Will the Palestinians Launch a Third "Intifadah" War on Israel?

By Barry Rubin

 Is there going to be a “third intifada?” I have no idea. That is a question most likely to be determined by those who set Palestinian strategy and they will surely differ among themselves. What interests me is the question of what factors would determine their choice.

When this issue is discussed publicly it is attributed almost entirely to the idea that frustration will motivate revolt. This is certainly the point made by Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders. The argument is that unless they get their way diplomatically violence will be the logical outcome.

But that’s just a tactic to use violence as leverage, scaring Western countries—because such threats won’t scare Israel—into concessions.  Moreover, since Western countries will not hand the PA unilateral independence on its own terms, without any deal with Israel or concessions, violence would ultimately either be useless or show that the PA's claim of making progress through violence would prove to be a bluff.



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There are other considerations that will determine Palestinian policy.

Would a “third intifada” actually bring Palestinian gains? I would argue that neither of the first two did, though of course that didn’t stop them from happening. Political profitability is not the only factor involved and Yasir Arafat had his own way of assessing the balance of forces.  But whether violence would bring any benefit is going to be an important issue for the PA leadership.
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Why would a PA leadership launch a new war if it didn’t expect rationally to gain from it? Ideological enthusiasm and irrational wishful thinking do play some part here. Yet the current leadership has had some lessons in the cost of wrecking their own infrastructure. That kind of thinking in itself is insufficient.

There’s another point that must be raised. Would a “third intifadah” and the wrecking of Palestinian infrastructure once again enhance or destroy the PA and Fatah dominance on the West Bank? On the positive side, demagoguery about heroic fighters, martyrdom, and liberating Palestine by fire and sword has proven to be useful for building mass support.

Yet that has usually been true when Fatah, through the PLO, either had a monopoly on violence or Hamas was content to play second fiddle to Arafat. Those conditions no longer apply.  

On the other hand, wouldn’t Hamas, with its greater degree of specialization in terror and triumphalism be in a better position to benefit? After all, Fatah does rule the West Bank and provoking anarchy and chaos could destroy its standing. By having to cooperate with Hamas, Fatah would legalize its organizations and actions, allowing it to heap new glory on itself by murdering Israeli civilians. That is very risky.

In contrast, Fatah would gain nothing in the Gaza Strip which would stay firmly under Hamas control. Small Fatah groups might be able to operate there but so what? They would have no political influence and be under the thumb of Hamas. A “third intifadah” is politically beneficial to Hamas and that is a point that no Fatah or PA leader can easily ignore.

More likely, then, is a situation in which either Hamas forces an outbreak of uprising or some leaders in Fatah do so. The latter’s motivations would include a genuine belief in revolutionary methods, which a significant sector of the Fatah leadership does accept, or the use of an intifadah as part of a leadership struggle.

The fact is that Mahmoud Abbas is in the closing phase of his leadership and there is no clear successor. Complicating the situation is the specter of a generational transition. People can put forward in conversation their preferred person to lead the PA, PLO, and Fatah or speculate as to who it might be. But the truth is that nobody has the least idea who will be the new leader or even who are the most likely candidates.  

A leader or faction or elements of the “young guard” might well decide that an intifadah would suit their purposes. It would distance themselves from the “failed” policies of Abbas and the current establishment. By focusing on youth, violence, and the security forces, such a strategy could benefit a takeover bid by “military” officials or by young anti-establishment forces.

There is a difference between those two sectors. The PA “military” tends to dislike Hamas but those who came of political age in the “first intifadah” see things differently. They might view a war as the best way to fuse Fatah-Hamas cooperation with themselves taking a leading role.

Of course, an uprising could take place due to some major or symbolic incident, forcing the leaders to rush to the front of the army. That is also possible. But least likely of all would be Abbas and the current leadership making a calculated decision to launch a war that they expect to gain from.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports,http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

This article was published in "Bitter Lemons."

Analyzing Internal Conflicts in Iran

By Barry Rubin

Spiritual Guide Ali Khamenei is supposed to be the boss. In curbing President Mahmoud  Ahmadinejad's power, Khamenei is reminding him of that fact, which Ahmadinejad tends to forget at times.

