With Us or Against Us

by Tony Judt

  have no alternative but to buy Israeli products? Clearly, Palestinian

  Islamists give priority to the anti-Israeli struggle over an anti-American or

  an anti-Western perception: in Olivier Roy’s words, the Palestinian

  case illustrates the “nationalization of Islamism.”9

  I will conclude this section with the following paradoxical observa-

  tion. While Palestinian Islamists have dissociated themselves from

  campaign against the United States, the United States has associated

  itself with the Israeli campaign against the Islamists. By outlawing

  Hamas and Jihad under its antiterrorism fight, and cracking down on

  financial support from American Islamic organizations to Palestinian

  Islamists, the United States has upgraded local “terrorist” groups to

  the rank of “global” ones, which, however one looks at it, is neither a

  deserved honor nor a justified stigma.

  The Left and Secularist Activists

  The anti-Americanism—however mild—of the Palestinian Islamists

  is clearer in comparison to the more accommodating line taken by

  the secularists, including Fatah cadres, and those on the left among

  Palestinian activists. It is interesting to note here that this was not the

  case historically. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Palestinian resistance

  organizations considered themselves as part of the third world anti-

  imperialism. Some of these organizations, like the PFLP, argued that

  instead of hitting the protégé, it was more efficient to hit the head.

  Hijacking, anti-American operations, and operational alliances with other

  movements, took place. Three important characteristics of the earlier

  period should be noted:

  1. The Palestinian armed organizations were not inside Palestine, but

  in the neighboring Arab countries; this means that there was as

  much incentive to strike Israeli or U.S. targets all over the world,

  such as planes and embassies, as to carry out operations against

  Israeli-controlled territory.

  2. The Soviet Union, while distancing itself from the modus operandi

  of the Palestinian armed organizations, was not, in most cases,

  disturbed by their anti-imperialist, anti-American drive.

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  3. Jordan and later Lebanon provided a safe haven, or sanctuary, for

  Palestinian armed organizations, insofar as the host state was inca-

  pable of controlling them. A similar situation evolved much later in

  Afghanistan, when the Taliban government, far from being able to

  control Al Qaeda, was controlled by it. Jordan in the late 1960s,

  Lebanon in the 1970s, and Afghanistan in the 1990s show that

  transnational political violence by non-state actors can only be

  sustained when these actors operate from a territory that is not

  sufficiently controlled by its government.10

  For the Palestinian left and the secularist activists, however, the

  situation in the 1990s bore little resemblance to the earlier decades.

  The three characteristics of the regional and international environ-

  ment that helped explain their recourse to transnational violence no

  longer existed. First, Palestinian resistance organizations no longer

  had a sanctuary after their withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982, not

  even in Syria (simplistic propaganda notwithstanding). Second, anti-

  American and anti-imperialist slogans became obsolete after the

  demise of the Soviet Union. Third, the Intifada and the Madrid-Oslo

  process made the West Bank and Gaza—rather than Amman, Beirut,

  or Tunis—the center of the Palestinian polity. While the secular

  activists, including the Fatah, and part of the left were among the first

  returnees, many PFLP and DFLP cadres, who had opposed the

  Oslo agreements from Damascus, gradually became reconciled to

  the new situation and arranged for their return to the Palestinian

  territories. Thus, both the push and pull factors of the 1980s and

  1990s worked against Palestinian political violence outside the

  Israeli–Palestinian territory and in favor of integration into a process

  conducted by the Palestinian leadership and involving a will to settle

  the conflict with Israel through peaceful negotiations and American

  assistance.

  However, as we shall see in the next section, the hopes placed in

  the Oslo process faded in the late 1990s. With the outbreak of

  the Palestinian–Israeli confrontation in September 2000, secularist

  and leftist activists were progressively drawn from participating in

  unarmed popular demonstrations against the Israeli army, to shoot-

  ing against the Israelis, and finally to suicide attacks inside Israel.

  Not only was hitting U.S. interests off their agenda, but they—and

  the governing elite—now had a pragmatist, instrumental approach

  to the potential role of the United States in the Palestinian–Israeli

  accommodation.

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  The Palestinian Perception of America

  163

  The Palestinian Leadership

  The Oslo process and the establishment of the Palestinian authority in

  the West Bank and Gaza have had important effects on Palestinian-

  U.S. relations. The Oslo agreements opened the way for Israel to sign

  a treaty with Jordan and to establish ties of differing importance with

  a number of Arab countries. The centrality of the Palestinian question

  in the Arab world became, perhaps, more operational than ideological.

