BY AHMED NIMER
RAMALLAH — The mainstream media here and in the West are trying to find out who exactly is "behind" the Palestinian intifada against Israeli rule. They'd serve the Palestinian people better if they sought out who is behind the conspiracies to end it.
In order to understand what is going on here, it is necessary to understand something of the nature of Fatah which, led by Palestinian Authority (PA) president Yasser Arafat himself, is the dominant political force in Palestine.
Fatah is not a political party in any sense of the word. Fatah does not conduct education of its members around a political program and no-one can really tell you what it wants, apart from vague nationalist demands. Fatah figures will incorporate Islamist slogans when they suit its purposes, and its political direction is whatever the leadership says at the time.
Fatah more closely resembles the mafia: it is organised around patriarchs and offers of protection in exchange for loyalty. If you have a problem (say, you need an ID card to travel or have a dispute with a neighbour), you go to Fatah and they help you — in exchange for political loyalty.
At the head of this structure is Arafat. He distributes the cash, and other forms of support like guns, to those loyal to him. These individuals then buy their own bases of support with this cash. Anyone who says something that Arafat doesn't like will find their cash supply cut or, in extreme cases, be killed.
Fatah is a pyramid of competing factions, each of which draw their patronage from Arafat at the top. This is replicated in all the major cities.
Palestinian security forces
On top of all of this, there are the security forces. There are at least 11 different security forces operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The most important of these are the Preventative Security (headed by Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank and Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza), Force 17 (technically the armed wing of Fatah, the "Tanzim") and the police. All are given arms by Arafat but also have to supplement them by other means.
The most successful of these has been the Preventative Security which, after the signing of the Oslo agreement with Israel in 1993, was given a monopoly on petrol by Arafat, the proceeds of which it supplements with arms sales, drug smuggling and dealing in stolen cars.
It's not that difficult to get a gun but it is difficult to use it without permission from Fatah. Thus, you will see non-uniformed Force 17 people walking around Ramallah with M-16s but if someone from the Islamic group Hamas or one of the left factions tries to brandish a weapon in public, they will be quickly arrested by the Palestinian police.
Media outlets, here and in the West, have sought to portray Ramallah Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti as the main leader of the intifada in the West Bank, and even to allege that he is using the intifada, and the Tanzim, to build himself up as a challenger to Arafat. Such reports are dead wrong.
Earlier this year Marwan lost the election for head of Fatah in Ramallah to Hussein Al Sheikh, a leader of another faction. He is currently attempting to ignore the result, by seeking to "lead" the intifada. His support base is very shaky, however.
For example, Ramallah's newspapers reported in mid-March on a planned general strike. The announcement of the strike had been made by Marwan, without the approval of the Popular Committee, made up of 11 different political parties, which decides on intifada events in Ramallah. The committee then met, decided not to back Marwan's side in an Fatah internal dispute, and called the general strike off.
Marwan's credentials to be a Fatah representative of a national West Bank intifada committee have also been withdrawn — because Fatah groupings in other localities said they didn't want him to represent them.
While he is certainly one of the leaders of Fatah (in Ramallah), he is certainly not the great leader of the intifada that the media makes him out to be. He is completely reliant upon Arafat and anything he says would be cleared by Arafat beforehand. If he steps out of line he will lose his funding from Arafat, and his social base will disintegrate, because it's based on patronage rather than a sound political strategy.
Succession manoeuvres
The picture is further complicated by manoeuvring for the succession when Arafat dies. One of the stronger factions is that led by Preventative Security heads Rajoub and Dahlan, and by Abu Mazen, one of the PA's chief negotiators, who is considered to be Arafat's number two. Marwan is associated with this grouping.
Abu Mazen was one of the architects of the Oslo accords and is also the author of the secret Yossi Beilin-Abu Mazen plan that accedes to the carving up of the West Bank by Israeli settlements and gives up refugees' right of return.
The Israelis have no problem with any of these figures and are certainly interested in a stable succession, which this grouping seems to offer. All these figures have sizeable financial links with Israelis, in the Jericho Casino and other hotels, in the petrol monopoly. They have also been responsible for much of the PA's internal repression over the past eight years.
The Israeli media has reported secret meetings between these figures and Israeli government officials, including one in mid-March between Rajoub, Marwan and the head of Shin Bet, Israeli intelligence. The PA has denied this meeting took place, but I am quite sure it did.
So, is Arafat losing control of the street?
The real question is, where is the street? The problem with this intifada is that the level of popular participation is extremely low and is confined to only a few isolated areas. Most people feel an immense sense of powerlessness and are just sitting around waiting for something to happen.
There are no mass demonstrations — except for Fridays when the political factions will mobilise some of their members for a ritual march down to the checkpoint where stone throwing occurs.
The only form of struggle taking place is the "armed struggle", most of which is patently ineffective. Shots fired at settlement windows during the middle of the night are met with Israeli heavy artillery fire into residential areas; home-made mortars or suicide bombings are met with even more extreme Israeli violence against Palestinian communities.
Israeli retaliation, however, is not indiscriminate but is designed to appease Israel's right wing while keeping the situation under control. While it's hard to predict what might happen, especially if the suicide bombings continue, neither Israel nor the PA want all-out war, in large part as this may threaten the existence of the PA itself.
Lack of popular participation
The problem is that all these forms of struggle lack any popular participation. Those involved in the leadership committees either acknowledge this problem but are at a loss as to what to do, or deny that it is a problem and elevate the "armed struggle" as the best tactic for the moment.
For example, at a recent "popular" conference about the next steps for the intifada, parties' speakers told of the need to involve the population more. But they put forward few practical suggestions as to how to this.
As a result of this lack of popular participation, Arafat can stop this intifada quite easily at any time. He just needs to give the order and the Fatah people will stop, for fear of losing their financial and political support. There is some evidence that this might already be happening.
The quandary for Arafat and the Israelis is, how do they sell a final agreement after all this suffering?
On one hand, people may have reached such a level that they just want life to go back to "normal" and, given the lack of any alternative political strategy or leadership, would accept a few cosmetic changes as a victory of sorts.
But on the other hand, the depth of violence and loss has been immense. The number of deaths and the Israeli violence far exceeds any comparative period in the last 30 years, including the first intifada in 1987.
It is hard to believe that after enduring such suffering the Palestinian masses would passively accept a deal between Israel and the PA that only introduced cosmetic changes. The more likely result of such a deal wold be mass riots, or attempts to overthrow or assassinate Arafat.
All Palestinian political forces never vary from the mantra, "an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital". But the possibility for a genuine independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip may have passed.
Such a state will be declared in the near future, and will be agreed to by Israel, but it will be independent in name only. The negotiations underway now are centred on the shape of what would be little more than a Palestinian "bantustan": a formally technically state, but in reality a "self-governing", self-repressing pool of cheap labour.