In Iran there is talk of a "military coup" that is Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps taking over more and more power and wealth in Iran.

So the differences are real and serious but have little or nothing to do with issues like the drive to obtain nuclear weapons or Iran's expansionist, subversive and anti-Western foreign policy.

Presumably if Khamenei lives long enough, he will replace Ahmadinejad with someone else as the next president.The question is whether in the long run Ahmadinejad has any chance of becoming Iran's dictator with Revolutionary Guard backing. This battle, and not the regime's overthrow--unfortunately--will probably be the main political issue in Iran during the next few years.

Iran's Nazi Site--First Reported Here--Has Now Become An Issue in Iran

By Barry Rubin

The fact, first reported in Rubin Reports, that Iran is broadcasting and apparently endorsing a pro-Nazi Internet site and discussion group has now become an issue within Iran.

A major Iranian site points out, as I had noted, that deputy minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Muhammad Ali Ramin had links to neo-Nazi groups when he lived in Europe and approved of their ideas. He then returned to Iran where he launched the government's official denial that the Holocaust ever happened. Ramin is also considered to be responsible for the new site extolling the Third Reich, since the site says it is under the supervision of his ministry.

After being criticized for antisemitism, the regime's institution cynically urged that the word "Zionist" be used rather than "Jew," a perfect example of how a lot of the pretense that hatred is merely anti-Israel is a veneer to hide the real standpoint being presented.

The new report on this story comes from the UAE-based al-Arabiya network which is more moderate than its rival, Qatar-based al-Jazira network. It can also be attributed to the fear of a more powerful Iran armed with nuclear weapons on the part of Gulf Arabs and their governments.

Six Years Ago, Yasir Arafat Died; Today His Legacy Still Prevails: No To Peace, No to Compromise

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French translation of this article is here.
By Barry Rubin
 
Six years ago, on November 11, 2004, Yasir Arafat died. On that occasion, former President Bill Clinton explained why he wouldn’t attend Arafat’s funeral: "I regret that in 2000 he missed the opportunity to bring [Palestine] into being….” Not Israel, but Arafat did so.


Today, the Arafat era’s lessons have been largely swept under the rug: his persistent mendacity, use of terrorism, cynical exploitation of an “underdog” posture to garner sympathy, and unfailing devotion to the dream of wiping Israel off the map. The placing of that last priority over creating a Palestinian state is why there is none today. Not Israeli policy, not settlements, but the preference for total victory over compromise.

At Arafat’s funeral, one of his lieutenants, Saeb Arikat, proclaimed: "Give him the honor he deserves!" Let it be so.

As the editorial in the London Times put it, he was the man who “threw away the best chance in a generation for an honorable settlement to the Middle East conflict.” In the New Yorker, David Remnick accurately wrote, “Rarely has a leader blundered more and left more ruin in his wake.”

Yet, too, perhaps, as never before in modern history, have so many relentlessly airbrushed away a leader’s career of faults and crimes. What was especially remarkable in so much of the coverage and discussion was the virtual erasure of a career in terrorism which had spanned forty years. There were no scenes of past carnage shown; no survivors or relatives of his victims interviewed. In political terms, his dedication to the elimination of another state and people, consistent use of terrorism, and rejection of peace were thrown down the memory hole of history.

The timeline for Arafat’s life prepared by both the BBC and the Associated Press omit any mention of terrorist attacks and skip the fatal year 2000 altogether. In its timeline the Associated Press only invokes the word terrorism to claim that Arafat had “renounced” it in 1988, though this had not prevented the PLO from committing scores of attacks—usually with Arafat’s blessing—thereafter.

Arabs, who knew him and his history better, were more critical. An article surveying Arab reaction in Cairo’s al-Ahram newspaper concluded that most Arab officials’ private reaction was one of “relief.” They said he had been an obstacle to achieving peace “largely for the sake of his own glory” and called him a man “too self-centered to really care about the misfortunes of his own people.” Not a single interviewee expressed a word of sorrow.

