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Writing the Intifada Collective Action in the Occupied Territories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Ian S. Lustick
Ian S. Lustick
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

The five-year-old Palestinian uprising, the intifada, was the first of many mass mobilizations against nondemocratic rule to appear in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the former Soviet Union between 1987 and 1991. Although the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is seldom included by the media or by social scientists in their treatments of this putative wave of “democratization,” many studies of the uprising are available. Although largely atheoretic in their construction of the intifada and in their explanations for it, the two general questions posed by most of these authors are familiar to students of collective action and revolution. On the one hand, why did it take twenty years for the Palestinians to launch the uprising? On the other hand, how, in light of the individual costs of participation and the negligible impact of any one person's decision to participate, could it have occurred at all? The work under review provides broad support for recent trends in the analysis of revolution and collection action, while illustrating both the opportunities and the constraints associated with using monographic literature as a data base.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , July 1993 , pp. 560 - 594
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1993

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References

1 The “open bridges” policy describes the Israeli practice of allowing, subject to sometimes rigorous and discriminatory screening procedures, movement of people and goods across the bridges linking the West Bank and Jordan.

2 Most of these individuals, however, were held in administrative detention for various periods of time.

3 Haaretz, April 2, 1991; and Maariv, September 5, 1990. Between December 1987 and February 1991, twenty-six Israelis were killed by Palestinians. The Israeli human rights group, Btzelem, also reported that during this period eighty-five additional Arabs, including thirty babies, died shortly after exposure to tear gas. More recently Btzelem reported that after five years of the intifada a total of 923 Palestinians had been killed by the security forces (i.e., excluding those killed by settlers) and that 675 Palestinians had been killed by other Palestinians. Kol Yisrael (Radio Israel) broadcast, December 8, 1992, transcribed by FBIS, Daily Report: Near East and South Asia, December 10, 1992, p. 31.

4 See “The Human Costs of the Uprising,” Palestine Human Rights Campaign Newsletter 11 (January 1991).

5 Davar, October 31, 1989.

6 As reported by the Israeli minister of justice, Maariv, November 17, 1989. In December 1991 the Israeli chief of staff reported that since the beginning of the uprising “nearly 100,000” Palestinians had been held in various detention centers or prisons for intifada offenses.

7 See Hiltermann, 174–76; Saleh, Samir Abdallah, “The Effects of Israeli Occupation on the Economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” in Nassar and Heacock, 48Google Scholar; and Tamari, Salim, “What the Uprising Means,” in Lockman and Beinin, 134.Google Scholar

8 Baumgarten, Helga, “‘Discontented People’ and ‘Outside Agitators’: The PLO in the Palestinian Uprising,” in Nassar and Heacock, pp. 207–26Google Scholar; Jarbawi, Ali, “Palestinian Elites in the Occupied Territories: Stability and Change through the Intifada,” in Nassar and Heacock, 287–305Google Scholar; Khalidi, Rashid, “The Palestinian People: Twenty-two Years after 1967,” in Lockman and Beinin, 113–26Google Scholar; Peretz, 87–90.

9 Although both Israeli officials and experts fairly quickly abandoned early characterizations of the uprising as the transient result of the activities of a small number of inciters, much of the work that has been done on the intifada by Israeli Arabists (professional advisers and experts on Arab affairs often enjoying close ties to the government and the security services) does tend to ignore the populist base and cellular organization of the uprising, which were among its most salient features. Ironically, by focusing on the role of the external PLO leadership, these studies implicidy endorse a view of the PLO, led from the outside, as virtually the only mobilizational framework within the Palestinian community—a view substantially in tension with the official Israeli rejection of the PLO as the Palestinians' “sole legitimate representative” and its insistence on the separability of the problem of the inhabitants of the territories from that of Palestinians living outside Palestine. See especially contributions by Susser, Asher, Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce, and Steinberg, Matti, in Gilbar, Gad and Susser, Asher, eds., B'Ayn HaSichsuch: Halntifada (At the core of the conflict: The intifada) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1992).Google Scholar

