With Us or Against Us
Page 29
ures necessary to stop all Palestinian attacks. The reality, however, is
more complicated. A year after the start of the Palestinian–Israeli
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The Palestinian Perception of America
167
confrontation, the Palestinian leadership had become technically and
politically incapable of controlling the diverse Palestinian activist groups
(control that even the Israeli military with all its might has not been
able to do following its reoccupation of the whole West Bank) and
was thus paying the price of its overseer approach. Technically, the
fact that Israel, after each attack (usually undertaken by Islamist
groups), chose to destroy the infrastructure (buildings, communica-
tions, chains of command) of Palestinian security forces made the latter
less and less efficient. Politically, even if the leadership was technically
capable of dismantling Palestinian armed networks, it was caught
between the danger of provoking a Palestinian civil war and the prospect
of American condemnation and Israeli reprisals.14 Obviously, it chose
to avoid civil war and risk being weakened and delegitimized in
Washington. It is known that delegitimation has taken the form of an
American call to replace Arafat and reform the institutions of the
Palestinian authority, including the security apparatus, as a precondi-
tion to any discussion of the establishment of a viable Palestinian state
called for in President Bush’s “vision” (June 2002). I will now tackle
the issue of reform in the framework of the Palestinian internal debate.
The Palestinian Internal Debate
and the Image of America
It would be inaccurate to restrict the Palestinian internal debate to the
question of institutional reform and to assume that the debate began
only at the end of spring 2002. Soon after Oslo, many issues came to
be debated in the Palestinian public space: models for building state
institutions, the relationship between Islam and the state, the rule of
law, the place of the judiciary vis-à-vis the traditional modes of societal
conflict resolution, the role of civil society, the respective roles of
public and private sectors, the economic model for Palestine, strate-
gies toward Israel for ending the occupation (negotiations, popular
resistance, armed resistance), and so on. After September 2000, other
issues were consecutively added to the debate: whether or not to go
beyond popular resistance and militarize the Intifada; whether or not
to extend operations inside Israeli territory, to conduct suicide opera-
tions, to end suicide operations completely. With the reoccupation of
towns and villages in 2002 and the impasse facing the Intifada, the
debate has become more introspective and centered on the question:
what went wrong? The actors already enumerated in this article were
involved in many of these issues, but with further sub-categorization,
such as, within Fatah, between returnees and “veterans” of the first
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C amille Mansour
Intifada and, within the leadership, between different circles around
Arafat. Obviously, many others have participated in the debate such as
political parties, NGO activists, journalists, intellectuals, business peo-
ple, and civil servants. Given the U.S. weight in Israel and the Middle
East, it is not surprising that those taking part in the Palestinian internal
debate have positioned themselves on many issues according to the
way they perceive America’s conduct with regard to the peace process
and Israeli security, how they understand America’s choices in funding
certain Palestinian programs and not others (through USAID assist-
ing, for instance, the training of judges and the police forces), or how
they see America’s influence on the choices made by other interna-
tional institutions active in the Palestinian territories (such as the World
Bank and IMF in the arena of devising the Palestinian legal framework
for a market economy).
It is not my purpose here to tackle all issues and actors of the
Palestinian internal debate and to connect each issue and each actor to
the perception of America. I will focus only on the question of reform.
Given Arafat’s strategy to allocate preference to the establishment of
the State over institution-building and his patrimonial approach as a
means of internal control, criticism was voiced very early on against
the way the Palestinian authority institutions were being established.
But, given the U.S. interest in encouraging the Palestinian security
forces to repress anti-Israeli operations by Islamic activists, the Clinton
administration did not want to weaken the Palestinian authority by
applying pressure on the issue of the rule of law: for example, the
establishment of state security courts was not criticized. Palestinian
human right groups could not but notice that what governed U.S.
policy in the Middle East was not universal principles such as human
rights and peoples’ self-determination, but whatever expediency that
support for Israel required at any given time. The sudden conversion
of the administration to reform during the spring of 2002 confirmed,
for people in the street, and particularly for those who had not ceased
advocating reform since the mid-1990, that Bush’s call was another
expediency, a tactic aimed at delaying serious resumption of the peace
negotiations, which would have required a steady involvement from
Washington and pressures brought to bear on the Israeli government
to stop seizing land in the West Bank and Gaza, to end the closures of
towns and villages, withdraw from areas occupied since September
2000, and accept a fair basis for a Palestinian–Israeli accord.
