despite small victories at the UN) and Hamas for failing to produce any tangible gains for Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip (aside from holding on to its credentials as the only party consistently engaged in resistance. Social purpose was exceptionally low in this time-frame. To be sure, some isolated hubs felt a stronger sense of social purpose, particularly activists in or around the BDS movement. But they remained a minority, albeit a vocal one seemingly capable of gradually shaping public discourse on a number of interactional norms. That respondents consistently referred to the post-inqisam years as munfalitah is a strong validation of a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance.

But certain questions remain unanswered. Specifically, how have the anti- normalization norm, the anti-PA security cooperation norm, and the consumer boycott

292 norm managed to gains so much traction? To be sure, these prohibitive norms do not enjoy all the clarity of, say, an anti-collaboration norm: the PA continues to argue for security coordination despite society-wide condemnation, the definition of normalization is still hotly contested, and consumer boycotts are hardly entrenched as a national strategy, usually lasting just months. Compliance is also nowhere near complete: dialogue groups still exist, the PA still cooperates on security matters with Israel, and

Palestinians still buy settlement products and Israeli goods. But movement in the direction of clarity and greater compliance, despite low social purpose, suggests something else is at work. The alternative hypothesis of institutional mediation helps little in understanding the trend. Institutions may be slightly more robust in this time frame, but they are uncoordinated and do not promote a strategic vision. Moreover, institutions of influence around the PA are the ones promoting permissive norms that the population appears to be rejecting. Intergroup competition, on the other hand, may help us understand the shift. Anti-normalization, anti-consumer cooperation, and anti-PA security norms tend to gain clarity and supporters with every wave of major contention, most notably during Israel’s wars on Gaza. Intergroup competition appears to have a mediating effect in the long-term despite fragmented leadership, likely in part because intergroup competition momentarily elevates social purpose. Nevertheless, it does not appear to be enough to gain clarity around norms that require tremendous personal sacrifice, namely a labor boycott (in the settlements or Israel) or a concerted and sustained economic boycott. It remains true that for prohibitive norms that require high personal sacrifice, cohesive leadership and high social purpose are still required.

293 Conclusion

While living in Ramallah in 2008, the author worked as the International Liaison for the

Palestine Investment Conference, an international conference that sought to increase investment in Palestinian industry mainly through Gulf and American business investment. It was the genesis of the now infamous Rawabi project, and built some key business relationships between Israelis and Palestinians. The author observed the discourse around the conference with a great deal of curiosity, and recalled one especially spirited conversation around the dinner table at a Palestinian friend’s home. About half of the room declared the conference to be bad for the national project, and condemned it as anything from “normalization” to “collaboration”, placing most of the blame on the PA.

One Palestinian – whose home had just been demolished by the Israeli army to make room for a new stretch of the wall, declared the Palestinians working for the conference to be traitors. He reserved similar words for the author. The other half of the room disagreed: Palestinians needed to stop waiting for a political resolution and take steps for a more reasonable life. If that meant increased cooperation between Palestinians and

Israelis, even if Israelis benefited disproportionately from the cooperation, then so be it.

In short, half the room believed in every day resistance and prohibitive boundaries as a means of achieving national goals, while the other half dismissed national goals as unrealistic and out of reach, satisfied in the end with increased economic opportunities and a more reasonable life.

The author drew up a set of questions that night: which Palestinians get to decide the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable cooperation with Israel? How do

Palestinians go about negotiating loyalty and betrayal while living under occupation?

294 And finally, how do everyday Palestinians assess the value of relative vs. absolute gains vis-à-vis cooperation with Israelis under conditions of extreme power asymmetry? The questions became the foundation for this project. I proceeded inductively from this initial conversation, and after two years of fieldwork, drew up a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance. The empirical chapters confirm, with some caveats, the hypotheses presented here, namely that: Cohesive leadership triggers social purpose, producing clear interactional norms and urging compliance with those norms (H1); If national strategy aims toward diplomacy, interactional norms will be positive, and society-wide compliance high (H1a); if national strategy aims toward resistance, interactional norms will be negative, and society-wide compliance moderate (H1b);

Fragmented leadership produces low social purpose, failing to trigger the mechanism.

Interactional boundaries will be ambiguous and highly contested, and compliance will be individually-centered (H2). Each case analyzed above offers a crucial test, revealing strengths and weaknesses of a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance.

