Armed Struggle In Palestine

A Political-military Analysis

Bard E. O'neill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429726972
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica mediorientale

Bard O'Neill investigates the Palestinian guerrilla movement and assesses the probability that the fedayeen will achieve their aim of liberating Palestine-including Israel-by means of protracted revolutionary insurgency. His analytic framework incorporates several factors that have a critical bearing on the outcomes of protracted insurgencies; thes

1
Introduction

Armed struggle is hardly a new phenomenon in Palestine. Indeed, for millennia men have turned to violence in order to satisfy their claims and ambitions in the area. The types and forms of wars they have waged have varied considerably over the centuries, ranging from conflicts between major political groups (empires, colonial systems, and nation-states) to those involving small units such as tribal or insurgent groupings.

Historical Sketch

The Battleground of Empires

During the many centuries which spanned the pre-Christian era, Palestine was the scene of continual clashes between decaying and newly emergent empires. Some, like the Egyptian, Hebrew, Babylonian, and Hittite, were indigenous to the area surrounding Palestine; others, such as the Greek and Roman, constituted more distant intrusions. The period of Roman rule, which began in approximately 63 B.C., was marked by recurrent conflict with both outside invaders and dissidents within. The extension of Islamic rule to the area by 640 A.D. did not bring an end to the conflict and violence as the great Ummayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid dynasties struggled against various enemies to assert their dominance.

The year 1099 A.D. saw a new force, the Christian Crusaders, enter the region in their quest to liberate the Holy Land. While successful in establishing a Crusader kingdom, they eventually met defeat at the hands of the Kurdish warrior Salah ad-Din al-Ayyubi in 1187. Though the Crusaders returned again in the thirteenth century, their stay was short lived and their presence was finally expunged once and for all.

As the Crusader episode drew to a close, Mongols from the East seized control in 1250. The next great invasion came in 1512 when the Ottoman Turks implanted an empire that would last for four centuries, although not without eventual challenge from European powers which, at the end of the eighteenth century, began to move into the area because of global balance of power considerations.

By the time of World War I, a disintegrating Ottoman Empire found itself opposed by one of those powers, Great Britain, which managed to align with the local Arab leaders seeking to expel the Turks. When the war ended, it was the European powers, rather than the Arabs, who asserted control in the Levant, with the French ensconced in Syria and Lebanon and the British in Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine.¹ European dominance proved to be relatively brief, however, since the global process of decolonization, expedited by World War II, engendered the transformation of mandates and protectorates into independent political units. Unhappily, the extension of the modern nation-state system to the area did not bring a new era of peace and tranquility, for the new nations soon crossed swords because of historical animosities, ideological differences, and territorial disputes.

The Conflict of Jewish and Arab Nationalism

Armed confrontation involving large collectivities was not the only sort of organized violence between social groupings in Palestine and its environs. The region also had a long legacy of conflicts among tribal and religious groups as well as localized rebellions against imperial, colonial, and indigenous authorities. In the contemporary era, such uprisings, for the most part, reflected the global trend towards national self-actualization—that is, the desire by people who share a common sense of identity to establish autonomous political units within which they can shape and control their own destiny. It is the intersection of two such nationalist movements, the Jewish and Palestinian Arab, that has generated the problem which is the focus of this study. Essentially, the current dilemma centers around the fundamental fact that, since the creation of the British mandate in 1922, both Jewish and Palestinian nationalists have laid claim to the same geographic area—the area that today is comprised of Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and a small portion of the Golan Heights. (The precise boundaries of "Palestine" have varied throughout its history. Today, for instance, the Israelis would argue that from an historical point of view the East Bank of the Jordan also should be considered part of Palestine.)

Zionism and Palestine

The Jewish nationalist movement received its initial impetus from members of the diaspora in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1896, its founder, Theodore Herzl, published a book entitled Der Judenstaat, which called for the formation of a Jewish state, hopefully in Palestine. After the idea was endorsed at the first World Zionist Congress in Basel a year later, the Zionists organized an extensive effort to persuade the major powers, especially Turkey, to adopt policies favorable to their aims.

