Building a Palestinian State

I n d ia n a S e r ie s in A rab and I sl a m ic S t u d ie s Salih ]. Altoma, Iliya Harik, and Mark Tessler, general editors Building a Palestinian State THE INCOMPLETE REVOLUTION Glenn E. Robinson INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis © 1997 by Glenn E. Robinson All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Robinson, Glenn E., date Building a Palestinian state : the incomplete revolution / Glenn E. Robinson, p. cm. — (Indiana series in Arab and Islamic studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-33217-6 (c l: alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-21082-8 (pa : alk. paper) 1. Elite (Social sciences)—Palestine. 2. Palestine—Politics and government. 3. Intifada, 1987- 4. Palestinian Arabs—Political activity. 5. Nationalism—Palestine. I. Title. II. Series. HN660.Z9E46 1997 305.52'095694—dc20 96-24708 1 2 3 4 5 02 01 00 99 98 97 For Elizabeth CONTENTS PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XV 1. The Traditional Notable Elite in Palestine 1 2. The Rise of a New Political Elite in the West Bank and Gaza 19 3. The Professional Middle Class 38 4. Abu Barbur: Elite Conflict and Social Change in Bayt Sahur 66 5. Popular Committees in the Intifada 94 6. Hamas and the Islamist Mobilization 132 7. The Logic of Palestinian State-Building after Oslo 174 NOTES 201 INDEX 223 PREFACE This book is about issues of collective action as well as about the Palestinians. That is, while it is a case study of the Intifada and its aftermath, the book also focuses on three central questions of revolu tionary collective action. The first question I ask is fundamental: Why do people rebel? More precisely, since grievances are always present in any society, what makes an aggrieved people turn from individual acts of rebellion to sustained collective action? I take up this question in the Palestinian case by asking what made the Intifada, the 1987-93 uprising, possible, given that Pales tinians in the West Bank and Gaza had lived under Israeli military occupation for twenty years before the Intifada began without engaging in anything approaching this level of action. The question is not really what were the causes of the Intifada, since any people would chafe under military occupation, but rather what happened to transform individual anger into a revolutionary process. The second question has to do with the revolutionary process itself. How is revolutionary collective action sustained in the face of over whelming counterforce (as states almost always have over rebellious societies)? In this case, how could the Palestinians sustain collective action for years in the face of harsh Israeli measures meant to deter such action? Third, and perhaps most interesting, is this question: How does the revolutionary process shape the political outcome in an emerging state? That is, when revolutions come to power, what can the dynamics of the revolution itself tell us about how the new state will look? What are the relationships between revolutionary causes, processes, and political outcomes? In the Palestinian case, the question is the same: How do the dynamics of the Intifada impact the state-building process of the Pales tine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the West Bank and Gaza? What is the "logic" of Palestinian state-building? In answer to the first question, I argue that the Intifada became possible only with the rise of a new and distinctive political elite in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian politics had long been dominated by an urban, landowning elite, which had its roots in nineteenth-century Ottoman policies. Ruling states had used this class, known as the no tables, to maintain effective social control. The two bases on which the notables' authority rested were a web of traditional patron-client rela tions and ownership of land. Each pillar was undermined by the unin- X PREFACE tended consequences of Israeli policies: opening Israel's labor markets to mostly agrarian Palestinians weakened patron-client networks, and land confiscations attacked that which brought the notable class social power—control over land. The new elite which rose to prominence in the 1980s came from a different social class than its notable counterpart. The new elite was not a landowning class, and its members were more likely to be from villages, refugee camps, and small towns than from urban centers. Because it came from a lower social class, the new elite was much more extensive than the old one. It largely coalesced at Palestinian universi ties—institutions that did not exist prior to 1972. In large measure because it came from a different social class, the new elite promulgated an ideology different from that of the old elite. While the notables ultimately espoused political transformation—indepen dence from Israel—the new elite sought not Just political but also social transformation: to remake Palestinian society, thus undermining the social bases of notable power. It was this new elite that undertook a policy of popular mobilization in the 1980s. Grassroots organizations forged in this period—student blocs, labor unions, women's commit tees, agricultural relief committees, medical relief committees, volun tary works organizations—were the institutional expression of the new elite. Grassroots mobilization provided a means to both oppose notable power and build the social and political relations necessary to sustain the Intifada. Structural change made the policy of mobilization possible. In this case, structural change—primarily changing patterns of employment, land tenure, and higher education—not only helped to eclipse the power of an old elite and create a counterelite but also produced a society in which the possibility of mobilization existed. In short, the changing labor market made peasants into Palestinians. The Intifada thus was made possible by the emergence of a new political elite, itself the by-product of structural transformations in Palestinian society. Sustained collective action could not be undertaken in the absence of the institutions and ideology of the new elite (in contradistinction to the nonmobilizational ideology of, and the absence of institutions built by, the notable elite). While the Palestinians always had a surplus of grievances living under military occupation, revolution ary collective action had to wait for a counterelite that could organize it. Not surprisingly, while the Intifada was primarily about confronting the occupation, it also contained a strong antinotable, transformative flavor. In terms of the second question—sustaining collective action in the face of overwhelming force—I argue that central to understanding the Palestinians' ability to sustain the Intifada is the notion of devolved authority. With the rise of a new elite, authority had spread downward in society and become much more diffused within it than before. This was PREFACE XI of critical importance. Earlier attempts to confront the occupation had largely failed because authority in Palestinian society was concentrated in a small stratum at the top of society. Israel could cut off the metaphori cal head of the beast, and the nascent rebellion would collapse. In the Intifada, when one group of leaders was arrested another would imme diately spring up. The institutions of devolved authority numbered in the thousands. They included not only the extant grassroots organizations but also the popular committees (lijan sha'biya), which virtually ran Palestinian soci ety during the Intifada. Such popular organizations ranged from the ever-changing leadership of the Intifada (al-qiyada al-wataniyya al- muwahida I'il-intifada, or the Unified National Leadership of the Upris ing, UNLU) to local branches of the UNLU to ad hoc committees that distributed food during curfews or taught neighborhood students when schools were closed. They included militant groups, which would en force strikes, attack collaborators, and organize confrontations with Israeli forces. Such groups sustained collective action in spite of harsh Israeli measures to stop it—and in spite of attempts by the PLO in Tunis to undermine autonomous political actions outside its control. In sum, the revolutionary process was directly linked to the structural changes which preceded it. In this case, structural changes had weak ened an old elite and brought a counterelite to the fore. This new elite mobilized a transformed society in order to better confront the occupa tion. By so doing, authority was pushed downward in society away from the notable elite and toward a much broader spectrum of individuals. The devolution of authority was seen directly in the Intifada by the emergence of thousands of popular institutions which organized Pales tinian society under emergency conditions and which Israel found to be impossible to eliminate. Sustained collective action, then, was directly linked to the reorganization of authority in Palestinian society by the mobilization efforts of the new elite. While the Intifada was a social revolution, it remained incomplete. It was a social revolution precisely because of its social transformative element. In other words, it was not only an anticolonial political revolu tion but also a movement that sought to remake internal Palestinian society.The promise of social transformation was never entirely fulfilled. The new elite was never able to fully consolidate its position of power, largely because the Intifada was never able to throw off the yoke of Israeli occupation.

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