More on Fayyad
Issandr El AmraniA commenter left a question about yesterday's links, regarding my reservations about Ali Abunimah's post on Noam Chomky's attitude towards Salam Fayyad. There's an excellent article addressing Fayyad's difficult position in The Economist:
A PORTLY official from the office of the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, planted a kiss on Musa Abu Mariya’s right eye, enveloped him in a bear hug and sped off in his sport utility vehicle trailing a cloud of dust. Mr Abu Mariya organises protests in Beit Omar, a town on the West Bank, against Israel’s appropriation of land for settlements and security walls that can cut through Palestinian farms and hurt the villagers’ livelihood. As official visits go, it was better than most. But the kiss left Mr Abu Mariya squirming. These days he no longer knows whether the pre-dawn knock on his door heralds Israeli or Palestinian security men. In recent weeks, both have hauled him off to their prisons.
The Palestinian official’s visit illustrates the dilemma faced by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Mr Fayyad. Publicly, the PA celebrates Mr Abu Mariya’s peaceful protests beneath Israel’s concrete watch-towers. His sit-downs in Beit Omar, on the main road that Jewish settlers use between Jerusalem and Hebron, the biggest Palestinian city in the southern part of the West Bank, chime with the PA’s own boycott of anything to do with the settlements. The PA recently gave the 25,000-odd Palestinians who work in them until the end of the year to give up their jobs or face up to five years in jail. And both the protesters and the PA share the common aim of ending the occupation in the 80% of the West Bank, known as Areas B and C, that are controlled directly by the Israeli army.
Yet the increasingly vocal protests by Mr Abu Mariya and others like him are disturbing the quiet that the PA has preserved since Israel crushed the Palestinians’ second intifada(uprising) some four years ago and that has given Mr Fayyad the space to start building a state from the bottom up. While the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, looks to American-mediated negotiations, which have just resumed indirectly, to bring about a future Palestinian state, Mr Fayyad has used the calm to try to resuscitate the economy and train security forces. Should protests, now concentrated in the rural parts of the West Bank and numbering around 40 a week, turn violent, Israel may once again feel obliged to rumble in and upset the PA’s plans. “Things are happening outside the cities beyond our control,” says a PA security official. “You can ride the tiger, but you have no idea where it is heading.”
Read more of the article for the impossible situation Fayyad is in, as well as some of the security provision he provides for the Israelis. The lesson I would take from it is that, with the failure of the political process almost certain, West Bankers should not rush, but make the next intifada one that counts (like the first before it was subverted by Arafat and Fatah and unlike the second, which led nowhere.) There needs to be strategic as well as tactical thinking.
Reader Comments (12)
It seems you are encouraging a new Intifada. Can that possibly help Palestinians get their own state? It seems more likely to result in additional Palestinian deaths and suffering, and at best, a Gaza-like descent into lawlessness. Shouldn't you, and all of us, be encouraging Palestinians to create real governing institutions and wean themselves off of UNRWA and other foreign dependence. Israel seems desperate to get out of the territories if there was someone they could leave in charge. Why not help them get out?
A popular uprising against their own, in favor of democracy and an end to petty corruption and thievery might not be the way Palestinians do things, but it might actually be productive. If I lived in the West Bank, nothing could be scarier then the Islamization of Gaza, complete with executions, clamp-down on normal, secular life and commandeering of property. If the Arabs of the West bank don't build some real institutions fast, Hamas in Ramallah may be the future.
Ridiculous argument not even worth addressing since it contains the sentence "Israel seems desperate to get out of the territories if there was someone they could leave in charge." Yeah, they've been really desperate to get out for 43 years. I say do both: build institutions, and fight the occupation. But do it smart.
It is not really ridiculous at all. Israel offered Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan a long time ago. While there are still some Israelis today who would like Israel to remain in the West Bank, most Israelis, in every poll, said they would give the area up for peace. For Israelis, peace means that the territory they exit not be used to attack them. That is why giving the territory to either Egypt or Jordan was attractive. That is also why giving up Gaza, and the results that followed, make them very scared of leaving the West Bank. There is little confidence in the ability of the PA to actually run a country.
Fighting the occupation is fine if fighting is important to you. But it is doesn't seem terribly effective if your goal is a Palestinian state. More importantly, the preoccupation with fighting the occupation seems an excuse for incompetent administration, corruption and backwardness. People who do, do. people who don't do, blame someone else.
Why not show the Israelis you can do something constructive so that if they leave, you would actually have something to lose if they came back. That would get them to believe that if they left you would have a reason to not shoot rockets at them, kidnap their soldiers or do whatever else they do from Gaza. I believe Israelis genuinely don't care about the West Bank or Palestinians, so long as you can be relied on to leave them alone if they leave.
But good luck to you either way.
I agree with issandra - there is ansolutely no evidence to suggest that Israel wants to get out of the territories. Citizen survey are irrelevant - Israeli state action is what we have to look at. And the simple fact is, far from trying to get out, or even maintaining the status quo, Israel is actively expanding its presence through settlements. There is one interesting theory that this is all to do with water - Israel now controls something like 80% of the West Bank's water supplies, which makes it even more unlikely that they are going to move anytime soon. Water, increasingly, is the conflict of the future (Third World Goes Forth has a great analysis of how sub-Saharan African countries are beginning the process of cutting off the Nile, something that has received very little coverage recently).
