A 1990 Palestinian poster depicting resistance against the Israeli occupation.
It’s surprising how little was
written to mark 20 years since the beginning of the 1987 Palestinian uprising,
usually named “The First Intifada.” Even among the Palestinian population of
the occupied Palestinian territories, there were almost no public events to
commemorate what has been the most important popular challenge to the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Intifada was the last
anti-colonial uprising of the 20th century, following the Mau Mau revolt
in Kenya, the Algerian
revolution and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, amongst others.
In December 1987, the population of Gaza and the West Bank
initiated simultaneous mass demonstrations and a general strike aimed at saying,
loud and clear, to the whole world and to the Israeli population in particular,
“enough is enough! We don't want Israeli occupation anymore! We want to be
free!" Intifada was indeed the best Arabic concept to describe what
was happening: it expresses the attempt of the horse to overthrow its rider.
The general strike lasted for three years—daily demonstrations and
confrontations with the occupation forces forced Israeli and international
public opinion to acknowledge the obvious: the occupation has not been
normalized and the Palestinian population is united in its demand to end it,
now.
The price paid by the Palestinian
insurgents was extremely high: in 30 months, more than 1,200 unarmed civilians,
men, women and especially children, were murdered by the Israeli military. Nevertheless,
their struggle paid off: Israeli public opinion gradually changed and a strong
solidarity movement developed that ultimately forced the government to end its
rejectionist policy and to open negotiations with the PLO, with the goal of ending
two decades of occupation-colonization. In the international arena, the
Palestinian demand for freedom and sovereignty was endorsed not only by popular
public opinion, but—with the obvious exception of the US—by the
international community too.
In 1991, Israel started indirect
negotiations with the PLO, negotiations which became direct in 1992 under the
general title of “The Oslo Process.” Indeed, the Intifada brought about a
process of political negotiations aimed at the decolonization of the Palestinian
territories occupied by Israel
in June 1967. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the coming to power of the
Israeli neocons (Netanyahu), combined with the global recolonization strategy
of their US
counterparts, put an end to that decolonization. From 1999 onwards, Ehud Barak
and, later, Ariel Sharon, launched a war of reconquest and destroyed the
(limited) achievements of the Intifada.
I put “first Intifada” in quotations,
because I strongly deny that there was a second one! In fact, what is usually
described as “The Second Intifada” is exactly the opposite of the first one.
While the Intifada was a Palestinian initiative, an anti-colonial uprising,
the so-called Second Intifada is an Israeli offensive, planned for a long time
by the Israeli military in order to reconquer what had been gained by the
Intifada. The “Second Intifada" is not an Intifada, but an “anti-Intifada.”
The year 2000 is a global turning
point, marking the end of the decolonization era and the start of the global
war of recolonization, the so-called War on Terror. The Israeli-Palestinian
negotiating process was caught right in the middle: it started as the last
decolonization process (with a Nobel Prize for its main actors) and ended as
the first “battle against international terrorism,” a code name for the global
offensive against progressive movements throughout the world (with Yasser
Arafat being relabeled as “terrorist,” disqualified and imprisoned in his
headquarters in Ramallah until his death).
The
fact that there were very few commemorations for the anniversary of the
Intifada testifies to the severe setback that characterizes these last years
for the Palestinian national liberation movement. The worse thing to do is to
close our eyes to this reality: we have to be aware of the changes in the
relations of forces, internationally as well as locally, not to sink into
despair and demoralization, but to adapt our expectations and strategies to the
actual reality, to reorganize our own ranks and to prepare for future offensives.
The heroic and successful resistance of Hezbollah to the Israeli war in summer
2006 provides us with living and inspiring evidence that the might and the
arrogance of our enemies is definitively not a proof of their invincibility.
There will be a second Intifada, and sooner than they are expecting.
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