Chapter II establishes the very foundations of interactional norms between

Palestinians and Israelis, during the exceptionally chaotic few years following Israel’s sweeping military defeat of Syria, Egypt and Jordan in 1967. Political and economic cooperation was imposed on Palestinians from the start, and indigenous leadership was fragmented and floundering, unsurprisingly incapable of setting or negotiating interactional norms. Nevertheless, the first six years of occupation saw the gradual genesis of a number of new, if only embryonic, norms. Boycotts were tested, strikes attempted, and political dialogue explored. I use the passive voice intentionally here – with no prior experience to draw from and fragmentation permeating every segment of

295 the population, national leaders fumbled through a series of haphazard boundaries.

Certain norms do have their origins in these crucial years, and became important markers in later boundary negotiations. Leaders tested interactional norms in three broad categories: economic, political, and security. In the first two categories, nationalist circles proposed prohibitive norms – in the economic realm through boycotts and strikes, and in the political through total non-cooperation – but swiftly capitulated, encouraging “change from within” policies instead. Security norms had yet to develop by 1973, but Israel had begun recruiting its army of collaborators, who would play a more relevant role in the latter part of the first twenty years. Unsurprisingly, fractured leadership during the first few years of occupation produced little social purpose, resulting in tremendous ambiguity in the economic and political realm. Residents acted in the interests of self, family, and clan, relying on traditional roles and a long-established system of patronage. In short, interactional boundaries were blurry in 1967, gradually shifting toward permissive encounters by 1973, though by necessity, not design.

We have a first opportunity to observe variation from 1973-1987, when national leadership finally began mobilizing. Interactional norms became most clear from 1973-76 with the emergence of the Palestine National Front (PNF), and 1978-1982 with the foundation of the National Guidance Committee (NGC). But leaders lacked agreement on end-goals from the start, unclear on what resistance was meant to achieve. Social purpose was moderate in moments of coordinated leadership, but never triggered to the extent of creating actual norms. Eventually, national leadership crumbled, in part because of factionalism and in part because of the structural conditions of the occupation. With the

296 advent of the civil administration, any gains in setting boundaries collapsed, leaving a degree of social anomie not seen since the first few years of the occupation.

The pre-intifada years signal how critical all four components of leadership are to the realization of high social purpose. Vertical and horizontal cohesion can help coordinate the masses on strikes, and enforce certain other prohibitive norms. But the population will not adhere to new prohibitive norms if they are given no indication of the direction of the national project. With all that the PNF and later NGC achieved, they had no clear path to independence. This element ensured that social purpose remained below the threshold. So while new prohibitive norms appeared during this time frame, compliance was always low and short-lived.

Chapter III allows for a more robust test of the theory, but also for a test of a competing hypothesis, namely that intergroup competition can trigger social purpose and mediate interactional boundaries. In the first 18 months of the first intifada, leadership coalesced around the UNLU, the PLO, and the popular committees. This decentralized but highly coordinated leadership was vested with a high degree of legitimacy, and the bi-weekly leaflets they issued carried the weight of law. The Islamic Bloc deferred to the

UNLU, coordinating on strike days and boycotts. And while the two forces disagreed on end-goals (Hamas opted out of the diplomatic realm, seemingly comfortable leaving that to the UNLU and PLO for the moment), the nearly consensual belief among the population was that the intifada served to arrive at a negotiated two-state solution. This ambition was articulated in leaflet after leaflet, and the prohibitive interactional boundaries of the uprising were understood as guidelines to achieve that goal.

297 Leadership was cohesive in the first 18 months along every measure: horizontal and vertical coordination, legitimacy, and agreement on end-goals. The result was triggered social purpose, higher during the first 18 months of the intifada than at any other point in the Palestinian struggle. Moved to engage in pro-social behavior,

Palestinians complied even when personal sacrifice was high. Most importantly, leaders proved reflective, hearing the populations needs when strikes or boycotts were to costly and renegotiating the norm. The first intifada also demonstrates the importance of ideas and symbols in enforcing norms. To be sure, material incentives, both carrots and sticks, played an important role in enforcing prohibitive norms, but Palestinians followed norms more out of an ineffable sense of social responsibility rather than fear of retribution. In short, the national movement relied on careful cultural framing and the production of emotional incentives, enforced at every level of society. And because goals were shared both vertically and horizontally, the population felt as though every individual act of compliance was part of a collective project.

