Six distinct calls for Palestinian reform and elections are being pressed now:
five of them are, for Palestinian purposes, both useless and irrelevant. Sharon
wants reform as a way of further disabling Palestinian national life. The United
States wants reform principally as a way of combating"terrorism", a panacea of
a word that takes no account of history, context, or anything else.
Third is the Arab leaders' demand which, as far as I can tell, is a combination
of several different elements, none of them directly helpful to the Palestinians
themselves. Fourth in the chorus of reform are the Europeans. But they only scurry
around sending emissaries to Sharon and Arafat, make ringing declarations in Brussels,
fund a few projects – and more or less leave it at that.
Then there is Yasser Arafat and his circle of associates, who have suddenly
discovered the virtues (theoretically at least) of democracy and reform. I know
that I speak at a great distance from the field of struggle, and I also know all
the arguments about the besieged Arafat as a potent symbol of Palestinian resistance
against Israeli aggression, but I have come to a point where I think none of that
has any meaning any more.
Arafat is simply interested in saving himself. He has had almost 10 years of
freedom to run a petty kingdom, and has succeeded essentially in bringing opprobrium
and scorn on himself and most of his team. Why anyone for a moment believes that
at this stage he is capable of anything different, or that his new streamlined
cabinet (dominated by the same old faces of defeat and incompetence) is going
to produce actual reform, simply defies reason.
Finally there is the Palestinian people, who are now justifiably clamoring
both for reform and elections. As far as I am concerned, this clamor is the only
legitimate one of the six I have outlined here. It's important to point out that
Arafat's present administration, as well as the Legislative Council, have overstayed
their original term, which should have ended with a new round of elections in
1999. Moreover, the whole basis of the 1996 elections was the Oslo accords, which
in effect simply licensed Arafat and his people to run bits of the West Bank and
Gaza for the Israelis, without true sovereignty or security. Any attempt to go
forward on that kind of platform is simply a wasteful ploy.
What then is to be done if the old basis of Palestinian legitimacy no longer
really exists?
The major interests in Palestinian society, those that have kept life going,
from the trade unions to health workers, teachers, farmers, lawyers, doctors,
in addition to all the many NGOs, must now become the basis on which Palestinian
reform – despite Israel's incursions and the occupation – is to be constructed.
It seems to me useless to wait for Arafat, or Europe, or the US, or the Arabs
to do this: it must absolutely be done by Palestinians themselves by way of a
Constituent Assembly that contains all major elements of Palestinian society.
It must keep Palestinian life going in an orderly way with full participation
for all concerned. It should also choose an emergency executive committee whose
mandate is to end the occupation, not negotiate with it. It is quite obvious that
militarily we are no match for Israel. What is needed is a creative method of
struggle that mobilizes all the human resources at our disposal to highlight,
isolate and gradually make untenable the main aspects of Israeli occupation, e.g.
settlements, settlement roads, roadblocks and house demolitions.
For such a Palestinian strategy to work there has to be an Israeli component
made up of individuals and groups with whom a common basis of struggle against
occupation can, and indeed must, be established. This is the great lesson of the
South African struggle: that it proposed the vision of a multiracial society from
which neither individuals nor groups and leaders were ever deflected. The only
vision coming out of Israel today is violence, forcible separation and the continued
subordination of Palestinians to an idea of Jewish supremacy. Not every Israeli
believes in these things, of course, but it must be up to us to project the idea
of coexistence in two states that have natural relations with each other on the
basis of sovereignty and equality.
We have never faced a worse or, at the same time, a more seminal moment. The
Arab order is in total disarray; the US administration is effectively controlled
by the Christian right and the Israeli lobby, and our society has been nearly
wrecked by poor leadership and the insanity of thinking that suicide bombing will
lead directly to an Islamic Palestinian state. There is always hope for the future,
but one has to able to look for it and find it in the right place. It is quite
clear that in the absence of any serious Palestinian or Arab information policy
in the United States (especially in Congress), we cannot for a moment delude ourselves
that Powell and Bush are about to set a real agenda for Palestinian rehabilitation.
That's why I keep saying that the effort must come from us, by us, for us.
Who else but the Palestinian people can construct the legitimacy they need
to rule themselves and fight the occupation with weapons that don't kill innocents
and lose us more support than ever before?
The writer is Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York
© 2002 lndependent Digital (UK) Ltd
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