Whereas the Islamic Jihad emerged from the intifada weakened by frequent and highly effective Israeli attacks, Hamas thrived and gradually subsumed its mother organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the primary reasons for the increasing popularity of Hamas as compared to the Islamic Jihad, both throughout the intifada and afterward, has been the former’s carefully calculated ideological flexibility and willingness to work with other Palestinian forces.47 While opposed to the secularism of the PLO and subsequently the PNA, and while viewing the Oslo Accords as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, Hamas was initially careful to avoid direct intra-Palestinian conflict. It also managed to acquiesce to the PNA’s recognition of Israel without compromising its own rejectionist stance in relation to Israel, maintaining that a partial Palestinian state (in the West Bank and Gaza) is only a prelude to the establishment of an Islamic state in all of Palestine.48 At the same time, Hamas’s ability to carry out relatively successful violent attacks against Israeli targets during the intifada—thirty-two in 1989, including the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers—helped enhance the organization’s popular appeal among most Palestinians.49 Israel’s heightened repression in response to the intifada, including the deportation of 415 Islamic activists to Lebanon in December 1992, only made Hamas’s intransigence and its violent rhetoric more popular.
Violent activities were not the only types of actions advocated by Hamas during the intifada. Like the ULU, through leaflets and announcements, Hamas encouraged Palestinians to engage in noncooperation and civil disobedience in relation to Israeli authorities. It also called on the Palestinians to sever their economic ties with the Jewish state. Again, being in tune with the popular pulse of the Palestinian community helped strengthen Hamas’s appeal among Muslim Palestinians.
In sum, the 1990s witnessed a gradual shift within Palestinian identity, as manifested in the rise of a more indigenous, locally based counterelite and the growing popularity of Hamas. Through and because of the intifada, Palestinian identity was no longer predominantly secular but now contained a strong Islamic component. It centered not so much on the PLO or the Fatah (the PLO’s largest and most popular component group) as on refugee camps, local mosques, and schools and universities. The intifada did not so much split Palestinian identity as give it additional layers of complexity and a richer texture. The unresolved, largely aborted nature of the intifada in many ways resembles and reflects the ambiguity and uncertainty that currently surround Palestinian identity. The Palestinians are the “citizens” or subjects of the PNA, an officially recognized and elected governing body, yet they mostly still live in refugee camps and in their day-to-day life are at the mercy of Israeli occupation authorities. The final shape of this identity—democratic or uncompromising, secular or religious, or a blend of everything—has yet to be determined. What is certain is that such an identity will continue to be shaped by the prevailing circumstances within the Occupied Territories.
THE SITUATION ON THE GROUND
Competing national identities form the backdrop against which the realities of everyday life take place. The term Occupied Territories is so frequently and regularly used that the essence of what it expresses—occupation—is often overlooked. Subjective, national identities apart, and irrespective of which group was there first and whose claims are valid, today, more than a century after it all began, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has essentially become a contest between an overwhelmingly dominant power and a dispossessed, dispersed, subjugated community. No matter how they are presented or what justifications are given for them, the facts on the ground and their force in motivating certain actions cannot be ignored.50 This section focuses on conditions in the Occupied Territories to better explain the predicaments of the Palestinians and how these predicaments led to the outbreak of the first intifada beginning in 1987. Also important to examine are the changes that have come about since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, reasons for the eruption of the Al-Aqsa intifada beginning in 2000, and, ultimately, the factors that have helped or hindered the prospects for a lasting solution to the conflict.
It was earlier mentioned that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is essentially a contest between two national identities that refuse to accept the validity and the rights of the other to exist. But Israeli identity has emerged as victorious and dominant—politically, militarily, and economically. In victory, Israel’s general assumption that the Palestinians do not have a right to exist on the land of biblical Israel has not changed.
Israel’s denial of the Palestinians’ rights to exist on Jewish Holy Land has manifested itself in three broad policy options pursued in relation to the Palestinians. The first has been depopulation: reducing, by as much as possible, the actual number of Palestinians living in areas under the military and political control of the state of Israel, first from 1948 to 1967, and then from 1967 until the present. A second, related policy option has been repopulation: encouraging, either actively or passively, the spread of Jewish residential settlements throughout the territories in which Palestinians (or, in the Golan Heights, Syrians) are concentrated. While the “unrightful” Palestinians are being encouraged to leave, their place is being taken by the “rightful” Israelis. Finally, the third policy option has been to control the remaining Palestinians through incapacitating them by whatever means possible, especially in their social and economic development. The cumulative effects of these policies, especially since 1967, when they were extended to the Occupied Territories, resulted in the eruption of the intifada from 1987 to 1993. When it became clear that the newly established PNA was incapable of qualitatively changing Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, the Al-Aqsa intifada erupted in September 2000.
