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Section Two The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: 1967-1993 There are two clear dimensions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the international dimension (involving , the PLO, and nations in the region and beyond) and the domestic dimension (involving Israel, the PLO and in the occupied territories). In reality, these two dimensions should not be separated, but for our purposes it is best to divide the post-1967 period into two sections. This section will mainly examine the conflict at the international level. Until the (or ‘uprising’) in the occupied territories beginning in 1987, most initiatives to end Israeli occupation came from the PLO leadership in exile. Other important actors at the international level discussed here, aside from Israel and the PLO, include the US, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. To keep this unit brief, we will give less attention to the roles of Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states. Students, however, are strongly encouraged to further investigate the role of these states in influencing the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the domestic-level Israeli- Palestinian peace negotiations covered in Section Three. Before we examine the major international issues, actors and events of the post-1967 period, it is a good idea to briefly highlight the important role of the US in the conflict. Following the 1967 war, the US and Israel developed a close partnership. During the Cold War (1946-1991), US strategic goals in the Middle East focused on containing Soviet influence, in addition to maintaining regional political stability and Western access to oil resources. These last two goals continue into the present, and often mean that the US supports authoritarian Arab leaders who can contain their citizens’ opposition to US policies—leading to regional ‘stability’ but also to frustration among Arab citizens who desire both a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and greater democracy in their own countries. Israel, on the other hand, is the only full-fledged democracy in the region, although as we will see, there are problems for Israeli in achieving equal citizenship. Israel has long supported US strategic interests in the region, and in return, Israel enjoys US political support at the UN and in the region, and receives the highest amount of US foreign aid of all countries in the world (followed by Egypt, after signing the Camp David accords). During the following discussion of the international dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is important to keep thinking about the US-Israel partnership. It is also a good idea to remember that when we discuss international relationships (or relationships between states), the opinions and activities of state leaders do not necessarily represent the opinions of all of their citizens. This is also true of leaders of the PLO, the Palestinian organization that seeks a state for the Palestinian people. More broadly, while it may seem easier to think that ‘all ’ or ‘all Palestinians’ think or behave in a certain way, it is very important to realize that these generalizations contribute to misleading and sometimes dangerous stereotypes. As we will see, Palestinians and Israelis often strongly disagree among themselves about their own leaders’ choices and actions.

13 UN Security Council Resolution 242 In the 1967 war Israel captured the (from Jordan), Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula (from Egypt) and the (from Syria). Palestinians, who did not receive the independent state mandated by the 1947 UN partition plan, now found themselves under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza (Map 2). The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which established a framework for future peacemaking and the principle of ‘land for peace’ (Document 5). Resolution 242 notes the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,” and calls for Israeli withdrawal from lands seized in the war and the right of all states in the area to peaceful existence within secure and recognized boundaries. The grammatical construction of the French version of Resolution 242 says that Israel should withdraw from “the territories,” whereas the English version of the text calls for withdrawal from “territories.” [Both English and French are official languages of the UN.] Israel and the US use the English version to argue that Israeli withdrawal from some, but not all, the territories occupied in the 1967 war satisfies the requirements of this resolution. Resolution 242 placed Israeli leaders in an excellent bargaining position. After 1967 Israeli leaders sought diplomatic recognition from neighboring Arab states, and normalization of regional economic and social relationships. Israel’s advantage, and the disadvantage to the leaders of the Arab states and to the PLO, was that 242 required that Arab states first recognize Israel, and then negotiate for peace. The leaders of neighboring Arab states in the post-1967 period faced domestic public opinion that overwhelmingly supported the Palestinian cause. The identities of many Arab states were long bound up with the goal of attaining justice for the Palestinians, and leaders of these states could not easily recognize Israel before achieving some kind of clear solution to the Palestinian problem. If they recognized Israel but failed to achieve a just solution, they would be deeply vulnerable to regional and domestic criticism. Naturally, Israeli withdrawal from the territories before recognition and negotiation seemed more reasonable to them, and to their domestic constituents. For many years the Palestinians rejected Resolution 242 because it does not acknowledge their right to national self-determination, or the right to return to their homeland. It calls only for an unspecified “just settlement of the refugee problem”, and does not detail the specifics of future Israeli withdrawal or the status of territories after that withdrawal. Palestinians also distrusted the resolution’s requirement that the Arab states recognize Israel without Israeli withdrawal or recognition of Palestinian national rights. Because Israel did not recognize the PLO until 1993, Palestinians could not negotiate for themselves. For this reason, Palestinians were understandably suspicious of any efforts by the Arab states to negotiate peace. They worried that Arab states might either seek Palestinian land for themselves (Jordan after 1948, see below), or make peace without resolving Palestinian demands for a just solution (Egypt’s failure at Camp David, see below).

14 The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) It is important to understand how Palestinian views have changed over the years. Keep in mind two points as you read this section and those that follow. First, people respond to the circumstances in which they live. If you are rich, you see problems one way; if you are unemployed, you see them a second way; if you own a small shop or farm the land, you see them a third and fourth way. Similarly, opinions among members of the same national or ethnic group may vary for other reasons, including gender, age and education. We must understand the circumstances in which Palestinians (and Israelis) live if we are to understand their positions and actions as individuals and as members of groups. Second, there are at least eight million Palestinians—in Israel, the occupied territories and abroad. Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world—one in three refugees is Palestinian. Like Americans, Mexicans, Canadians and Israelis, they disagree on political issues. They also change their minds as new circumstances develop. It is a mistake to think Palestinians have a common view that remains unchanged. As we will see, their views have changed considerably over the years. In the immediate aftermath of 1948, Palestinians took two different paths. One group, under a leader named Amin Husseini, called for the end of partition and the creation of a secular state in all of Palestine that would include Muslims, Jews, and Christians. A second group, led mainly by Palestinian elites living in exile in Jordan, agreed to unite the West Bank and East Jerusalem with Jordan to form one country under Jordanian leadership. Many Palestinians were so angry at Jordan’s apparent attempt to grab their land that they came to view Jordan as an enemy almost as much as Israel. No Arab state recognized the unification with Jordan as a permanent solution, nor did the US. By the early 1950’s, however, Palestinian leaders seemed ineffective and unable to speak for their people. The established the PLO in 1964 in an effort to control while appearing to champion their cause. Although it was supposed to represent the Palestinians, the PLO really represented the views of President Nasser of Egypt. Its first leader, Ahmad Shuqairi, made wild and irresponsible threats to drive Israelis into the sea. He had little support among Palestinians for he was seen as a puppet of the Egyptians. In fact, early PLO leaders were selected by the Arab League based on their commitment to containing radical nationalism and limiting guerilla activity against Israel. Leaders of the Arab states sought to expand Arab unity and build up stronger military forces so as to better negotiate with Israel. Some Palestinians, however, refused to wait for Arab unity and military strength, and tried instead to stimulate popular support in the region for a war of liberation. In the 1960s Palestinian students began to form their own organizations independent of control by Arab governments (although the Syrians, Libyans, and Iraqis continued to fund and control particular groups). From 1965-1967 ’s group, , abstained from joining the PLO and chose instead to conduct guerilla raids into Israel from neighboring Arab states. These activities proved so popular among Palestinians that groups within the PLO soon began to organize paramilitary activities, and younger, more militant Palestinians began to take over the PLO.