At the time of Arafat’s death his people still did not have a state, a functioning economy, or the most elementary security after following his leadership for thirty-five years. Much of that situation remains the same today.

Yet Arafat’s narrative had largely triumphed, certainly in persuading those who wanted to believe it that the movement he shaped and created was noble and sympathetic, a victim of other’s treatment rather than of its own policies.

Arafat was widely proclaimed a hero of national resistance for opposing an occupation that could have already ended on more than one occasion if he had chosen to achieve a negotiated peace. He was hailed as the victim in a war which he had begun and continued despite many opportunities to end the fighting. He was said to be striving only for a state when he had long invoked the idea that a separate state living peacefully alongside Israel was treason.

He was said to be popular and loved by his people even though—despite his considerable degree of real support—he stole so much from them and was ridiculed by them in private. In fact, Arafat’s performance in Palestinian public opinion polls had never been impressive. Even a British reporter who revered him admitted that Arafat didn’t have support from his people. “Foreign journalists,” she recounted, “seemed much more excited about Mr. Arafat's fate than anyone in Ramallah.”

At the time of his death he was more popular in France, where almost half the population saw Arafat as a great national hero, than among his own people. In a June 2004 poll, only 23.6 percent of Palestinians named him as the leader they most trusted. Actually, Arafat’s popularity rating among Palestinians was lower than that of President George W. Bush among Americans, though the U.S. leader was—in sharp contrast to Arafat--widely portrayed as being reviled and mistrusted by a large part of his people.

But Arafat had always been able to outlive his own history. He had indeed created a Palestinian nationalist movement, organizing and uniting his people. Yet having so much authority over it, Arafat had to be held responsible for its shortcomings. Was it really so impossible that things could have been otherwise, that even the violence might have been tempered by some moral or pragmatic restraint, and that the goals would have been moderated at least far earlier in history?

Did the creation of Palestinian nationalism really inevitably entail Arafat’s virtual creation of the doctrine of modern terrorism; betrayal of Jordan; contribution to destabilizing Lebanon; or support for unprovoked Iraqi aggression? Did it really require the systematic killing and glorification of killing of civilians from its beginning to the last day of Arafat’s career? Did he really have no way to urge his people toward a peaceful compromise or to rule them well when given the chance to do so?

Since Arafat’s death, most of the leadership of Fatah and the PA has made clear their interpretation of Arafat’s legacy was the need to fight on for total victory, no matter how long it took or how much suffering or lives it cost. One Palestinian leader recalled that when, in 1993, he had reproached Arafat for signing the Oslo accords, Arafat replied that by making the agreement, “I am hammering the first nail in the Zionist coffin."

Actually, though, Arafat biggest achievement may have been hammering the last nail into the Palestinian coffin.

By the way, here is what young Palestinians are being taught about Arafat.

For more on Yasir Arafat and his legacy, see Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography. You can order the book here. [Oxford University Press 2003; paperback, 2005. British/Commonwealth edition: Continuum 2003. Australian edition: Allan and Unwin. Italian edition: Mondadori, 2004; Hebrew edition, Yediot Aharnot, 2005; Turkish edition, Aykiri Yayincilik, 2005.]




 
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

So You Want to Hold Direct Talks? First, Study Palestinian Politics

By Barry Rubin

While explaining how the U.S. and European effort to start direct talks was going to fail because it neglected to consider Palestinian politics and ideology, I'm still amazed by how rapidly this point was proven. Briefly, the Palestinian Authority continues to be dominated by the politics of rejectionism and the fact that Hamas rules almost half of the land it purports to speak for must be taken into account.

Sure enough, even before the official PA acceptance of the U.S. invitation to direct talks, we've seen these developments:

--Hamas announces that since it totally rejects direct talks (much less any peace with Israel) as treason, it is stopping its own negotiations with the PA for cooperation or merger. This shows clearly that the PA cannot reach any deal with Israel (even if it wanted to do so) and deliver on its commitments because of the Hamas factor. Do also remember that not only does Hamas run the Gaza Strip but also has a very large base of support in the PA-ruled West Bank.

