Palestinians Inside Israel example essay topic

Introduction -- This paper will provide an overview of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, including its early history and its rise to prominence during the Intifada that began in 1987. It will also include a description of Yasser Arafat's ascendency to the leadership of the PLO, a position that earned him the right to speak for all Palestinians by virtue of the peace framework signed by him and the former Israeli Prime Minister Yitsak Rabin in 1993. Early History -- Growing Palestinian activism in the early part of the 1960's provided the impetus for the convening of the first summit conference of Arab leaders in 1964 - to plan a unified response to Israeli plans to divert some of the waters of the Jordan River. This activism influenced the decision, made at that conference, to create the PLO. It also precipitated the slide of the Arab states into the June 1967 war with Israel.

In the mid-1960's the Arab regimes were again haunted by a force they had not had to deal with since 1948: a Palestinian nationalist movement that, in spite of being divided into several underground groups, could exert great pressure on them by playing on public opinion and inter-Arab pressures. -- During the early and middle 1960's dissatisfaction with the Arab status quo fueled the growth of Palestinian nationalist groups. Most successful was Fatah, headed by Yasser Arafat (discussed below) which began military operations against Israel on Jan. 1, 1965, with an attack on the Israeli national water carrier project to transfer water from the Jordan River to the south of Israel. Although little more than pinpricks to the Israelis, these attacks were effective armed propaganda in the Palestinians political offensive to force the Arab regimes, partiuclarly Egypt under Gamal Abd al-Nasser, to practice what they preached regarding Palestine. The first target chosen by Fatah was especially symbolic, since none of the Arab summit meetings called to deal with Israel's Jordan River water diversion had resulted in any concrete action. This pattern of armed propaganda continued to characterize Palestinian armed attacks.

It was aimed at winning Palestinian opinion over to Fatah and at convincing Arab public opinion of the feasibility of direct action against Israel. -- The June 1967 war, in which several Arab nations were soundly defeated by Israel, was nonetheless a watershed that led to the rebirth of a Palestinian national movement with a strong separate identity. The rebirth occurred in several stages. The first was winning a crucial victory in the battle of Karam eh in the Jordan river valley in March 1968, where outnumbered Palestinian guerrillas, backed by Jordanian artillery, stood up to Israeli armored forces.

The importance of this battle was not in the relatively limited Israeli losses, but in the fact that the Israelis appeared to have been driven back by Palestinian irregulars only nine months after the rout of three Arab regular armies in 1967. During the next stage, also in 1968, the Palestinian guerrilla groups, who called themselves fid a " iy een (fedayeen), or self-sacrificers, seized control of the PLO from the leadership that had been installed by Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser in 1964. Arafat's Rise -- Arafat was born in Jerusalem in 1929 and brought up in Gaza. He studied civil engineering at Cairo University, where he headed the League of Palestine Students (1952-1956), and fought in the Suez war of 1956.

In the late 1950's he lived in Kuwait and helped to establish Fatah, which began terrorist operations against Israel in the early 1960's. From about 1965, and particularly after Israel's victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, a power struggle developed within the Palestinian resistance movement, mainly between advocates of Arab state sponsorship and those, like Arafat, supporting an independent movement. In 1969 Arafat, as leader of the most powerful group in the PLO, was elected chairman. -- Under Arafat's leadership, the PLO developed a variety of political, socioeconomic, and educational institutions in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Palestinian diaspora. Arafat's greatest efforts, however, were seen in the diplomatic arena, where he doggedly pursued the goal of international recognition of the rights of Palestinians to self- determination and of the PLO as their legitimate political representative. Because of his desire to press for a diplomatic solution he undertook initiatives that at times were unacceptable to the Palestine National Council (PNC), the Palestinian people's "parliament in exile".

-- In the late 1960's, Arafat supported the PNC's call for a secular democratic state in all of Palestine, to be achieved by guerrilla attacks against Israeli targets. This strategy lost credibility in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and in 1974 the PNC agreed to a Palestinian state in any part of Palestine. From then on, Arafat remained a backer of what was understood to represent a "two-state" solution. The Intifada: The Palestinian Mass Uprising -- The rise of the PLO to the world stage really began with the well-known intifada, or mass uprising, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was at the end of 1987 where resistance to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip began to sharply escalate in the form of demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, and violence. It came to involve virtually the whole Palestinian population in those areas, and continued even two years later in spite of the hundreds of Palestinian deaths and thousands of detentions that came at the hands of Israeli police forces.

-- The uprising was the product of a generation that had been brought up under Israeli control. By the late 1980's two out of every three Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had either been born or were less than five years old when the Israeli occupation began. For two decades the people had had no control over their own lives and their future was becoming increasingly unsure. This was primarily due to the creeping annexation of land by the Israeli occupation authorities and the establishment of Israeli settlements on the confiscated lands. By 1993, more than 60 percent of the West Bank land and about 50 the land of the overcrowded Gaza Strip had been appropriated by Israel (Peretz, 1990). Some of it was destined for Jewish settlements, inhabited in many cases by militant right-wing settlers seeking Israeli annexation of these areas.

The settlements were meant to "establish facts", and hence make Israeli control irrevocable. The presence of these settlers seriously worsened the tensions between Palestinian and Jewish settlers. -- For two decades Israel had done much to prevent independent economic or social development and to subject the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the needs of the Israeli economy: these areas became the second largest market for Israeli exports, provided a pool of cheap labor for Israel, and offered a field for lucrative Israeli investment. West Bank and Gaza Strip workers had to pay part of their low salaries into the Israeli social security fund, but could not receive benefits. All residents were heavily taxed, but the Palestinian workers received much less benefits than the Israelis enjoyed. It came to the point that the occupation not only paid for itself but became profitable to the Israeli state.

