| The Legacy and Lessons of Arafat |
| The Editors | |
|
The passing of Yasser Arafat last November marked the end of an era in the Palestinian movement. With this event the American and Israeli regimes revamped their ideological offensive—pulling out a tried and tested method—declaring the “chances for peace” once again within grasp. Having allowed himself to be made a “statesman” by Oslo, Arafat, in the years preceding his death, was recreated into a dictator and a terrorist. Israel and the U.S. insisted—against all evidence—that Arafat was the instigator of the second Intifada exactly to cover up the rebellion’s democratic challenge to the tyranny of their own regimes and of the Palestinian Authority. At the same time hundreds of thousands attended the return of Arafat’s body to Ramallah. As tens of thousands crowded the landing helicopters it was evident from the signs of genuine anguish and defiance that Arafat’s passing represented a collective historical and tragic experience of a movement for freedom. Clearly behind every great historical personality is an epic movement of millions. To take account of Arafat’s life we have to make sense of the two contradictory roles of this representative man. The first role was as a popular guerrilla leader who for a time defied not just the imperial powers, but also every state and ruling class of the region. He was at certain moments a representative figure of an Arab nationalism and internationalism that implicitly rejected the counter-revolutionary notion of a progressive nationalist ruling class. The Intifada has always contained this vision. Arafat’s second role came later. As the only guarantor of the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority he was ultimately responsible for the destruction of the first Intifada, giving an accepting Palestinian face to creeping Israeli apartheid. Therefore, such figures can represent the aspirations and power of a people to be self-governing and at the same time be a new ruler-in-waiting who seeks to smash this power by seizing the state or constituting a new ruling class. To highlight the difference it is necessary to relate Arafat’s life to the development of the Palestinian movement as a whole in its challenge to U.S. and Israeli society. As a target for official society’s hatred and fear, Arafat was made to embody the racist idea of Arab people that more than ever attempts to justify U.S. imperialism and Israeli apartheid. Arafat became the central embodiment of international terrorism in official newspapers and newscasts, which in some respects the Palestinian movement pioneered. Like such leaders as Mandela, Castro and Cabral among many others, he was also a representative figure of the national liberation period. Finally, this era took seriously the question of armed self-defense and prioritized the building of movements that reached out to oppressed and working people all over the world. In the United States alone, the Palestinian movement created ties with such important groups as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The importance of understanding the legacy of Arafat and its relationship to all of these developments helps to clarify how anti-imperialist and anti-racist principles are central to undermining the U.S. and Israel’s justification for apartheid, to which both are more committed than ever. These are problems for consideration not simply for “over there” as either political tourists or disinterested journalistic opinion, but to grasp vital lessons to problems that confront everyone in the United States today who wishes to see a better world tomorrow. Arafat’s life embraced all but the earliest history of the Palestinian movement. Born in 1929 in Cairo, Yasser Arafat grew up in Jerusalem in the 1930s. He inherited the political experience of an earlier generation of organizers and thinkers who fought to overthrow feudal elites and imperialist division of the Arab world. Only ten years earlier the British-installed king Faisal of Syria was overthrown by the people and they instituted a government of democratically elected councils and assemblies in his place. When the French invaded and defeated the popular Arab militia, many traveled to British-colonized Palestine, bringing with them their invaluable political experience. Too young to actively participate in the resistance to increased Zionist settlement and British control of Palestine, Arafat could only witness the great general strike of 1936-39 and incipient guerilla struggle led by Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam. He returned to Egypt for schooling and in the 1940s and 1950s was involved in student politics. In 1948, in an effort to create a Jewish-only state, Zionist paramilitary forces carried out their plan to expel as many Palestinians as possible. Nearly 1 million Palestinians fled while Arab elites, like in Greater Syria three decades earlier, failed to participate in any serious organized political response. It was up to thousands of ordinary Palestinians and other Arab people to form militias and protect their homes. This development was a direct threat to reactionary Arab rulers who courted favor from Western imperialists in competition with Zionists. Arafat fought in Palestine, but returned to Egypt after the fighting ended. Like many Palestinians, Arafat found himself exiled in the Middle East and supportive of the liberating potential of Arab nationalism. Often associated with Gamal Abdul Nasser, eventual leader of Egypt, Arab nationalism promised a vision