The departure of Palestinians from the territories in which they have historically lived has occurred by three primary means: expulsion in times of war, encouragement to leave in ordinary times through the fostering of a repressive environment, and house demolitions. Perhaps the biggest mass exodus of Palestinians from Israel occurred at the outset of the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, when a total of 846,000 Palestinians were displaced from Israel (table 3). For some time, the general Israeli explanation for this “miracle” of “population transfer,” that it was either voluntary or in response to encouragement by Arab leaders, was accepted as historical truth.51 But a number of works by notable Israeli scholars, chief among them Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, have conclusively demonstrated that most Palestinians reluctantly left their homes because of campaigns of psychological terror, false Israeli radio broadcasts, or the destruction of their villages.52 A second major Palestinian exodus took place in the three months following the 1967 War, when over 300,000 Palestinians were forced out of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Of these, 120,000 were second-time refugees and had spent the previous twenty years in refugee camps.53
More prevalent has been Israel’s general fostering of an environment in the Occupied Territories that is stifling and unbearable. The simplest and most mundane everyday acts—driving, farming (which most Palestinians do), securing work permits (needed for travel to and from Israel)—require cumbersome, often frustratingly long procedures and paperwork. Life in the Occupied Territories is full of hazards and petty restrictions, and the dangers of being subjected to prolonged “administrative detention,” collective punishment, or harassment or attack by Israeli settlers are both real and constant.54 The treatment of Palestinians as second-class citizens goes beyond guaranteeing Israel’s security needs. According to the Israeli human rights organization BʾTselem, “BʾTselem and other human rights organizations have documented hundreds of cases in which soldiers and police have slapped and kicked Palestinians, insulted and humiliated them, and delayed them at checkpoints for no reason. On occasion, more serious violence has also been exposed.”55
Israeli legal procedures within the Occupied Territories, most of which are in contravention of the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1947 (c
oncerning the “Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”), are designed to go beyond merely ensuring Israeli control over the Palestinians. They also help facilitate the expropriation of land held by Palestinians by deciding what “state land” is, effectively taking it out of indigenous control and turning it over to Israeli government agencies or to civilian settlers.56 According to Amnesty International, “The Israeli authorities intensified their demolition of Palestinian homes and other facilities in the West Bank that had been built without permits, demolishing more than 620 structures during 2011. Almost 1,100 Palestinians were displaced as a result, an 80 per cent increase over 2010; more than 4,200 others were affected by demolitions of 170 animal shelters and 46 cisterns.”57 Life in the Occupied Territories holds few luxuries and many pitfalls for Palestinians. For many, the risks and uncertainties of migrating abroad count for less than the pains of staying behind.
One main danger of life in the Occupied Territories is that of having one’s house demolished by Israeli military authorities. House demolitions are one of the most effective—and controversial—methods used by the Israeli authorities to depopulate parts of the Occupied Territories. According to Amnesty International,
Since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, thousands of Palestinian homes have been demolished. Some had been built and inhabited for years; they are furnished, occupied often by more than one family with many children, who are often given only 15 minutes to gather their possessions and leave. A squad of workers may throw the furniture into the street; or the furniture may still be in the house when the family sees the bulldozers move in. Other houses are still uninhabited but have been built as the fruit of months of work and the expenditure, sometimes, of all the family’s savings.58
A more recent Amnesty International report states that “for years, the Israeli authorities have pursued a policy of discriminatory house demolition, on the one hand allowing scores of Israeli settlements to be built on occupied Palestinian land, in breach of international law, while simultaneously confiscating Palestinian lands, refusing building permits for Palestinians and destroying their homes. The land vacated has often been used to build illegal Israeli settlements. International law forbids occupying powers from settling their own citizens in the territories they occupy.”59
Immediately following the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli authorities drove out an estimated five thousand Arab residents and destroyed their homes in order to guarantee security access to the Wailing Wall. From 1967 to 1974, in the West Bank alone (excluding East Jerusalem), some 4,425 Palestinian houses were demolished. According to data presented by BʾTselem, from 1987 until 2004, Israeli authorities ordered the demolition of a total of 3,825 Palestinian homes, many as a form of punishment in the two intifadas. Although in 2005 the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that this form of punishment will no longer be practiced, from 2006 to 2012 some 466 Palestinian homes were demolished on grounds of having been built without a permit.60 At the same time, permits for the construction of new houses in the Occupied Territories were so difficult to obtain that they totaled no more than 2,950 between 1967 and 1999.61 From 1967 to 2011, in fact, more than 14,000 Palestinians had their residency revoked in East Jerusalem alone.62 By contrast, according to the Statistical Abstract of Israel 2000, between 1997 and 1999 alone, 7,350 buildings were constructed in the Occupied Territories by Israeli civilians and official agencies. In only one year, 1999, Israelis began work on the construction of an additional 2,510 buildings.63
The depopulation of the Occupied Territories of their Palestinian residents is taking place at a time of their repopulation with Israelis.64 This repopulation has taken the form of establishing Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories from immediately after their capture in 1967 to the present, so that today nearly 534,000 Israeli settlers live in Palestinian areas (table 4). At first, the settlements were established according to the Allon Plan, named after then labor minister Yigael Allon, who favored the establishment of civilian Jewish neighborhoods in the form of security belts in the Golan Heights and around East Jerusalem. The initial goal was to “create facts on the ground,” with Israelis moving to sparsely populated Palestinian areas to show continuous Jewish residence.65 Following its victory in 1977, the Likud cabinet drastically accelerated the pace of the settlements and changed their geographic focus. Instead of concentrating on areas with few Palestinians, settlements were now deliberately made in areas with large Palestinian populations, the goal being to consolidate Israel’s control over the areas and make territorial compromises difficult. Despite the frequent change of cabinets since, this policy still remains in effect today.