10 For accounts of the pre-intifada development of such grass-roots organizations and the crucial mobilizational role they played, see Jawwad, Islah Abdul, “The Evolution of the Political Role of the Palestinian Women's Movement in the Uprising,” in Hudson, 63–76Google Scholar; Taraki, Lisa, “The Development of Political Consciousness among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, 1967–1987,” in Nassar and Heacock, 59–62Google Scholar; Barghouthi, Mustafa and Giacaman, Rita, “The Emergence of an Infrastructure of Resistance: The Case of Health,” in Nassar and Heacock, 73–87Google Scholar; Hiltermann, passim; Bargouti, Husain Jameel, “Jeep versus Bare Feet: The Villages in the Intifada,” in Nassar and Heacock, 107–9Google Scholar; Peretz, 74; Tamari, Salim, “The Palestinian Movement in Transition: Historical Reversals and the Uprising,” in Brynen, 20–22Google Scholar; and Hillel Frisch, “MiMaavak Mizuyan Legiyus Politi: Temurot BiEstrategiya shel Ashaf BiShtachim” (From armed struggle to political mobilization: Trends in PLO strategy in the territories), in Gilbar and Susser (fn. 9), esp. 50–58. On the predominant role of the four major PLO factions in the territories, see esp. Hiltermann, 64–66, 173–217; Hunter, 65–66; Jarbawi (fn. 8), 296–300; and Jawwad, in Hudson.

11 Regarding pre-intifada attitudes of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians toward a “separate state” solution with Israel, see Lesch, Ann Mosely, Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Washington, D.C.: Middle East Institute, 1980)Google Scholar; Sahliyeh, Emile, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988)Google Scholar; Ma'oz, Moshe, Palestinian Leadership on the West Bank (London: Frank Cass, 1984)Google Scholar; Lesch, Ann Mosely and Tessler, Mark, Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinians: From Camp David to Intifada (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Shadid, Mohammed and Seltzer, Rick, “Political Attitudes of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Middle East Journal 42 (Winter 1988).Google Scholar

12 Hiltermann, pp. 65–66; Jad, Islah, “From Salons to the Popular Committees: Palestinian Women, 1919–1989,” in Nassar and Heacock, 131Google Scholar; Salim Tamari (fn. 10), 22; and Taraki (fn. 10), 67.

13 Farsoun, Samih K. and Landis, Jean M., “The Sociology of an Uprising: The Roots of the Intifada” in Nassar and Heacock, 19.Google Scholar

14 See Lustick, Ian S., Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Peled, Yoav, “Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship: Arab Citizens of the Jewish State,” American Political Science Review 86 (June 1992), 432–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 This campaign against informers was highly successful in the first year of the uprising; but it degenerated later after a prolonged period of lawless conditions within Palestinian communities whose policemen had resigned, and as a result of systematic disinformation and ruthless counterintelligence operations by the Shin Bet and special Israeli army units disguised as Arabs. The best evidence for this sequence is the virtual prohibition imposed by Israeli censors on public discussion in Israel about Palestinian anticollaborationist activities in the first year of the uprising, followed, in 1989, by the high profile accorded by Israeli government officials to Palestinian killings of “suspected collaborators.”

16 Israeli commentators have labeled the return of the Labor Party to power after the June 1992 elections, following fifteen years of Likud domination of the political scene, as another maapach.

17 Tamari, Salim, “The Revolt of the Petite Bourgeoisie: Urban Merchants and the Palestinian Uprising,” in Nassar and Heacock, 163.Google Scholar Another this particular dialectic between exclusivist Israeli annexationism and the widening basis for Palestinian mobilization, see also Tamari (fn. 10), 14–18; Saleh, Samir Abdallah, “The Effects of Israeli Occupation on the Economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” in Nassar and Heacock, 37–51Google Scholar; Farsoun and Landis (fn. 13), 19–27; and Hunter, 47. For a case study of a Palestinian family that illuminates how the transformation of Israeli policies under the Likud eliminated any economic opportunities for Palestinians willing to accommodate themselves to Israeli rule (thereby producing the basis for the broad, cross-class alliance of forces that produced and sustained the uprising), see Doumani, Beshara, “Family and Politics in Salfit,” in Lockman and Beinin, 143–54.Google Scholar

18 Shehadeh, , “Israel and the Palestinians: Human Rights in the OTs,” in Brynen, 37.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., 38. Howard Rosen uses the figure of $1 billion, or 2–2.5% of Israel's annual GDP, as the cost of the intifada to the Israeli economy in 1988 and 1989. Rosen, , “Economic Consequences of the Intifada,” in Freedman, Robert O., ed., The Intifada: Its Impact on Israel, the Arab World and the Superpowers (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991), 384.Google Scholar Another figures published in the Israeli press, Azmy Bishara reports that Israel's annual preintifada tax revenue from the territories exceeded its expenditures there by $143 million. See Bishara, , “The Uprising's Impact on Israel,” in Lockman and Beinin, 225–26.Google Scholar Another also Peretz, 150–51. Samir Abdallah Saleh's judgment in 1989 was that if the intifada had not made the occupation a net economic liability for Israel, it had made it “tangibly less profitable.” Saleh (fn. 16), 49.