of collective struggle against Western political and economic domination, Zionist colonization and the older feudal order. However, while pan-Arab nationalism represented a groundswell of new popular energy and the potential for collective self-government, it also very often meant their negation. “Revolutionary” or progressive parties that opposed the Western states and the old reactionary monarchical and feudal elites used the rhetoric of pan-Arabism to justify the centralization of power into their hands as they took control of the state—constituting a new ruling class. The consequences of this became clear in the case of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was set up by governments of the region as an outlet for growing Palestinian anger over continued Zionist colonization. This new wave of militancy among the Palestinian working and middle classes threatened these same governments. This was true because these Palestinians represented a highly politicized, and thus potentially revolutionary, force within their own societies. At the same time the Palestinian fight against colonization implicitly highlighted the self-serving impotence of the Arab regimes. It is in this situation that Arafat and others began to build the guerrilla organization Fatah. The birth of Fatah was in direct response to the Arab elite’s—both radical nationalist and monarchical reactionary—unwillingness to fight Zionist colonization in Palestine. At first Fatah grew in competition with the PLO. Later, Fatah would win control of the PLO from the direct manipulation of regional states, at least for a time. Fatah’s ranks grew as it began militia activity against Israel and projected a political vision of a united Palestinian people throwing off the yoke of colonialism. Arafat and Fatah made an important contribution to the consolidation of Palestinian nationalism by uniting refugees through the concrete organizational mission of overthrowing Israeli colonization. By confronting the regime directly and politicizing the Palestinian cause, millions of Palestinians exposed systematic state-enforced Zionist racism. Support for this system by European and the American regimes became another source of liberal imperialist hypocrisy. Palestine became a key focal point of international attention and a barometer of the question of imperialism and racism among everyday people worldwide. Further, by showing the necessity of popular armed struggle to achieve clear and democratic political goals, Arafat contributed to raising concretely the importance of everyday people being self-governing in military affairs. Later, Arafat would maintain an ambiguous stance towards the international terrorism carried out by Palestinian factions. In particular, the killing of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich and the murdering of an old Jewish man on a hijacked cruise ship in the Mediterranean were morally reprehensible acts that for moments obscured the political goals of the movement and made international solidarity more difficult. As Palestinian militias and the PLO leadership moved from Jordan to Lebanon and then Tunisia, Arafat was instrumental for a time in promoting the idea that the Palestinian movement was in the forefront of an Arab mass movement that called into question the existence of all states and ruling classes. This was the case whether it was the reactionary Jordanian or Saudi monarchy, the radical regime of Nasser’s Egypt or the state populism of Syria. Each clearly understood that the Palestinian movement embodied the potential for people’s self-government that threatened the existence of class society and the existence of the state. Fatah was hostile to existing Arab regimes, however it ultimately sought out patronage from them rather than challenge them directly. Behind this was a political vision that believed a liberated Palestine would come through blackmailing existing regimes rather than a regional revolutionary upheaval. Arafat chose to leave Jordan and avert civil war rather than lead a mass upheaval that was itching to overthrow the monarchy. Once in Lebanon, he sometimes arrogantly projected his own organization as the “leadership” of the struggle against Israel, disdaining consultation with the ordinary Lebanese. When Israel invaded the country this had disastrous effects. His ambiguous relationship with regional states would increasingly become the basis of a new policy of containment, not just by those regimes, but the imperialist ruling classes as well. It may not have seemed so clear at the time but Arafat’s brokered deal with the U.S. for safe passage from Lebanon to Tunisia and his unilateral acceptance of the infamous “two-state solution” prepared the ground for his rehabilitation as a “responsible” pawn in the destruction of the first Intifada and the onset of the Oslo years. When the first Intifada erupted in 1986, Arafat and the PLO leadership were in exile in Tunisia. They had been allowed to leave Lebanon by the U.S. as Israel invaded and destroyed that nation. The Intifada, or mass popular uprising in the West Bank and Gaza areas of Palestine, caught all state powers off-guard. As always, they believed that the collective power of the movement was created and controlled by Arafat. He was militarily defeated and increasingly politically dependent on recognition from the imperialist powers and regional states. Arafat’s distance from the Palestinian people grew as he tried to gain diplomatic acceptance from the imperialist powers. He not only reversed the PLO