Table 4.Population Growth in Selected West Bank Settlements
SOURCE: Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel, “Localities and Population, by Municipal Status and District,” table 2.13 in Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2009 (Tel Aviv: Government Publishing House, 2010) and Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2011 (Tel Aviv: Government Publishing House, 2012).
Settlements represent more than mere demographic colonization of the Occupied Territories by Israel. They signify a deepening of Israeli control over the territories and their Palestinian residents. In addition to expanding Israeli military control, settlements are designed to facilitate Israel’s access to two additional, strategic resources: land and water. An elaborate road system has been constructed to link Israel directly to the new settlements while bypassing major Arab towns in the West Bank such as Nablus and Ramallah. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of new settlement dwellings sold in the West Bank jumped from 437 in 2006 to 733 in 2008.66 New settlements and housing units bring with them additional Israeli infrastructure and military patrols—in addition, of course, to heavily armed settlers—thus solidifying the extent and nature of Israeli control. The Palestinian city of Hebron, while an extreme example, starkly demonstrates this point: “Because Hebron is the only city in all of the West Bank where Jews actually live among the Arabs—as opposed to living in self-contained settlements near Arab towns—the Israelis have retained control over 20 percent of the city so they can protect the 540 Jewish residents. However, 20,000 of Hebron’s 125,000 Arabs . . . live or work in the area still under Israeli control.”67
Hebron’s settlers, it must be pointed out, are “ideological” or “political” settlers who have moved into predominantly Palestinian areas mainly to “establish facts on the ground.” Initially, all settlement activities were ideological and were orchestrated by a fundamentalist group calling itself the Gush Emunium (Bloc of the Faithful).68 In recent years, relatively inexpensive property prices have drawn an increasing number of nonideological bargain hunters motivated by convenience, especially in light of the preferential treatment they receive from the government when it comes to “the provision of space, construction, water provision and grants.”69 Today, nearly 60 percent of all settlers are nonideological Israelis in search of hilltop properties at affordable prices.
Ideological settlers at times resort to violence against Palestinians. According to BʾTselem,
Acts of violence carried out by settlers against Palestinians and Palestinian property are an ongoing and widespread phenomenon. In recent years, some of these acts have been referred to as “price tag attacks”—a response to actions of the Israeli authorities that are perceived to harm the settlement enterprise. For example, some of the attacks occurred after the Military’s Civil Administration distributed demolition orders for settlement structures that were built unlawfully, or after such structures were demolished. In other cases, the violence took place after Palestinians harmed settlers. Security forces do not always deploy in advance to protect Palestinians from settler violence, even when such violence could be anticipated.70
In addition to depopulation and repopulation, Israel has sought to control the Occupied Territories by marginalizing and incapacitating them economically and politically. The poli
tical incapacitation of the territories, in the form of tight controls and the imposition of measures that are all too often draconian, was alluded to earlier. Complementing these political- military measures have been specific policies designed to ensure the continued economic underdevelopment of the West Bank and Gaza. Occupation policies, and restrictions on construction activities or the physical movement of people, have resulted in the underdevelopment or complete absence of industrial, construction, and service sectors throughout the territories, so that small-scale agriculture remains one of the most common forms of economic activity. Nevertheless, poverty remains prevalent among Pales-tinians.
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