blake 3:17
13th January 2011, 17:37
Book review: Arafat's ghost and the Palestinian national movement
Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada, 13 January 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/110113-khalil-ghanem.jpg November 2010 marked the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. For the last two years of his life, the once peripatetic leader who was a constant fixture on the world stage for almost four decades, was reduced to living in a small compound-cum-prison. Only after he became gravely ill did Israel permit Arafat to leave for medical treatment in France. Less than three weeks later, he returned to Ramallah in a coffin and was buried in a chaotic funeral. While the circumstances surrounding his death remain shrouded in controversy, its impact on the Palestinian national movement is indisputable.
Although As'ad Ghanem's new book Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement focuses on the post-Arafat era, the dead leader permeates the pages and his legacy hangs like a specter over the Palestinian body politic. As Ghanem documents, Arafat's actions and decisions as chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (1969-2004) and as president of the Palestinian Authority (1996-2004) served not only to consolidate his rule, but were directly responsible for the current crisis in the Palestinian national movement and its inability to achieve its goals.
A senior lecturer in the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, Ghanem is unsparing in his assessment of the current state of Palestinian politics and unsentimental in his analysis. The Palestinian national movement has not only failed as the book's subtitle declares, but is "disintegrating." What follows, Ghanem argues, is fratricidal chaos.
Ghanem's main argument is bleak. "The crisis among the Palestinians is so severe," he writes, "that the street fighting and confrontations covered by the media barely scratch the surface" (p. x). He adds that "the Palestinians have actually lost the ability to function efficiently, internally or externally, as a single national group" (p. 173).
Drawing on primary and secondary sources in English and Arabic, Ghanem identifies three internal and external indicators that demonstrate that the Palestinian movement has failed. Internally, he argues, the movement has descended into "internecine struggle and internal collapse" (p. 18). More importantly, he contends that the movement has not achieved a single goal in its conflict with Zionism: it has not liberated Palestine, established an independent state, or even achieved a stable peace with Israel. Nor has Zionism been rejected internationally as a colonial movement. Finally, the stature of the Palestinian national movement in the Arab and international arenas has "plummeted" (p. 18).
What is the cause of this failure? Ghanem argues that the seeds were planted during the Oslo period (1993-2000). He asserts that a combination of factors have led to the "political bankruptcy" of the PA and the PLO (p. 12). These include the PLO's shift from pursuing a comprehensive solution to a partial resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as embodied by the Oslo accords, Arafat's dominance over the national movement and the increased corruption under his leadership.
Palestinian Politics after Arafat picks up where works by Yezid Sayigh and Rashid Khalidi left off. But while Ghanem cites and references Sayigh's Armed Struggle and the Search for State (1997), Khalidi's The Iron Cage (2007) is notably absent. Ghanem also benefits from and draws upon his earlier critical examination of the Palestinian national movement and the PA in The Palestinian Regime (2001). In both books Ghanem's analysis echoes many of Edward Said's criticisms of Arafat and the PA, particularly those discussed in his edited volumes Peace and its Discontents (1996), The End of the Peace Process (2001), and From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map (2005). Indeed, Ghanem substantiates many of Said's claims of the cronyism, corruption and authoritarianism that pervaded the PA and became synonymous with Arafat's regime.
In chapter 1, Ghanem addresses the influence of external factors on the Palestinian national movement, offering a compelling analysis of Israel's "post-Oslo strategy." Adopted in the wake of the failed Camp David Summit in 2000, he argues that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shifted from conflict resolution to conflict management. The key element of this strategy was the separation of the two populations through the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the construction of Israel's "separation wall" in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the existence of the PA allowed Palestinians to retain some measure of limited self-governance. Ghanem convincingly demonstrates that Israel's goal was the establishment of a "Palestinian entity," offering "more than autonomy and less than a state" (p. 36).
The reorientation of Israeli policy was driven by two related factors: first, Israel's preoccupation with the "demographic threat" -- in other words, that Palestinians will become the majority within the boundaries of historic Palestine. And second, the fear that Israel will be transformed into a binational state. Ghanem argues that in spite of Israeli efforts to ensure a Jewish majority, the higher birth rate of Palestinians portends the opposite, creating a constant source of "concern among Jewish politicians and academics interested in the character and identity of the state, prompting many of them to seek new ways of guaranteeing a Jewish majority" (p. 23). He demonstrates that Israeli academia, think tanks and the government often worked closely in researching and assessing strategies to deal with this issue. However, Israel's post-Oslo strategy has been complicated by the parallel policies of increased settlement activity and the annexation of the Jordan River Valley. As a result, Israel's goal of separation from the Palestinians is undermined by the greater desire for Palestinian land and resources.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11732.shtml
Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada, 13 January 2011
http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/3/110113-khalil-ghanem.jpg November 2010 marked the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. For the last two years of his life, the once peripatetic leader who was a constant fixture on the world stage for almost four decades, was reduced to living in a small compound-cum-prison. Only after he became gravely ill did Israel permit Arafat to leave for medical treatment in France. Less than three weeks later, he returned to Ramallah in a coffin and was buried in a chaotic funeral. While the circumstances surrounding his death remain shrouded in controversy, its impact on the Palestinian national movement is indisputable.
