But Fayyad’s successes were fleeting. After Arafat’s death in 2004, Mahmoud Abbas rose to power, largely due to the unwavering efforts of former US president George W. Bush, who believed that Abbas was committed to peace with Israel. Abbas was roundly lauded as the antithesis of Arafat: nonviolent and a stalwart against corruption.
But it soon became clear that Abbas was not the man Bush believed him to be. From the moment he assumed office in 2005, Abbas moved aggressively to consolidate political and economic power. The nepotism and political patronage that characterized the Arafat era again became the norm. Abbas undermined some of the PA’s own laws and systematically denied power to Fayyad and other political competitors. He co-opted or weakened institutions that promoted transparency and accountability.
Unfortunately, the West further encouraged Abbas’s consolidation of power after the Palestinian civil war of 2007, when Hamas overran the PA government in the Gaza Strip. Fearing a complete terrorist takeover of the Palestinian territories, Israel and the Western donor community, led by the United States, propped up the Palestinian leader with weapons, intelligence, and cash. The message was clear: stay in power at all costs, and don’t let Hamas take over.
With the international community overwhelmingly concerned about the continued survival of the government in the West Bank, Western governments abandoned all expectations of Abbas as a leader. Discussions no longer revolved around efforts to create an independent state with a viable public authority. The goal was simply to keep the West Bank out of the hands of Hamas.
With the end of expectations came the decline of the nascent political system the Palestinians had tried to build. Among other things, Abbas ensured that Fayyad’s office lacked the power to do anything more than receive donor checks and allocate funds to the Palestinian bureaucracy. This ultimately led to Fayyad’s resignation in April 2013. Other political figures found themselves cornered and unable to mount a challenge, let alone engage in open political debate. Meanwhile, Abbas also detained reporters who criticized him and shut down websites that highlighted the alarming lack of transparency in the PA.
There is a real and growing problem in Ramallah today. To be sure, Israel’s continued military presence and its accompanying restrictions have contributed to it. But the problem, at its core, is about good governance. Whatever recognition the Palestinians earn for their national project, if a viable Palestinian state is ever to emerge, its government must undergo substantial reform. Without cleaning out the ossified institutions that revolve around one powerful figure and weigh down the current system, the future state of Palestine may simply collapse under its own weight.
Right now, however, world leaders have made no such demands on the Palestinians. Too many decision makers remain dangerously silent on the problem. And that silence could smother the fledgling nation in its cradle. These leaders seek to project foreign policies that appear “pro-Palestinian.” But as this book will make clear, nothing could be further from the truth.
The failure to address the issues besetting Palestinian governance is a byproduct of the way Palestinian supporters approach their cause. There is simply too little introspection. The focus instead continues to be on Israel and its policies vis-à-vis the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In some cases, the focus tends to be on Israel as an illegitimate colonial state that must be destroyed so that a Palestinian state can be built on its ashes.
Again, this is not to deny that Israel has, throughout the course of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, contributed to the plight of the Palestinians. It undoubtedly has. Whether through the conquest of land or the imposition of restrictive policies in the name of security, Israel has set back the Palestinian cause. This is a deeply regrettable outcome of the conflict between these two peoples.
As Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine notes, “The occupation remains not only the most important barrier to Palestinian independence and statehood, it has also been one of the most important obstacles to successful institution building.” But Ibish also notes, “Those who would argue that real institution building and practical preparation for successful independent statehood is not possible under conditions of the occupation have been proven wrong.”9
In other words, the Palestinians must also take responsibility. They must come to terms with the fact that their ability to create a functioning state goes hand in hand with putting their own house in order. Unfortunately, Palestinian stakeholders are not there yet—not by a long shot. Such change usually arises from soul-searching, often a byproduct of journalism and scholarship that underscores the challenges and wrestles with a menu of options that could serve as solutions.
But, therein lies another problem. The Palestinian–Israeli conflict has received more mass media coverage, academic consideration, and overall attention from the world’s policymakers than almost any other international issue.10 This disproportionate focus has drawn attention away from other worthy causes, from China’s Great Leap Forward to the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur. But it has also yielded a cacophony of zealous arguments from all sides, such that even the most valid arguments are lost in the noise.
However, it is more complicated than that. Access to Israel is rather open, which makes it easy to look at all of Israel’s warts under a microscope. And there are many, as we have seen over the years. Yet there is a tendency to look at Palestinian politics only through the prism of the peace process. Palestinian politics seems to matter only insofar as it impacts diplomacy with Israel. Moreover, few outsiders ever gain access to Palestinian political elites, apart from the very top tier. Even fewer care to. Among those who take the time to report on what happens inside the Palestinian political system, most are dissuaded from reporting on what they find, fearing academic and political retribution, or worse.
The result is a dearth of information on the internal Palestinian dynamic. This is strange given how many activists and scholars will argue that the Palestinian issue is the most central issue in the Arab world.