15 After 1967 Egypt, Syria and Jordan suffered serious domestic and regional embarrassment because of their military defeat at the hands of Israel, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. At a time when Arab states and citizens felt so powerless against Israel, the PLO achieved regional popularity for its paramilitary efforts to ‘liberate’ Palestine. PLO guerilla raids into Israel from neighboring Arab states, however, destabilized the region, brought negative international attention to host countries, and credible threats of Israeli reprisal. For these reasons the Arab states often arrested PLO activists, and generally sought to redirect the PLO into diplomatic channels. The PLO includes different political and armed groups with varying ideological orientations. Yasser Arafat is the leader of Fatah, the largest group, and has been PLO chairman since 1968. However, neither he nor Fatah can ‘control’ other groups in the PLO. The other major groups are the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and, in the occupied territories, the Palestine Peoples Party (PPP, formerly the Communist Party). Over time, these factions have differed sharply in their relative support for violence versus negotiations, and what sort of outcome to the conflict they were willing to accept. Although Fatah first emerged as an organization promoting guerilla incursions into Israel, it soon moved into the mainstream as other, more radical groups, began to undertake hijackings and assassinations outside of Israel and the occupied territories. These acts, especially the taking of hostages at the 1972 Munich Games, resulted in substantial international shock and anger. Arafat, seeking to maintain PLO unity and international respectability, had to try to limit these terrorist activities and maintain some sort of control over the movement. Arafat was often successful in keeping these factions together around a more moderate approach supported by Fatah, but not always. As we will see, sometimes more extreme factions succeeded in dragging the PLO away from a moderate position. Arafat had a difficult balancing act: to keep the factions together, Arafat could not appear too moderate. To win broad international support, however, Arafat had to become more moderate. Despite factional differences, the majority of Palestinians still regard the PLO as their representative. In the 1960s, the PLO’s primary base of operations was Jordan. In 1970 a brutal attack by the Jordanian army drove the PLO leadership out of the country, forcing it to relocate to Lebanon. When the started in 1975, the PLO became a party to the conflict. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the PLO leadership was expelled from the country, relocating once more to Tunisia. It is important to note that until 1994, the PLO leadership in exile was focused on advancing Palestinian goals from the ‘outside’ through international diplomatic and military activities, while Palestinians on the ‘inside’, or in the occupied territories, often faced rather different issues. Although the majority of Palestinians on the ‘inside’ always supported the PLO, they would demonstrate a certain independence from the PLO leadership in Tunis during the intifada, beginning in 1987.

16 The 1968 PLO charter considered the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel illegal (Document 6). Arafat’s efforts toward moderation, and apparent willingness to negotiate with Israelis, contributed to the PLO’s diplomatic successes, most notably when the PLO gained observer status at the UN in 1974 after Arafat’s speech (Documents 7, 8). From the 1970s to the , the PLO engaged in military and diplomatic activities with the goal of creating a secular democratic state for Jews, Christians and Muslims in all of former Palestine (Document 9). As it gained recognition at the UN, the PLO lost the possibility for recognition by the US. In 1975, in order to extract concessions from Israel to Egypt regarding removal of Israeli forces from the Sinai, the US promised Israel not to recognize the PLO until it explicitly accepted UN resolution 242 and recognized Israel’s right to exist. This created serious problems for PLO diplomacy: if the US, the major peace broker in the Middle East, refused to associate with the PLO, then the PLO was excluded from important negotiations, most notably Camp David I. Although many Palestinians, including some PLO leaders, had said for several years that they accepted a ‘two-state’ solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it was not until 1988 that a clear official PLO declaration was made. At this important meeting in , the Palestine National Council accepted the partition of Palestine, accepted Israel as a permanent and legitimate state, and renounced terrorism. From 1948 until 1993, Israel did not acknowledge Palestinian national rights or recognize the Palestinians as an independent party to the conflict. Israel refused to negotiate with the PLO, arguing that it was nothing but a terrorist organization, and insisted on dealing only with Jordan or other Arab states. It rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state, insisting that Palestinians should be incorporated into existing Arab states. This intransigence ended when Israeli representatives entered into secret negotiations with the PLO, which led to the Oslo Declaration of Principles. There have been three main Palestinian opponents to Yasser Arafat’s PLO: 1. On the left various socialist groups think Arafat is too close to business and banking interests, and too willing to negotiate with Israel and cooperate with the US. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is one of these. It is led by , a Christian doctor. The PFLP left the PLO Executive Committee in 1974 and rejoined it in 1981. It opposes negotiations with Israel. 2. On the right some Islamist groups feel that the PLO is too willing to cooperate with socialists and is too willing to negotiate with Israel. They feel there should be a united Palestine where Jews could live, but which would not be governed by Jews. The largest of these groups is called Harakat Al-Mouqawama Al-Islamiyya (, or the Islamic Resistance Movement). ‘Hamas’ is an acronym meaning ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘zeal’. 3. Several Palestinian radicals maintain their own military organizations. Abu Nidal was one of these. He bitterly and violently opposed the PLO for what he considered its moderate positions. He carried out airplane bombings and attacks on civilians and tried to assassinate Arafat. He opposed any negotiation with Israel, and was probably funded by Iraq. Abu Nidal died in Iraq in August 2003. Iraqi officials claimed he committed suicide, but Abu Nidal’s supporters say the Iraqis killed him.

17 The October 1973 War The bulk of US assistance to participants in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the post- 1967 period falls on the Israeli side. In fact the US never strongly backed the understanding of 242 that most of the rest of the world supported: ending Israel’s occupation of territories seized in 1967. For years following the 1967 war, the UN voted over and over in favor of an international UN-sponsored peace conference, with all parties to the conflict (including the PLO, which emerged as a serious force after 1967) to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict once and for all. But the US always voted no. Instead, US diplomatic initiatives were devised to keep Washington in control of regional peacemaking activities. The first US initiative was the Cold War-driven Rogers Plan, which was not welcomed by Israeli leaders, who felt that the plan sought to appease Arab states at Israel’s expense. Based on the same approach as 242, it was designed largely to win individual Arab governments away from Soviet influence and into the US orbit. It offered Arab leaders the return of some occupied territory, in exchange for recognition of Israel. The Palestinians, however, would get nothing. Jordan was a major target of US diplomacy, but King Hussein was uneasy about the large and increasingly activist Palestinian community in his country, and implementing the Rogers Plan would undermine Palestinian national claims. Another US goal was to woo Egypt away from Soviet influence by promising the return of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, then occupied by Israel. Under significant pressure at home to win back the Sinai, Nasser agreed to future discussions following the Rogers Plan in July 1970. Nasser’s abandonment of his long-standing support for the Palestinians encouraged Jordan’s King Hussein to go even further. A low-intensity conflict had been brewing between the Jordanian government and the PLO. During the 1960s the PLO’s primary base of operations was in Jordan, and the PLO had established itself as an increasingly autonomous political organization in that country—performing police activities and organizing mass demonstrations. Yasser Arafat and Fatah had counseled and promised nonintervention in Jordan’s affairs, but more radical groups within the PLO, especially the PFLP, wanted to overthrow King Hussein. The PFLP’s goals expanded in popularity among PLO supporters in Jordan, and Fatah’s desire for nonintervention was increasingly ignored. Small-scale attacks by Jordan’s army on Palestinian guerrillas in the refugee camps had been going on for some time, and tensions were high. In July 1970, following Nasser’s lead, King Hussein endorsed the Rogers Plan. In August the Palestine National Council condemned this move, and the PFLP attempted to assassinate King Hussein. The PFLP then hijacked four jumbo jets and blew up three of the empty planes in Jordan. The PLO denounced these activities and suspended the PFLP, but could not prevent an intensification of the conflict with the Jordanian government—which was what the PFLP wanted in the first place. Less than two weeks later, on September 15, King Hussein launched a major assault on the Palestinians in his country. In ten days an estimated 5,000 were killed and 20,000 wounded, most of them civilians—in what Palestinians describe as ‘’. The Palestinian guerrillas, their families, and many more Palestinian civilians were forced into another exile, this time to Lebanon.

