the fluffy intifada
. | 04.10.2002 09:37
Published on Monday, September 30, 2002 in the Toronto Globe & Mail
A New Intifada is Born
by Daoud Kuttab
The time was almost midnight, on Sept. 20, when a number of satellite television stations interrupted their regular programming to announce that Israeli soldiers had warned Palestinians living near Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah that the building would be blown up in 15 minutes if those inside it didn't come out.
Within those tense minutes, the streets of Ramallah filled with ordinary Palestinians. Marchers, often led by women, increased in number as people trapped in their homes for days on end decided to shake off the injustice that had befallen them. Many demonstrated more in defense of their national honor than in support of Mr. Arafat.
The popular uprising that began in the Ramallah neighborhood of Umm al Sharit quickly spread to Nablus, Tulkarem, Gaza and Bethlehem. The next day, women and men came out with pots and pans and beat on their household utensils as a sign of anger and protest. The following day, a candlelight vigil was held as a way to break what people considered a repressive curfew.
In 1987, Palestinians introduced the term intifada into the international lexicon, when thousands of youths armed with nothing more than stones rose up against Israeli guns and tanks. In the fall of 2000, when rioting broke out following the visit of Ariel Sharon to the area around the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, many called those protests the al Aqsa, or second, intifada. Now, with what happened the evening of Sept. 20 in Ramallah, I believe we are witnessing the birth of the third intifada.
Since that night, schools in many West Bank cities have remained open, defiant of Israeli curfews. Some areas are organizing popular schools. Some of the more affluent schools are sending homework to their students via e-mail. Curfew days have become high traffic days on the Internet as most people are doing their office or school work from their homes. A major culture is being written up, recorded, photographed and spread on cyberspace about life under curfew.
What happened late that Friday night was not without warning. A week earlier, the representatives of the Palestinian people did something unprecedented in Arab politics: They forced a government appointed by Mr. Arafat to resign rather than be shamed by a confidence vote. At about the same time, a public opinion survey, commissioned by the Search for Common Ground, found that a majority of Palestinians supported the idea of non-violent resistance. Hence the peaceful protests that started 10 days ago.
In the two previous intifadas, those who favored more violent confrontation soon came to dominate the protests. Such acts are not only contrary to the spirit of non-violence, they also endanger those involved, quickly limiting the possibility that large numbers of ordinary Palestinians might participate.
For a long time, many international critics of the Palestinians have been asking why we don't use non-violent methods to effect change. They argue that if Palestinians do that, a major change will take place in Israeli and international public opinion that will eventually be translated in political terms. Many of us have doubts about that, seeing that the Sharon government is only interested in a Palestinian population that raises the white flag of surrender.
When Palestinians in Ramallah carried out their plans to hold a candlelight vigil on Wednesday night, the Israeli army, which had said it would lift Thursday's curfew, reversed its position and reimposed the curfew. Some people obeyed the renewed order; most didn't. Schools in particular have decided that they will no longer call off their teaching duties according to Israeli army dictates.
What is worrisome, however, is that the Israeli and international press have ignored or belittled the non-violent nature of what happened in Palestine last week. It seems that the long-awaited change in Israeli and U.S. public opinion will not happen soon, as both peoples continue to be bombarded by news that fulfills the aspirations of those wishing to end the conflict in a violent way.
Daoud Kuttab is director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University in Ramallah.
dkuttab@ammannet.net
A New Intifada is Born
by Daoud Kuttab
The time was almost midnight, on Sept. 20, when a number of satellite television stations interrupted their regular programming to announce that Israeli soldiers had warned Palestinians living near Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah that the building would be blown up in 15 minutes if those inside it didn't come out.
Within those tense minutes, the streets of Ramallah filled with ordinary Palestinians. Marchers, often led by women, increased in number as people trapped in their homes for days on end decided to shake off the injustice that had befallen them. Many demonstrated more in defense of their national honor than in support of Mr. Arafat.
The popular uprising that began in the Ramallah neighborhood of Umm al Sharit quickly spread to Nablus, Tulkarem, Gaza and Bethlehem. The next day, women and men came out with pots and pans and beat on their household utensils as a sign of anger and protest. The following day, a candlelight vigil was held as a way to break what people considered a repressive curfew.
In 1987, Palestinians introduced the term intifada into the international lexicon, when thousands of youths armed with nothing more than stones rose up against Israeli guns and tanks. In the fall of 2000, when rioting broke out following the visit of Ariel Sharon to the area around the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, many called those protests the al Aqsa, or second, intifada. Now, with what happened the evening of Sept. 20 in Ramallah, I believe we are witnessing the birth of the third intifada.
Since that night, schools in many West Bank cities have remained open, defiant of Israeli curfews. Some areas are organizing popular schools. Some of the more affluent schools are sending homework to their students via e-mail. Curfew days have become high traffic days on the Internet as most people are doing their office or school work from their homes. A major culture is being written up, recorded, photographed and spread on cyberspace about life under curfew.