At a time when the Palestinian authority apparatus had lost control
over the territories that were under its jurisdiction before September
2000, many Palestinians felt that even if it became “the perfect
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The Palestinian Perception of America
169
government,” it still would be no more than an empty shell in the grip
of an occupying army, which would go on insisting that whatever
reform measures were adopted would be insufficient. Palestinian
skepticism concerning reform was confirmed when the U.S. adminis-
tration’s attitude on Palestinian elections began to change: while the
administration had advocated such elections in June 2002, it very
quickly retracted when it realized that Arafat would pass the test at the
polls. Many Palestinians would have subscribed to the words of a
Hamas leader in Gaza in a harsh article on reform: “Whoever imple-
ments the policy of America and Israel is acceptable to them no matter
how repressive he is against his own people. Whoever rejects the
policy of America and Israel is branded by them as undemocratic, no
matter how popular he is and even if he got his position through fair
and democratic elections.”15
As for the beleaguered Palestinian leadership, and whatever its
misgivings about U.S. intentions, it had no o
ther option than to face
the issue of reform, because its very survival was at stake. Once the
issue was imposed on the political agenda, it became a football in
the internal power struggle rather than a road map to the perfect
government. And as is the case in all power struggles in the world, the
first to jump on the reform bandwagon were the pragmatists around
the leadership who had something to gain in the power struggle (in
this case, mainly the various Fatah factions) and those already in the
leadership (mainly individuals loyal to Arafat) who had something to
lose. Consequently, these last made some concessions, for example, in
accepting the creation of a prime ministerial post, and were prepared
to move ahead with other reform measures so as not to give the
United States or Israel the excuse to proceed to another stage in
the dismantling of the Palestinian authority and allow Israel to remove
Arafat himself. Ironically, those who showed the least interest in the
reform agenda were precisely those who had always advocated it with
no thought of personal gain, as well as members of opposition groups
who felt they had no chance in the present power struggle and the
weary and disenchanted Palestinian street.
To conclude, it is fair to say that the Palestinian perception of
America is not devoid of ambiguities and contradictions, not only
among the various groups and forces, but also within each individual,
because the image of America, unavoidably, has a bearing not only on
their future but even on their self-image. For many Palestinians in the
street, for intellectuals, the negative image of U.S. policy is mixed with
admiration for American achievements. For the governing elite, the
negative image is mixed with the pragmatic and existential need to
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C amille Mansour
deal with the only remaining superpower, the only country in the
world that has any influence on Israel and that since 9/11 claims to
impose its vision on the Middle East through the military campaigns
against Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, whatever the ambiguities and
contradictions, the attitude of most Palestinians toward America
appears to be more a consequence of America’s dominant status than
an expression of the so-called clash of civilizations.16
Notes
1. James J. Zogby, What Arabs Think: Values, Beliefs and Concerns (Utica,
NY: Zogby International and Arab Thought Foundation, 2002), p. 63.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., pp. 62–63.
4. For example, the Gallup poll conducted in December 2001–January
2002 in nine Arab and Muslim countries, Andrea Stone, “Many in Islamic
world doubt Arabs behind 9/11,” USA Today, February 27, 2002; the
poll conducted late summer and early fall 2002 in 44 countries by the
Pew Research Center in association with the International Herald Tribune,
see Brian Knowlton, “A rising anti-American tide,” International Herald
Tribune, December 5, 2002.
5. British Council, Connecting Future Research: Palestinian Territories
Summary Report (London: British Council, 2002), p. 2.
6. Hanan Ashrawi, “Image and reality: the role of the U.S. in the Middle
East,” in www.miftah.org/display.cfm?DocId⫽167.
7. Daoud Kuttab, “America is a great country but,” in www.amin.org/
eng/daoud_kuttab/2001/13sept2001.html.
8. Aluf Ben, “The celebrations have already begun,” Haaretz, February 20,
2003.
9. Olivier Roy, L’Islam mondialisé (Paris: Seuil, 2002), p. 33. The fact is
that little has been heard about individual Palestinians being members
of bin Laden’s Al Qaeda (see ibid., p. 23). So far, nobody (whether
Palestinian Islamists, Israeli, or American spokespersons) has claimed a
link between Palestinian Islamic organizations and Al Qaeda.
