Palestinian politics update

I’ve been reading the interview with Abu Mazen that was in yesterday’s Al-Sharq al-Awsat. It’s great that he came out so strongly for the demilitarization of the intifada, as noted in many mainstream media. Another great aspect of what he said was that he called for the continuation of the intifada by other, non-military means.
Here’s the full text of that question and answer:

Q: You (in the plural) had a clear opinion about the militarization of the intifada, and has that opinion remained only an opinion or have you adopted alternative steps [to the military ones]?
A: There’s no value in an opinion if it remains only an opinion, and it’s necessary that it should be implemented, and one of the means of such implementation is the imperative of disarming the intifada because the intifada is a legitimate right of the people in order to express its opposition to the occupation by popular and social means. And that’s what happened in the first intifada in the ‘eighties. Therefore the Palestinian people aren’t prevented from pursuing such activities, which express its viewpoint. The use of arms was harmful and it must stop, through working for calming members of the ranks of the Palestinian people.

He did not, unfortunately, spell out any further what he meant by these “popular and social means”. (Readers interested in learning more about Palestinian nonviolence organizations can look here, or here, or here.)
One of the other topics discussed in the interview–which was conducted by Naser Qadih, during Abu Mazen’s trip to Kuwait– was the whole issue of Abu Mazen’s tour around various Arab countries that (like Kuwait) previously were fairly or extremely hostile to the PLO/PA leadership.
It strikes me that this new Palestinian-Arab rapprochement is one of the most significant– but generally, under-noted– consequences of the death of Yasser Arafat.
And let’s face it, as the Stalinists used to say, this is “no accident”. To be precise, one of the greatest of the many dis-services that Yasser Arafat did the Palestinian cause was his record in quite gratuitously and seriously irritating large numbers of Arab leaders…

Let’s look at some of the places Abu Mazen has been in recent weeks:
Jordan, which used to have very frosty relations with Arafat going all the way back to the events of Black September in 1970. In around ’77, the Jordanians and the PLO leadership did make up their differences a little. But not much.
Syria, which was royally pissed off with Arafat ever since 1983, when he gratuitously made an attempt to “return” to Lebanon and rally the Palestinians there around his flag at a time when the Syrians strongly intended for them to rally around their flag, instead. Okay, I know the Syrians were quite unnecessarily bloodyminded in all this. But why did Arafat feel impelled to go back and make a (totally useless) military stand in northern Lebanon at the time??
Lebanon, strongly under the sway of the Syrians since 1984 (see above)…
Kuwait. Okay, in 1990, maybe Arafat didn’t totally align himself with Saddam… But he came darn close to doing so and did nothing helpful whatsoever to try to repair relations with the Kuwaiti government after it became evident that aligning with Saddam had been a massive error of judgment… Also, just on a matter of principle, you’d think that Arafat would have solidarized with anyone seeking to resist and roll back a foreign military occupation???
So in all these cases, Arafat’s personal style–as much as, if not more than, his politics– had over the years resulted in wrecking relationships that could and should have been important and fruitful ones for the Palestinians. All four of those countries used to have significant populations of Palestinian refugees. (The Kuwaitis kicked most of their Palestinians out of the country, extremely vengefully, after the restoration of the kuwaiti monarchy in 1991.)
In addition, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan are all contiguous with Israel. Syria and Lebanon remain important factors in Israel’s military equations, though Jordan concluded a final peace treaty in 1994. Kuwait, for many long decades prior to 1990, used to be major financial and political supporter of, in particular Arafat’s Fateh movement and its broader coalition, the PLO…
And so, that was what Arafat succeeded in wrecking… And what Abu Mazen is now cautiously trying to patch back together.
I am particularly intrigued with the prospects he might have for pulling back together some kind of a working relationship between the Palestinians and the Syrians regarding the diplomacy with Israel.
One of the many things that Arafat did that really annoyed the Syrian regime was to break with the “joint Arab ranks” in the diplomacy with Israel and rush toward the unilateral approach embodied in the Oslo Accords of 1993. To the Syrians, that felt like a stab in the back. When I interviewed Foreign Minister Farouq Sharaa in 1998 he said that once Arafat had made his dash for a “separate deal” the Israelis had the great advantage of being able to play the two main remaining contenders for Israeli diplomatic attention off against each other, “as though we were two patients waiting in the doctor’s waiting room and each of us is competing– and willing to pay an ever high price– to get called in by the doctor.”
Well, Oslo led the Palestinians nowhere, so the Syrians feel somewhat vindicated regarding their hands-off, but largely skeptical, approach to Oslo: (“We’ll let the Palestinians pursue it and see where it takes them…”)
In the present circumstances, Abu Mazen’s relationship with Syria is closely tied to his attempt to reach out to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and find a way to ring them into the Palestinian leadership over the weeks ahead. Both organizations have important leadership ties with Syria (though I was assured when we were in Syria recently that the organizations are not headquartered, as such, in Damascus any more.)
Anyway, here’s my translation of the relevant portions of yesterday’s Sharq al-Awsat interview with Abu Mazen:

Q: How do you see the prospects of the possibility of the participation of Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad in the PLO?
A: Yes, there are discussions under the name of ‘Palestinian participation’ and under the name of ‘bringing everyone into a single forum’ so that every individual and every organization will pursue its proper role. And also there are discussions about a unified leadership and the role this leadership would have within the framework of the PLO, and how it could do its work. Another thing: if this is not achieved, shall we have elections? And there is another discussion from their side about entering legislative elections so they can be part of the political fabric of Palestinian society…
Q: From your meetings with the leaders of Hamas and Jihad in Palestine and Syria, did you arrive at an agreement on any specific mechanism to support the peace process?
A: It can’t be said that we agreed, but we say that we discussed and proposed all the issues and nothing has been left out of the talks. And until now we didn’t reach any agreement and we hope we’ll do so in the future.
Q: And what about getting any help from Syrian officials in this regard?
A: I judge that the Syrian officials are ready to do that without our asking this from them. Since we sense the readiness, we don’t need to ask them…
Q: Why have Syria and Lebanon and Kuwait been the first places on your tour of Arab and Gulf countries?
A: There’s no particular reason but it just happened that way because of the schedule. We have confidence in every step we take and we have confidence (trust) in our brothers who received us. And it’s not enough that there should be trust only from our side…
Q: What about the Palestinian Islamic movements that are in Syria. Was there a discussion on them stopping their activities?
A: We had discussions with [all] the Palestinian organizations found in Damascus, from Hamas, to Jihad, to the PFLP, to the DFLP, and we conducted dialogues with them.
Q: Was any specific [coordination] mechanism created with them?
A: The dialogue continues between us and them.
Q: In your view, where will it lead?
A: It will lead to an agreement.
Q: An agreement on them ending their activities?
A: It will lead to an agreement in line with what we all want. What we want now is an opportunity to work for the future and we all want to reach this agreement.

Personally, I think that whether he’s talking to Hamas and Jihad heads in Syria or elsewhere, or with skeptics and others in the Palestinian population inside the occupied territories, he’d do well to spell out in much more detail the kinds of “popular and social” activities he thinks that Palestinians ought to be undertaking as part of a nonviolent intifada.
After all, he’s asking them to give up doing the violent things they have been doing… But what does he want them to do instead?? If he’s really confident of his position, surely he ought to be able to ask them to start undertaking mass, popular demonstrations, strikes, hunger strikes, sit-ins, and all the other panoply of nonviolent types of mass actions…
What’s more– and this was something Yasser Arafat could never really understand– if there were to be such a background of mass, popular activity against the continuation of this ways-too-long military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, then that would only strengthen the hands of the Palestinian negotiators rather than–as Arafat apparently feared– posing some kind of an internal challenge to them.
So let’s see what happens, eh?