Those euphoric months did not last long. The Israeli military slowly strangled the popular committees, arresting thousands. Israeli agents and infiltrators sewed the seeds of internecine violence. Indigenously produced infighting also took a toll, as Fatah, the dominant party in the PLO abroad, tried to assert dominance over the more popular left- leaning parties on the ground. Authority and legitimacy eroded around the UNLU, gradually shifting toward the Islamic bloc. With such deep leadership rifts, social purpose withered away, and interactional norms became unbounded. Compliance ground to a halt, even as enforcement increased. Collaborators were no longer dealt with in a measured fashion, signaling a rapid return to a vicious cycle. Leadership fragmentation directly

298 attenuated social purpose, leaving Palestinians grasping for guidance under a political system designed to leave them without clear normative boundaries.

Two other factors played central roles in the strength and later weakness of social purpose during the intifada. The uprising immediately pinned Palestinians against the

Israeli occupation; with intergroup competition so high, social purpose increased manifold, which contributed to agreed-upon norms around cooperation with Israelis. But my theory argues that intergroup competition, however intense, is not a sufficient condition to trigger social purpose. Without unified leadership, intergroup competition does not produce social purpose, a hypothesis that I test in Chapter V on the second intifada, when leadership suffered from horizontal and vertical fragmentation from the start and failed to produce high levels of social purpose. Second, the erosion of social purpose and the blurring of interactional boundaries in 1989 may not be attributable exclusively to leadership fragmentation. To be sure, Palestinians were exhausted – the uprising demanded self-sacrifice and came at a high cost to participants and non- participants alike. Nevertheless, we can’t explain the timing of that exhaustion. Why did clear norms last for 18 months and not three months? And why did the precipitous decline in clear norms happen just as leadership withered? I consider exhaustion as an environmental condition affecting the outcome, but like intergroup competition, do not deem it a sufficient cause.

The pendulum swing that ushered in the Oslo years could not have been more extreme. The First Intifada brought on a dramatic shift toward prohibitive norms, and a remarkable degree of compliance with them, but the swing toward permissive norms was even more drastic. From the perspective of interactional norms, this was a defining

299 moment. Oslo represented the birth of PLO-sanctioned “normalization”, a comprehensive program aimed at economic integration, security coordination, and social, cultural, and academic dialogue – in essence, the realization of normal relations between Palestinians and Israelis. A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance suggests that these guidelines should be met with popular compliance, regardless the degree of leadership cohesion, since permissive norms do not carry the high costs of popular boycott and broad noncooperation. Indeed, leaders never met all four conditions of high cohesiveness: horizontal coordination was moderated by the PFLP, Hamas, and other detractors from the peace process, and legitimacy was hampered by high levels of corruption and a tendency toward authoritarianism in the PA. Fatah and Arafat were the only game in town, and their popularity was never challenged by a contender. But many Palestinians mistrusted them even as they allowed them to work for peace. Most troubling for leadership cohesion was the lack of vertical coordination. Civil society had been demobilized, left out of the political process and stripped of their ability to mobilize.

Agreement around end-goals did remain quite high throughout the Oslo years, even after

Netanyahu’s election victory in 1996, and that no doubt contributed to support for permissive norms.

A theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance has mixed results in the Oslo years. On the one hand, Palestinians took advantage of the permissive norms in education, people-to-people dialogue groups, economic relations, and in the case of the

PA, in political and security cooperation. In line with my theory, there was a fairly high degree of norm coherence and compliance, despite only moderate leadership cohesion and untriggered social purpose. But contestation of permissive norms was more pervasive

300 than my theory might predict. The anti-normalization discourse ramped up in the late

1990s. Palestinian universities (al-Quds university excluded) broke with norms by demanding non-cooperation with Israeli institutions, and more and more Palestinians put people-to-people dialogue into question. In the meantime, as the PA used its cooperative relationship with Israel to its advantage by cracking down on opposition, many started to question the validity of the permissive norm of cooperation between the PA and Israel’s security forces. I explain this through the prism of power asymmetry: so long as unequal relations between ingroup and outgroup prevail, permissive norms will not enjoy society- wide compliance. This was the reality during the 1990s, as norms became more and more ambiguous despite the PA’s insistence that they remain in place. Civil society, feeling the effects of power asymmetry on their daily lives, called Arafat’s logic into question and demanded a renegotiating of the norm. But because PA cadres were so invested in the peace process, benefiting economically from their positions, no renegotiation was forthcoming. This disagreement was carried forward into the 2000s.