10. Some would argue, here, that states can be secretly behind sustained
transnational political violence and that some Arab states have been
involved in this kind of practices. But are there states among world or
regional powers that are immune from the accusation? The difference
between non-state actors and states conducting transnational violent oper-
ations is that the latter can be deterred, punished, or even submitted to by
other states, while the former can only be dealt with through providing the
conditions (not only military but also political and economical) that will
allow the reconstruction of the hosting state’s authority over its territory.
11. See Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, “Camp David: the tragedy of
errors,” The New York Review of Books, August 9, 2001; Akram Haniyyé,
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The Palestinian Perception of America
171
“Ce qui s’est réellement passé à Camp David,” Revue d’études palestiniennes,
no. 77 (automne 2000).
12. For example, Menachem Klein, “The origins of Intifada II and rescuing
peace for Israelis and Palestinians,” in www.fmep.org/analysis/klein_
origins_of_intifada_II.html.
13. “The impact of 11 September on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,”
Journal of Palestine Studies, no. 122 (winter 2002), pp. 10–12.
14. See also Graham Usher, “Facing defeat: the Intifada two years on,”
Journal of Palestine Studies, no. 126 (winter 2003), pp. 29–33.
15. Ibrahim al-Maqadmah, “The American–Zionist reform,” in
www.amin.org/views/ibrahim_almaqadmeh/2002:oct19.html. Note that
al-Maqadmeh was assassinated by the Israeli army in March 2003.
16. For field study validating the “anti-dominance” explanation over the
“clash of civilizations” explanation, among a sample of students at the
American University of Beirut, see: Jim Sidanius et al., Why Do They Hate
Us? The Clash of Civilizations or the Politics of Dominance, New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, Working Paper no. 187, 2002.
* * *
9
A nti-Americanism in Pakistan
Mohammad Waseem
Introduction
The context for the present chapter is the post-9/11 wave of anti-
American feelings in Pakistan, especially after the U.S. war on Taliban
as well as the electoral victory of proto-Taliban groups in the October
2002 elections in the Pakhtun belt of the two provinces of Pakistan,
NWFP, and Baluchistan. To understand the ambivalent and hostile
attitudes toward the United States, or more precisely anti-
Americanism in Pakistan, one needs to inquire about:
● other strands of negative feelings in Pakistan, which can be compared
and contrasted with feelings against the United States;
● the sources of these feelings;
● the strength or weakness of these feelings in terms of their potential
for transformation into public action, diplomatic profile, or policy
structure;
● the relevance of these feelings for the future shape of events.
Attitudes toward America developed in Pakistan out of a variety of
patterns of interaction between the two countries over the last half-
century. However, most typically, this interaction has been characterized
by the one-w
ay flow of American influence and much less, if at all,
the other way round. There were both positive and negative factors
involved in strengthening the Pakistan–American relations. At the
heart of the former was the American capital and technology, which
Pakistan direly needed and which the United States was ready to make
available to a significant level. As for the latter, the two countries
were relatively free of any baggage from the past in terms of hostile
relations, being as they were geographically distant and historically and
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M ohammad Waseem
politically irrelevant to each other, especially as Pakistan emerged as a
distinct entity only in 1947. That means that Pakistan–American rela-
tions operated essentially from a pragmatic perspective. As opposed to
this, relatively rigid ideological perspectives about certain other coun-
tries such as India, Israel, and the USSR-Russia characterized the
national goals for most of the post-independence period in Pakistan.
The remoteness of the American public and private life from the
experience and imagination of Pakistanis in general lent a peculiarly
reductionist character to attitudes toward that country. At the bottom of
it lay a state-to-state relationship, which was understood by Pakistan in
terms of its security and economic development. Pakistani perceptions
about Washington often took a turn for the worse in the wake of the lat-
ter’s perceived tilt in favor of India. Alternatively, the U.S. withdrawal
from active involvement in the region, such as after the Soviet with-
drawal from Afghanistan in 1988, was bound to cost Pakistan much
more than its eastern neighbor. Apart from the two pillars of Pakistan-
U.S. relations, namely strategy and economic development, there have
been very few patterns of exchange between the two countries in other
fields such as art, music, law, literature, sports, diplomacy, fashion, as well
as morals and manners covering vast areas of public and private life. In
this sense, the Pakistan–American relations are far less comprehensive
and meaningful than the relations between the United States and various