Support from the Turks was crucial in view of the fact that permission for the emigration of a large number of Jews to Palestine was considered a sine qua non for success, given the Arab majority in the area. Though the Turks refused to allow European Jews to purchase a large tract of land, limited immigration nonetheless commenced, thereby giving rise to protestations by local Arabs whose own sense of nationalism was beginning to crystallize.

When the British consolidated control in the area during the war, they, too, were subjected to Zionist pressures. On November 17, 1917, the British foreign secretary, Arthur J. Balfour, indicated in a written declaration that Britain viewed with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jews so long as it did not prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The vigorous efforts of the Zionists and continued immigration following the Balfour declaration increased tensions in the area; over the course of the next two decades the Zionists and Arabs clashed violently, not only with the Mandatory Power but also with each other. Of the two nationalist movements, the Zionist was by far the more successful. It proved able, although not without considerable effort and cost, to create and sustain a Jewish state (Israel). The Palestinian Arabs (hereafter referred to as Palestinians), by contrast, were denied concrete expression of their nationalism in the form of an independent state, because, unlike their Zionist adversary, they were plagued by inept political leadership, poor organization, strategic miscalculations, and a lack of resources.² Political and material deficiencies such as these played a major part in the genesis and outcome of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

The Creation of Israel and the 1948 War

Throughout the history of the Mandate, commissions of various sorts had investigated the Palestinian problem, but the British government, preoccupied with the Second World War, had postponed a major decision, confining itself instead to the immediate issue of regulating Jewish immigration. In the aftermath of the war, a weakened Britain, beset with economic difficulties, decided to turn what seemed to be an unsolvable problem over to the United Nations. After several months of intensive and skillful lobbying by the Zionists, the UN approved a partition plan on November 29, 1947, which made provision for both Jewish and Palestinian states.

When the Palestinians rejected the plan, fighting ensued between the two sides. Taking advantage of the absence of a UN plan to implement the partition, the Zionists seized the initiative by acquiring weapons and training the forces necessary not only to defend their communities, but also to sustain the state that would be established after the British withdrew in May 1948. On the other side, the Palestinians proved unable to mobilize and organize the capability necessary to undercut the partition plan. A poorly coordinated intervention of regular Arab military forces did not spare the Palestinians from a major defeat, the consequences of which they would suffer for the next twenty-eight years.³

The Legacy of the 1948 War

Three specific outcomes of the 1948 fighting were especially significant for the Palestinians: the flight of the refugees; the expansion of Israel; and the extension of Egyptian and Jordanian control to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, respectively. The large exodus of refugees from Israeli-controlled zones was due to the convergence of several factors. Many Palestinians fled because of systematic and deliberate coercion by the Zionists while others merely followed the example of their own leaders who had departed. There were also cases of notables encouraging the people to flee in the belief that the exodus would only be temporary. Finally, of course, there were the untold numbers who always seek refuge from the ravages of war. More important than the specific causes of the exodus, as far as this study is concerned, is the fact that hundreds of thousands were displaced and dispossessed.⁴ For the next three decades most would languish in refugee camps in the Arab states contiguous to Israel, while the remainder would disperse throughout the Middle East and other parts of the world.

Though the members of the Palestinian diaspora were separated from their homeland, they did not forget it.⁵ Yet, while the attachment to Palestine was kept alive, strengthened, and, at times, idealized in the art, literature, and poetry of the Palestinians, reconquest was left to the Arab states. Thus, for the better part of twenty years, the Palestinians waited in vain for the Arab armies to transform their longing for return into a reality. Because the June 1967 war seemed to shatter that possibility permanently, a new generation of Palestinian leaders surfaced. Determined to deal with these matters themselves, they turned to the restive masses in the camps for support—especially the younger elements that had been brought up to hate Zionism and Israel.⁶

The failure of the Arab states to regain the losses of 1948 was related partially to the second outcome of the 1948 war, namely, the expansion of Israel to a size far more viable and defensible than it had been under the original partition plan. Taking advantage of breakdowns in cease-fire arrangements that punctuated the 1948 fighting, Israel seized the Negev and Upper Galilee, both of which were considered vital to its future security.

The death knell for the Palestinian state that was called for in the partition plan was sounded shortly after the final armistice, by the extension of Egyptian administration to the Gaza Strip and the annexation of the West Bank by Jordan. This third consequence of the war meant that the Palestinians were not only denied any form of statehood, but that they also became the political pawns of the Arab states. Moreover, it made subsequent Israeli arguments that there is no such thing as Palestinian nationalism appear credible to some listeners.

