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revolutionary socialists in the United States

News & Views

Palestinian resistance groups ripped by internal conflicts
by Gerry Foley

While the Israeli army continues to decimate the leaderships of the Palestinian resistance organizations and terrorize the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian Authority has been gripped by an acute crisis involving clashes among armed factions.

On July 31, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a movement linked to Yasir Arafat’s Al Fatah, burned down the building in the West Bank city of Jenin housing the intelligence service of the Palestinian Authority, of which Arafat is president.

The following day, 20 members of a small grouping within Al Fatah dispersed with gunfire a meeting of Palestinian legislators and senior Al Fatah officials being held in the West Bank city of Nablus to discuss reform of the Palestinian authority. The armed members of the Al Awda Brigades claimed, according to the Al Jazeera web site, that the meeting was really aimed against Yasir Arafat.

A U.S. wire service reported with respect to the Jenin incident: “Zakaria Zubeida, a local leader of the group Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, told CNN the militants burned down the buildings because members of the intelligence services had been following them and they feared their whereabouts would be passed on to the Israeli military.”

The assault on the Palestinian intelligence services building in Jenin was followed by a demonstration of 5000 people in the streets of the city supporting the attackers, an Al Jazeera dispatch of Aug. 1 reported.

An analysis of the conflict in the Aug. 1 issue of the Paris daily Le Monde claimed that the dispute had had only a “limited” effect on the Palestinian population because it was seen as a faction fight within Al Fatah. But the Jenin demonstration seems to indicate that the strife is beginning to have a wider response.

The “reformers” also seem to be upping the ante. In its Aug. 1 issue, the liberal Zionist daily Haaretz reported an inflammatory statement by Mohammed Dahlan, Arafat’s erstwhile security chief and now rival: “‘Arafat is sitting on the corpses and destruction of the Palestinians at a time when they’re desperately in need of a new mentality,’ Dahlan was quoted as saying during the interview, which was held in Jordan.

“If Arafat does not carry out real reforms within the PA by August 10, 30,000 Palestinians will demonstrate in the streets of Gaza, Dahlan said.”

The conflict between the Palestinian Authority and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade opened up wide in the middle of July when Arafat tried to consolidate the Palestinian security services under the authority of his nephew Musa Arafat. The appointment was followed by protests by armed groups, as well as the resignation of the Palestinian Authority premier Ahmed Qureia, which Arafat refused to accept.

The confrontation between Arafat and Qureia was resolved at least temporarily by Arafat agreeing to share control of security with Qureia. But a tug-of-war came out in the open. Next, the Palestine legislature produced a report denouncing the Qureia government as a failure.

There have been various interpretations of the conflict in the local and international press, with some calling it a dispute between Arafat’s “Old Guard” and the rising generation in Fatah while others blame it on Dahlan.

But it is clear that Arafat’s authority is at the center of it. In fact, Arafat’s strength is also his weakness. He is a bonapartist figure who is able to bridge the gap between the fighters and the opportunist politicians in a way that no other personality can. But the contradictions of his role are wearing his regime out.

The United States and Israel are trying to find a Palestinian politician who can collaborate with the Zionist authorities to suppress the Palestinian resistance. Arafat’s former premier, Abu Mazen, broke his back trying to fit into that role without touching off a Palestinian civil war that he knew he would lose. Dahlan was associated with Abu Mazen and has won a reputation with the Israelis and the U.S. as a “realist.”

The British business magazine The Economist noted July 22: “Young, well-dressed and energetic, a fluent Hebrew speaker from his time in Israeli prisons, Mr. Dahlan is a wily operator. The Israelis savour his apparent enmity to Mr. Arafat. The younger man is readier to say things that Israelis like to hear—for instance, acknowledging that they will never accept the return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes, since the demographic change that would ensue would lead to the end of a Jewish state.”

If, as the Israeli daily Yediot Ahoronot claims, the Islamic militant organization Hamas has decided to support Arafat in the present conflict, it is probably because it fears the rise of Dahlan. But the shifting alliances among the armed factions are less and less able to contain the contradictions in the Palestinian leadership.

In its July 18 analysis of the crisis, Al Jazeera quoted “civil society activist” Mustapha Barghuti at length. He argued that the solution to the conflict was to create a normal parliamentary structure in the Palestinian areas, new municipal elections (none have been held since 1976), an “independent judiciary,” and so on.

But in a society under the sort of pressures that the Palestinian areas are, there is no way that a “normal” parliamentary system can work. The gap between the fighters and the relatively privileged and bureaucratic elements of Palestinian society is too wide and growing. The impoverishment of the masses and the pressure that they face from the Israeli forces are too great.

The constant attacks by the Israeli army have prevented the Palestinian Authority from functioning almost entirely on the West Bank and gravely disrupted its functioning in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian administration is essentially financed by grants from the European Union, which are only able to keep a bureaucracy in waiting (125,000 functionaries for a population of 3.5 million).

Dahlan complains that the PA has spent $5 billion of the European Union’s money without the Palestinian people seeing any result. Of course, the reason the EU provides this money is to build up the basis for a Palestinian mini-state that can sell out the Palestinians to Israel. In a society where more than 60 percent of the economically active population is unemployed, these bureaucratic posts can be a major factor of corruption.

The prospect of a sell-out are in fact increased by the present faction fight and the process of the Palestinian people being worn out by the pressures it is under and the demoralization caused by the failures of its leadership.

The demoralization of the Palestinian people is clearly what the Zionists are waiting for. Al Jazeera reported July 5 with respect to a debate in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset: “[Israeli chief of staff Moshe] A’alon scolded the committee [on defense and foreign affairs] for revealing that the Israeli occupation army effectively provoked the Palestinians into escalating the violence during the first few months of the second intifada in order to give the army a pretext to hit hard on the Palestinian society and bully it into unconditional surrender.”

The report went on to say: “According to Israeli sources, then Chief of Staff and now Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz didn’t plan to bring about the end of the conflict.

“Instead, he thought he had finally seized the opportunity to ‘beat and vanquish’ the Palestinians in order to ‘burn into their consciousness’ and make them ‘internalize their weakness and inferiority vis-a-vis Israel’s strength.’

“Mofaz’s ultimate aim, of which he later convinced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was to hector Palestinians into negotiations in a weakened and exhausted state whereby they would have no choice but to accept Israel’s dictates and demands.”

The Palestinian resistance has likely exceeded the determination the Zionists expected from it. But it is showing erosion. The present conflict indicates the dangers. In order to overcome the divisions, the Palestinian fighters need a social revolution in the territories they dominate, the creation of a central authority based in local organs elected by the masses and loyal to them, dedicated to the victory of their struggle.

They need an organization that can raise the perspective of a social revolution in the Middle East and mobilize the great majority of working people in the region to fight the imperialists and their local agents.

The article above first appeared in the August 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.

Youth 4 Socialist Action: P.O. Box 16853, Duluth MN 55816 (715) 394-6660 -- mnsocialist@yahoo.com