--Far from welcoming talks and expressing his eagerness to make peace and live alongside Israel, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas explains that he only requested permission from his true masters (the Fatah leadership) to go to talks for one month. It should be clearly understood that the Fatah leaders include three groups: old companions of Yasir Arafat, ideological hardliners, and perhaps about ten percent relative moderates. It doesn't want to make a permanent compromise peace with Israel.

--Some Fatah leaders are claiming that even this one-month permission isn't valid since there wasn't a quorum at the relevant meeting. In some cases, leaders stayed away on purpose so they could block direct negotiations.

--Other PA and Fatah leaders are unhappy that the U.S. officials claimed there were no preconditions for direct talks since the Palestinians wanted to be given everything (especially the 1967 borders and a state whether or not negotiations succeeded) in advance. Basically, they only want to accept a state from Western hands without any real compromises with Israel (recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, permanent end of conflict, settlement of all Palestinian refugees in Palestine, border changes, non-militarization, and security guarantees).

--It is also being pointed out in Palestinian circles that Mahmoud Abbas has been an unelected leader of the PA for two years, since elections were cancelled by him. The current government thus lacks legitimacy and a mandate to make any deal.

This is only the beginning! Ask me some time about how the PLO handled Jordan's King Hussein in the 1980s when he tried to get it to make peace with Israel. Briefly, it kept playing bureaucratic games about preconditions, contradictory statements, and failure to keep commitments until he gave up. The same story has repeatedly foiled peacemaking efforts.

None of this makes sense unless the observer comprehends that Israel wants peace with a two-state solution; the Palestinian leaderships want total victory and Israel's destruction. They will make no agreement and accept no state unless convinced that it won't make it impossible for them to get everything eventually. I'm sad to explain this and wish the facts were otherwise. But they aren't.

A case can be made for current Western policies in terms of government self-interest (to look as if the leaders are making real accomplishments) and national self-interest (keep the issue quiet and be able to claim they are doing something to Arabs and Muslims in order to keep things quiet and get on with other priorities). It is doubtful, though, whether many anti-Western, pro-Islamist Arabs or Muslims are impressed into changing their views. If these governments consciously know they are acting cynically this limits the damage.

But meanwhile, a lot of the study or analysis of the Middle East is like insisting that the moon is made of green cheese, then either ignoring or explaining away every astronomical observation and scientific experiment that showed this idea to be wrong.

For example, here's how The Economist puts it:

"Mr Abbas came close to agreement with Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli leader, at least on borders. He wants to pick up where he left off. But having pinned his political career on these talks, his credibility, and that of the Palestinian Authority he leads, may be weakened further if they seem a farce. Mr Netanyahu’s intentions are still opaque."

Let's analyze this. The pattern in talks is that Israel makes an offer of what it will give in exchange for what it wants. The PA then responds: OK, we'll take your offers as concessions. We haven't made any. And that will be our starting point. So we will now discuss the additional unilateral concessions you will make while we don't offer anything.

The above paragraph may sound like a satire but it is precisely how things have worked repeatedly, without anyone in the Western media catching on.

The second part of The Economist quote is equally ludicrous.



On these issues, see here and here. For a deeper look at Fatah and PA politics, see here and here. And best of all, you can read my books Revolution Until Victory and (with Judy Colp Rubin) Yasir Arafat.

Iran: The Regime Unites; Opposition Prospects Dim

By Barry Rubin

Unfortunately, the opposition in Iran does not have any good prospect for overturning the regime and no one should have illusions to the contrary. Note that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful leader of what might be called the relatively pragmatic (i.e., more interested in making money than being ideologically pure) faction was initially alienated by the stealing of the election. But now he has come back onto the team, praising Spiritual Guide Ali Khamenei who is of course the backer of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is a significant development.

The point is, though, that Rafsanjani is not going to pull the regime into being more pragmatic. It's the exact opposite: he's accepted the current extreme radical course understanding that he cannot go up against Khamenei.