The Oslo years also offer an opportunity to test an alternative hypothesis, namely that institutions can mediate interactional norms through the use of symbols, laws, curricula, etc. Many of those institutions existed during the Oslo years. The Paris

Protocol demanded economic cooperation, the “Rome Declaration” opened up academic cooperation, Article VIII of Oslo II created space for people-to-people dialogue groups, while Article IV, Annex I set the parameters of PA security coordination with Israel.

Despite all of these, however, and despite the fact that each of these institutions created permissive norms that benefitted the individual, disagreement around them was pervasive. The Oslo years offer a fairly robust repudiation of the institutional hypothesis.

301 Again, social purpose proves to be the prime mover – without it, even permissive norms with institutions backing them up fail to take hold.

Chaotic interactional boundaries during the second intifada offer further weight to a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance. Predictably, a horizontally and vertically fragmented leadership, low levels of popular legitimacy, and unclear end-goals led to low social purpose and abstruse interactional norms. The second intifada also serves as an important test of an alternative hypothesis, namely that intergroup competition mediates normative boundaries. Competition between ingroup and outgroup should be enough to produce some degree of social purpose. This would be consistent with SIT scholarship that finds that agents turn to a social identity when intergroup competition is high, but defer to a personal identity when intragroup competition is high.

Like the first intifada, the second had very high levels of intergroup competition. But social purpose was nowhere to be found. This is in large part because intragroup competition was also high, perhaps negating whatever effects ingroup competition might have. This is a finding consistent with my theory – only a cohesive national leadership can mitigate intragroup competition (and associated turns to personal identity). Because the second intifada leadership – if we can call it that – spent excessive resources outbidding in a quest for legitimacy, they failed to unite the population or produce social purpose.

Nevertheless, some norms were more coherent than expected during the second intifada, namely those around normalization and anti-normalization. This can be attributed at least partly to the mediating effects of increased intergroup competition. But compliance with prohibitive cultural norms was far from complete. The same can be said

302 for prohibitive economic norms, which were ambiguously defined and hardly respected when leaning toward prohibition. Again, a comparison between the first and second intifada weakens the alternative hypothesis of intergroup competition. The first intifada saw coherent articulation of interactional norms and a moderately high level of compliance with norms that demanded a great deal of personal sacrifice. That same degree of coherence or compliance was absent in the second uprising, and the main determinant of that was social purpose, produced during the first intifada from cohesive leadership. National leadership during the second intifada was fragmented vertically and horizontally. They were split between the NIFHC, the PA and Hamas, while the grassroots was left out of the uprising and resisted separately from the national leadership. And end-goals were never well-articulated. With a fractured leadership and unclear aims, social purpose was exceptionally low, despite high levels of intergroup competition.

Finally, in Chapter VI, we encounter a case in which leadership continues to fragment, social purpose remains low, and interactional boundaries are predictably obscure. The post-inqisam years saw a leadership fragmented geographically between the

West Bank and Gaza, split along ideological lines especially in stated end-goals, and totally isolated from popular input. Civil society was demobilized by official leadership – in the West Bank by the PA and in Gaza by Hamas – a factor that no doubt contributed to massive legitimacy crises among both governments. Also affecting the paucity of leadership legitimacy was the fact that neither government was capable of achieving their stated goals, let alone advancing confidently toward them. Abbas, despite small victories at the United Nations, was further from a two-state solution in 2016 than he was when

303 elected in 2005, and Hamas was no closer in 2016 to ending the siege on Gaza or liberating all of historic Palestine, though that stance is largely rhetorical. As a result, social purpose was exceptionally low, reflected in the common refrain among interview subjects that the post-inqisam years are best understood through the lens of popular schizophrenia, and that interactional norms are munfalitah, a close linguistic cousin of social anomie. In these ways, the post-inqisam years are a powerful validation of a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance.

But like the Oslo years, and to a lesser extent the second intifada, anti- normalization norms continued to gain in strength, counter the expectations of my theory.

From consumer boycott and anti-normalization, to the norm opposing PA security cooperation with Israel, certain prohibitive norms have gained traction. These are not mutually agreed-upon red lines like “collaboration” or land dealing, but they have been moving steadily in that direction since the late 1990s, despite there being no official leadership to articulate or enforce the norm. We should be careful to not exaggerate the level of coherence around each of these norms. The BDS movement has made inroads as a norm-generating force, shifting the discourse around boycott and normalization, but the norms themselves remain the purview of Ramallah elite, incapable so far of pulling in less educated, working class Palestinians. Likewise, while Hamas and other factions criticize the PA’s security coordination with Israel, a call most Palestinians get behind during times if heightened intergroup competition, cooperation continues almost unfettered.