In 2011, Arab governments were toppled across the Middle East. Repressed populations rose up against autocratic leaders, demanding new freedoms and brighter futures. The Palestinian leadership, however, remained immune to these changes. The real fight, they said, was against Israel.
But the Palestinians may be experiencing the Arab Spring in slow motion. Those in power, particularly Abbas and his circle, are finding that, despite their best efforts to change the subject, the Palestinian people wish to hold their government to account. For now, Abbas’s insurance is Hamas. The international community appears content not to hold him to the same standards as some of the new governments that have been built on the ashes of fallen dictatorships for fear of a hostile takeover by the Islamist group that ripped control of Gaza from his hands in 2007.
At four years past the end of his legal term, however, Abbas needs to clear the way for new leadership. Change is long overdue. But such change will not come until Palestinian partisans recognize that the PA is broken. The Palestinian government must take responsibility for the domestic challenges it faces, allow more space for political debate, and create a self-sustaining economy to usher in a new era.
In the end, criticizing the Palestinian leadership for its ossified approach to governance is not anti-Palestinian. Indeed, it is decidedly pro-Palestinian. The sooner we begin to understand this, the sooner we can get back to the task at hand: establishing the building blocks of a Palestinian state that will help both Israelis and Palestinians get one step closer to the two-state solution.
2
The United States and
the Question of Palestine
Is the United States inclined to be anti-Palestinian? We hear about a powerful “Israel lobby”1 that dissuades Washington from allowing Palestinians to achieve statehood. But the history of US–Palestinian relations tells a different story. In fact, US presidents have increasingly viewed P
alestinian statehood with favor and have consistently moved closer to accepting Palestine as a state with each passing administration. With each new presidency, one gets the sense that time is on the side of the Palestinians.
In the aftermath of World War I and the unraveling of the Ottoman Empire, one could argue that President Woodrow Wilson supported the Palestinian quest for statehood. Columbia University’s Rashid Khalidi argues that the US president was referring to the Palestinians (and perhaps the Kurds and Armenians)2 when he stated in his famous 1918 “Fourteen Points” speech that “other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of an autonomous development.”3
Did Wilson intend to acknowledge Palestinian nationalism? It is not known. What is known is that Wilson created a commission led by Henry Churchill King, president of Oberlin College, and Charles Crane, a Chicago businessman, to survey the needs of the inhabitants of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The King-Crane Commission, as it was known, visited Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon in the summer of 1919. A majority of the commission favored curtailment of Zionist emigration, reflecting the desire of the Muslim communities with whom they spoke.4 The report was never officially published, and its findings were ultimately not considered. As historian Kathleen Christison notes, this was because Wilson suffered a stroke two months after it was written. But Christison also charges that “Wilson did not care deeply one way or the other about Palestine’s political fate.”5
True, Wilson likely did not give a great deal of thought to the demands of the local Arabs in the territory of the British Mandate. But he did not care much about Zionism, either. After World War I, US foreign policy was isolationist, fueled by a desire to avoid foreign entanglements. By design, therefore, the United States had little influence over the region, which was largely dominated by Britain and France.
Of course, Wilson supported the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine, but this might be viewed more as support for an ally’s decision rather than as a sign that he had any deep-rooted feelings about the issue one way or another. Christison notes that Wilson endorsed the declaration a full month after its issuance “and only upon being reminded of the request.”6 It was not until September 21, 1922, some five years after the declaration was issued, that Congress issued Public Resolution Number 73, which stated that “America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”7
The roaring twenties was not a time of American involvement in the Middle East. Then, in October 1929, just two months after riots erupted between Jews and Arabs at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem,8 the US stock market crashed, beginning what would become known as the Great Depression. This devastating economic downturn lasted until the start of World War II, effectively causing Americans to turn inward and largely ignore international affairs. Under the leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected president in November 1932, Congress passed the first of several Neutrality Acts designed to insulate America from overseas conflicts.9 In short, the Middle East was of little concern to a beleaguered United States. Perhaps the one significant exception was the first oil concession granted by the Saudis to Southern Oil of California in 1933.10
Whatever Americans did know about the Palestinians was likely tainted by bloodshed. From 1936 to 1939, Palestinian Arabs fought a low-intensity war against the British and Jewish communities in protest of increased Jewish immigration. The spiraling conflict left 5,000 Palestinians dead, 15,000 wounded, and 5,600 incarcerated.11 Coordinating much of the violence, even amid British efforts to recognize Palestinian demands,12 was the mufti of Palestine and head of the Arab Higher Committee, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Al-Husseini had an ongoing relationship with senior Nazi figures, including Adolf Hitler. In a January 1941 letter that he wrote to Hitler, al-Husseini pledged to the “great Fuhrer” that Arabs everywhere were “prepared to act as is proper against the common enemy and to take their stand with enthusiasm on the side of the Axis and to do their part in the well-deserved defeat of the Anglo-Jewish coalition.”13
