For most of us, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is an abstract. Those of us sympathetic to the Palestinian cause may commiserate, protest, visit, etc. but ultimately we return to lives where we have rights and freedom. However, there is now a generation of Palestinians for whom the opposite is true. Freedom is something they’ve heard about. They’ve lived their entire lives under a military occupation. To grow up at gunpoint, to navigate a landscape of barbed wire and concrete barricades, to be intimidated constantly by soldiers, to know death well, and never justice - these things must create a consciousness, an identity, that is unique.
The question of the moment is: who is going to speak for the generation of Palestinians raised in the occupied territories. Arafat, Abbas, and the current leadership of the PLO all migrated back to the territories after the signing of the Olso Accord in 1993. Prior to that, they had been living in relative comfort as expatriate rebels in Tunisia.
Marwan Barghouti has emerged as a popular leader representing this younger generation within the dominant Fatah party, despite the fact that he is currently imprisoned in Israel for his role in leading the Intifada. Last week, he announced as a candidate for Yassir Arafat’s post of President of the Palestinian Authority. However, he could only run as the Fatah candidate if nominated by the party’s Central Committee. The Committee consists of a small number of “old guard” leaders. Not suprisingly, they nominated Abbas - which was supposed to have ended Barghouti’s candidacy.
On Thursday, Barghouti made a suprise announcement that he would run an independent campaign for President. This threw everybody into a tizzy until he called it off late Thursday night. The best report on this, I thought, was on National Public Radio. The trade-off, it appears, was that Fatah will hold new elections for its ruling Revolutionary Council, for the first time in fifteen years. This will certainly give the younger generation greater power in the organization.
What will this mean for Palestinian policies? Firstly, the younger generation has pressed for more efficient government and an end to patronage and corruption in the Palestinian Authority. Secondly, those raised on armed struggle against an oppressive regime are not likely to lay down their arms and accept whatever compromise suits Israel’s purposes. As Barghouti put it, he stands for resistance and negotiation; Abbas for negotiation without resistance. A third possible consequence, if Barghouti and his constituents are successful, is that a reinvigorated Fatah will regain its credibility among disaffected Palestinians who have gravitated toward Hamas in the past decade.
I say, so far, so good. But Israel and the U.S. may be disappointed if we expect Abbas to lead the Palestinians happily down a path of passive acceptance of whatever sort of “homeland” Israel has in mind for them. It is worth remembering that we created the terrible conditions under which a million or so Palestinians have lived for nearly four decades. They have not struggled for so long to be a pliant element of someone else’s political strategy. Now is the time for us to take Palestinian demands seriously, and to deal with them fairly. It looks to me like they will get their house quickly in order in this much heralded post-Arafat era. The “opportunity” will then be ours to seize or lose.
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