Blueprint for a democratic Palestinian state: UNLU communiques and the codification of political values for the first two years of the Intifada.

Urban, J. Kristen

INTRODUCTION

Palestinians find themselves in a unique sociopolitical setting, with the PLO having served for several decades as the "sole legitimate representative" for two sets of interests: Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and Palestinians scattered in various circumstances throughout the globe. While this formulation of governance was necessitated by the harsh policies of direct-rule implemented by the Israeli occupation,(1) the present reality is one in which Palestinians themselves must redefine what governance will mean. Like any victims of abuse, Palestinians must now attempt to "shake off" the (political) patterns they have adopted in coping with these past years. Two sets of people, two sets of interests, and, most significantly perhaps, two sets of leadership must now merge as one. For while the PLO has served as the visible and symbolic political representative of all Palestinians at the global level, Palestinians laying claim to the homeland have been representing all Palestinians as well, while incurring daily, the costs of living under Israeli occupation.

The debate which presently occupies Palestinian political society reflects the tensions of this reunification. At the heart of the issue is whether Yasser Arafat and the PLO (more specifically, Fatah) can return to the homeland with an agenda written in the authoritarian-style politics which served the needs of a sequestered government-in-exile, and seek to impose such measures upon a people who have survived the extremes of occupation by employing cooperative processes of democratic decision-making. Nor can it be overlooked that it was such democratic processes which served to maintain the Intifada, and which brought Palestinians to the present crossroads.

The fears on both sides are real, precisely because there is much at stake: no less than the future of the Palestinian state. Two sets of comments from within Palestine lay out this new challenge for Palestinian leadership, directly:

I have worked for my people and, like many others, I have spent several years in Israeli prisons because of this. Yet the day Palestine becomes a state, I will leave, and I will tell you why: I have more freedom now, under the Israelis, than I will have under the PLO and Fatah.

I am active in politics because I must struggle against the Occupation, but it was never my hope to be a politician. For myself, I have only one hope: to live in freedom - and then I will rid myself of politics. At the same time, I am not that optimistic, perhaps, about the state which will come from our struggle, in terms of the level of democracy it will represent . . . but there must be complete respect for human rights and the principles of democracy. When it will come into being, my state, I will be committed to struggle by the proper means, for human rights and the freedom of expression.

This essay seeks to inform this debate by examining policies and processes of decision-making undertaken by the UNLU during the first two years of the Intifada. The research itself is part of a larger undertaking, and involved an analysis of the communiques and interviews with activists and members of the internal leadership in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza during the summer of 1992.

THE NATIONAL CONTEXT

To maintain the Intifada not merely as a vehicle of resistance, but as a means of bringing into reality a sovereign Palestinian state, the UNLU was faced with the problem of acting out that reality which was not yet officially on the ground: the reality of statehood. Granted, there was a history of national development on which to build which included the activities of the PLO, the various political factions, and those of numerous organizations at the popular level, and while it was also true that there had been many "intifadas" in the 1970s which had taken advantage of these "national elements," the UNLU was acutely aware that none of these mini-uprisings had lasted beyond a few weeks. The paradoxical nature of leadership within the Palestinian national movement meant that the UNLU had to promote new possibilities, taking advantage of the inertia of the street while acknowledging and reaffirming what had gone before. Among other things, this meant being able to accept the mantle of legitimacy as a leadership forged from the policies of the Israeli occupation, while at the same time, affirming the validity of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people.

It is within this context that Nassar and Heacock's assertion that the UNLU Communiques, "were transformed into a sort of biweekly [bi-monthly] legislative-executive-judicial document with the force of a constitution,"(2) takes on meaning. The UNLU leaflets served not only to organize the Intifada, but to express the reality of Nationhood emerging through political struggle. In this, the leaflets reflect the democratic aspirations of the grassroots initiative from whence the "shaking off" began, and they can further be viewed as the codification of socio-political values within the context of an evolving social and political reality.

For Aristotle, the constitution of a polity was not a written document, but an understanding: not so much a structuring of political interactions as a recognition that a legitimate government arises from the historic-cultural-political milieu of a particular society. Almond(3) and later Almond and Verba(4) brought this concept forward, subjected it to the refinements of modern systematic empiricism, and called it "Civic Culture." In this it is argued that the process of nation-building requires a mix of political orientations, particularly with respect to individual perceptions of one's role as a participant within the political culture.