The mufti, in fact, was welcomed as an honored guest by top leaders of the Third Reich. After meeting personally with Hitler, he established close working relationships with high-profile Nazi war criminals, including Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Adolf Eichmann. According to testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, al-Husseini was among Eichmann’s best friends, and he joined Eichmann on a visit to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. In 1943, Himmler placed al-Husseini in charge of recruiting as many as 100,000 Muslim fighters to join units serving in the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East.14
Roosevelt, meanwhile, tried to distance himself from the growing controversy in the Middle East and even spurned Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter’s request in 1942 to meet with David Ben-Gurion, the leading political figure among the Jews in Palestine. Only after 1944—12 years after Roosevelt took office—as the death toll of the Holocaust became too much to bear, did a US president see the need for a “Jewish commonwealth.”15
Even then, Roosevelt met with Saudi king Ibn Saud in the early spring of 1945 and promised that he would consult with the Arab leaders on any US decisions regarding Palestine. In an address to Congress on March 1, 1945, Roosevelt reportedly departed from a prepared text, stating that he had learned “more about the whole problem, the Moslem problem, the Jewish problem, by talking with Ibn Saud for five minutes than I could have learned in the exchange of two- or three-dozen letters.”16
Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman, took office in April 1945. He felt a moral obligation to protect the Jewish people who had suffered under Nazi cruelty, believing that they had suffered “more and longer” than others affected by World War II. Many Americans also believed that “Palestine should be the haven for Jews who had survived the horrors of war.”17
On September 26, 1947, Britain announced that it would be withdrawing from Palestine, thereby ending the mandate and leaving the fate of the territory to the international community. Two months later, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan, which divided the territory up into three contiguous Arab swaths and three contiguous Jewish swaths, with Jerusalem slated for permanent trusteeship.
The White House backed partition, but Washington was not unanimous as to the merits of the plan. Specifically, the State Department’s policy staff issued a paper arguing that the plan required further study. One ambassador even suggested that the entire territory come under temporary UN trusteeship.18
The Arab states, for their part, rejected the partition plan outright, which did little to help the Palestinian cause as the world deliberated. As Christison notes, “Far from demonstrating that they were the victims of an injustice, as they believed, [the Arabs] gave the impression around the world that they were the victimizers.”19 It was not lost on the world that the Arabs called for outright war against some 400,000 Jews living in Palestine just three years after six million Jews had been slaughtered in Europe.
In the end, Truman announced his recognition of the State of Israel at 6:11 p.m. on May 14, 1948, 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion’s declaration of independence in Tel Aviv.20 But this did not mean that Washington did not care about the fate of the Palestinians. There was no intention to reject the creation of a Palestinian Arab state in the territory allotted by the United Nations.
Moreover, in the years following the 1948 Arab invasion and the first Arab–Israeli War, the United States showed a great deal of concern for the estimated 725,000 Arab refugees in the region. For example, in December 1948, the United States supported UN Resolution 194, which called for refugees from the conflict “willing to live in peace” to be allowed to return to their homes. The United States was also involved in devising a number of unsuccessful plans to reintegrate them.21
All the while, Palestinian nationalism had lost much of its m
omentum. The Palestinian uprisings of 1936–1939, the subsequent British crackdown, and the way in which the Arab states had exploited the Palestinian cause left the nascent nationalist movement in disarray. It would take more than 15 years for Palestinians to rediscover their desire for independence. Rashid Khalidi calls the years between 1948 and the emergence of the PLO in 1964 the “lost years.”22 With few nations advocating on behalf of the Palestinians, the cause was given similarly short shrift in Washington.
Truman’s successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, assumed office in January 1953. He was never considered to be an avowed friend of Israel. In fact, although Israel was facing increased cross-border fedayeen attacks from neighboring Arab states and heightened bellicosity from the likes of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Eisenhower administration elected not to sell arms to Israel in an effort to avoid potential conflict with the Soviet Union.23
Furthermore, Eisenhower would not support the Israelis when they captured Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula (along with France and Great Britain) in the Suez War of 1956. However, the fact that some of Eisenhower’s policies were less than friendly to Israel did not necessarily make him “pro-Palestinian.” Indeed, there was no such paradigm. Jordan and Egypt controlled the West Bank and Gaza Strip, respectively.
Moreover, the ideology that captured the imagination of the Palestinians at the time was pan-Arabism. A socialist ideology championed by Nasser, pan-Arabism was built on the premise that the Arabs “were a single people with a single language, history, and culture.” This, Khalidi notes, “obscured the identities of the separate Arab nation-states it subsumed,” including the Palestinians. And as Khalidi admits, the Palestinians were “deeply attracted” to this ideology.24
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