platform goal of one secular democratic state in all of Palestine, but declared Israel had a “right” to exist. The first Intifada became a serious political problem for the Israeli regime. It did not so much feature the heroic guerrilla raiding Israel, but instead a popular uprising within Greater Israel against IDF soldiers, the civil authorities—including collaborationist Palestinian officials—and growing ghettoization as a result of the increased building of Jewish-only neighborhoods. The uprising forced Israel as well as the Western imperial states to step up their propaganda efforts in justifying a creeping, yet not completely recognized de facto policy of apartheid—separate and unequal “racial” development. Initially Zionist ideology prescribed mass military violence as the solution to this problem. For Zionism the Palestinians lost their animal fear of the state. If an Arab raises his head, such racial thinking went, then it was a necessity to smack it back down. However, it would be the U.S. and Israel’s adaptation of a very modern political solution that would bring the Intifada to an end. After the first Iraq war in 1991 the United States began to construct an elaborate international political spectacle that was designed to demonstrate its leadership of the Middle East. This was what became known as the Oslo peace process, in which an officially recognized Palestinian leadership would negotiate with Israel for a “state” in the West Bank and Gaza areas. They invited Arafat to return to Palestine after so many decades of exile. It appeared this was a victory of the Intifada, but in fact it was its final defeat. There had been tremendous tension between the local leadership of the Intifada and the Tunisian-based older guard. The political strategies of the two were entirely at odds. For Arafat, his return would reconcile his symbolic image as embodiment of the Palestinian cause. Yet the reality was that the majority of the Palestinian people had moved well ahead of him. For Israel and the United States he would guarantee a reliable political elite who had already demonstrated his commitment to limited self-rule autonomy within the framework of Greater Israel and Zionist domination. Arafat, like many of the PLO’s financial base, believed—just as they had in the past—that they could negotiate on the terms of a Zionist vision of Palestine/Israel, rather than one based on political principles of ending the racist discriminatory Israeli system and U.S. imperial intervention. The only way to politically back up such principles was through a popular movement and popular international solidarity, not elite diplomatic negotiations in which Israel and the U.S. held all the cards. Israel and the United States had made Arafat a “statesman” who would responsibly receive patronage on behalf of Palestinian society at a critical moment when the first Intifada presented an insurmountable political challenge to them. How could these regimes represent freedom when so many Palestinians were fighting apartheid oppression? Ultimately, to his credit, Arafat rejected the bantustan proposal offered by Clinton and Barak. Yet he could not dissolve the Palestinian Authority and encourage the reconstitution of political power in popular committees as in the first Intifada. The “peace process” was a disaster for the Palestinians and a victory for Israel. While Israel had to recognize Arafat as “statesman” and not a “terrorist,” Oslo allowed it to maintain control over the political terms of the conflict, exactly when this was being severely tested by the Intifada. Further, the creation of the Palestinian Authority, as the “government” of this self-rule, gave a new legitimacy to a time-tested method of setting up local Palestinian proxies for Israeli civil administration. The PA would keep “peace” while Israel would now increase the building of Jewish-only neighborhoods and control of resources. Meanwhile, generations of refugees would remain packed in crowed quarters within view of open space on the other side of the Green Line. No longer would Palestinians predominately be employed on the other side of the Green Line, but in free trade industrial zones. The desperate need for money, both from economic “development” and U.S. and European aid, was contingent on the PA’s ability to keep down the political aspirations of everyday Palestinians for a free and equal life. Arafat in the end rejected a formally recognized apartheid arrangement, but by then it was a de facto reality. The outbreak of the second Intifada was a decisive rejection of the Oslo regime. Palestinian society, with the solidarity of the Arab masses, in a mere two weeks of revolt, reconstituted the basis of their power. They destroyed the legitimacy of Oslo diplomacy that had gained a foothold on their backs. Educated in the realities of Greater Israel, they rejected its internationally recognized Bantustan policy. Counterpoised to the state destruction of their humanity they once again challenged the very basis of the existence of the Jewish-only state. Like the first Intifada, Arafat was by-passed by this development. The only way for him to maintain any political power was to keep control of the Palestinian Authority and distance himself from the uprising. Israel again tried to militarily smash the Intifada. It killed dozens within the first two weeks, both inside and outside the Green Line. It began a relentless assassination campaign carried out by death squads against any identifiable popular Palestinian leadership. It began destroying