  Whatever the ups and downs of Palestinian–Israeli relations between

  1994 and 2000, Palestinian–American contacts intensified. For the

  Clinton administration, relations with the Palestinians became an impor-

  tant component of U.S. policy in the region and acquired a strategic

  dimension because of their impact on Israel’s place in the region. This

  relationship, likewise, compensated for any negative effect that

  U.S. policy toward Iraq could have on Arab perceptions.

  As for the Palestinian leadership, now that it had gained American

  recognition and an open door to the White House, nurturing the

  relationship became vital. This does not mean that it had any illu-

  sions about weakening U.S.-Israeli ties, but, at least, it thought that

  by maintaining intensive contacts with the U.S. administration, it

  could involve Washington in the minutiae of the Palestinian–Israeli

  relations in such a way as to give the administration a stake in a suc-

  cessful outcome of the final negotiations. Certainly, the Palestinian

  left would have argued that it was unrealistic to count on American

  pressure to get Israel to halt settlement building, for example, but

  neither the Palestinian left nor the intellectuals criticized the develop-

  ment of Palestinian-U.S. ties. A positive image of the United States

  emerged on the Palestinian street, and this reached a climax in December

  1998 with President Clinton’s visit to Gaza.

  It is possible that Bill Clinton became so entangled in the minutiae

  of Palestinian–Israeli negotiations that he came to want a successful

  outcome by the end of his term (January 2001) at any price. And suc-

  cess at any price meant ignoring the situat
ion that had developed

  on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza: expansion of the settle-

  ments, mounting Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in their daily lives,

  Palestinian loss of confidence in a fair negotiated outcome, and so on

  and misrepresenting the gap between the negotiating positions of the

  two sides. It was on this basis that he hastily convened the Camp

  David summit in July 2000 in the conviction (or at least the hope)

  that the weaker party, the Palestinians, would bend to pressures.

  When this did not occur (though there was a real narrowing of the

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  gap), Clinton immediately put the blame on the Palestinian side. This

  signaled the start of the downward slope in U.S.-Palestinian relations.

  This is not the place to analyze the reasons behind the failure of

  Camp David negotiations in July 200011 or to deal with the unfolding

  Palestinian–Israeli confrontation, which broke out in September 2000.12

  I will deal only with those elements that are necessary to understand

  how the Palestinian leadership, in the conduct of its affairs, perceived

  the role of America, first in the transition between the Clinton and

  George W. Bush presidencies, and then after 9/11. During the last

  three months of the Clinton administration, when the Intifada con-

  sisted mainly of popular demonstrations against the Israeli military

  (which already, during that period, exacted a heavy toll in Palestinian

  lives), the Palestinian leadership tried to get Washington to recognize

  Israel’s responsibility for the confrontation and requested the estab-

  lishment of an international commission of enquiry. The Palestinian

  objective was to improve their negotiating position on the final status

  issues and to internationalize the path to a settlement by involving

  other actors than Israel and the United States. In November, Clinton

  acceded to the demand concerning the commission by constituting a

  watered-down fact-finding committee under U.S. auspices and the

  chairmanship of George Mitchell. Shortly thereafter, in December, he

  presented to the two sides his “Parameters” for a final settlement,

  which significantly improved, from the Palestinian point of view, what

  was on the table at Camp David. However, in terms of the internal

  calendars in Washington and Tel Aviv, it was too late. Bush replaced

  Clinton in January 2001 and Sharon was elected prime minister in

  early February.

  Initially, the Palestinian leadership was not unhappy with George

  Bush’s election as president. Encouraged by the Saudis, the Palestinians

  thought that Saudi influence could be brought to bear on an admin-

  istration whose pillar was the pro-Republican oil lobby. Very early,

  however, it became clear that the Republicans, who had an interest in

  the Gulf area, were driven by the idea that as long the Palestinian–

  Israeli confrontation did not spill over into the region, there was no

  reason to intervene. The Palestinians also soon realized that the neocon-

  servatives, the other pillar of Bush’s administration, were against any

  “nation-building” intervention as a matter of general principle and

  had a pro-Sharon bias. Finally, the Palestinian leadership could not

  help noticing that both groups wanted the new administration to dif-

  ferentiate itself from its predecessor’s active approach. This was

  expressed by the Administration’s formal abandonment of the Clinton

  peace parameters no later than two days after Sharon’s election, its

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  The Palestinian Perception of America

  165

  insistence that Arafat make a 100-percent effort (impossible to measure

  in any case) to end Palestinian violence as a condition before any

  meeting with the American president, and its support of Israeli Prime

  Minister Sharon’s definition of violence and conditions for a ceasefire

  after the publication of the Mitchell Commission’s Report in April 2001

  (thereby condoning, in effect, the Israeli battering ram tactics against

  the Palestinians).