Interesting viewpoint.
Sam Thurlow:
I am amazed that you say that there is no evidence that Israel wants to get out of the territories and cite as evidence the fact that Israel doesn't today act as if they have already withdrawn. That is like saying your proof that my home is not for sale is that I haven't moved out yet.
If I led you to believe that I think Israelis overwhelmingly wish to withdraw from the West Bank unilaterally, as they did from Gaza, then I apologize. I meant that Israeli opinion polls show a willingness to withdraw as part of a peace deal. In other words, there is no conflict with what Israelis say they would do if they had peace versus what the Israeli State does now, and I am not sure why you think there is. Or do you believe that Israeli State action is divorced from Israeli public opinion and the government does whatever it chooses regardless of elections?
In any event, it is hard to say why increased settlements today are really a problem for anyone other than the Israelis. There were settlements in Gaza and Sinai before, all of which the Israelis dismantled when they left. The more settlements they build now, the more painful it will be for them to dismantle them, but that is their burden. The evidence so far is that they been willing to pay that internal price when the political decision to withdraw was made. Perhaps at some point, the price will be too great for Israelis, but at the moment, their polls show otherwise. In the meantime, they act as if there is no intention to withdraw and build settlements since there doesn't seem to be an agreement on the horizon, but presumably they will dismantle them when it comes time to leave. I know new settlements or building in existing ones make people angry, but that has nothing to do with whether it proves that Israel won't ever leave.
Yes, it is totally the Israelis who are hurt most by the settlements. Too true!
Briefly put:
My reservations about Fayyad and the "government" he heads is simply he is a near carbon-copy of both autocratic Arab regimes and Israeli military dirty tactics. I understand the whole "facts on the ground" argument but the price is the diminishing of a once-thriving political discourse thus eliminating any hope for the rise of an Arab democracy.
His is simply continuing Arafats' legacy of "security-first".
As for "jgupta"; you really should brush up on your history. The Zionazis had dozens of possibilities to pull back. Even when they built the wall, the Palestinians stated outright that, yes they agree on the physical separation but as long as it is on demarcated, internationally recognized border. Instead nearly 15% of the entire West Bank is annexed.
Need more proof of "Israels" dirty hands?
PS.
Issandr, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.
A little point of clarification about "intifada." What does intifada mean? It means uprising. It doesn't mean terrorism or suicide bombing. The first intifada, in the 1980s, was largely a non-violent movement (or where the violence usually culminated at throwing rocks at armored vehicles and soldiers with guns). Sooner or later, without a real political process or Israeli government willing to evacuate the West Bank (which represents little of a security threat, particularly in light of the Wall), and the perpetuation of routine, daily crimes like the recent burning of trees by settlers under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers, these people will revolt. I hope they follow the model of the first intifada combined with action against soldiers and settlers. This is normal. I'm not Palestinian and have no desire to tell them what to do, but I know it's what I would do if it was my country. It's what most of my Belgian family did for its country during the German occupation in WW2
My point is that the next intifada, which will come as the unavoidable alternative to a flawed political process, will need to be well thought-out and not left in the hands of the incompetents at Fatah or the dubious tactics of Hamas (notably its suicide bombings, which I oppose as both immoral and counter-productive). It needs to be a people-based movement, not vanguard-based, and hopefully a more democratic movement than what Fatah or Hamas have tried to offer.
Issandr, I'd like to go back to the basic question you raised on Fayyad. From your response to the comment on your links piece, I can certainly see you are taking a nuanced and not black and white view, but I still have to question it. I get that you like that Fayyad is making facts on the ground. But what kind of facts? Ok, so supposedly he's "revived" the West Bank economy. Has he? In my view all he has done is built the gilded cage the Israelis asked for with yet another American-trained Arab-statelet torture apparatus, and as "reward" for that the Israelis decided to let people get a couple crumbs to eat. Crumbs that they stole in the first place. I really don't see how anything Fayyad is doing goes anywhere positive. He is unelected, unpopular, controlled almost purely by foreign forces, and doing his darndest by torture and police state brutality to get people to shut up and accept Bantustans as the permanent solution for their existence. I don't doubt that he believes he is doing quite the opposite and is very likely sincere, but we all know what the road to hell is paved with. At worst he's a Quisling, at best he's a tool.
You may very well be right, but the important question is what to do about it. Start an uprising against the PA? Eventually perhaps, but you have to lay the ground first. That includes getting some breathing space for the West Bankers. I don't believe in West Bank first nor economy first, but I don't see the alternative being prepared. Let's get some real, credible alternative leaders in place - perhaps Barghouti - and prepare, if that's what Palestinians want to do.
It's a fair point regarding preparation/planning. If there's one thing both Intifadas taught, it's that rage without clear goals eventually is co-opted and fizzles into not much. But I'd argue the seeds are already germinating with the various popular, grassroots, and local movements fighting the wall, supporting the (non-Fayyad) boycott moves, etc.