A written constitution necessarily derives from the Aristotelian conception. In this, the written "contract" between a government and its people reflects a conscious awareness of the need to accommodate the dialectic of change across time. Collaborative work(5) undertaken on the systematic study of developing political systems in the 1950s and 1960s identified five crises of political development. These, admittedly, reflect a Western political bias, but are useful in organizing discussion. The five "crises" are: Identity, Legitimacy, Participation, Penetration, and Distribution. Such concerns are part of an ongoing "constitutional dialogue" today not only in nations traditionally labelled developing, but also in the formulation of new states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. While boundaries are still being redrawn in many emerging democracies, opposing forces are struggling to determine which version of "the state" will predominate: a state modelled after Western liberal democracies in which citizenship is independent of race, ethnicity, language, or religion, or a state organized around nationality and defined precisely by such characteristics. What people expect their constitutions to do, then, resonates very differently depending upon not only the heritage of a people, but the conditions under which they find themselves.

A CONSTITUTIONAL DIALOGUE

Compared with the Palestinian entity, many other peoples presently defining their national aspirations enjoy certain advantages: They control the land which they are attempting to govern; They control the resources from which they can fashion an economically strong union; They control the infrastructure through which they can begin to implement their policies, and importantly; They are able to establish the principle of the rule of law under which all citizens will be held equally responsible. Clearly these conditions presently cannot be met in the Occupied Territories (OT), as the term "occupied" would suggest. In what sense then, have the communiques released by the UNLU been able to serve as a de facto Constitution for a people in the process of nation-building, a process which lay at the heart of the Intifada? This author argues that three areas crucial to maintaining the Intifada - Identity, Legitimacy, and Participation - and already identified as being essential to the process of nation-building itself, were addressed by the UNLU through the issuance of the leaflets, and that the UNLU, in coordinating the events of the Intifada, was thereby laying groundwork within the OT for the development of a state of Palestine grounded in democratic principles.(6)

IDENTITY

For Palestinians, the question of national identity brooks no argument: Palestinians are the people of the land of Palestine. Admittedly there are factions within the Palestinian camp, both political and religious, but such divisions have generally reflected a commitment to the means of achieving a "legitimate" national identity - an internationally recognized sovereign nationstate - rather than to the fact of such an identity. The challenge for the UNLU then, was not so much in structuring the relationship between itself and "the people" to reflect a commitment to such an identity, but in effecting solidarity. For the Intifada to be successful in shaking off the Occupation, it had to succeed in 1) keeping people in the streets and maintaining a commitment to visible resistance and, in 2) mobilizing all groups at all levels of society.

1. Maintaining the Confrontation. That people were in the street on 9 December 1987 had little to do with the UNLU, which was not yet formally organized. This Uprising, like many in the 1970s, was a spontaneous response to the burdens of the Occupation. That people were still in the streets on 9 January, 9 February, and 9 March 1988, however, was largely due to the efforts of the UNLU in managing the resistance and its use of communiques in coordinating such efforts.

Successful initiatives were largely grassroots initiatives which were picked up by the UNLU, not formulations delivered from the top, down. This reflected a new understanding of "leadership" within the Territories, and began to shape new ideas regarding the relationship between the polity and "the government." The strikes of the early weeks of the Intifada provide a good example of this. Popularly directed, these strikes, lasting in excess of thirty days, actually confused the UNLU, which believed that long, unbroken strikes would break the Intifada. It was a dilemma for a leadership attempting to develop a resistance strategy: Since the masses supported the strikes, clearly the UNLU could not call them off. The dilemma resolved itself, however, as eventually the popular committees themselves decided to specify times for shop openings; the strike then became a frequent measure called for by the UNLU. In contrast, things which did not arise from the masses were often ignored. If people were called upon to do "silly things" merely to demonstrate solidarity, such calls were largely ineffective. Few Palestinians whistled at specific times of the day or ran inside to turn off their lights, merely to express their support for the uprising.