  It is necessary, at this point, to summarize the Palestinian leader-

  ship’s attitude toward the militarization of the Intifada, because this is

  intimately related to its relations with the U.S. administration. I have

  explained elsewhere13 that the leadership—because of the constraints

  imposed by its dual nature (a quasi-state structure and a national lib-

  eration movement), the restrictions on its territorial jurisdiction, and

  fears for its own survival—acted as the “overseer” of the uprising rather

  than as its “general staff.” This meant, from a declarative standpoint:

  asserting that the root of violence lay with Israel even while carefully

  refraining from referring to Israel as the enemy; remaining silent when

  actions by different Palestinian groups were undertaken against the

  Israeli occupying army, while condemning suicide operations and reit-

  erating each time its opposition to the killing of civilians, whether

  Israeli or Palestinian. From a practical standpoint, the overseer approach

  meant arbitrating between different Palestinian activist groups, letting

  things happen, and seriously intervening in favor of a cease-fire only

  when absolutely necessary and when significant backing from the

  Palestinian population could be expected. The reasoning behind the

  approach was that as long as Israel (or at least Washington) did not

  compensate the Palestinian leadership with a tangible reward relating

  to the peace process, the Palestinian leadership would not be in a position

  to control the street.

  The Bush administration’s lack of interest in an Israeli–Palestinian

  peace process, its permissiveness concerning Israeli military measures

  in the West Bank and Gaza, and the gap between the administration

  and the Palestinian leadership on the cause of the violence show that

  a low ebb in Palestinian–American relations predates the 9/11 attacks

  on New York and Washington. However, when the attacks occurred,

  the Palestinian leadership very quickly understood their implications:

  on the one hand, fears that the neoconservative argument describing

  all forms of Palestinian struggle against occupation as “terrorism” (and

  thus lumping it indiscriminately with Al Qaeda) would be strength-

  ened, and, on the other hand, hopes that the viewpoint of Secretary of

  State Colin Powell would prevail, according to which America would

  need calm in the Middle East and Arab support in order to focus on

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  identifying, locating, and pursuing those directly responsible for the

  attacks. At this delicate juncture, Arafat hastened to line up behind

  Washington and tried to calm the situation on the ground. He was

  keen to show that he held one of the keys for American access to the

  Middle East (in terms of influencing how America is seen in Arab

  opinion) and that he knew how to use this key positively and unhesi-

  tatingly (ahead of Egypt’s Mubarak, for instance, who was far more

  reticent). This app
roach seemed to bear some fruit, as testified by the

  administration’s displeasure with an Israeli attempt to escalate in the

  two or three days following 9/11, considered as a cynical exploitation

  of the tragedy, pressure on Tel Aviv for a cease-fire, and hints that

  there would be movement toward a Palestinian state.

  In mid-October, the Palestinian leadership could claim that its

  status in Washington, while lagging very much behind its level during

  the Clinton era, was better after 9/11 than it was before. However,

  several factors quickly shattered this optimism: the seemingly easy vic-

  tory against the Taliban and bin Laden’s forces in Afghanistan, thus

  silencing those in Washington who claimed that America needed the

  support of Arab and Islamic countries; the tilt in the internal power

  struggle in favor of the neoconservatives; the affirmation by the latter,

  now virulent unilateralists allied with Christian fundamentalists, of an

  arrogant imperial America ready to fashion regimes sympathetic to

  America and to combat terrorism everywhere, especially in Muslim-

  inhabited areas. In the Palestinian–Israeli arena, the triggering event

  that gave the upper hand to the alliance between American neocon-

  servatives and Ariel Sharon was the assassination (October 17) of an

  Israeli minister of the extreme right, Rehavam Ze’evi, an outspoken

  advocate of transferring the Palestinians outside Palestine, by mem-

  bers of the PFLP in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of their leader,

  Abu Ali Mustafa. From that point on, Palestinian–U.S. relations

  witnessed an aggravating deterioration whose tempo appeared closely

  linked to the deterioration on the ground: targeted assassinations of

  Palestinians by Israel, suicide operations against civilians in Israel, closure

  of Palestinian towns and villages, shooting at Israeli soldiers and settlers,

  land grabs by and for Israeli settlers, and, finally, reoccupation of the

  entire West Bank and parts of the Gaza Strip.

  Many observers have argued that the Palestinian leadership, what-

  ever the merits of its case, failed to grasp the gravity of the 9/11 shock

  on America and the almost absolute American tendency to view any

  Palestinian violence as terrorism, and thus failed to take all the meas-