-- Over the years the Israeli occupation authorities expelled more than 1,700 Palestinians for political offenses. They punished the families of many suspects (often later found innocent) by demolishing their homes. They arrested and detained many thousands of Palestinians, often by means of administrative detentions without trial that bypassed even the military justice system. Eventually so many people had been harmed by the occupation in one way or another that a large proportion of Palestinians apparently felt that they had nothing left to lose. -- What resulted starting on Dec. 9, 1987, was clearly a popular uprising. It included children, teenagers, adults, and elderly people, men and women, every class of the population from laborers to wealthy merchants, and every region from the cities and towns to the refugee camps to isolated villages.

Medical relief committees, food distribution cooperatives, local agricultural production initiatives, educational committees, and other ad hoc local groups sprang up to sustain the uprising. The uprising was led in each locality by a committee representing all the area's political forces-generally the three or four main groups composing the PLO (Nasser and Heacock, 1990)... A similar leadership formed at higher regional levels, and it was topped by an underground coordinating group that signed its periodic communiques "PLO-Unified National Leadership of the Uprising in the Occupied Territories" (Peretz, 1990). As members of the leadership were detained by the Israelis-who after 18 months had detained more than 20,000 people-their places were taken by others.

-- The uprising shattered the barrier of fear of the occupier, strengthened the sense of self-reliance, and in general empowered a population that had been systematically deprived of control over its destiny during two decades of Israeli occupation, and before that for 19 years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule. The resiliency of the uprising in spite of varied forms of Israeli repression over many months showed that the Palestinians had learned well how to rely on themselves and on institutions that they created. And while many demonstrators often threw rocks and gasoline bombs, they generally avoided more lethal weapons and tactics. The uprising helped crystallize a new and much younger leadership, and marked the beginning of a new phase of the Palestinian national movement (Nasser and Heacock, 1990).

= = = = The uprising provoked intense sympathy in the Arab world and galvanized Palestinians everywhere, bringing their cause to the attention of the world (Gerner, 1992). Palestinians inside Israel carried out sympathy demonstrations and strikes. A growing number of Jews voiced doubts about Israeli policy. As a direct result of domestic and other pressures sparked by the uprising, Jordan's King Hussein, on July 31, 1988, severed his country's links with the West Bank and renounced Jordan's sovereignty over it, thereby reversing nearly 40 years of Jordanian policy. -- PLO leader Arafat rode a strong wave of international support during and after the intifada (Peretz, 1990). He was able to speak before the United Nations General Assembly.

During that U.N. meeting, and afterwards, Arafat sought to satisfy the United States' two long-standing conditions for negotiation: a recognition for the rights of Israel to exist and a renouncement of terrorism. The critical sentence at that speech that many thought should satisfy the U.S. recognition requirements was the following (Gerner, 1992): "The PLO will seek a comprehensive settlement among the parties concerned in the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the State of Palestine, Israel, and other neighbors, within the framework of the international conference for peace in the Middle East on the basis of Resolutions 242 and 338 and so as to guarantee equality and the balance of interests, especially our people's rights, in freedom, national independence, and respect the right to exist in peace and security for all". -- Yet, the United States and Secretary of State George Shul z were not completely satisfied. Thus, Arafat gave it one more try at a news conference the following day, in which he said: "In my speech also yesterday, it was clear that we mean our people's rights to freedom and national independence, according to Resolution 181, and the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace and security, and, as I have mentioned, including the State of Palestine, Israel, and other neighbors, according to the Resolutions 242 and 338. As for terrorism, I renounced it yesterday in no uncertain terms, and yet, I repeat for the record. I repeat for the record that we totally and absolutely renounce all forms of terrorism, including individual, group, and state terrorism".

-- Afterwards, the United States announced that the PLO had met the conditions for negotiation, and low-level talks between the PLO and the United States ensued. But it was in 1993 when the most significant talks took place, unbeknownst to most of the world. Secret, direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO took place in Norway. They culminated in a draft peace agreement, and were followed by formal mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO on September 10. Three days later the agreement was signed on the White House lawn and sealed by a handshake between Arafat and Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin. Conclusion -- The PLO, which grew to prominence under the organization of Yasser Arafat and which became an international player thanks to the intifada, found its ultimate goal of a Palestinian homeland closer than ever with the signing of the peace agreement with Israel.

It marked a great accomplishment for an organization that was begun by four Arab countries in 1964. But even today it is not clear that the PLO's mission has been fully realized; the election of the conservative Netanhayu government in Israel has hampered some of the steps outlined in the peace agreement. Thus, once again, Arafat is trying to rally the world to the side of the PLO in its ongoing struggle.

Bibliography

Gerner, Deborah. "The Arab-Israeli Conflict". Intervention into the 1990's.
ed. Peter J. Shraeder. Boulder: Renner Publishers, 1992.
pp. 361-382. Nasser, Jamal and Heacock, Roger, eds. Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads. New York: Praeger, 1990.
Peretz, Don. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising. Boulder: Westview Press, 1990.
Biographical information taken from: Kory, Philip S. "Arafat, Yasir". Colliers Encyclopedia CDROM. Vol. 2 1996.