Still, movement in the direction of clarity and greater compliance with these prohibitive norms, despite fragmented leadership, suggests something else is at work. I

304 have examined the institutional hypothesis throughout this project, and again find it to do little work: institutions may be more robust in this time frame, but they serve only the immediate needs of Palestinians, void entirely of a grand strategy. Moreover, the institutions at play in this time frame are proposing the very norms that the population rejects. Intergroup competition, however, appears to have a mediating effect. Anti- normalization, anti-consumer cooperation, and anti-PA security cooperation norms rise in popularity with every wave of major contention, most notably during Israel’s wars on

Gaza and more recently with the so-called “knife intifada”. Even the PA and PLO jump on the bandwagon when competition is intense, passing the Boycott of Settlement Goods

Law in 2010 in the aftermath of the 2009 war with Gaza and a boycott of certain Israeli goods in 2015-2016. Intergroup competition once again appears capable of triggering social purpose despite fragmented leadership. Still, the effects appear to be isolated among elites who can afford to follow the prohibitive norm (laborers in settlements will continue to work throughout even the most severe conflicts, as long as their employers will take them), and last only as long as intergroup competition is intense.

In short, intergroup competition plays an important role in producing social purpose and mediating interactional boundaries, a variable that should be taken more seriously in later iterations of this research agenda. Still, intergroup competition does most of its work when national leadership is cohesive, evidenced by the exceptional degree of compliance with prohibitive norms during the first intifada, when both intergroup competition and leadership cohesion was high. When leadership is fragmented and intergroup competition high, social purpose mediates norms, but only for isolated groups and only for short periods of time.

305 I hope to have made an important contribution to the field with this dissertation, in three notable ways. First, I have developed a robust typology of interactional norms that builds fluidity into the definition. My treatment of grey zones and red lines of cooperation issues a challenge to rigid theories of “collaboration” that tend to assume that such an objective things exists. Instead, I find that all manner of cooperation with the enemy can be deemed “collaboration” if the circumstances are right, including seemingly innocuous forms of interaction like social dialogue or private sector cooperation.

Likewise, “collaboration” itself is not always punished in the same way – leaders gauge their level of proscription and punishment based on the political climate, often offering amnesty for the sake of national conciliation. And of course, because the alien ruler benefits from watching the subordinate group splinter, preventing all-out wars on collaborators proves an important challenge to the dominant group. My theory also challenges notions that “collaboration” is defection. Members of the subordinate group that cooperate with the dominant group do so for countless reasons, but the most common is a simple thrust for personal survival and a reasonable life. Members of the subordinate group understand that drive, and are far more forgiving to “defectors” than many existing theories suggest.

Second, and related, a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance makes a case for understanding interactional norms through a constructivist lens. Rational theories cannot sufficiently account for variation in acceptable cooperation. While I take material incentives and rational calculations seriously in this study, I place social purpose at the center, arguing that it does most of the work. As a situational mechanism, social purpose connects the outcome – coherence and compliance of interactional norms – with the

306 cause – leadership dynamics. I contribute to a body of literature that considers social or

“collective” purpose to be an important factor in identity construction and boundary maintenance, and I hope that this theory-building exercise has strengthened the definition of social purpose while giving it more centrality in our understanding of complex social dynamics.

Third, my theory underscores the critical importance of leadership cohesion for a national group under alien rule, particularly in the realm of norm generation and maintenance. Cohesive leadership does important work – leaders can present a unified grand strategy, and propose tactics to arrive at a strategic end-goal. These tactics very often become norms, particularly if leaders maintain high levels of legitimacy. In so doing, they can help overcome coordination issues that plague stateless peoples, especially on actions that do not closely align with self-interest. Placing leaders as a central explanatory variable in various nationalist outcomes is not new. My contribution is overtly theorizing how cohesive leadership does what it does, namely by triggering social purpose.

There are some important next steps for a theory of purpose-driven boundary maintenance. First and foremost, there is room for clearer operationalization of the variables. This dissertation is qualitative, using discourse analysis to arrive at an understanding of social purpose and interactional norms. But because I present a binary threshold model, in which social purpose is either triggered or not, future studies will have to flesh out precisely where that threshold exists. Like Timur Kuran’s study of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc,587 this research can flesh out the “threshold sequence” by

587 Timur Kuran, “Now out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics 44, no. 01 (October 1991): 7–48.

307 which leadership cohesion can lead to a triggered social purpose. Introducing a formal model will also allow to more precisely test the effects of institutions and intergroup competitions.