20 Bishara, , “The Third Factor: Impact of the Intifada on Israel,” in Nassar and Heacock, 276–85.Google Scholar

21 Legrain, Jean-François, “The Islamic Movement and the Intifada,” in Nassar and Heacock, 175–90.Google Scholar

22 See, e.g., Lisa Taraki's attack on Hamas as either an instrument of Israel or a cynical attempt to carve out a niche for itself in the future Palestinian state as the “Islamic opposition.” Implicit in Taraki's depiction of Israel, and of her praise of the UNLU for the “clarity of its political vision and … the concreteness of its aims” is that the Jewish state is substantially more rational than Hamas's desperate strategy implies. Taraki, , “The Islamic Resistance Movement in the Palestinian Uprising,” in Lockman and Beinin, 174–75.Google Scholar

23 The most useful discussions of the particular effects of the intifada in various Arab countries are Andoni, Lamis, “Jordan,” in Brynen, 165–94Google Scholar; and Lawson, Fred, “Syria,” in Brynen, 215–34.Google Scholar Another also Gregory Gause, F. III, “The Arab World and the Intifada,” in Freedman (fn. 18), 191–219.Google Scholar

24 Regarding the greatly increased clout of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians within the Palestinian movement as a whole, see Khalidi (fn. 8), 124–26. On the irreversible effect of the intifada's psychological, cultural, and political vitalization of the occupied territories on Palestinians, see Ashrawi, Hanan Mikhail, “The Politics of Cultural Revival,” in Hudson, 77–83Google Scholar; Brynen, Rex, “Israel and Palestine: Implications of the Intifada,” in Brynen, 7–9Google Scholar; and Hunter, 216. Regarding the displacement of traditional elites, see, for example, Bargouti (fn. 10), 110–18. On the significant but very incomplete success of Palestinian women in their efforts to use the intifada to advance gender equality, see Rita Giacaman and Johnson, Penny, “Palestinian Women: Building Barricades and Breaking Barriers,” in Lockman and Beinin, 155–70Google Scholar; Jad (fn. 11), 125–42; and Jawwad (fn. 10), 63–76.

25 Tessler, , “The Impact of the Intifada on Israeli Political Thinking,” in Brynen, 43–96.Google Scholar Another question of whether the Rabin government will actually reach and implement an agreement with the Palestinians that would lead to such an outcome is an open and quite different question. For another highly nuanced analysis of the impact of the first year and a half of the intifada on Israeli society, see Peretz, 119–62.

26 See Lustick, Ian, “Israeli State-Building in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Theory and Practice,” International Organization 41 (Winter 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Rouhana, , “Palestinians in Israel: Responses to the Uprising,” in Brynen, 97–117.Google Scholar Another a different view, one more reflective of traditional Israeli Arabist perspectives, stressing the uprising's “Palestinianizing” impact on Arabs in Israel, see Rekhess, Elie, “The Arabs in Israel and the Intifada,” in Freedman (fn. 19), 343–69.Google Scholar

28 Mueller, and Opp, “Rational Choice and Rebellious Collective Action,” American Political Science Review 80 (June 1986), 475.Google Scholar

29 Waterman, , “Reasons and Reason: Collective Political Activity in Comparative and Historical Perspective,” World Politics 33 (July 1981), 558–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Aya, , “Popular Intervention in Revolutionary Situations,” in Bright, Charles and Harding, Susan, eds., Statemaking and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), 326.Google Scholar

31 See Aya, , “Theories of Revolution Reconsidered,” Theory and Society 8 (July 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 I draw from Popkin's account in his essay “Political Entrepreneurs and Peasant Movements in Vietnam,” in Taylor, Michael, ed., Rationality and Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

33 On the crucial activity of intifada activists as seeking, with direct services to constituents, to “outadminister” the Israeli authorities and draw previously nonpoliticized individuals into the national struggle, see Hiltermann, 53–57, 68, 78, 87–89, 126–28, 143, 163–72, 209–11; Hunter, 121–41; Abed, George T., “The Economic Viability of a Palestinian State,” in Hudson, 210–11; and other sources cited in fn. 10.Google Scholar

34 See fn. 10.

35 See Scott, , “Hegemony and the Peasantry,” Politics and Society 7, no. 3 (1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Taylor, “Rationality and Revolutionary Collective Action,” in Taylor (fn. 32).

