THE JEWISH NEWS
THIS ISSUE 60YP
SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY
JANUARY 27, 1989 / 21 SHEVAT 5749
Intifada's Mutation:
The Islamic Jihad
Beneath the clashes between Israeli troops and
Palestinians, behind the talk of negotiations with
the PLO, a virulent fanaticism struggles for power.
HELEN DAVIS
Foreign Correspondent
The conciliatory pronouncements
by Yassir Arafat in Geneva last
month, and Washington's subsequent
decision to open a dialogue with the
PLO, has provoked a fierce in-
ternecine struggle for control of the
hearts, minds — and souls — of
Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank and Gaza Strip.
Since the uprising erupted 14
months ago, more than 300 Palesti-
nians have been killed and 20,000
have been wounded in clashes with Is-
raeli security forces. In addition, some
32 have been deported and thousands
more have been detained on suspicion
of instigating, or participating in,
violent unrest.
Behind the cold statistics,
however, an intense campaign is now
underway for paternity of the revolu-
tion, which was born in Jebalya, one
of the overheated, overcrowded
ANALYSIS
refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, on
December 9, 1987.
According to Israeli military
sources, the Palestinians might yet
again surprise the world — not least
Israel — by changing both the ac-
cepted history and the direction of
their revolution.
A hint of the New Wave was con-
tained in a leaflet which was
clandestinely handed out to Palesti-
nians throughout the West Bank and
Gaza Strip last week.
The authors of the leaflet were
members of llamas, an acronym for
the Arabic "Harakat al-Mukawameh
al-Islamiyeh" — the Islamic
Resistance Movement — and the
message was starkly simple:
The second year of the uprising,
according to the leaflet, is to be the
"Year of the Martyrs," and the duty
of Palestinians now is to escalate the
"jihad" — holy war — in order to "ut-
terly defeat the Jews and take
revenge on them."
After listing the various measures
employed by the Israelis in their at-
tempt to put a lid on the uprising, the
leaflet poses three questions:
"Is this not enough to teach us
with certainty about the character of
the Jews?
"Has our people not become wise
enough to understand the treachery,
cunning, lies, hatred and hostility of
the Jews toward us and all humani-
ty?"
Then, following a searing attack
on those "treasonous" Palestinian
leaders who would strike a political
deal with Israel, it asks the third
question: "How can we allow the Jews
to establish a nation of terror and op-
pression on more than four-fifths of
the Holy Land?"
It is a challenge directed as much
at the PLO as at the hated Zionist
enemy, for while the struggle against
the Israeli occupation continues un-
abated — last month was the
bloodiest since the start of the upris-
ing — a new internal struggle is gain-
ing momentum; a struggle which
could radically alter the terms of the
debate in the Palestinian movement.
In the byzantine labyrinth of
Palestinian politics, there have
always been simmering tensions bet-
ween the pragmatic Arafat loyalists,
the doctrinaire communist fol-
lowers of the Syrian based rejec-
tionist groups and the Islamic
fundamentalists.
So far, these tensions have been ef-
fectively submerged in the larger
cause of achieving a measure of con-
sensus and a unity of purpose in the
fight against the common enemy.
Arafat's recent concessions,
however, have radically shifted the
balance. Both the rejectionists and
the fundamentalists now fear that
they are being comprehensively out-
flanked by Arafat as he plays his
American card.
The rejectionists have already ex-
pressed their displeasure in the bom-
bing of the Pan Am airliner over
Scotland last month, an act which
was aimed at undermining Arafat's
credibility in the West and torpedoing
his budding relationship with
Washington.
Now, an all-out battle for
supremacy among the rank-and-file
Palestinians has been launched by
the Islamic fundamentalists, who in-
sist that Hamas was, in fact, respon-
Continued on Page 18
Arab access to chemic weapons is a
jor threat to Israel. It could change t
military balance in the Middle East.'
Features, Lifestyles, Engagements, Single Life
conveniently accessible in ou new sectio