Palestinian Nationalism: 1949-1967

Despite the desperate circumstances of the Palestinians after the 1948 war, the fires of Palestinian nationalism still flickered. Though a younger generation of leaders had appeared in the 1950s, their dispersion had led them to identify with various ideological currents in the area (e.g., Nasserism, Ba'thism, Marxism). These conditions, as William B. Quandt has noted, "... did little to foster a sense of purpose and unity among the Palestinian elite."⁷

In the 1960s two major organizations emerged that sought to rectify this desultory situation—the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Al-Fatah. (Fatah means "conquest" and is an acronym that reverses the order of the letters of the Arabic name of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement: Harakat at-Tahir al-Watani, al-Filistini.) The PLO was established at an Arab summit conference in 1964 as the official voice of the Palestinian people, and shortly thereafter it proceeded to organize a military component, the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA). In spite of its claim to autonomy, the PLO was, in fact, heavily influenced by Egypt. Since the PLO's main base of operations was the Gaza Strip, Cairo kept the organization on a short leash lest it cause problems with Israel at inopportune moments. Moreover, the PLA, equipped with tanks and artillery, had a conventional force structure, which was somewhat anomalous for a contemporary liberation organization. Since both the linkage to Cairo and the conventional force structure resulted in a low level of insurgent activity, the PLO was criticized by a number of Palestinian organizations as being insufficiently revolutionary.⁸ When war did come in 1967, Israel crushed the PLA with relative ease.⁹

Shortly after the formation of the PLO, a rival organization, Al-Fatah, made its presence felt. Fatah was a strong proponent of irregular, rather than conventional, warfare, as the means to liberate Palestine, regardless of the strategy and views of the Arab states. Accordingly, it spent several years following its formation in the late 1950s, planning guerrilla raids against Israel.¹⁰ In 1965 it carried out its first attacks under the name Al-Assifa ("the storm"). According to Leila S. Kadi, this name was chosen so that in the event of a failure Fatah might continue its secret preparations for armed struggle.¹¹ Following several operations, Fatah decided to continue using the appellation Al-Assifa, and the latter became synonymous with its military wing.

With the exception of Syria, the Arab governments were either opposed or indifferent to Fatah, and many of its recruits ended up in Arab jails. Furthermore, there were a number of armed clashes with Jordanian and Lebanese forces seeking to prevent guerrilla raids from originating in their territories for fear of Israeli reprisals. This interference, plus the fact that Fatah was operating with a total strength of no more than two to three hundred men, rendered it incapable of inflicting serious military damage on Israel. Despite such problems, Fatah's operations were nevertheless a factor which helped precipitate the June war.¹²

The June War and the Palestinian Resistance Movement

The war, of course, was a great disaster for the Arab states, whose armies emerged from the conflict in defeat and disarray. While the outcome was a far cry from the war of liberation envisaged by the fedayeen,* it had the paradoxical effect of strengthening the latter. Two factors accounted for this: the new military situation and Israeli occupation of several Arab territories.

The magnitude of the defeat suffered by the Arab armies led Palestinian leaders to once again question the feasibility of conventional combat against Israeli forces. The thought of a regular armed confrontation with an enemy, whose relative military strength had increased substantially as a result of the war, seemed ludicrous. Minimally, such a course of action would require many years of preparation, years that the new, more militant fedayeen leaders, believed they could ill afford to lose. Moreover, the Palestinians, along with many Arabs outside the resistance movements, felt a strong psychological need to redeem their wounded honor and dignity. In a military-psychological setting such as this, the renewed call for an active and immediate armed struggle using unconventional techniques became an increasingly attractive alternative strategy for many Arabs.

The receptivity to the notion of a people's war was further increased by the spatial and demographic changes affecting the area which Israel controlled. Prior to the war, the idea of conducting a people's war in Israel, relying on some 300,000 Arabs living amidst 2.5 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Framework for Analysis
• 3. The Political Context
• 4. Israeli Counterinsurgency and the Environment
• 5. Popular Support
• 6. Organization and Cohesion
• 7. External Support
• 8. The Uncertain Future
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Index