Democratic Palestine : 36 (ص 3)
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- Democratic Palestine : 36 (ص 3)
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Two Years oft the Intifada
Heading for the 1990’s
«The independent State of Palestine is being built on the national soil
through the achievement of mass empowerment and unity of action in
struggle, as asolid base for the Palestinian national movement in stead-
fastness and confrontation» - the PLO/United National Leadership
(UNL) in the occupied State of Palestine, Call no. 36, March 15, 1989.
What was distinctive about the sec-
ond year of the Palestinian uprising?
Certainly, there were more marches
and stones, more heroism and unity,
more popular committees, self-suffi-
ciency and civil disobedience from the
Palestinian side of the trenches - and
more killing and atrocities from the
Israeli side. But 1989 was much more
than a rerun of the first year of the
intifada. While a major achievement of
1988 was comprehensive unity, mobili-
zation and empowerment, the key to
the intifada’s momentum in 1989 was
combining the ongoing militancy with
conscious organizing work to regulate
the socioeconomic framework of the
new way of life that Palestinians under
occupation embarked on with the out-
break of the intifada in December
1987. This was a logical development
of the thrust of the first year, and
required to continue and escalate the
uprising in the face of intensified
Zionist repression and divide-and-rule
tactics.
Above all, the self-regulation was
not an inward-looking dynamic, but
part of the process of forging the State
of Palestine in the furnace of direct
confrontation with its opposite - the
occupation. In the course of 1989, a
well organized, sustained popular
revolt was turned into an alternaiuve
‘system. Popular authority proved itself
not only in directly challenging the
occupation, but also in building a new
political and social order. Two main
battles typified this momentum - Beit
Sahour’s victorious struggle against
Democratic Palestine, December 1989
taxation without representation and
the protracted workers’ strike against
the imposition of computerized iden-
tity cards in the Gaza Strip.
Profiling the State of Palestine
The emphasis on internal regulation
did not render 1989 short of dramatic
displays of mass militancy. In Feb-
ruary, the defiance of the masses
closed down the police stations in the
Gaza Strip, while East Jerusalem resi-
dents enacted a successful boycott of
the Israeli municipal elections, despite
concerted Zionist efforts to attract
select Palestinian candidates and vot-
ers.
The Israeli press reflected the wide-
spread Zionist fear that the intifada
was radicalizing. In the March 23rd
edition of Haaretz, Ori Nir wrote that
direct attacks, in which Palestinian
youth confront Israeli soldiers face-to-
face, were bcoming more widespread,
citing a number of attacks with knives
and hatchets. He also noted an inci-
dent in Gaza where Palestinians seized
firearms from Israeli soldiers, conclud-
ing «there is an increasing danger that
attacks with live ammunition will
become more frequent (as the intifada)
comes to resemble the Algerian
model». He also noted that «events in
the territories over the past week or
two are reminiscent in many ways of
the first months of the intifada» in
terms of mass demonstrations, burning
tyres, stonethrowing and Palestinian-
manned barricades, admitting that
«Full physical control of the Gaza Strip
is only possible when curfews are
imposed on all the population
centres...and even then there is no
lack of disturbance resulting from cur-
few-breaking.»
Through biweekly calls, the UNL
charted a plan for keeping up the
momentum at a level which the masses
could realistically maintain. While the
number of strike days increased in the
fall to fight the battle of the imposed
IDs, in general they did not rise
dramatically as compared with 1988. In
fact, the emphasis was on direct con-
frontation, with the UNL calling for
the fall of a martyr to be the signal for
more attacks on the occupation forces,
rather than a general strike, except in
the martyr’s home district where due
respect should be accorded the family
in mourning. The UNL also urged
those wanted by the occupation
authorities to opt for the status of fugi-
tive rather than succumb to arrest. The
underground grew: a new category of
highly respected citizens of the
occupied State of Palestine, living in
the islands of semiliberation among the
masses of the West Bank and Gaza.
Strip.
In June, the Israeli press wrote that
for one afternoon East Jerusalem
looked like «the capital of Palestine,»
after 10,000 marched in the funeral of
Omar Qassem, Palestine’s Mandela,
the longest serving political prisoner in
Israeli jails, who died due to the
Israelis’ denial of medical treatment.
This was the biggest demonstration in
Jerusalem since the 1967 occupation.
A more joyful occasion occurred in
Beit Sahour on November 5th; 3,000
Palestinians, residents and guest dele-
gations, marched to celebrate the vil-
lage’s victory in the war of the taxes.
The residents of Beit Sahour withstood
a six-week military siege, maintaining
their refusal to pay taxes to the occu-
pation, despite harassment, beatings, >
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