Promoting Democracy. Manal A. Jamal

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      Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but rather under circumstances found, given, and transmitted.

      —Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”1

      A rich history of civic organizing in El Salvador and the Palestinian territories underpinned the mass mobilization of the 1970s and 1980s. These mobilization efforts and much of the associational life that grew out of them were responses to conflicts with long historical roots: the British Mandate and Zionist colonial settlement in Palestine and, later, Israel’s military occupation in the WBGS, and massive and enduring socioeconomic inequality, characterized by extreme concentration of land ownership in the hands of a very small minority (fourteen families to be exact)2 in El Salvador. This conflict in El Salvador ultimately culminated in a civil war between the FMLN and the right-wing government. In both cases, the establishment of political-military organizations began in the latter part of the 1960s. The Arab-Israeli War in 1967 resulted in Palestinians seeking less Arab tutelage and more Palestinian autonomy and led to the establishment of various guerrilla/political-military organizations. In El Salvador, proponents of armed struggle in the Partido Comunista de El Salvador (Communist Party of El Salvador, PCS) broke away in 1969 and established the Fuerzas Populares de Liberación (Popular Forces of Liberation, FPL), which similarly set in motion the founding of various guerrilla/political-military organizations.

      The Political-Military Organizations: Precursors to Mass Mobilization

      The Palestinian Nationalist Movement Asserts Its Autonomy

      By the early 1960s, and certainly following the 1967 war, the struggle for historic Palestine assumed an increasingly Palestinian character involving diasporic Palestinians themselves. This was a marked departure from the post-1948 defeat period in which the struggle for Palestinian independence assumed an Arab character that increased the involvement of neighboring nation-states.3 Ironically, it was Palestinian students, studying and living in neighboring Arab countries, who questioned the commitments of other Arab leaders and cast into doubt the ability of these states to liberate historic Palestine.

      In the late 1950s, these students founded a number of political organizations throughout the Arab world. Among these students were Khalil Wazir, Salah Khalaf, and Yasir Arafat, who took over the PLO in 1969. Two different streams dominated the Palestinian nationalist movement, the Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-ʿArab (Arab Nationalist Movement, ANM) which was more leftist in its political orientation, and Fatah, which is more nationalist in its orientation. Many of the Palestinian guerrilla and political organizations that emerged in the 1960s and thereafter owe their roots to one of these political strands.4 Eventually, Fatah emerged as the largest and strongest of the Palestinian political factions, and is the current-day leadership party of the PA and the PLO.

      The defeat of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War severely undermined the legitimacy of these states in the eyes of the Arab public, further eroding any notions that they would ultimately play an important role in the liberation of Palestine. In the aftermath, a number of Palestinian guerrilla organizations emerged.5 The ANM’s Palestinian branch, along with three other small guerrilla organizations, founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1967. In 1968, the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command broke away from the PFLP. Then in 1969, another group splintered from the PFLP, and called itself the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (now called the DFLP).6 These groups were predominately leftist in their orientation and would come to be among Fatah’s major opposition. Fatah, the PFLP, and DFLP would come to represent the largest Palestinian political factions in the PLO, and play an important role in mass mobilization in the occupied territories, amassing substantial followings.

      Communist Party activities in the Palestinian territories date back to the early 1920s, though the party became increasingly active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.7 The West Bank Communists were firmly committed to mass mobilization and nonviolent protest.8 In 1969, they reactivated the General Federation of Labor Unions, and later played a leadership role in the founding of the voluntary work programs among university and high school students.9 In 1982, the West Bank Communists founded the PCP, despite the protests of the Jordanian Communist Party.10 In 1987, the PCP joined the PLO.

      Beginning in 1968, the DFLP, soon followed by the PFLP, began its transformation from a pan-Arabist organization to a Marxist-Leninist organization. These organizations were concerned with fundamental social and political change in Palestinian society, as well as throughout the Arab world. Both groups also initially called for the creation of one secular democratic state in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims would enjoy the same political rights. In the early 1970s, the DFLP began to entertain the idea of creating a binational state that would represent the Palestinian and Jewish communities, and later called for a sovereign state in the WBGS. The Palestinian Communist Party, PCP (later named the Palestinian People’s Party, or PPP), on the other hand, limited its struggle to ending Israeli occupation of the WBGS, and the establishment of an independent state in that territory.11 Although the early record of Fatah’s military operations was quite humble, the high losses that they were able to inflict on the Israeli military during the Karameh battle of 1968, further reinforced the strength of the organization.12 The growth of the guerrilla organization imposed its own logic on the structure of the PLO. By the fourth Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in 1969, it was a foregone conclusion that Fatah, because of the seats allotted to it, and the support it enjoyed from independents, would be able to elect the leader of its choice to head the PLO. During that meeting, the delegates elected Yasir Arafat as chairperson of the organization.

      During the 1970s, the internal organization of the PLO was rationalized, enlarged, and consolidated, and beginning with the Lebanese civil war until its expulsion from Beirut (1975–82), the economic and social functions of the PLO were dramatically expanded. Among the divisions of the PLO established were the Palestine National Fund, the Department of Education, the Red Crescent Society for Health Services, Departments of Information, Popular Mobilization, and the Occupied Homeland, a research center, an economic development center, and a social affairs institute.13 By the mid-1970s, the PLO had developed the structures of a de facto government in exile.14

      The decisive shift in terms of mass mobilization and associational activity in the WBGS took place in 1972. The PLO’s defeat in Jordan in 1970 culminated in the Palestine National Council’s 1972 decision to shift the locus of attention to the occupied territories and to incorporate the masses into the struggle.15 Hence, at the tenth session of the PNC, the members passed resolutions calling for new trade unions, student groups, women’s groups, welfare organizations, and other mass-based organizations that could mobilize the population in the territories under the auspices of the PLO.16 By the end of the 1970s, an alternative strategy had emerged that involved supporting grassroots efforts in the WBGS.17 Following the example of the PCP, then not part of the PLO but an early pioneer of mass mobilization efforts in the WBGS, the leftist factions of the PLO, the DFLP and PFLP, and later Fatah, followed suit in the latter part of the 1970s.18 In time, the Palestinian population began recognizing the establishment of grassroots organizations as the new standard mode of sociopolitical organizing. They also began to identity this grassroots expression as proof of the strength of the political factions and as a reaffirmation of their presence on the ground.

      In the 1980s, activists in the WBGS founded a number of political organizations that would come to play a significant role in Palestinian contemporary politics, and amass significant followings. Although Muslim Brotherhood activities in the Palestinian territories date back to the 1940s, Islamist associations, unions, and organizations became increasingly prevalent in the early 1980s following the Iranian Revolution. In the mid-1980s, Islamic Jihad splintered from the Muslim Brotherhood, and established itself as a separate organization. Most notably, the Islamists founded the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas), in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the first Intifada. Following the initiation of the Madrid СКАЧАТЬ