What happened late that Friday night was not without warning. A week earlier, the representatives of the Palestinian people did something unprecedented in Arab politics: They forced a government appointed by Mr. Arafat to resign rather than be shamed by a confidence vote. At about the same time, a public opinion survey, commissioned by the Search for Common Ground, found that a majority of Palestinians supported the idea of non-violent resistance. Hence the peaceful protests that started 10 days ago.
In the two previous intifadas, those who favored more violent confrontation soon came to dominate the protests. Such acts are not only contrary to the spirit of non-violence, they also endanger those involved, quickly limiting the possibility that large numbers of ordinary Palestinians might participate.
For a long time, many international critics of the Palestinians have been asking why we don't use non-violent methods to effect change. They argue that if Palestinians do that, a major change will take place in Israeli and international public opinion that will eventually be translated in political terms. Many of us have doubts about that, seeing that the Sharon government is only interested in a Palestinian population that raises the white flag of surrender.
When Palestinians in Ramallah carried out their plans to hold a candlelight vigil on Wednesday night, the Israeli army, which had said it would lift Thursday's curfew, reversed its position and reimposed the curfew. Some people obeyed the renewed order; most didn't. Schools in particular have decided that they will no longer call off their teaching duties according to Israeli army dictates.
What is worrisome, however, is that the Israeli and international press have ignored or belittled the non-violent nature of what happened in Palestine last week. It seems that the long-awaited change in Israeli and U.S. public opinion will not happen soon, as both peoples continue to be bombarded by news that fulfills the aspirations of those wishing to end the conflict in a violent way.
Daoud Kuttab is director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University in Ramallah.
dkuttab@ammannet.net
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Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
HOPE NOW
04.10.2002 17:57
INTENSIFY THE STRUGGLE TO END ISRAELI APARTHEID!
ANTONIUS CLIFFUS JNR.
good luck
04.10.2002 18:43
anna
The Intifada - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.
05.10.2002 14:43
The roots of the first intifada in a tradition of non-violence and campaigns of mass civil disobedience is often forgotten now.
Unlike the elitist approach of the PLO's armed struggle and "Peoples War". The first intifada was a genuine revolution from below that brought all the people of the West Bank and Gaza strip together in shared resistance to the ilegal occupation.
The first intifada was an inspiration! Like the freedom summers in the deep south of America, and the Soweto Uprising of 1977 it deserves to be remembered and studied (critically) as a model for all social movements. It was a revolt of the oppressed. . .the last great anti-colonial struggle.
In 1987 the PLO were in disarray, many people believed the Palstine question was over - and suddenly a terrible beauty was born: Children facing down tanks and machine guns with stones just like in South Africa, mass strikes accross the occupied territories, and in this traditional society women took a lead in the resistance - organising the education committees that replaced the schools that couldn't open, leading the grassroots neighbourhood organisation.
Their was even a campaign similar to our wartime "Dig for Britain" campaign, as people began growing their own food to overcome the effect of closures and the occupation on the food supply.
The sight of children facing down tanks forever shattered the Zionist myth of Israel as a David facing the Arab Golliath.
The brutality of Israeli repression tore off the veil that had hid the nature of the Occupation from the world.
In Prague during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, demonstrators proudly wore T-Shirts with the slogan "I-N-T-I-F-A-D-A".
The intifada even temporarily effected the West's support for Israel: even someone as right wing as Margaret Thatcher remarked to the Israeli government, "we don't like the way you treat Palestinians", (if I remember correctly it was the tories who introduced an arms embargo against Israel, and New Labour who have doubled exports to Israel in the last year).
The intifada even attracted support from liberal Israeli's, and was one factor that drove Israel to the negotiating table (the other being America's need to woo the Arab ruling classes to support the last gulf war).
The great tragedy was that the intifada was defused by the PLO leadership, and ten years were wasted in fruitless negotiation with Israel (the Oslo Frauds, or "Peace Process". The Palestinian leadership believed they could achieve by negotiation a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza strip, but the reality was that the Israel government was only interested in repackaging the Occupation and forcing Palestinians into Bantustans.
The Palestinians are not only fighting against the racist state of Israel, they are fighting against a whole system of imperialism.
The new intifada needs to return to the democratic roots of the original intifada and shake off the control of Arafat's bankrupt leadership - But Palestinians cannot win alone against the fourth best military (Israel) in the world backed by the world's only superpower (USA).
To suceed we need to link three threads - 1) Intifada not only in Palestine, but accross the middle east breaking the corrupt arab regimes and thus the power of the US/Oil axis in the middle east 2) A mass movement of solidarity across the world of a similar nature to the anti-apartheid movement to isolate the Zionist regime. 3) To support the work of rapproachement between Jews and Arabs, while recognising that true reconcilliation can only come by removing the roots of the conflict - Israeli apartheid and the Zionist colonial movement.
FOR ONE SECULAR, DEMOCRATIC STATE OF PALESTINE WHERE ARABS, JEWS, MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS, AND PEOPLE OF NO RELIGION CAN LIVE IN PEACE, EQUALITY AND PROSPERITY!
ANTONIUS CLIFFUS JNR.