In its efforts to promote solidarity, then, the UNLU had to reflect this understanding of its role as "leader," both in its exhortations and in the calls it selected for each communique, discarding ideas which would not be picked up by the public and reinforcing actions that already had support This not infrequently involved evaluating what the people could in fact be called upon to do in light of Israeli policies of reprisals. For example, on 17 May 1989, then-Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin issued an order that all Gazan males over age 16 would be required to carry a magnetized plastic card in order to enter Israel to work. Such cards were issued only to people with clean security records and those who had paid all outstanding taxes and fines. The Gazan leadership called on Gazans not to comply. On 15 August, Communique No. 44 called for strikes in solidarity with the Gaza Strip, labelling any work in Israel as "treasonous." Communique No. 46 (28 September 1989) greeted the "revolutionary masses in the heroic Gaza Strip," and affirmed support from within the entire Palestinian body: A one-day strike was dedicated to the hardships in Gaza. But two months later, Communique No. 49 (4 December) failed to mention "Gaza" at all, though it urged West Bank Palestinians to be "prepared to wage the battle of the magnetic cards," as soon as the policy was transferred to the West Bank. And Communique No. 50 (26 December) made no mention at all of the magnetic cards; rather, it called on Gazans to be alert to nefarious Israeli marketing attempts at label-changing (the promotion of Israeli goods as being "Arab"). Does this reflect a policy-change? Was the UNLU no longer concerned about resisting Israel's "operation plastic card," which by compelling Palestinian integration with the Civil Administration, seriously undercut UNLU policies of disengagement with Israeli authorities?

The UNLU was very much interested in maintaining policies of civil disobedience. What this shift reflects, rather, is the acknowledgment of the realities of the Occupation.(7) Following the call to resist Operation Plastic Card, the Gazan leadership had set watch groups in place, to monitor compliance. Names of those who collected the new identity cards were noted, and at night, these watch groups would visit the homes of those on their lists. All cards were confiscated. Over weeks of forced compliance, the UNLU came to realize that this policy created excessive hardships for people whose welfare depended upon work in Israel. With this decision, UNLU leaders announced that all the confiscated cards would be placed in mosques, and anyone having had a card confiscated, could go and collect it, without fear of retaliation.

2. Effecting Mobilization. Besides keeping people in the streets and visibly engaged in resistance, the UNLU had to promote national identity by mobilizing all levels of Palestinian society. Admittedly, many Palestinians were already mobilized, a process which had been going on throughout the 1970s and 1980s; but to promote solidarity of all groups with regard to the UNLU policies, and to bring in new groups, such as the shopkeepers and former Jordanian sympathizers, the UNLU appealed to many groups specifically. Beginning with Communique No. 1 (8 January 1988), the following categories of people were listed: Brother Workers, Brother Shopkeepers, Brother Bus Company and Taxi Owners, and Brother Doctors and Pharmacists. Communique No. 3 (18 January 1988) called upon "Our people of all classes and sectors," to boycott Israeli goods and in the following paragraphs, exhorted "the Palestinian working class masses," "our valiant students," and "our valiant taxi drivers, bus drivers, and owners of taxi and bus companies," then called upon other groups to be prepared for service: doctors and the health services, pharmaceuticals, and owners of pharmacies, "all able and well people" who can donate resources, and "all academics and professionals."

Within a week or two, Communique No. 4 addressed itself to merchants, students, laborers, and the besieged camps, and asked that the "popular means" become a daily weapon in the hands of every "brother, sister, student, youth, woman, and girl" in the course of the uprising. By the beginning of the second month, Communique No. 5 was issued, which enlarged the audience through even greater differentiation. The appeal in the preamble was directed toward merchants, workers, farmers, students, children, women, and old men. The communique further called on the people to respect the work boycott against Israel and specifically requested that "our mothers, sisters, and daughters" work alongside their menfolk in the snuggle. "Valiant students," who had just completed high school exams were called upon to be soldiers of the uprising, and "our merchants . . . citadels of the uprising," were extolled for their leadership role.

Once it was apparent that all Palestinians were committed to the demands of the Intifada, new concerns arose for the UNLU - those of creating specific tasks for specific groups and thus ensuring the engagement of all. For example, in Communique No. 9 (2 May 1988) several calls were given: Merchants, artisans, and professionals were to refrain from paying Israeli taxes; factories were to work at full capacity to provide necessary goods to sustain the boycott of Israeli products; pharmacies, clinics, and health services were to remain open all the time; students and teachers were to break closure orders and forcibly enter their institutions; women were to undertake large marches in the streets.

Half a year later, the public arena having been effectively shut down by Israeli policies,(8) the communiques reflected a shift from people to tasks. Whereas in early communiques, the activities were linked with "Brother Shopkeepers," "Brother Workers," and so forth, by Communique No. 27 (9 October 1988) the significant categories identified were functional: "Education," "Agriculture," "Merchants," "Attorneys," and "Resisting the Policy of Raids." Further, life had by then become more complex. It was no longer of use to the national cause merely to "demonstrate." With regard to "Education," for instance, international and human fights organizations were asked to appeal to UNESCO, the UN itself, and diplomatic missions to pressure Israel into opening schools and universities. Students were urged to organize sit-in campaigns on campuses and at diplomatic missions, and academics and development workers were asked to oversee the organization of popular education in neighborhoods, villages, towns, and refugee camps. Where "people" form the category (eg., physicians, attorneys), the emphasis was still upon service: being available, maintaining low fee structures, and coordinating efforts with others.