18 After the death of Nasser in September 1970, Egypt’s new president, Anwar al-Sadat, began strong peace overtures to the US, believing only Washington could pressure Israel to return the occupied Sinai. In late 1970, President Sadat told UN envoy Gunnar Jarring that he was willing to sign a peace agreement with Israel in return for Egyptian territory lost in 1967. Sadat tried to attract Washington’s support by opening Egypt to Western investments and allowing US oil companies to explore for oil and build pipelines. By the summer of 1972, Sadat went even further: he expelled 15,000 Soviet military advisers from Egypt, providing Washington with an unmistakable signal of Cairo’s intentions. But it proved insufficient and Egyptian diplomats, even after the dramatic Soviet expulsion, received an icy reception in Washington. When Israeli Prime Minister returned from Washington a month later with promises of new Phantom jets for Israel’s air force, Sadat decided that only a limited war could create the necessary pressure for an Israeli-Egyptian settlement. Egypt and Syria decided to act together to break the political stalemate. They attacked Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights in October 1973, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. The surprise attack caught Israel off guard, and the Arabs achieved some early military victories. This prompted US political intervention, along with sharply increased military aid to Israel.

19 The Aftermath From 1967 to the present, Israeli leaders consistently sought, and succeeded at negotiating peace with their Arab neighbors bilaterally (on a ‘one on one’ basis). In this way, Israel could negotiate the best deal with each Arab state and gain the maximum concessions possible. If Israel was forced to participate in multilateral talks, Arab states would have more power through a unified bargaining position. After the 1973 war, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pursued a diplomatic strategy of limited bilateral agreements to secure partial Israeli withdrawals from the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights while avoiding negotiations on more difficult issues important to Palestinians, especially the fate of the West Bank and Gaza. Kissinger’s approach, which focused on strengthening ties with Arab governments and dealing with the Palestinians only as refugees, was fatally flawed. Palestinian opposition to the US-promoted ‘Jordanian option’ of placing the Israeli-occupied West Bank under King Hussein’s rule was virtually universal. One result was a major escalation in international support for and recognition of the PLO, culminating in Yasser Arafat’s appearance in November 1974 at the UN General Assembly (Documents 8, 9). The UN voted 105 to 4 to recognize the right of the Palestinians to self-determination, and to grant the PLO observer status at the UN. Only Israel and the US, along with US-dependent Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, voted against the resolution. It was a major defeat for US policy. By late 1975 US peacemaking efforts had exhausted their potential, and there was no prospect of achieving a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement. In September 1975 the US brokered an agreement between Egypt and Israel. Israel promised to return part of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt, while Egypt signed a non-aggression pledge. Implemen- tation of the agreement stalled, however, as each side defined its responsibilities differently. On November 19, 1977, President Sadat moved to break the stalemate. In an historic visit, the first by any Arab leader, he traveled to Jerusalem to address the Israeli Knesset. The US hailed the surprise visit as an important step, but Palestinians, Arab leaders and their people worried that Sadat would give away too much in his negotiations with Israel.

20 Camp David I Sadat’s November 1977 visit to Jerusalem led to the Camp David accords and the signing of an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979. In his Knesset speech Sadat focused on the need for a comprehensive peace to end all wars in the Middle East. He spoke of the need for Israel to withdraw from all occupied Arab territories, including East Jerusalem, and to recognize the legitimacy of Palestinians’ efforts to regain their lost rights. Prime Minister ’s position, however, was quite different. While asserting that “every- thing was negotiable,” Begin made it clear that Israeli security was the primary goal, and claimed that UN resolutions 242 and 338 did not require Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967 (especially the West Bank and Gaza), that Israeli settlements in the territories would remain in place and under Israeli jurisdiction, that Jerusalem would remain united under Israeli rule, and that Israel was not prepared to recognize the PLO—although it would consider some kind of autonomy for West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. There was clearly a wide gap between Sadat and Begin. Negotiations continued after Begin paid a return visit to Egypt, but after some months Sadat broke off the talks. In response, the US moved in to take control of the diplomacy, promising Israel in no uncertain terms that regardless of the results of the talks, the US would continue to provide military assistance and would not use that assistance to pressure Israel. In September 1978 President Jimmy Carter invited Sadat and Begin to Camp David, a presidential retreat in Maryland. Sequestered for 13 days, Begin and Sadat finally emerged with the Camp David accords. They worked out two agreements: a framework for peace between Egypt and Israel, and a general framework for resolution of the Middle East crisis, i.e., the Palestinian question. The first agreement formed the basis of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty signed in 1979. The second agreement proposed to grant ‘autonomy’ to the Palestinians in the West Bank and the , and to install a local administration for a five-year interim period, after which the final status of the territories would be negotiated. As Palestinians had feared, only the Egyptian-Israeli part of the Camp David accords was implemented. The Palestinians and other Arab states criticized Sadat for destroying Arab unity and playing into Israeli hands, and Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. Egypt, Israel and the US hoped other Arab countries would follow suit and accept US- brokered bilateral agreements with Israel. The Arab states, however, continued to hold out for multilateral negotiations. Jordan’s King Hussein, for example, condemned the Camp David accords and called for comprehensive regional negotiations under UN auspices. The Palestinians also opposed the accords, seeing them as a surrender to Israeli power, and an acceptance of the US-Israeli view that Middle East peace could be crafted without the Palestinians.

21 These critics rejected the Palestinian ‘autonomy’ concept because it did not guarantee full Israeli withdrawal from areas captured in 1967, or the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Their fears came true during subsequent negotiations between Egypt and Israel on Palestinian autonomy. Israel sabotaged the talks by continuing to confiscate Palestinian lands and building new settlements in violation of Begin’s commitments at Camp David. In a strange twist, Begin insisted that the Palestinians would have the right only to limited self-rule in the occupied territories, but that this did not include rights to the land, water or other resources. Finally, Begin made it clear that Israel would not agree to a Palestinian state. As for Sadat, he was increasingly isolated in his own country and throughout the Arab world for what was viewed as a betrayal of regional hopes for multilateral peace negotiations by signing a separate peace with Israel. Sadat paid the ultimate price: on October 6, 1981, President Sadat was assassinated by a member of his own military, who saw the Egyptian leader as a traitor to the Arab and Muslim cause.

