The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalidi

The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalidi

Author:Rashid Khalidi [Khalidi, Rashid]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0315-2
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2007-08-14T16:00:00+00:00


5

Fateh, the PLO,

and the PA:

The Palestinian Para-State

The Palestinians after ‘Arafat

In November 2004, the Autumn of the Patriarch finally ended. Yasser ‘Arafat’s death closed a lengthy era in modern Palestinian politics during which his larger-than-life figure towered over the resuscitated post-1948 Palestinian national movement. ‘Arafat dominated Palestinian politics in multiple capacities during most of his lifetime of seventy-five years. He was elected president of the Union of Palestinian Students in Cairo in 1952 when he was in his early twenties, was preeminent among the founding leaders of the Fateh movement in Kuwait in the late 1950s, became chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO in 1969, and finally in 1996 was elected president of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In any national movement, whether successful or not, such a founding (or refounding) figure plays a unique role. This was certainly the case with ‘Arafat, as it was with Nehru, Sukarno, Nyerere, Bourguiba, ‘Abd al-Nasir, and others before him. They seemed the stuff of myth, and their successors often appeared lackluster in comparison. After such a long period during which he sometimes seemed omnipresent, ‘Arafat departed from the scene at a time when the Palestinians faced a reinforced occupation and decades-long dispersal, while confronting a cohesive American-Israeli alliance, and still suffered from a nearly century-old tradition of weak self-governance and disunity. These are long-standing problems that could not have been resolved by any single individual. Nevertheless, there has often been a tendency to personalize Palestinian politics, such that every decision, every vagary, every flaw, has been described as being the work of one man: Yasser ‘Arafat.

It is true that to ‘Arafat (and to his fellow founders of Fateh) goes much of the credit for reviving the Palestinian cause in the two decades immediately after the debacle of 1948. In the 1950s and 1960s, the young leaders of Fateh, including Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyyad) and Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad),1 among whom ‘Arafat for his entire life was first among equals, galvanized Palestinian politics with their fiery militant rhetoric, their air of mystery, and their vague ideology, which had the potential to embrace virtually all political tendencies. Also extremely attractive to many Palestinians in the 1950s and 1960s was Fateh’s insistent preaching of direct, armed action against Israel, combined with its independence from Arab governments. This struck a chord among those seeking redress for their recent dispossession, particularly at a time when the governments of the Arab countries bordering Israel (with the exception of the short-lived Syrian neo-Ba‘th regime, in power from 1966 until 1970) were generally quite careful to avoid any provocation of the powerful Jewish state.

The ascendancy in the 1950s and 1960s of the leaders of Fateh, along with the rise of other competing militant groups, represented a thoroughgoing generational change and a striking alteration in the image presented by those who represented the Palestinians. It involved a shift from the domination of Palestinian politics by sober men in their fifties and sixties wearing suits and red tarbushes (and in the case of



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