as many Palestinian homes and as much of the local economy as possible. In response the Palestinian parties—having the quickest ability to respond—found their militia ranks swelled with youth ready to make the political costs of a military confrontation as high as possible for Israel, perhaps bolstered by the example of the success of Hizbullah’s fight to liberate Lebanon. As the Intifada ground on and popular international solidarity efforts began to make gains Israel and the United States once again needed a political strategy. They now declared Arafat was indeed a “terrorist” all along who directed the Intifada from his compound in Ramallah. This is why the Israeli regime not only attacked the movement and its popular base, but also PA buildings and infrastructure developed from foreign aid money such as schools and libraries. The regime hoped to blackmail the PA authorities, including Arafat himself into smashing the Intifada. Arafat never did directly. He correctly feared that it could result in his own overthrow as figurehead of Palestinian nationalism. When this did not work, Israel and the U.S. began to pour their attention into inducing new “statesmen” to emerge like Mahmoud Abbas. They had to obscure the political challenge of the movement and international solidarity at all costs. All of official society in the United States and Israel declared the passing of Arafat as an opportunity to transition to a new era. Rhetorically this meant a change in attitude toward the Palestinian people. In the earlier years of the Intifada, the official U.S. position was to declare its support for Israel’s “security.” This meant defense of Zionist attempts to militarily eradicate Palestinian resistance, practice a scorched-earth-policy of total destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and institutions, a campaign of terror against the populace, and the ongoing colonization of land by forcefully moving Palestinians into smaller and smaller ghettos, thereby creating more Jewish-only space. Meanwhile, the political vacuum grew. Neither the factions, more and more concerned with their mere survival, nor collaborationist officials of the Palestinian Authority could fill this vacuum. Only the Israeli and U.S. governments had the will to do so. Today with Israel and America’s “Gaza pull-out” spectacle complete, the same fundamental conflicts remain despite Arafat’s passing. Once again, Israel and the U.S. have regained the political initiative by repackaging apartheid. By offering yet another version of limited self-rule bantustans and encouraging the emergence of a revamped Palestinian Authority to police and jail Palestinian aspirations for freedom and equality the fundamental questions remain as yet unresolved. Arafat had not been a revolutionizing force since at least the first Intifada. With his passing perhaps the Palestinian Authority as a major obstacle to defeating apartheid will further weaken. Yet it is also possible that one of Arafat’s final legacies was to lay the permanent foundation for a representative ethnic middle class whose roots lay in the revolutionary beginnings of the Fatah and the PLO. It is a familiar story both here in America and around the globe. Arafat made decisive contributions towards consolidating a Palestinian movement that could politically challenge Israel. As an historical personality he represented the collective aspirations and will towards self-government of millions that has been ruthlessly attacked by Zionist colonialism and racism as well as reactionary Middle Eastern states for almost a century. At his highest moments he represented the historical independence of the Palestinian struggle that was not loyal to any state or ruling class. Yet he himself operated under the illusion that he and the leadership of Fatah were both a state and revolutionary ruling class in waiting and sort of populist heroes who were loyal to the collective sovereignty and action of the people, delegated to specific tasks necessary to carry the fight against Israel. Such lack of political clarity opened the door for today’s Abbas to jump and jive as “statesman” so that they will be granted a “state” by which to rule. The fact that this will never happen is a product of the failure to understand that the vast majority of Palestinians have continually been way ahead of any officials who would speak for them. Whether it was the mass strikes in the early part of this century, the taking up of guerrilla war, the Intifadas or armed self-defense, everyday Palestinians have been the only ones to offer serious political challenges to Israeli colonialism and apartheid. This was the meaning behind Arafat’s return to a true hero’s welcome, where tens of thousands of Palestinians made his funeral not an event of officials, politicians and the elite, but a recognition of the collective history of the Palestinian struggle, sacrifices and its will to endure and move forward. At the same time, on one news channel in the U.S., a PA official commented with open embarrassment about the “backwardness” of Palestinians as the video footage played and government agents gloated that the “old terrorist” was finally gone. For these members of an aspiring official society, the fact that there was not a state funeral attended by a political class but instead a mass democratic expression of grief and resolve was a sign of the lack of civilization not its advance. Thus even in death , Arafat became the ground with which to measure two irreconcilable ways of social life. |
| < Prev |
|---|