By June 1989, the situation, as reflected in the communiques, had changed again. Israeli policies had become very harsh, much of the grassroots leadership had been deported, arrested, or driven underground. Open communication was difficult, precluding organized public activities. Communique No. 41 (14 June 1989) was more terse in its tone, and the key concerns were concerns regarding compliance. In place of the hopeful, enthusiastic focus of the earlier communiques were calls such as the following:

The UNLU calls on the owners of artesian wells to reduce the price of water . . . .

The UNLU calls on bakery owners not to turn their bakers into groceries. . . .

The UNLU warns merchants who tamper with prices. . . .

The UNLU urges the accountants association in Gaza to expel members who still submit tax statements.

The specific calls (the two-week calendar) included general strikes, days of escalating the struggle, days for militant activities, and sit-ins.

If the argument can be made that the communiques served as the living, breathing Constitution for the uprising, then keeping people on task was what remained when superior forces had subjected the movement to fierce oppression. Here the lives were sparse - as were the directives - precisely because each community and each sector of society was operatively on its own. Compliance, which by this time had lost the euphoria of the early months of the uprising, was perhaps even more crucial to the larger goals of the uprising. The "constitutional" impact of such communiques was, therefore, to provide a definition of national identity within a context of visible resistance oriented toward achieving national independence.

LEGITIMACY

In written constitutions, legitimacy is assured by means of process: The document spells out how its political leadership, both executive and legislative, is to be selected from among the people, and how change in such leadership is to be engineered. For the UNLU, the notion of process was, likewise a crucial issue, although the communiques mirrored this understanding rather than served as a blueprint for it. The UNLU itself reflected the political, rather than the social, elements of Palestinian leadership. It was necessary, therefore, as far as national leadership was concerned, that legitimacy be tied with the grassroots organizations. The crucial linkage for this - in terms of decisionmaking - was the phenomenon of the "popular committees," which themselves embodied the "social leadership."

1. Legitimacy as Process: Decision-Making. Popular committees arose as a way to meet the everyday demands of the Intifada. When the Israeli government closed schools and universities, for example, popular committees sprang up in the refugee camps, the towns, and the villages to organize "popular education" for the children, as the political factions did not operate at this social level. The popular committees, each focused on specific tasks, were elected democratically in the refugee camps, and would change membership as the activities changed.

The decision-making process involved in selecting the Calls to Action, or the two-week agenda published in each communique, involved direct communication between leaders of the popular committees throughout the OT with regional factional representatives which then communicated with the UNLU, itself. In essence, the decisions both arose from and were received by, the people, themselves. In publishing the bi-monthly calendar of actions in the communiques, the UNLU was acknowledging this relationship publicly, and the communiques came to be the written evidence of a legitimately conceived governing body, albeit restricted in the range of its actions by the policies of the Israeli military command.

This is not to say that the lines of "authority" were always clear within the UNLU, a fact which might be expected in a popularly-mandated process and in an environment wherein open "leadership" carried with it great risk. There were two Communiques No. 10 for example. In both language and substance, they are similar, but one was published 10 March 1988 and the other, a day later. That such confusion was held to a minimum testifies to the importance which the UNLU placed on the necessity for achieving consensus in the release of its official statements. This awareness is particularly striking in light of past efforts of an inside leadership at working together.(9) This history was in fact exploited by the Israelis, who published false leaflets under the name of the UNLU.

Clearly the legitimacy of the UNLU as a political institution is demonstrated by the continued release of communiques which reflect/promote interests of Palestinians engaged in the Intifada. Moreover, the very fact that the leadership (while frequently undergoing change due to imprisonment, deportations, etc.) was able to continue publishing coherent statements and leaflets which reflected a measure of consensus, further attests to the legitimacy - or perceived legitimacy - held by the "governing body" in the eyes of its constituents, at least throughout the first eighteen months.

