How psychologically prepared are the Palestinian people to face the two massive challenges — the end of the occupation of Gaza and the loss of Yasser Arafat? Let’s start with the good news: Even after 37 years of being occupied and reduced to extreme poverty by a democracy — hardly a good example — Palestinians still want a democracy of their own. In the most recent polling, 95 percent want free, open, regular general elections in which anybody can stand, and 82 percent demand a completely free press with no censorship. This summer, there was a seminal moment in Palestinian politics. Protesters across Gaza launched a mass campaign against the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and demanded “democracy, democracy, democracy.” So much for the racist idea that Arabs are “tribal people” who don’t even want a decent political system. If the Palestinians can (at last) wrest control of their future from both Israeli occupiers and Arafat’s corrupt generation of Palestinian politicians, then Palestine will succeed.
But can they do it? It’s clear what Sharon — a man who has been targeting Palestinian civilians all his adult life — would like to happen. Sharon’s senior advisor Dov Weisglass explained this month that the Gaza withdrawal is designed to “remove indefinitely from the agenda... this whole package called the Palestinian state”. Out of 240,000 illegal settlers living on stolen Palestinian land, he boasted, “190,000 would not be moved”.
No more illusions. Sharon is getting rid of Gaza — a difficult place to police, and one with no religious significance — so he can consolidate his control over the West Bank. Palm off the rubble on somebody else, and keep God’s Territory to yourself. It would neatly complete Sharon’s screenplay if Gaza, once released, sinks further into anarchy and poverty. Sharon could then claim the Palestinians were better off under the Israeli boot, and bind the West Bank even tighter to the settlers.
The Palestinians can still disrupt the Sharon script without murdering Israeli civilians with suicide bombs. The best way to do this is for the many jagged splinters that make up Palestinian political life to agree to participate in and abide by the results of democratic elections in Gaza. This free, unified Gaza could, over time, be used to gain international credibility and strengthen the (already overwhelming) moral case for freeing the West Bank from settlement and apartheid. Sharon will not be there forever; in time, a peaceful Gaza could convince the Israeli public to turn on their thuggish settlers and relinquish the West Bank.
The model for this Palestinian mini-state on the Gaza Strip could be — in one of the neat ironies that litter Middle Eastern history — the Zionist movement. In the 1930s and 1940s, there were dozens of different groups fighting for an end to British occupation and the creation of an Israeli state. They stretched from the hard-right Stern Gang to the socialist Haganah. There was a real fear that these various militias would never unify, and that they would make Israel ungovernable. But once the Israeli state was created in 1948, Menachem Begin’s right-wing Irgun reluctantly placed its arms under the democratic control of the elected Israeli government. The other factions followed — and the rest is a history of internal success and prosperity.
Will the Palestinian factions show the same determination to succeed — especially when Sharon is setting them up to fail? In the vacuum left by the Israeli withdrawal next spring, there will be 16 different Palestinian security apparatuses, in addition to dozens of Islamic resistance groups, from huge networks like Hamas to tiny armed gangs based in individual refugee camps. Will all this congeal into a coherent state? The chances of this happening are diminished even further once Arafat is no longer there to provide some symbolic glue. Nobody should mistake this for approval; Arafat’s model of political resistance is a lousy one. He compromised the Palestinians’ moral legitimacy by condoning the targeting of innocent Israeli civilians. Eighty two percent of Palestinians believe his Palestinian Authority is “somewhat” or “very” corrupt. When he was given real power in 1993, he used torture just as readily as the Israelis.
But we have to be pragmatic. You can’t democratize a vacuum. I find it impossible to identify a figure other than Arafat with the historical legitimacy to hold Gaza together in the immediate aftermath of a withdrawal. The best-case scenario was for this to happen alongside mass popular democratic movements within Palestine that pressured the Palestinian leader to make his own powers subject to monitoring by a free press, parliament and electorate. Without Arafat, it is hard to see anybody else assuming enough authority to do this in time for the withdrawal next spring — and a collapse into anarchy in Gaza becomes probable.