36 On the crystallization of a distinctive Palestinian nationalist consciousness among Arabs in the territories in the 1970s and 1980s and its relationship to the intifada, see especially Taraki (fn. 10), 53–71. On the emergence of latent gemeinschaft affinities in Palestinian villages and refugee camps as an ingredient in the uprising, see Yahya, Adii, “The Role of the Refugee Camps,” in Nassar and Heacock, 91–106Google Scholar; Bargouti (fn. 10), 107–23; Hunter, 120–48; Johnson, Penny and O'Brien, Lee with Hiltermann, Joost, “The West Bank Rises Up,” in Lockman and Beinin, 29–42Google Scholar; Vitullo, Anita, “Uprising in Gaza,” in Lockman and Beinin, 43–56Google Scholar; Baumann, Melissa, “Gaza Diary,” in Lockman and Beinin, 57–66Google Scholar; and Giacaman and Johnson (fn. 24), 155–70. For illustration of the complex interconnections between familial and local community ties that bind individuals together while opening opportunities for collaborators to penetrate villages on behalf of the Israeli authorities, see Winternitz, Helen, A Season of Stones: Living in a Palestinian Village (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991).Google Scholar

37 Hechter, , “Comment: On the Inadequacy of Game Theory for the Solution of Real-World Collective Action Problems,” in Cook, Karen Schweers and Levi, Margaret, eds., The Limits of Rationality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 240–49.Google Scholar

38 According to one estimate, there were 45,000 “popular committees” at the neighborhood, village, and block level in the occupied territories by mid-May 1988. New York Times, May 15, 1988. Cited and discussed by Nassar, Jamal R. and Heacock, Roger, “The Revolutionary Transformation of the Palestinians under Occupation,” in Nassar and Heacock, 199.Google Scholar

39 Mueller and Opp (fn. 28), 471–88. For accusations that Mueller and Opp have abandoned rational choice altogether and for their response, see Klosko, George, Mueller, Edward N., and Opp, Karl-Dieter, “Rebellious Collective Action Revisited,” American Political Science Review 81 (June 1987), 557–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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41 Kuran, , “Now out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Polines 44 (October 1991).Google Scholar

42 There is of course the additional practical problem of making the required observations of so many individuals while a revolutionary process is under way.

43 See Taylor (fn. 35), 66–67.

44 See, e.g., Said, Edward, “Intifada and Independence,” in Lockman and Beinin, 14Google Scholar; Jarbawi (fn. 8), 296; Peretz, 39–52; Stork, Joe, “The Significance of Stones: Notes from the Seventh Month,” in Lockman and Beinin, 67–80Google Scholar; and Hunter, 89, 220.

45 Goodwin, Jeff and Skocpol, Theda, “Explaining Revolutions in the Contemporary Third World,” Politics and Society 17 (December 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another is the only theoretical or general work of which I am aware that explicitly includes the intifada as a case, or potential case, of revolutionary collective action.

46 Berejikian, Jeffrey, “Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem,” American Political Science Review 86 (September 1992), 647–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Tullock, Gordon, “The Paradox of Revolution,” Public Choice 11 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Another the vanguard role of youth in the uprising and the obvious thrill involved in confronting confused Israeli soldiers in the first weeks of the uprising, see Stork (fn. 44), 67–81; Hunter, 67; Hiltermann, 42, 210; Johnson and O'Brien with Hiltermann (fn. 36), 34; and Legrain (fn. 21), 186.

48 See Scott, , Weapons of the WeaK (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).Google Scholar Another evidence directly challenging Scott's thesis, see Stokes, Susan C., “Hegemony, Consciousness, and Political Change in Peru,” Politics and Society 19, no. 3 (1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar