BACKGROUND
An Israeli Policeman fires
tear gas.
INA FRIEDMAN
Special to The Jewish News
T
he first 1,000 days of
the intifada were days
in the sun. Everyone
saw, understood, and backed
us. Now, after the Gulf crisis
and the massacre at Al-
Aqsa, we Palestinians are
entering a dark tunnel.
Anything can happen to us."
That gloomy statement by
Dr. Mandi Abdul Hadi, head
of the Palestinian Academic
Society for the Study of
International Affairs
(PASSIA), reflects the deep
sense of uncertainty that has
overtaken many Palestin-
ians as the intifada marks
its third anniversary.
In the past, intellectuals
like Abdul Hadi and Dr. Sari
Nusseibeh of Bir Zeit Uni-
versity played a double role
of both analyzing the in-
tifada and helping it get its
bearings.
Today, the Palestinian
uprising has moved far
beyond their influence. Once
again, as in its earliest days,
its direction is being set not
by intellectuals or even by
the intifada's shadowy
Unified Command but by
the mood on the streets,
which grows more radical
each day.
There are few reasons to
believe that the intifada is
waning, but clearly its style
has changed in a number of
ways.
Last week, Israel Televi-
sion reported, tens of
thousands of Palestinians
spent the night out on their
verandas gazing expectantly
up at the moon in response
to a rumor that the face of
Saddam Hussein — the
"new Saladin" who will br-
ing salvation — would be
revealed therein.
Such bizarre behavior by
people who three years ago
renounced their passivity
and vowed to take their fate
into their own hands —
perhaps the most powerful
message of the intifada — is
indicative of the nadir to
which the uprising has
slumped.
At the same time, the
wave of popular violence
against Israelis continued
last week, when three Pales-
tinians wielding kitchen
A woman student hurls
rocks at Israeli soldiers.
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Darkness And Disarray
The Gulf crisis has changed everything about
the Palestinian uprising in Israel. A feeling of
desperation has overtaken the movement.
knives attacked passengers
on a bus heading into Tel
Aviv. Only recently have
Israelis begun to consider
the deep despair that lies
behind this mayhem. "Many
Palestinians are desperately
depressed about [the in-
tifada's] lack of concrete
results," reports Helen
Winternitz, an American
journalist who has just
completed a book on the sub-
ject. The result of such
despair, many observers
agree, is that the intifada is
beginning to spin out of con-
trol.
Certainly the secular, na-
tionalist and (up until now)
restraining PLO has lost
considerable ground to the
radical fundamentalist
groups: Hamas (the Islamic
Resistance Movement) and
the even more militant
Islamic Jihad.
This shift in power has al-
ready led to one major
change in tactics: after three
years of forbidding the use of
firearms, the Unified Com-
mand — a PLO organ —has
recently urged "all forms of
struggle" in resisting the oc-
cupation, clearly condoning
the use of lethal weapons.
Soon thereafter, a bus car-
rying Israeli settlers
through the West Bank was
attacked by gunfire, leaving
three people injured and
Israel as a whole shocked yet
again by the lurch toward
escalation.
Palestinians, too, are
alarmed by these develop-
ments. "If weapons are in-
troduced into the uprising,"
says Dr. Abdul Hadi, "it
won't be an intifada
anymore; it will have
become something else."
In Dr. Nusseibeh's view,
the retreat from self-reliance
is the most damaging
change in the Palestinian
mindset. His prescription for
the intifada is to turn its
back on Israel, declare a
provisional government, and
create a civil service as the
concrete basis of a state-in-
the-making.
The one way Palestinians
can overcome their "great
frustration with their
powerlessness," he explains,
is by "practicing self- deter-
mination with their own
hands."
But the question is
whether anyone is listening
to these moderates anymore,
especially as the PLO itself
is in a state of upheaval
bordering on disarray. The
Palestine Communist Party,
which played a key role in
defining the early goals of
the intifada, is all but an
anachronism today. The
Democratic Front (DFLP),
whose activists were the
first to harness the violence
of the uprising by creating
the Unified Command, is in
the throes of a rebellion by
its younger activists in the
territories, who want more
power than the veterans in
Tunis and a more pragmatic
approach toward a set-
tlement with Israel.
Out on the streets, mean-
while, rather than getting a
grip on their frustrations,
Palestinians seem to be tur-
ning on each other in grow-
ing numbers. Even the most
conservative estimate puts
the number of Palestinians
killed by their own people,
as alleged "collaborators,"
at over 300 — almost half
the number felled by Israeli
bullets.
For more than a decade,
observers have been com-
menting on the odd sym-
metry between the mood and
outlook on both sides of the
Green Line.
Today, that observation
still holds. A poll published
by the new English-
language magazine the
Jerusalem Report the only
Israeli publication to devote
serious coverage to the in-
tifada's third anniversary —
showed that just as the Pa-
lestinians want the Israelis
to stay off their turf, a full
two-thirds of the Israelis
want the Palestinians
—
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