22 Lebanon The civil war in Lebanon, begun in 1975, escalated rapidly in the early 1980s. Central to this conflict were internal Lebanese struggles for power and resources between the various religious, political and clan-based factions. To compound the internal conflict, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees lived in Beirut and southern Lebanon. After expulsion from Jordan in 1970, the PLO founded a new base of operations in Lebanon, and took over many governance activities, from schools and hospitals to licensing and legal systems. Palestinian guerrillas and Israeli troops also traded rocket fire across the Israeli-Lebanese border. Since 1978 Israel had occupied a strip of southern Lebanon, in defiance of UN Resolution 425, which called for Israel to immediately and unconditionally withdraw (Document 10). Instead, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) paid, armed, trained and supported an anti-Palestinian Christian-led militia, called the , in its occupied zone. Much of Israel’s strategy involved trying to turn the Lebanese against the Palestinians. Because of Palestinian involvement in their civil war, Israel had some success among wealthier Lebanese disturbed by Palestinian influence in the South, and among the poor classes of Lebanese. Israel’s real goal was to destroy the PLO infrastructure—social as well as military—in Lebanon, and to arrange for a compliant, pro-Israel regime in Beirut. When it appeared that Lebanon’s civil war could drag on forever without those goals being achieved, Israel decided to move on its own. But first Israel needed to be sure its allies in Washington would approve. This was a bit tricky because there wasn’t an obvious provocation on which to claim that a direct Israeli invasion was ‘necessary for self-defense.’ In May 1982, Israel’s Defense Minister went to Washington to meet with Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Former President Jimmy Carter said after a national security briefing that “the word I got from very knowledgeable people in Israel is that ‘we have a green light from Washington’.” Haig denied that, but admitted that “the Israelis had made it very clear that...at the next provocation they were going to react. They told us that. President [Reagan] knew that.” On June 3, Abu Nidal’s anti-PLO Palestinian faction attempted to assassinate Israel’s ambassador in London in order to spark Israeli military action against the PLO. The British police immediately identified Abu Nidal’s forces as responsible, and revealed that the PLO leaders were among the names on the would-be assassins’ ‘hit list.’ The PLO had nothing to do with it, but Israel claimed the attack (the ambassador was unhurt) was a justification for war. Three days later the Israeli army invaded Lebanon in operation “Peace for Galilee,” crossing the Litani River and moving almost as far north as Beirut, destroying feeble resistance from local villagers and from UN peacekeeping troops swept aside in the assault. Israel remained in virtually uncontested control of the air, and had overwhelming military superiority on land and sea. Beirut was besieged and subjected to merciless bombing for two months. Casualties were enormous, hospitals were hit, and Palestinian refugee camps were leveled in massive bombardment.

23 Condemnation poured in from around the world. Even the US, which supported Israel’s goals of forcing the PLO out of Lebanon, issued a mild criticism of the bombing. A ceasefire was soon achieved, and the US brokered the terms, which centered on the PLO leaving Beirut—its guerrillas, doctors, civilian infrastructure, and officials would board ships heading for Tunis. The US promised to serve as guarantor of Israel’s promises, especially as protector of the Palestinian civilians left behind, primarily women, children and old men. US Marines were deployed as the centerpiece of an international force with a 30-day mandate to guard Beirut during the withdrawal of the PLO fighters. On September 11, 1982, two weeks before the end of their official mandate, the last US Marines were withdrawn from Beirut. Three days later, the Israeli-supported Christian president Bashir Gemayel was assassinated. Within hours, Israel responded by invading Muslim (and formerly Palestinian) West Beirut. They first claimed it was to ‘protect’ the Palestinians from revenge from Gemayel’s Christian supporters, but it was in complete violation of the agreement negotiated with the PLO. After a few hours Defense Minister Sharon announced that the Christian Phalangists, the most anti-Palestinian of all the Christian militias, would actually enter the Palestinian camps, rather than the Israelis themselves. The senior Israeli commander met with the top Phalangist leaders and told them, he said, “to act humanely, and not to harm women, children and old people.” On Thursday, September 16, Israeli troops surrounded the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of West Beirut, and lit flares to light the way for their Phalangist allies to enter the camps. Mass rape, torture and murder lasted for three days and resulted in the deaths of 1,000-2,000 Palestinians, mostly children, women and old men, whose bodies were left piled up or hastily buried in mass graves. The Red Cross later said it would be impossible to know the exact number who died. There was no question that the Israeli soldiers, and their military and political leaders, knew what was going on inside—it was visible from the IDF post at the edge of the camp, and the sound of machine-gun fire continued for three days and nights. The US finally pushed Israel to withdraw the Phalangists. US Special Envoy Morris Draper told the Israeli officers: “You must stop the massacres. They are obscene. I have an officer in the camp counting the bodies...They are killing children. You are in absolute control of the area and therefore responsible for that area.”1 The Sabra-Shatila Massacre, as it quickly became known, transformed public perceptions about the war, especially inside Israel (Document 11). Israeli officials first denied knowing anything about the ‘alleged massacres’, but 400,000 Israelis (nearly 10 percent of Israel’s population) marched in protest, and eventually Israel established the high-level Kahan Commission to investigate (Document 12). Among other things, it found Defense Minister Sharon personally “responsible for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge when he approved the entry of the Phalangists into the camps as well as not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed”. The UN General Assembly voted 147 to 2 to condemn the massacres; but the US joined Israel in voting against the condemnation. Many voices in the US pointed out that the massacres might not have happened if Washington had kept its word and its troops in Lebanon.

1 Testimony of Israeli Foreign Ministry official Bruce Kashdan before the Commission of Inquiry; Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times (Nov. 22, 1982).

24 The Reagan administration’s response was quick: the decision to send US troops back to Beirut, just two weeks after they had been withdrawn, was made during the weekend of September 18-19, just as the massacre was ending. According to the Middle East specialist on the National Security Council Geoffrey Kemp, the decision to return US troops to Lebanon was influenced “by the feeling that the United States had assumed responsibility for the safety of the Palestinians and that our friends, the Israelis, had allowed the worst to happen.”2 The 3,800 troops of the Multi-National Force, with French and Italian soldiers joining the Americans, returned to Beirut with awesome military power. They became the real power in the city, but the Lebanese civil war was not over. Thirty-three Lebanese and foreign militias and armies still vied for control of the country. In March 1983 small-scale attacks on the US and other Western forces began. Then, on April 18, the US embassy compound was destroyed by a powerful car bomb, killing 63 people, of whom 17 were Americans, and wounding 100 more. The civil war intensified, with the Israeli-backed Phalangist government challenged by Syrian-backed Muslim, Druze and secular militias. Cold War politics came into play, as the Soviet Union increased its support to Syria and the US took a harder line in backing Lebanese ‘sovereignty’ under the existing Christian- based government. Israel withdrew its forces from the Chouf Mountains overlooking Beirut, and fierce fighting broke out there between the government and the Muslim- Druze militias. On September 19, one year after the Sabra-Shatila massacre, the US military joined Lebanon’s civil war. The warships of the American Sixth Fleet were firing into the Chouf, aiming at the Druze fighters near the tiny town of Souq al-Gharb. The giant battleship USS New Jersey led the attack, firing 2,000-pound shells the size of Volkswagens. Washington was now officially a partisan in Lebanon’s civil war. Quickly the fighting increased, with other parts of the Multinational Force drawn in. On October 23 the US Marine Corps barracks and headquarters, as well as the headquarters of the French paratroopers, were destroyed by a truck bomb; 241 American service people and 58 French paratroopers were killed. The Italians, whose troops had not engaged in fighting, were not harmed. The US and French troops surrounded their compounds with defensive walls. The fighting continued, and the US began air strikes from the carrier Eisenhower against Druze and Muslim militias above Beirut. Fighting increased again, and on February 6 Reagan announced that the Marines in Beirut would retreat to their ships. The US mission to Lebanon was over. In 1985 Israel’s partial withdrawal from Lebanon—while maintaining its occupation of a nine or ten-mile-wide strip of south Lebanon along the Israeli border—finally set the stage for the civil war to come to an inconclusive end some five years later. The UN’s 1978 demand in resolution 425 that Israel withdraw “forthwith” from Lebanon remained unfulfilled until Israel fully withdrew in 2000. The withdrawal of US troops in 1984 signaled a shift in Washington’s policy emphasis from Lebanon back to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The PLO leadership was now banished to Tunis, far from its homeland, and Palestinians inside the territories began considering how to take more initiative on their own.