Although As'ad Ghanem's new book Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement focuses on the post-Arafat era, the dead leader permeates the pages and his legacy hangs like a specter over the Palestinian body politic. As Ghanem documents, Arafat's actions and decisions as chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (1969-2004) and as president of the Palestinian Authority (1996-2004) served not only to consolidate his rule, but were directly responsible for the current crisis in the Palestinian national movement and its inability to achieve its goals.
A senior lecturer in the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, Ghanem is unsparing in his assessment of the current state of Palestinian politics and unsentimental in his analysis. The Palestinian national movement has not only failed as the book's subtitle declares, but is "disintegrating." What follows, Ghanem argues, is fratricidal chaos.
Ghanem's main argument is bleak. "The crisis among the Palestinians is so severe," he writes, "that the street fighting and confrontations covered by the media barely scratch the surface" (p. x). He adds that "the Palestinians have actually lost the ability to function efficiently, internally or externally, as a single national group" (p. 173).
Drawing on primary and secondary sources in English and Arabic, Ghanem identifies three internal and external indicators that demonstrate that the Palestinian movement has failed. Internally, he argues, the movement has descended into "internecine struggle and internal collapse" (p. 18). More importantly, he contends that the movement has not achieved a single goal in its conflict with Zionism: it has not liberated Palestine, established an independent state, or even achieved a stable peace with Israel. Nor has Zionism been rejected internationally as a colonial movement. Finally, the stature of the Palestinian national movement in the Arab and international arenas has "plummeted" (p. 18).
What is the cause of this failure? Ghanem argues that the seeds were planted during the Oslo period (1993-2000). He asserts that a combination of factors have led to the "political bankruptcy" of the PA and the PLO (p. 12). These include the PLO's shift from pursuing a comprehensive solution to a partial resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as embodied by the Oslo accords, Arafat's dominance over the national movement and the increased corruption under his leadership.
Palestinian Politics after Arafat picks up where works by Yezid Sayigh and Rashid Khalidi left off. But while Ghanem cites and references Sayigh's Armed Struggle and the Search for State (1997), Khalidi's The Iron Cage (2007) is notably absent. Ghanem also benefits from and draws upon his earlier critical examination of the Palestinian national movement and the PA in The Palestinian Regime (2001). In both books Ghanem's analysis echoes many of Edward Said's criticisms of Arafat and the PA, particularly those discussed in his edited volumes Peace and its Discontents (1996), The End of the Peace Process (2001), and From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map (2005). Indeed, Ghanem substantiates many of Said's claims of the cronyism, corruption and authoritarianism that pervaded the PA and became synonymous with Arafat's regime.
In chapter 1, Ghanem addresses the influence of external factors on the Palestinian national movement, offering a compelling analysis of Israel's "post-Oslo strategy." Adopted in the wake of the failed Camp David Summit in 2000, he argues that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shifted from conflict resolution to conflict management. The key element of this strategy was the separation of the two populations through the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the construction of Israel's "separation wall" in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the existence of the PA allowed Palestinians to retain some measure of limited self-governance. Ghanem convincingly demonstrates that Israel's goal was the establishment of a "Palestinian entity," offering "more than autonomy and less than a state" (p. 36).
The reorientation of Israeli policy was driven by two related factors: first, Israel's preoccupation with the "demographic threat" -- in other words, that Palestinians will become the majority within the boundaries of historic Palestine. And second, the fear that Israel will be transformed into a binational state. Ghanem argues that in spite of Israeli efforts to ensure a Jewish majority, the higher birth rate of Palestinians portends the opposite, creating a constant source of "concern among Jewish politicians and academics interested in the character and identity of the state, prompting many of them to seek new ways of guaranteeing a Jewish majority" (p. 23). He demonstrates that Israeli academia, think tanks and the government often worked closely in researching and assessing strategies to deal with this issue. However, Israel's post-Oslo strategy has been complicated by the parallel policies of increased settlement activity and the annexation of the Jordan River Valley. As a result, Israel's goal of separation from the Palestinians is undermined by the greater desire for Palestinian land and resources.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11732.shtml