A second important next step is to test the theory in other cases of alien rule. The

Czechoslovak experience under Nazi rule fits the scope conditions of this project well –

Czechs and Slovaks were subordinate to the Nazi regime for seven years, leaving ample time to examine the construction and maintenance of interactional norms. Local resistance had varying degrees of influence over those norms, though they faced a far more robust coercive apparatus.588 How the local resistance and government in exile went about negotiating acceptable cooperation under alien rule should provide an important test of the theory. The Czech case also allows for comparison of interactional boundaries in moments of transition, with the 1990s in Palestine as a point of comparison.589 From

1944-1948, the Czech government struggled to settle on a clear definition of treasonous behavior. Miscegenation, for example, was harshly punished in the first two years, despite the central government’s repeated calls to allows mixed-marriage couples to remain unharmed. When the government consolidated its hold on the judiciary, and reined in roving gangs of vigilantes, identification and sanctioning of intermarriage halted. Czechoslovakia’s first four years of independence were also characterized by variation in the independent variable—control over governance and security institutions.

Edvard Beneš’ government-in-exile drafted the Great Decree in 1944 to enact a policy of

‘national cleansing’. But the laws put forth in that document were only implemented in the summer of 1945. In the many months in between, Beneš permitted the founding and

588 Benjamin Frommer, National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 589 Though the transition never happened in Palestine, Palestinian leaders did consider their measured treatment of collaborators as a form of transitional justice.

308 development of “people’s courts”, decentralized institutions that tried more than 32,000 alleged collaborators and war criminals. Without centralized control over the legal apparatus, definitions of collaboration varied from court to court. The Czechoslovak case is exciting for its variation in the IV and DV, but also because, despite clear differences with Palestinian retribution, we observe similar patterns., even in the immediate aftermath of the occupation when violent retribution of collaborators spread through the region. In Northern Ireland, all manner of interactions took place, in a way that more closely aligns with the Palestinian case. The Sinn Fein confronted both internal competition and attempts by the British government to crush it, but managed to produce clear boundaries around citizen dialogue and “collaboration.” The region also has a long history of peacebuilding that occurred alongside continued conflict, allowing for a more direct comparison with the Palestinian experience.590 Finally, the experience of Iraqis under the US occupation from 2003-2011 is apt and ripe for comparison. Power asymmetries dominated the discourse around loyalty and betrayal, and similar dynamics of supply and demand were present: Iraqis hoping to live a more reasonable life under US rule considered various forms of cooperation to be beneficial to self and family despite social pressure, while the Coalition Provisional Authority needed its own army of collaborators to combat opposition. The Iraqi case also offers important points of comparison in terms of leadership; the Iraq Interim Governing Council (and later Iraqi

Transitional Government) bears close resemblance to the PA both in terms of the role it was meant to have and the degree of autonomy it was able to exercise.591

590 Daniel Wehrenfennig, “The Missing Link: Citizen Dialogue in Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine” (University of California, Irvine, 2009). 591 Miller, Nicholas. “Beyond Patriots and Traitors: Collaborations and Resistance in Iraq, 2003-2005.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, August 17, 2013. http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2327699.

309 Finally, I hope that this dissertation can offer some degree of policy guidance for

US foreign policy advisors working on Israel and Palestine. With respect to leadership, rather than actively sowing the seeds of internal fragmentation, as they did in 2006-2007 when they worked with Israel to pit Fatah against Hamas, the United States can and should work to achieve reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. A unified national leadership is more likely to craft a national strategy that can guide Palestinians in their interactions with Israel. And as Pearlman found in her 2011 study, a unified national leadership is far more likely to promote and manage nonviolent resistance, of which prohibitive interactional norms are an important component. US policy makers should also consider the effect that power asymmetry has on interactional norms, and take the anti-normalization debate seriously. This is especially important if they hope to be a credible third party in mediating an end to the conflict. Rather than favoring joint dialogue NGOs, which are increasingly unpopular in Palestinian society, the United

States should consider supporting separate but complementary projects aimed at building a more robust and independent civil society. That policy is far more likely to produce a civil society willing to accept peace should that ever become a possibility.

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