2 Cited in , Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (London: Andre Deutsch Ltd., 1990).

25 On the diplomatic front the US proposed several initiatives, all aimed at establishing some kind of partial autonomy for the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Some envisioned links with Jordan as well. But none broke new ground, and none were taken seriously. Israel continued to build and expand settlements in the occupied territories, and Palestinians endured daily life under the harsh rule of the Israeli army. Social, political, and economic conditions deteriorated, and the US did little to respond or to pressure Israel to change its policies.

26 The Occupied Territories Section Three, so far, has focused on the international dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To help understand why Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza spontaneously participated in the intifada, or ‘uprising’ beginning in 1987, it is time to examine the domestic conflict in the occupied territories. We will then reconsider this domestic conflict in terms of the US-Israel partnership and its focus on Israel’s security. Finally, Section Three will conclude with a discussion of the intifada and the subsequent Madrid conference. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip became distinct geographical units as a result of the 1949 armistice that divided the new Jewish state of Israel from other parts of Mandate Palestine. From 1948-67, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was ruled by Jordan, which annexed the area in 1950 and extended citizenship to Palestinians living there. During this period, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military administration. In the 1967 war, Israel captured and occupied these areas, along with the Sinai Peninsula (from Egypt) and the Golan Heights (from Syria) (Map 2). Israel first established a military government, and later a ‘civil’ administration to govern the Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Under these arrangements Palestinians were denied many basic political rights and civil liberties, including freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of political association. Palestinian municipal councils were tightly controlled by the Israelis. After many Palestinian leaders expressed support for pro-PLO Palestinian nationalism, Israeli authorities began to appoint and recognize only those leaders who would assist the occupation. At the same time, the economy of the occupied territories developed with close links to Israel as Palestinians traveled into Israel, offering cheap labor for construction and factory work. Israel claimed that its occupation resulted in a rising standard of living and a reduction in unemployment for Palestinians, and indeed, the economy of the occupied territories expanded at a faster rate than that in Israel in the post-1967 period, and unemployment declined. Critics of the occupation, however, argued that economic growth in the territories was characterized by a dangerous dependency on Israel that worked to Israel’s benefit. They noted that industrial output as a share of economic activity actually declined after 1967, and that subsequent growth was due to the export of cheap labor to Israel for lack of any job opportunities in the territories. Critics noted that long-term, secure economic development in the territories required an investment in infrastructure, such as roads, airports, seaports, telecommunications—that Israel refused to make. Although unemployment in the territories declined after 1967, critics argued that Israel benefited more. Because Israel did not invest in development of the territories, Palestinians were forced to offer their labor cheaply to the Israeli market, and also purchased most of their consumer goods from Israel. Israel was in a win-win situation, and Palestinian leaders worried about the increasing economic dependency of the territories on Israel.

27 Meanwhile, Palestinian nationalism was criminalized as a threat to Israeli security, which meant that even displaying the Palestinian national colors was a punishable act. All aspects of Palestinian life were regulated, and often severely restricted by the Israeli military administration. Israeli policies and practices in the West Bank and Gaza included extensive use of collective punishments such as curfews, house demolitions and closure of roads, schools and community institutions. Hundreds of Palestinian political activists were deported to Jordan or Lebanon, tens of thousands of acres of Palestinian land were confiscated, and thousands of trees were uprooted. Since 1967 over 300,000 Palestinians were imprisoned without trial, and over half a million were tried in the Israeli military court system. Torture of Palestinian prisoners has been a common practice since at least 1971, and dozens of people have died in detention from abuse or neglect. Israeli officials claimed that harsh measures and high rates of imprisonment were necessary to prevent terrorism. Israel has confiscated Palestinian land, built hundreds of settlements and permitted hundreds of thousands of its own Jewish citizens to move to the West Bank and Gaza, even though this constitutes a breach of international law. Israel justified violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international laws governing military occupation of foreign territory on the grounds that the West Bank and Gaza are not technically ‘occupied’ because they were never part of the sovereign territory of any state (Documents 4, 13). According to this interpretation, Israel is not a foreign ‘occupier’ but a legal ‘administrator’ of disputed territory whose status remains to be determined. The international community rejects the Israeli official position that the West Bank and Gaza are not occupied, and maintains that international law should apply there. But little effort has been mounted to enforce international law, or to hold Israel accountable for its numerous violations since 1967. Israeli Settlements Small Jewish communities existed in what is now the West Bank prior to the 20th century in Hebron, the Old City of Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias. The Hebron community disappeared after a massacre of Jews in the communal fighting in 1929 (described in Section One). The Jewish Quarter in the Old City was evacuated in the 1948 war. When Israel conquered and occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, there were virtually no Jewish people living in this area, and the land was owned by Palestinians. From 1967-77, settlements under Labor governments emphasized security following Israel’s ‘Allon Plan’. Labor wanted outposts along the Jordan River and on the strategic high points in the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The Allon Plan divided up the West Bank and encircled Jerusalem to enable Israeli annexation of the city and its outskirts, or ‘Greater Jerusalem’, and to isolate Palestinians in East Jerusalem from those in the West Bank (Maps 3-6). The Labor party avoided settling in the dense population centers of the West Bank and Gaza, and did not openly support new religious settlements. However, Labor tolerated these settlements because they found it politically difficult to remove Jewish settlers who took over Palestinian land and then called for Israel’s protection and support. Labor leaders like Rabin and Peres generally supported the idea of ‘land for peace’, although they hoped that Jordan, and not an independent Palestinian body, would ultimately take control of the West Bank.

28 In the 1977 elections Menachem Begin, leader of the right-wing Likud Party became Prime Minister of Israel. This was the first time since Israel’s founding that Labor did not control the government. In contrast to Labor, Likud hoped to prevent any future exchange of ‘land for peace’, and any independent Palestinian state. The Likud party, which held power in 1977-1992, in 1996-1999 and again in 2001, planted settlements close to centers of Palestinian population and were more active in demolishing Palestinian homes. The Likud was supported by radical religious settler groups, and Begin shared their commitment to hold the occupied territories permanently and settle them with Jews. This was a way to establish ultimate control over the West Bank, just as Jewish settlements were the basis for establishing Israel in 1948. Begin felt that the land belonged to the Jewish people and always referred to it using their Biblical names, Judea and Samaria. Begin began an aggressive settlement campaign, led and designed partly by Ariel Sharon, that confiscated private- and state-owned land farmed by Palestinians for centuries, and established Jewish settlements on it. Sharon’s changes to Labor’s Allon Plan involved the construction of Jewish settlements around and between Palestinian population centers, dividing the West Bank into three noncontiguous, or disconnected areas (Map 6). Begin’s partners in the territories were the right-wing religious settler groups. After 1967 these groups articulated a religious and land-focused nationalism that considered Israel’s seizure of territory as a sign of divine favor, and a first step in their religious duty to reclaim the land of Israel and hasten the Messiah’s arrival. Gush Emunim, a settler lobby founded in 1974, consolidated many private Israeli groups seeking to expand settlement activity and to pressure their government to approve those settlements, often after they were established illegally. Gush’s direct action to establish settlements in the occupied territories drew IDF protection, thus expanding the IDF’s presence in the territories. The settlers often engaged in deliberate actions aimed at provoking Palestinian anger and violence—thus expanding popular Israeli support for more IDF troops and further settlement in the territories. Permanent retention of the territories meant that the sizable Palestinian population would threaten the Jewish character of Israel. To address this problem, the Kach party favored expulsion of the Palestinians. American Rabbi Meir Kahane formed the Kach party after he moved to Israel in 1971 (Document 14). Kahane described Palestinians as a cancer and vermin that had to be expelled because the presence of non-Jews in Israel was a corrupting force that compromised Jewish civilization. His position (not supported by historical evidence) was that Palestinians were not truly a people but were just Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians, or Lebanese who had come across the border to work. Above all, the Kach party hoped to destroy any possibility for peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians through often violent action, and advocated elimination of Israeli-Arab citizenship in Israel, and the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories. Many Kach party members also moved to the occupied territories to found or join religious settlements there. Although Kahane was assassinated in 1989, some Israeli parties and organizations continue to advocate the expulsion of Palestinians.