2. Legitimacy as Outcome: Policy-Making. In addition to making decisions and outlining actions which people listened to and followed, the leadership was also required to shape such policy as events dictated. The fluid nature of this process did create problems for "legitimacy." One reflection of this is the fact that two months after the Communiques No. 10 were released, two Communiques No. 17 were issued, one on 21 May 1988 and one a day later, and broadcast over Al-Quds on 24 May 1988. The first bore the signature of, "the PLO, the Unified Leadership of the Uprising in the Occupied Territories," while the second, addressed to the "Children of the Stones," carried no signature. In this instance, the communiques were very different from one another, not only in language, but in the Calls to Action as well. The first carries the sensibilities of Palestinians living through the Intifada, not unlike other communiques released through this point in time, while the second is more terse and decidedly linear in its formulation. Importantly, its focus is directed not toward managing life inside the OT, but toward the outside - the international arena. One would not be remiss in questioning whether the authorship of the second was located within the Territories, and at least one analyst interviewed in the course of this research pointed to the two Communiques No. 17 as evidence of a coup d'etat, or a take-over of the policy-making machinery from without. Is this the only evidence, or does an analysis of other communiques of this period support such a claim?

An assessment of other communiques, particularly beginning with Communique No. 15 (30 April 1988) would indeed tend to support this. In addition to tone and content, a more simple "index" might be used, that being the number of references to the "PLO," "PNC," "Mr. Arafat," and so forth. The early communiques, developed from within the OT acknowledged the role of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians, usually through a single reference in the preamble. Israel was, after all, attempting to fictionalize the Palestinians, and to separate Palestinian voices inside from those outside the OT. For this reason alone, the local UNLU was careful to open no cracks for Israeli manipulation. In Communiques No. 1-14, the average number of references to the PLO is one. With Communique No. 15 there is a subtle change in tone and perspective and in the number of references to the PLO itself. Five or six paragraphs focus on external, international issues and speak of "thwarting the U.S.-reactionary conspiratorial schemes;" of the "joint Soviet-Palestinian agreement to render successful the convening of an international conference;" of the "UN Security Council Resolution No. 605;" of the "Palestinian, Algerian, Libyan, and Soviet efforts;" of using "Syria to embody a relationship of militant alliance with the PLO;" and of "the sons of our steadfast people in the Lebanese arena." By contrast, in Communique No. 13 (10 April 1988) there is a single paragraph which states in fairly indefinite terms, "Now we can feel the increase in the international support of our cause and of our legitimate rights." Moreover, Communique No. 15 makes reference to the "PLO" a total of seven times and mentions "Brother Abu 'Ammar" by name; Communique No. 13 refers to the "PLO" twice, and makes no mention of Arafat. Communique No. 16 (11 May 1988) refers to the "PLO" no less than ten times, in conjunction with phrases such as: "The originator of our snuggle, the PLO;" "the presence of the PLO and the continuation of the Palestinian struggle within its framework;" "declaring the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people everywhere" (stated twice in the communique); "through a commitment to the PLO;" "toward developing the unity of the PLO;" and, "to realize a national consensus within the PLO." There seems to be a clear attempt at bolstering the position of the PLO vis-a-vis the events of the Intifada within the Territories, with the apparent intention of wresting the internal policy-making function from the UNLU, through factional representatives on the outside. This trend of more frequent references to both the "PLO" and "Mr. Arafat" continues, as does the change in tone and the concern with world events external to the OT.

In defense of this move, it must be said that the PLO, in speaking for Palestinians inside the OT throughout the years, had always been compelled to take its policy "cues" from the inside, particularly when such decisions directly affected Palestinians living under occupation. For example, the initial response of the PLO to the Camp David Autonomy Plan had been ambivalent; but following a conference among Palestinians in Jerusalem, which said, "No!" the PLO adopted this position. Recognizing the paradoxical nature of its leadership, it could not do otherwise. It must also be said that by the summer of 1988, there was a stark reality to be faced within the OT: Fifty Palestinians had been deported or issued deportation orders; international telephone lines had been cut (and were not reconnected until 9 January 1989); Gaza had been declared "closed" to the press and in East Jerusalem four newspaper editors had been placed under house arrest; all educational facilities had been closed; Abu Jihad had been assassinated in Tunis on 16 April 1988; and by August, the popular committees had been declared "illegal" and hundreds of people had been arrested.

While UNLU legitimacy was thus being threatened by Israeli policies, and the arena for discourse within the OT was being effectively shut down, the Intifada itself had sparked activities abroad. The Moscow Summit between Reagan and Gorbachev was scheduled for May 1988; then-U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz was on a tour of Israel and the Middle East to rally support for the U.S. peace plan; at the Arab Summit in Algiers (3 June 1988) PLO spokesperson Bassam Abu Sharif presented a document entitled Prospects of a Palestine-Israeli Settlement which endorsed a two-state solution; and on 31 July 1988 King Hussein abrogated "all legal and administrative ties" with the West Bank, and stated his "willingness to step aside for the PLO."

Hence, precisely at the moment when the continuation of a legitimate leadership was most in question within the OT, the need for such leadership - not only for maintaining the struggle during very difficult times, but also for enabling the political gains of the Intifada to be realized on the international stage - was absolutely paramount. That this shift would move away from the democratic processes established from the early days of the Intifada and reflected in the early communiques, however, was viewed by nearly everyone interviewed in the course of this research, as an unnecessary compromise.

PARTICIPATION

It is necessary that a democratic formulation of government, grounded in participatory democracy, outline the fundamentals of participation. Whether premised upon legislative sovereignty or limited through socially engineered mechanisms of checks and balances, the role of "the people" must be constitutionally defined to forestall the appearance of two alternate outcomes: chaos or tyranny.

The concept of participation itself is not easy to define. For instance, popular participation in the Intifada, itself a "popular" resistance movement, denotes the involvement of all sectors of Palestinian society in the strikes, the demonstrations, the flying of Palestinian flags, the refusal to pay taxes, and so forth. The present study would refer to participation of this sort as mobilization. It would define participation in terms which specify those people (or categories of people) who share in the process of decision-making. This definition can, itself, be further dichotomized to two operations which, though difficult to separate, are technically distinct: "participation" in the implementation of the national agenda; and "participation" in policy-making - outlining the agenda for the resistance. The difficulty comes in the present study because implementation was often undertaken in communities isolated from the rest of Palestinian society. For example, when towns and villages were declared closed military zones, placed under curfew, or came under military siege, they found (facing Israeli policies of reprisal unique to a particular time and place) that implementation of UNLU policies actually became policy-making, itself.

1. Participation as Implementation of UNLU Policies. Recognition of the role of the popular committees in sustaining the resistance was not given grudgingly. When the UNLU emerged to shape the Intifada a month after it had begun, it was more concerned with mobilizing all sectors of Palestinian society than with challenging the already effective grassroots leadership. As described earlier, the decision-making process operated loosely from bottom-to-top in the initial stages of the Intifada, the UNLU reaching consensus regarding the language and calls of the communiques after receiving suggestions from the popular committees. The popular leadership was therefore established as an integral part of the process from the beginning.

Reflecting this, reference to the popular committees in the communiques of the first six months is sparing and is utilitarian in tone: The popular committees implemented, at the local level, the policies published by the UNLU (policies which the grassroots leadership had already helped to establish). While discrete groups within the population were being mobilized through the rhetorical use of language ("Brother Workers," "Brother Shopkeepers," etc.), Communique No. 1 merely appends a "General Statement" for the popular organizations as the closing paragraph:

All members of popular committees and uprising committees in various worksites must work at giving people a hand in anything they need, especially to needy families.

In Communique No. 3, the UNLU defers to the local leadership for policy implementation:

We call on all the committees of national work and popular committees to declare a general strike starting on Tuesday, 19 January 1988 until Friday evening, 22 January 1988.

The popular committees were here recognized as a fact of the peoples' lives and were called on with respect to implementation. When, in Communique No. 9 (2 March 1988) the UNLU asked the people to establish "centers for donations," this was to be done under the supervision of the popular committees. As life became more complex with the resignations of many Palestinians employed by the Civil Administration (police, tax officials, etc.), the people were urged in Communique No. 11 (19 March 1988) to "continue forming popular committees in every site, city, village, camp, or street to be the arm of the united command across the homeland." And when Days of General Steps of Struggle were ordered in Communique No. 12 (2 April 1988), the popular committees and the strike forces were asked to take the lead.

On 18 August 1988, in an attempt to destroy the Intifada's infrastructure, the Israeli government declared the popular committees to be illegal. A new policy of mass arrests was undertaken by the military, with the accusation of membership in a popular committee being enough to send a person to serve six months in the Negev prison camp. That these committees continued to play a crucial role both in organizing and implementing policy throughout half of the Intifada's second year is evident by the kinds of references made to them in the communiques. In Communique No. 32 (7 January 1989) three entire paragraphs were devoted to the popular committees, calling on "all strugglers . . . to safeguard the unity of the local leadership and the popular committees;" to supervise the boycott of Israeli products "to which there are alternatives from our national products;" to form popular courts to try "thieves, agents, and brokers who encroach on people's rights;" and finally, of the need for carrying out cooperative projects at the local level to expand land investment, the independent local economy, and supervision of the supply and storage of goods to protect people during curfews, strikes, and times of siege.

Recognition of the role of the popular committees by the national leadership, at least as evidenced in the communiques, was thus never a problem with regard to their role in the implementation of UNLU policies, at the local level.

2. Participation as Policy-Making. What one sees clearly with regard to "policy-making" via the communiques, however, is UNLU dominance in this area of national leadership. In all official UNLU communiques, it is the UNLU (by name) which lays out the policy of resistance, and whatever the informal decision-making process, officially it is the popular committees which implement what the national leadership outlines.

Beginning in June 1989, and the publication of Communique No. 41 (12 June), there is evidence of a reorganization at the center of policy-making. The designation "UNLU" is abruptly discarded at this point and is not reinstated. Following Call No. 43 (25 July 1989), the official name becomes the UNLI: the Unified National Leadership of the Intifada.

As with the change noted a year earlier in June 1988, regarding the competing Communiques No. 17, when the UNLU appeared to be taken over by leadership outside the OT and new trends in both the focus and language could be noted, the adoption of a new name by the national leadership in July 1989 (without explanation) is also accompanied by other changes. The most outstanding is an apparent shift to the political "right," a movement away from "participation" as it has been employed here, and toward a more centralized and hierarchical system of authority. Emphasis is placed upon "solidarity," "standardizing slogans," "smoothing over factional differences," "discipline" regarding one's actions, acting only with the backing of a "national consensus," and undertaking no initiatives "without a central decision by the higher command."(10)

This move to the right [a take-over by Fatah?] represents efforts to restrict popular involvement - participation - at the decision-making level. Participation in this new orientation comes to be defined solely as "implementation," the duty of Palestinians in the Homeland being to continue the Intifada in unity. But the sound of this "unity" is not the same as in calls stressing mobilization and unity in the first months of the Intifada. Such calls sought to involve all sectors of society without regard to political belief, and in whatever capacity each could contribute to the national goal of creating an independent state of Palestine. "Unity" implied unity of commitment and of purpose. Two years later, in the context of the OT, "unity" signifies unity of political beliefs, unity to central authority, unity to standardized slogans.

The two final communiques of 1989 demonstrate the move toward politicization of the process of decision-making. Communique No. 50 (25 December 1989) reviews at length the gains of the Intifada and calls upon the masses to continue the uprising, "intensifying its popular character," but proposes no new initiatives. The Calls to Action include calls for boycotts, strikes, continued shop closings, and support for popular education, all tactics developed within the fast six months of the Intifada. How new, creative policies are to be generated is unclear. While the UNLI "applauds and greets the nongovernmental organizations," [italics added] the notion of the popular committees seems remote from the concept of "NGO's." The entire Call reads:

The UNLI applauds and greets the nongovernmental organizations and appeals to our masses to support their activities and demonstrations of solidarity with our people's struggle for their legitimate rights.

Clearly, something has changed. Formerly, the people and the popular committees were one and the same, and the people themselves determined democratically the content of those actions. The UNLI now feels it must appeal to the people to support such groups. Why? Are they constituted differently at this point? Is the leadership "out of touch"?

Communique No. 49 (4 December 1989) perhaps speaks to these questions. Included in the calendar of events and stipulated as the activity for 17 December 1989 is something new, at least in terms of the Intifada:

The 17th of December. A day of completing the formation and construction of political committees and their specialized committees in the neighborhoods, villages, and camps to reinforce their role among the masses. [Italics added]

For the sake of "unity," for the sake of controlling a national Palestinian strategy made increasingly complex as it is swept (finally) into the international arena - an arena itself also being transformed by the dissolution of the East/West divide - the UNLI has reverted to an earlier leadership strategy of imposing political definitions upon activities within the Territories, from above.

SUMMARY

It has been suggested here that the UNLU communiques of the first two years of the Intifada reflect the codification of sociopolitical values within the context of an evolving social and political reality. In this, three sets of values generally understood to be critical to the emergence of democratic norms have been cited as having been critical in maintaining the effectiveness of the popular uprising: identity, legitimacy, and participation.

Admittedly, all three sets of values overlap as they are applied in a fluid political setting such as that maintained within the OT. It must be noted, however, that fluidity is often characteristic of the emergence of nationhood. In the Palestinian case, the larger question of national identity did not have to be seriously addressed: Palestinians knew who they were. The question, rather, was one of mobilization through difficult times and uncertain waters, with the aim of achieving the nationally-defined goal of legal statehood. The legitimacy of the decision-makers charting the course was crucial to the success of the movement, and was achieved by means of a dialectic which promoted a bottom-to-top process of arriving at specific Calls to Action, the calendar of activities, and overall policies of strategy. Participation (as distinct from "mobilization") was encouraged, particularly with regard to the responsibilities of the popular committees in implementing formal UNLU policies. Because of the fluid circumstances, such implementation was frequently tantamount to policy-making, itself, the committee leaders often having to make decisions in isolated and peculiar circumstances.

It has also been noted, from an analysis of the communiques themselves, that the "maximum" democratic thrust of this constitutional effort was achieved during the first year or so of the Intifada, and that thereafter, the democratic elements of the process became sharply circumscribed. While this can be explained in terms of a leadership responding to increasingly harsh circumstances, the fact remains that identity came to be linked with particular political understandings, legitimacy now was defined from the "top" of the decision-making hierarchy, and participation was limited to the implementation of policies handed down from above. In other words, by the end of 1989 democracy was being written in minimalist terms.

What does this mean in light of the 13 September 1993 "handshake," which now necessitates evidence of genuine political leadership on the part of Palestinian leaders? For the diasporan leadership, much of its tenure has been spent in activities focused on the needs of diasporan Palestinians and in symbolic activities, activities intended to unite larger constituencies. But revolutions, ultimately, are not about symbolic questions. They are about small discrete matters, issues which Palestinians inside the Territories have had to address on a dally basis: under curfew, how do we get water? food for our babies? provide school for our children? find bandages for our wounded? For diasporan and internal interests to come together and, importantly to arrive at a mutually acceptable process of decision-making, the de facto leadership from both "inside" and "outside" each have to address both the big questions and the narrow specificities of daily living. To make headway in this, both will have to agree on a definition of legitimate government.

Aristotle speaks of legitimate government as being that which derives from the constitution of a society, that is, from the accumulated historic-socio-religious values embedded within the experience of a people. The dilemma for Palestinians, it would appear, is: Upon which past do Palestinians now draw? A past which links tribal bonds and social status to leadership? A past which outlines Qur'anic definitions of leadership in terms of belief? A past which preserves the dichotomy between external and internal loci of power? A past which crystallizes factional and ideological imperatives by means of politically correct behaviors? Or, more recently, and certainly more successful in its apparent achievements, a definition of leadership which understands the paradoxical nature of leading, and which seeks to incorporate a dialectic with the polity, itself? Within the framework of "democracy," these offer minimalist and maximalist definitions. For Palestinians, the resolution of this dilemma may be the beginning of the next social revolution in Palestine.

NOTES

1. See Jeff Goodwin and Theda Skocpol, "Explaining Revolutions in the Contemporary Third World," Politics and Society 17 (1989):489-510, for a general discussion of structural political repercussions of directly-ruled colonies.

2. Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock, "The Revolutionary Transformation of the Palestinians Under Occupation," in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, eds. Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock (New York: Praeger, 1990), 191.

3. Gabriel Almond, "Comparative Political Systems," Journal of Politics 18 (1956):391-409.

4. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).

5. Under the direction of Gabriel Almond, the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) initiated "Studies in Political Development," published by Princeton University Press. The culmination of the series was Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971).

6. For a discussion of aspects of this history and observations regarding specific changes which the PLO and the factional bureaucracies must make to ensure the development of a Palestinian political system characterized by democratic principles, see Jamil Hilal, "PLO Institutions: The Challenge Ahead," Journal of Palestine Studies 23, no. 1 (Autumn 1993):46-60.

7. This example was relayed by a journalist, AR, in Gaza, in August 1992.

8. For example, in the two-week period, 2 October-15 October 1988, 122 demonstrations were reported as occurring in 64 West Bank towns, villages, and camps, an average of one/week/locale. FACTS Weekly Review no. 27 (2 October-15 October 1988):15.

9. As discussed by Ibrahim Dakkak, "Back to Square One," in Palestinians Over the Green Line, ed. Alexander Scholch (London: Ithaca Press, 1983). See especially pages 85-86, in which he describes the functioning of the National Guidance Committee II.

10. In particular, see Communiques No. 44 (15 August 1989), No. 45 (5 September 1989), No. 47 (15 October 1989), and No. 48 (9 November 1989), from which these phrases were excerpted.

J. Kristen Urban is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and International Studies at Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland.