•
Ask The People Who Know
and close to 4,000 wounded.
Thousands have been de-
tained, many without trial,
and several dozen have been
expelled. Houses have been
blown up or sealed shut and
just about every Palestinian
has a story of humiliation at
the hands of Israeli soldiers or
officials.
Through all that, the Pales-
tinians have remained stead-
fast. When strikes are called
they are heeded (though Is-
raeli officials maintain that
intimidation is a key factor)
and support for Palestinian
independence remains over-
whelming.
Nascent local Palestinian
leaderships and alternative
structures have developed. At
the top is the Unified Leader-
ship, consisting of represen-
tatives of the four main
resistance groups: Fatah, the
Communist Party, the Popu-
lar Front for the Liberation of
Palestine and the Democratic
Front for the Liberation of
Palestine.
The leadership meets week-
ly to plan strategy and put
out communiques, more than
30 of which have been pub-
ished to date. Several of its
members have been detained,
but other key leaders remain
free and underground.
Each town and village has
its Popular Committee, which
implements the directives of
the leadership. The popular
committees have been bann-
ed and many of their leaders
jailed, but they continue to
function.
The groups of youths who
enforce the decisions are
known as shock committees.
Much of their work consists of
ensuring that merchants
observe strike orders, though,
in headier moments, they like
to refer to themselves as the
Palestinian army-in-the-
making.
Of greatest significance for
the future are the alternative
community structures, such
as those that teach pupils in
the absence of schools (which
have been shut for much of
the year) and those that
market fresh produce from in-
dividual landholdings.
There is also a "repair and
rehabilitation" network of
doctors, lawyers, builders and
others, who treat the wound-
ed, repair houses and provide
other assistance to villagers
after military raids or opera-
tions.
These alternative bodies
are weak and their scope is
very narrow, but they could be
the foundations for the in-
stitutions of a future state.
Israel, as Palestinian intellec-
tuals love to point out, was
built on the para-statal foun-
dations established during
the days of the British Man-
date.
A potentially serious threat
to Palestinian unity is the
growing strength of the
Islamic Resistance Move-
ment, known by its Arabic
acronym Hamas. The move-
ment, which is dominant in
Gaza and increasingly in-
fluential on the West Bank,
strongly opposed the "mod-
eration" of the PLO in
Algiers. Any further accomo-
dation of the West could pro-
voke violence between the
fundamentalists and the
PLO.
lb a large extent, Israel has
managed to absorb the in-
tifada. The shock of the first
few months, during which the
defense establishment groped
wildly for means of dealing
with the violence, has been
replaced by a weary, wary pro-
fessionalism. The Israeli
army is carrrying out Chief of
Staff General Dan Shomron's
instruction to "prevent the in-
habitants of the territories
from dictating terms to
Israel's political leadership."
Trained for conventional
warfare, the army was not
prepared to contend with
youths armed only with
stones and bottles of petrol. It
took the better part of the
past year for the army's tac-
tics, equipment and training
to be adapted to street con-
frontations.
The turning point, accord-
ing to Deputy Chief of Staff
General Ehud Barak, was the
introduction several months
ago of plastic bullets, which
cause severe wounds but are
seldom lethal at distances of
over 70 meters. Their use has
meant that soldiers are more
apt to fire, knowing that they
probably won't kill, and
rioters are less likely to ven-
ture into firing range.
Tactical necessity has dic-
tated policy. Before the in-
tifada it was thought prudent
to maintain only small forces
in the territories and to keep
them out of urban areas. To-
day, some 10,000 soldiers are
in the territories at any one
time.
The major damage has been
in the international arena,
where Israel's image has
taken some hard knocks and
its allies are showing less sen-
sitivity to Israel's concerns.
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t 61 .•
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