29 Many Israelis are not supportive of religious settlers who, they believe, are responsible for the increased tension between the Palestinian and Jewish populations, making lasting peace more difficult. Because Jewish settlements focused on annexing Palestinian land are controversial in Israel and unlikely to appeal to the average Israeli, in 1981 Sharon and Begin decided that Israel should subsidize bedroom communities in the occupied territories near Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (Document 15). In this way, relatively inexpensive housing appealed to the pocketbooks of average, even secular Israelis who would not otherwise support or participate in this activity. It has been estimated that today perhaps 25% of the settlers come to the West Bank and Gaza for religious or nationalist reasons, while 75% move in response to the generous government financial subsidies. The maps in this section tell the story of the establishment of settlements (Maps 5-10, 12). Militant religious settlers call this ‘redeeming the land.’ The Palestinians, on the other hand, see this as a steady takeover of their homeland. By 1990 half the land in the West Bank, and a third of Gaza was reserved for exclusive Jewish use. Today some 60%-70% of the West Bank and Gaza is reserved exclusively for Jewish use as military reserves, bypass roads, or housing settlements. Bypass roads and settlements are generally only open to Jews, not to Palestinian Muslims or Christians. Some settlers believe that the land they now occupy was empty before their development was built. They may not have seen the previous owners, Palestinians say, because the Jewish National Fund ‘acquires’ the land and clears it of its Palestinian owners before turning it over for development as a Jewish settlement. Thus new settlers are usually insulated from seeing the Palestinians who they have displaced, almost always without compensation. Some Israelis claim there is a need for more housing for Israelis, but others say that there is a high vacancy rate in these new settlements because most Jews do not want to live there. The US State Department investigated, and confirmed a high vacancy rate existing in the new developments already built. Palestinians also point out that their population, denied building permits for so many years, is far more in need of housing units than are Israeli Jews. Palestinians also point out that US tax money, and funds that are deemed tax-exempt by the US government for charitable reasons, are being used to build housing with the sort of religious restrictions that would be illegal under US law. The Israeli government has claimed that it has a perfect right to build wherever it wants on ‘its own land,’ but Palestinians, under international law—especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, challenge the authority of the occupier to confiscate the land of the occupied, and to move its own population into the occupied area (Document 4).

30 SETTLEMENT FACTS 2002 (from Foundation for Middle East Peace) Number of settlements in the West Bank (5,640 sq. km.): 130 Number of settlements in the Gaza Strip (360 sq. km.): 16 Number of settlement areas in East Jerusalem: 11 Total settler population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: 1972: 1,500 1983: 29,090 1992: 109,784 2001: 213,672 Total settler population in Palestinian East Jerusalem: 1972: 6,900 1992: 141,000 2000: 170,400 Palestinian population [CIA Factbook, 2002]: --2.2 million in 650 locales in the West Bank (including 200,000 in East Jerusalem) --1.2 million in 40 locales in the Gaza Strip Jerusalem Historically Jerusalem was divided into four ‘Quarters,’ one each for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Armenians (Armenians are Christian but were given a separate quarter for historical reasons) (Map 3). The quarters were created not to discriminate, but to reassure each group that their rights would be respected. If a Jew wanted to live in the Christian Quarter, for example, that person would petition Christian religious leaders for an exemption, with the understanding that if the Jew ever sold the land the Christian leaders would have the right to repurchase the property. The 1947 UN partition plan called for Jerusalem to become an international zone, independent of both the proposed Jewish and Palestinian Arab states (Map 1). In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel took control of the western part of Jerusalem, while Jordan took the eastern part, including the old walled city containing important Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious sites. The 1949 armistice line cut the city in two. In June 1967, Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan and almost immediately annexed it. It reaffirmed its annexation in 1981, in spite of UN Security Council Resolution 465 (1980) deploring settlements in the occupied territories and Jerusalem (Document 13; Maps 3-5). Israel regards Jerusalem as its ‘eternal capital’. Arabs consider East Jerusalem part of the occupied West Bank and want it to be the capital of a Palestinian state. After 1967 Israel began to place Jewish settlements in the Old City of Jerusalem in areas that had traditionally been reserved for the use of Christians and Muslims.

Refugees and Displaced Persons At least four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants now live outside Palestine/Israel. Another four million Palestinians live inside the pre-1948 territory of Palestine, now divided into Israel (with almost one million Palestinians), and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank (including Arab Jerusalem) and Gaza (with a combined total of more than three million Palestinians).

31 In 1947-49, during the battles of the First Israeli-Palestinian War, around 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes, or left because of the atmosphere of violence. Very few of these people were allowed back into the land controlled by Israel. Fifty years later they and their descendants now number about four million, living mainly in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, though some live farther away in Europe and America. Previously Israelis claimed that the refugees left willingly, and should not be allowed to change their minds and return, or even to be compensated for their lost homes and lands. But recently Israeli historians have admitted that most of the departures were carried out by Israeli force of arms, or in an atmosphere of violence. Israel calls those who left or were forced out in 1947-49 ‘refugees’, and those who left or were forced out in 1967 or in days since ‘displaced persons’. Many Palestinians who are still living inside Israel or in the West Bank were made refugees at least once, and may have lost their lands, homes, and other possessions without compensation. They could be living in Israel or the West Bank and Gaza as refugees from their original homes. Another wave of departures occurred after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Several hundred thousand men from Jerusalem were forced across the border to Jordan. In addition, in the weeks following the occupation, local Palestinian leaders, including the mayor of Jerusalem, the president of Bir Zeit University, doctors, lawyers and religious leaders, were transported to various spots in the Jordanian desert against their will and without any judicial process. We will discuss settlements, Jerusalem and refugees more extensively in Section Three.

