Democratic Palestine : 38 (ص 9)
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- Democratic Palestine : 38 (ص 9)
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effort. The new talks and the Palestinian
concessions that paved the way for.them,
laid to rest Henry Kissinger’s infamous
1975 agreement with Israel that the US
would refuse to talk with the organization
until it renounced terrorism and recog-
nized Israel.
On the ground in the intifada, the
effect of this new series of diplomatic
maneuvers has been alternating bet-
ween hope and despair. Certainly
there are different views on how - and
whether - to continue the present PLO
diplomatic strategy of making conces-
sions in the hopes that the «Cairo
gate» will open the door to concessions
from the US and Israel.
But so far the Shamir, Mubarak and
Baker 4, 10 and 5-point plans have gained
nothing, and the new stage’s challenge
continues to be the effort to realize tangi-
ble political gains - steps toward an inde-
pendent state - to make worthwhile the
sacrifices of the intifada.
In the new stage, Palestinians must
look outside their occupied country to
interact with international diplomatic
realities - and to ensure that the voice of
the intifada remains the central voice
articulating the Palestinian reality to the
world. But this outward focus is chal-
Ienged by the virtual absence of the
foreign press from occupied Palestine,
and the reality that today’s intifada can-
not rely on the sympathy generated last
year by televised coverage of Israeli brut-
ality. That brutality continues, but too
often invisibly and the intifada itself now
is much harder to see, to quantify, to tele-
vise, than the mass demonstrations and
community-wide garden projects that.
characterized the uprising only half a
year ago.
The very success of the _ ins-
titutionalization of the uprising brings
with it new difficulties and new chal-
lenges. At bottom, this phase is one of
maintaining and consolidating the gains
of the last 27 months in the face of Israel’s
continued economic and _ physical
assaults. In a fluid process like the Pales-
tinian intifada, of course, it is never
enough to simply stand still. Maintaining
even the current level of dual power will
require a significant expansion of the net-
work of popular committees to villages
and other areas where earlier efforts to
build branches of the UNL structure
were tried and failed, or where no
attempt had been made. Strengthening
Democratic Palestine, March-April 1990
the Palestinian side of the dual power
equation will require a return to mass
action; new, creative methods must be
devised that will allow a reemergence of
the broad-based mass character of the
early resistance, without repeating the
unacceptable high price in casualties
from large-scale street confrontations.
This revitalization of mass popular
activity is absolutely necessary to prepare
the political groundwork for the next,
future stage. That period, of national dis-
obedience, will represent the culmina-
tion of a long-term effort to prepare the
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political, cultural, financial and organiza-
tional framework for an all-sided disen-
gagement between the Palestinians living
under Israeli occupation and the occupa-
tion authority itself. Such a break
demands a high level of political con-
sciousness, active society-wide mobili-
zation, and careful organizational struc-
tures.
For now, the dual-power period
must be viewed as one that will last a rela-
tively long time, and through which the
seeds of true national disobedience will
be sown and watered. - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 38
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