32 The US-Israeli Partnership, and the Question of Peace and Security After the 1967 war Israeli leaders, both Labor and Likud, followed a strategy of winning regional peace on Israel’s terms: by exchanging some land for peace, and discouraging any Palestinian opposition to Israeli goals through overwhelming Israeli military force. For better or worse, the Israeli choice to follow this strategy is strongly influenced by the fact that the US supports it as well. Supporters and critics of the US-Israel partnership, and Israel’s continuing possession of the territories seized in 1967, differ on one major question: How to best secure Israel’s long-term security among its neighbors in the Middle East. Just as Americans don’t always agree with their leaders on how to address the Middle East in general, or Israel in particular, Israelis also sometimes disagree with their leaders over how Israel should respond to peaceful and violent Palestinian efforts to achieve national self-determination. Most of those who support ‘hawkish’ Israeli military responses toward the Palestinians argue that US assistance is necessary to Israel’s very survival in a hostile region. They argue that Palestinians will never accept Israel’s existence and will continue to attack it even if Palestinians gain full control, and even statehood, in the territories captured by Israel in 1967. From this perspective, Palestinian statehood is undesirable, and hawks from the Likud to the far right promote the building of settlements and the continuing presence of Israeli forces in the territories to either prevent an independent state, or to prevent a viable state (one that could conceivably attack Israel) from emerging. Israeli supporters of the US-Israel partnership argue that the US should stop demanding that Israel make any concessions to Palestinians. For them, such concessions make Israel appear weak, and the appearance of weakness invites Palestinian attacks (Document 16). Rather, the US should allow Israel to force Palestinians to submit to Israel’s demands through military actions that demonstrate that they can never win any conflict with Israel, and that all attacks against Israelis are doomed to failure. From this perspective, actions against the Palestinians in the territories are justified on the basis of Israeli security, as they define it. Supporters of this method to achieve Israel’s long-term security sometimes call their critics, even other Jews and Israelis, ‘anti-semitic’. It is important to note here that the goals of the Israeli far-right are the mirror image of the goals of Palestinian radicals, who call for the destruction of Israel, and whose attacks against Israel are justified as legitimate actions against an occupying force. For both Palestinian radicals and the Israeli far-right, force is the solution to the Palestinian problem, and in some ways they are indirectly allied in their efforts to obstruct peace negotiations and prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories.

33 Critics of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories argue that Palestinians want peace and security just like Israelis, but that desperation is born among people with nothing left to lose: as Palestinians confront more settlements and settlers in the occupied territories, as well as curfews, border closures, house demolitions and military force—violent responses have become more frequent. In 1999 , who would soon become prime minister of Israel, seemed to agree with this ‘dovish’ perspective when asked what he would do if he were born a Palestinian. He replied: “I would have joined a terrorist organization”. Critics of past Israeli policy want Israel to make the concessions that they feel are necessary to accomplish peace—such as the removal of Israeli settlements and military forces, and ultimately the formation of a viable Palestinian state. In sum, the ‘hawks’ assume that Palestinians will continue to attack Israel even after they have an independent state, and ‘doves’ argue that if Palestinians receive an acceptable peace deal, they will stop attacking Israel. Critics of the US-Israeli partnership argue that the US can never be a fair peace broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict because it has in fact permitted, encouraged and even funded (through continuous aid to Israel) the building of settlements in the territories and Israeli military responses to Palestinian aspirations for self-determination. They argue that official US protests against Israel’s policies in the occupied territories, such as settlement building and human rights abuses, are not backed up with credible threats to cut foreign aid to Israel. From this perspective, loyal US support for Israel means that the US is also responsible for the human rights abuses committed by Israel (Document 17). To some of these critics, unwavering US support, and US-sponsored peace negotiations, mean that Israeli leaders will never have to comply with peace terms that would satisfy the aspirations of the Palestinian people. As a result, many argue that partnership with the US is actually hurting Israel—that Israel’s efforts to hold onto the territories by creating settlements and maintaining military control over these areas means that Israel will never make a lasting peace with its neighbors, and will always be endangered. From this perspective, an international UN-sponsored peace initiative would offer more peaceful, long-term results. The scope of action for leaders, both hawkish and dovish, is strongly influenced by the actions of individuals and groups on the ground. Sadly, the hawks have an advantage in this regard: the rising violence between Israelis and Palestinians means that Israeli hawks can find more evidence to support their arguments that all Palestinians, and not just smaller radical groups, seek the destruction of Israel. Any Palestinian attack on any Israeli results in popular support for Israeli retribution (hawkish policies), and attacks on Palestinians. Because Palestinian violence against Israelis leads to popular support for the hawks, some critics wonder whether hawkish leaders order IDF military actions and assassinations of Palestinian leaders in the territories—especially during ceasefires—in order to stimulate further violence from Palestinians and slow the peace process (Document 31).

34 As we will see below, in the first intifada, or mass ‘uprising’ (1987-1993), Palestinians mainly used rocks against Israeli guns. In the (2000-present), the violence has escalated on both sides. In both intifadas, Israeli leaders (both Labor and Likud) have demanded an end to demonstrations and violence before negotiations could begin or continue. Palestinians, who desperately need the unity found in intifada activity to raise international support and pressure on Israel, and who feel that Israel is not negotiating in good faith, cannot rationally cease their protests without real incentives beyond Israeli promises of further negotiations. For their part, Palestinian radicals usually want the negotiations to fail. Thus, Israeli leaders’ demand to end violence before negotiations often means that they can delay hard decisions on removing settlers and military forces from the occupied territories—and the ultimate creation of a Palestinian state. If the doves are right, this can only lead to a prolonged . All parties to the conflict presumably seek security, but at their most extreme, the Israeli far-right and Palestinian radicals see both the problem and the solution as violence. The current cycle of violence probably began in 1980 with the killing of six religious Jews in Hebron and visibly accelerated in 1994 after the killing of 29 Palestinians (Hebron Massacre). After the Hebron Massacre, Hamas claimed credit for the first suicide bombing against Israel. In the spiral of killing and revenge killing, provocation and response, innocent victims on both sides suffered horribly—while the Israeli far-right and Palestinian radicals ‘benefited’. For these reasons, except for acts of violence that strongly influence the course of historical events, we will not dwell on violent activities by either side. When you encounter information on these events, keep in mind that the actions of Israeli or Palestinian individuals or groups are not necessarily condoned by all other Israelis or Palestinians! Also remember that each side bears a measure of responsibility for the escalation of violence.

35 The First Intifada (1987-1993) In December 1987, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza started a mass uprising against the Israeli occupation. This uprising, or intifada (which means ‘shaking off’ in Arabic), was not initiated or orchestrated by the PLO leadership in Tunis. Rather, it was a spontaneous popular mobilization that drew on the organizations and institutions developed under occupation. The intifada involved hundreds of thousands of people, many with no previous resistance experience, including children, teenagers and women. For the first few years, it involved many forms of civil disobedience by unarmed participants, including massive demonstrations, general strikes, refusal to pay taxes, boycotts of Israeli products, political graffiti and the establishment of underground schools (since regular schools were often closed by the military during the uprising). It also included stone throwing, Molotov cocktails and the erection of barricades to impede the movement of Israeli military forces. Intifada activism was organized through popular committees under the umbrella of the United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU). The UNLU was a coalition of the four PLO parties active in the occupied territories: Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP and the PPP. When known leaders of the uprising were arrested by Israeli soldiers, new, often unknown people quietly stepped forward to take their place. This broad-based popular resistance drew unprecedented international attention to the situation facing Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and challenged the occupation as never before. Images of Palestinian children throwing rocks at armed Israeli soldiers created a wider sense of sympathy for Palestinians, who were vastly unequal to the military might of their occupiers. The US hoped that the intifada would create a new generation of Palestinians who would agree to talk with the US in a much more narrow framework—one that didn’t stress international law and UN resolutions. The US still refused to talk to the PLO. But the uprising’s leadership, who communicated with their own people through daily leaflets distributed through streets and marketplaces across the territories, made one thing very clear. Our diplomatic address, they told the world’s press and the world’s leaders, is in Tunis, with the leadership of the PLO. Every effort by Israel, the US and others to find an ‘alternate’ leadership failed. In the summer of 1988, Jordan’s King Hussein severed all administrative and economic ties with the West Bank, and explained his move as an expression of support for the PLO. He reminded the world that “Jordan is not Palestine,” dashing the hopes still floating around in Washington for a ‘Jordanian solution’ to the Palestinian problem. Under the leadership of Minister of Defense , Israel tried to smash the intifada with ‘force, power and blows’, and army commanders instructed troops to break the bones of demonstrators. From 1987 to 1991 over 1,000 Palestinians, including over 200 under the age of sixteen, were killed by Israeli forces. By 1990, most of the UNLU leaders had been arrested and the intifada lost its cohesive force, although it continued for several more years. Political divisions and violence within the Palestinian community escalated, especially the growing rivalry between the various PLO factions and Islamist organizations (Hamas and Islamic Jihad). Palestinian militants killed over 250 Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the occupation authorities and about 100 Israelis during this period.

36 Although the intifada did not bring an end to the occupation, it convinced many Israelis that the occupation could not continue. The intifada also shifted Palestinian political initiative from the PLO leadership in Tunis to the occupied territories. Palestinian activists in the occupied territories demanded that the PLO adopt a clear political program to guide the struggle for independence. In response, the PNC convened in Algeria in November 1988, recognized the state of Israel, formally accepted a two-state solution, proclaimed an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and renounced terrorism. The Israeli government did not respond to these gestures, claiming that nothing had changed and that the PLO was a terrorist organization with which it would never negotiate. The US did acknowledge that the PLO’s policies had changed and opened diplomatic channels in Tunis, but did little to encourage Israel to abandon its uncompromising position. In December 1988 Arafat was invited to address the UN General Assembly. The US, however, refused to grant him a visa to come to New York to speak at UN headquarters. In response, the entire membership and staff of the UN General Assembly, including translators, clerks, security guards and assistants as well as diplomats, packed up and traveled to Geneva to hear Arafat speak. In his speech Arafat built on the Palestinian peace initiative and formally recognized Israel, making official what had long been the PLO’s unofficial support for a two-state solution. He also called for a UN-sponsored international peace conference. Within hours, U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz announced his intention to open talks with the PLO. It was the first break with Kissinger’s 1975 commitment to Israel that the US would refuse to negotiate with the PLO. The US-PLO dialogue that followed was brief and unproductive. Washington wanted the Palestinians to accept Israel’s plan for elections in the occupied territories, from which the PLO would be excluded, with the best possible result a narrow version of autonomy. The PLO refused, and the talks stalled. Then, in the spring of 1990, a group representing a minor PLO faction directed by Abu Abbas, a known terrorist living in Iraq, tried to attack Israel from the Mediterranean but was intercepted by the IDF. 3 Arafat asserted that neither he nor Fatah had any advance knowledge of the attack, but the US insisted that the PLO condemn the attack and punish those responsible in order to show clear opposition to terrorism. The PLO issued a general statement repeating its policy of opposition to any military actions targeting civilians. The US considered the PLO response inadequate, called off the US-PLO dialogue, and refused further contact until the PLO demonstrated, to US satisfaction, a more sincere opposition to terrorism. At this time the international scene was in turmoil as the Soviet Union neared collapse. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Cold War was at an end, and a few months later Iraq would invade and occupy Kuwait.

3 Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, gained notoriety for directing the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro. Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound, 69 year-old American Jew, was killed and thrown overboard during the highjacking.

37 The Madrid Conference US and Israeli failure to respond meaningfully to PLO moderation resulted in PLO opposition to the US-led attack on Iraq during the 1991 . The PLO did not endorse Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait, but it saw ’s challenge to the US and the Gulf oil-exporting nations as a way to alter the regional status quo and focus attention on the question of Palestine. After the war the PLO was diplomatically isolated. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia cut off financial support they had been providing, bringing the PLO to the brink of crisis. After the Gulf War, the US sought to stabilize its position in the Middle East by promoting a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite their turn against the PLO, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were anxious to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and remove the regional instability it created. The Bush administration felt obligated to its Arab allies, and pressed a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister (of the Likud party) to open negotiations with the Palestinians and the Arab states at a multilateral conference convened in Madrid, Spain, in October 1991.4 Shamir’s conditions, which the US accepted, were that the PLO be excluded from the talks and that Palestinian desires for independence and statehood not be directly addressed. The Madrid conference was mainly non-substantive, intended only to launch the new peace initiative. The substance came after the conference, in the form of separate ‘tracks’ of bilateral negotiations. This meant that Israel negotiated separately with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians. In subsequent negotiating sessions held in Washington, D.C., Palestinians were represented not by the PLO but by a delegation from the occupied territories. Participants in this delegation were subject to Israeli approval, and residents of East Jerusalem were barred on the grounds that the city is part of Israel. Although the PLO was formally excluded from these talks, its leaders regularly advised the Palestinian delegation. Although Israeli and Palestinian delegations met many times, little progress was achieved. Later, after leaving office, Prime Minister Shamir publicly announced that his strategy was to drag out the Washington negotiations for ten years, by which time the annexation of the West Bank would be an accomplished fact. A new Israeli Labor Party government, led by Yitzhak Rabin, assumed office in June 1992 and promised rapid conclusion of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Instead, the Washington negotiations became stalemated after December 1992, when Israel expelled over 400 Palestinian residents of the occupied territories who were accused, but not tried or convicted, of being radical Islamist activists. Human rights conditions in the West Bank and Gaza deteriorated dramatically after Rabin assumed office. This undermined the legitimacy of the Palestinian delegation to the Washington talks, and prompted the resignation of several delegates.5

4 Because they had voted for his opponent in the previous presidential race, Bush felt relatively free of potential domestic Jewish opposition. Bush’s willingness to compel Israeli leaders to the bargaining table, and Clinton’s subsequent pro-Israel stance, explains why many in the Arab world supported and applauded the election of Bush’s son, president George W. Bush, in 2000. 5 Madrid’s Israel-Jordan track led to a 1994 peace treaty between the two countries. Talks between Syria and Israel bogged down over when Israel would withdraw from the Golan Heights, and what Syria’s ‘full peace’ would look like. Lebanon’s talks with Israel, largely derivative of the Israel-Syria track, also stalled.

38 Lack of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track, and deterioration of the economic and human rights conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, also accelerated the growth and popularity of a radical Islamist challenge to the PLO. Hamas established a military arm, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigade, committed to the assassination of Israelis and Palestinian collaborators. Violent attacks against Israeli targets by Hamas and Islamic Jihad further increased tensions. Ironically, before the intifada, Israeli authorities had funded and facilitated Islamist organizations as a way to divide Palestinians in the occupied territories, and to decrease popular support for the PLO’s secular nationalism. As the popularity of Islamists grew and challenged the relative moderation of the PLO, Israeli leaders came to regret their policy of encouraging political Islam. Eventually, Yitzhak Rabin came to believe that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the broader Islamic movements of which they were a part posed more of a threat to Israel than the PLO.

39