The State of Palestine: Between National Liberation and Pragmatism

What is the State of Palestine?

In choosing the title of this article, I intend for the State of Palestine to have a double meaning: the condition of Palestine and the issue of Palestinian statehood. This piece traces the drive towards statehood from the bureaucratization of the PLO during its revolutionary heyday to the present, focusing on the persistent tension between national liberation and statism. The article critiques the political trajectory adopted by the PLO, emphasizing its efforts to appease world powers in exchange for the promise of a state. Fundamentally, it interrogates how the pursuit of statehood through appeasement, respectability politics, and concession — all under the guise of pragmatism — has come to dominate Palestinian politics from the 1970s to the present.

Pragmatism as Liberation

In 1973, just after the conclusion of the October War (better known in Western historiography as the Yom Kippur War), Yasser Arafat attended a training camp for young Lebanese and Palestinian university students based in Misyaf, Syria. On a rainy day, he proclaimed that he would be giving up the liberation of Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in favor of a Palestinian ministate. He stated that he would accept a Palestinian state “even in Jericho” (al-Taher, 2017, p. 51; Ghabra, 2012, pp. 91-93). He was faced with an angry youth that demanded an explanation for this sudden change in political trajectory. Arafat noted that the October War changed the reality on the ground, and that it was high time for the PLO to get its share of the cake in any future peace conference (al-Taher, 2017, p. 51; Ghabra, 2012, pp. 91-93). The PLO’s later adoption of the Ten-Point Program in 1974, encouraged by Fateh, represented the mountain’s peak of this trajectory at the time. The highlight of this Ten-Point Program was the establishment of a “national authority” on any part of Palestine to be liberated from Israel. Most of the lower-to-middle cadres of Fateh read this as an explicit call for settlement with Israel, and accordingly critiqued the Central Committee of Fateh for having accepted it and pushed for it. This trajectory was influenced by the USSR and the nature of Fateh’s leadership in the Palestinian National Movement as the central faction of the PLO. In a November 1973 meeting between various PLO factions – including Fateh and the PFLP – and a Soviet representative, the representative cautioned the factions on not “missing out” on a settlement surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict through advocating for a Palestinian ministate in the West Bank and Gaza (Chamberlin, 2012, p. 201). The Soviets advised to “phase” the struggle through adopting a political stance that favored this Palestinian ministate (Sayigh, 1997, p. 342). Eventually, the PLO would be disregarded by the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in favor of Hashemite Jordan to represent the Palestinians in the Geneva Peace Conference of 1973 (Chamberlin, 2012, p. 294).

As the Palestinian Revolution expanded, and Fateh in particular adopted many members to its ranks, some fighters from Fateh were traditional army officers from Jordan, Syria, and Iraq – trained for conventional warfare rather than guerrilla warfare. Several of the middle-level cadres of Fateh were disgruntled with the harsh penalty system adopted by these officers, and as such Camp 99 was born during the Jordan period (1968-1971) as a space where penalties were not used and criticism and self-criticism was prominent (Muna, 2011). In addition, the leader of the Student Brigade (an impromptu military formation of Fateh similar to a militia, later “reorganized” into a proper military unit) noted several conflicts arising from the traditional penalty system adopted by the ex-officer fighters who headed training camps, and noted that the Student Brigade prohibited any egregious penalties during training in camps and that penalties would be limited to removing the fighter from the battle lines as punishment for any wrongdoing after training (al-Taher, 2017, p. 157). In addition, during the Lebanon period (1970/71-1982), a sprawling bureaucratic body was continuously expanding in Lebanon and especially in West Beirut around the PLO offices in Al-Fakahani neighborhood. As such, this phenomenon was dubbed the “Fakahani Republic.” In tandem with this rapid expansion of bureaucracy were the “professionalization” measures adopted by Arafat and the military commanders of Fateh in order to centralize control over al-Asifa[^1] by consolidating command and control, as well as to consolidate a rank system present in traditional militaries onto the military apparatus of Fateh. The Foucauldian notions of discipline and punishment should not be lost on anyone here.

The Neoliberal Entanglement and the “Right to Rule”

During the First Intifada, esteemed Palestinian economist Yusif Sayigh was tasked by the PLO to craft a manuscript outlining the economic viability of a Palestinian state. In his Economic Foundations of an Independent Palestinian State, Sayigh totally rejected any form of shared market with Israel due to the unequal exchange of trade between Israel and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Instead, he favored a shared Arab market in which the sought-after Palestinian state would engage with (Sayigh, 1990/2022, p. 41-42). At the conclusion of his study, Sayigh noted the following:

"At first glance, it seems that the common denominator in addressing most of the previous [economic] models is the focus on the Palestinian state primarily in terms of its viability or lack thereof. It can be said that behind this forced evaluation lie primarily political issues, which makes some of these models little more than a repetitive exercise in the advantages of specialization and international trade according to the principles of the neoclassical approach. The outcome of this exercise is already known: viability is contingent on the consequences of foreign trade, and the chances of its realization increase proportionally with the intensity of international relations; the more these relations are intertwined with more developed ones, the higher the chances of achieving viability. In short, the viability of the Palestinian state is contingent upon its linkage with the Israeli economy. These previous models lead us to a few observations, including that defining the precise concept and significance of the economic viability of the Palestinian state remains an open question. Moreover, acknowledging that the economic viability of the Palestinian state is essential for ensuring its independence does little to resolve the issue of viability itself, since economic independence, by its very nature, is a relative and elusive concept within current international relations. Furthermore, formulating quantitative criteria for determining economic viability depends fundamentally on defining viability itself, especially if the goal of establishing such criteria is their empirical application, while social and political factors remain in the background, regardless of their importance" (Sayigh, 1990/2022, p. 258-259).

In essence, the whole question of economic viability lies within a neoclassical, and indeed now neoliberal, paradigm that favors integration with Israel as the more advanced economy. In his conclusion, Sayigh questions the traditional macroeconomic wisdom surrounding viability as an inherently technocratic endeavor absent political or social consequences. The PLO, which had requested his study, favored another paradigm: further integration with Israel in a neoliberal “peace dividend” economy tied with Egyptian, Israeli, and Jordanian economic projects under the label of the Palestinian National Authority and in accordance with the flourishing of neoliberalism in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR (Hanieh, 2013; Haddad, 2016).

In 2007, as a result of the loss of Gaza to Hamas, the PA dismissed the Ismail Haniyeh government. In Haniyeh’s place lay a “caretaker government” led by World Bank economist Salam Fayyad. During his mandate, neoliberal “good governance” and “anti-corruption” measures were taken to ensure that the “right” to a Palestinian state and negotiations with Israel over final status agreements of the would-be Palestinian state could be realized. In 2009, the “Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State” program was announced to the world by the Salam Fayyad government. In it, continuous allusions to good-governance and institution-building were made, alongside the respectability politics that come with it — echoing the logic of earning the “right to rule” established by the British and French Mandates in the early 20th century (Palestinian National Authority, 2009). In the document, the Salam Fayyad government promised “to complete the process of building institutions of the independent State of Palestine in order to establish a de facto state apparatus within the next two years” (Palestinian National Authority, 2009, p. 5). A month later, chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erakat would express frustration with Israeli intransigence during negotiations with the US and Israel, stating to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel, Egypt, and the Levant David Hale:

"On substance, from day one [Netanyahu] said: Jerusalem the eternal undivided capital of Israel, demilitarized state without control over borders or airspace, no refugees. Once you agree to this we can negotiate a piece of paper and an anthem. We have invested time and effort and even killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law. [Fayyad] is doing everything possible to build the institutions. We are not a country yet, but we are the only ones in the Arab world who control the Zakat and the sermons in the mosques. We are getting our act together." (Palestine Papers, 2011).

By 2011, the dream of proving the right to a state through “good governance” and “institution building” measures had faltered, and was replaced by the strategy of winning international recognition in the United Nations. Today, the PLO (responsible for political representation of Palestinians) is pushing the diplomatic recognition battle to the forefront in lieu of the resistance model espoused by Hamas and allied Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, while the PA (responsible for local administration and counterinsurgency in the West Bank) is pledging another round of reform and elections in order to gather international aid to its under-funded and bloated bureaucratic apparatus, seeking to engage itself in the Abraham Accords political economy — as well as “post-war” Gaza — through such reforms.

We Have Been Here Before…

One common denominator in the above history and present is the tendency to placate and “professionalize,” to treat the Palestinian cause in a statist and technocratic manner that would require a sisyphean set of reforms: the phasing of struggle in 1974; the “professionalization” of the Fateh military apparatus through a rank system as well as the establishment of a large bureaucratic apparatus in Lebanon by the PLO in the mid 1970s up to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982; the complete entanglement with the neoliberal “economic peace” paradigm in the 1990s to this day; the “state-building” and reform discourse of the Fayyad government of the post-Second Intifada; as well as the fight over diplomatic recognition of a State of Palestine by the PLO since 2011. In this process, concession after concession is granted under the guise of establishing the “right to rule,” with no Palestinian state in sight. Even on its own ground, if we concede our right to all of Palestine, the strategies adopted have failed and will continue to fail in the near-to-long-term future as the political leadership is stuck in believing in earning the “right to rule” through concession — or rather, using it for its own political survival. The revival of the two state solution, as such, is merely a smokescreen for the interests of the political elite in Ramallah, who benefit from the reality of occupation through such “right to rule” schemes. Simply put, continuing the same decades-long trajectory of concession after concession to Israel and “international partners,” under the guise of reform and statehood recognition at the pristine halls of the United Nations, means the movement internationally, and Palestinians locally, need to reckon with this stalemate: the continuous cover and normalization of the post-Oslo status quo as a tool for counterinsurgency and the silencing of more radical and liberatory visions for Palestine.

Sources:

Al-Taher, M. (2017). Tibgh Wa Zaytoon: Hikayat Wa Souwar Min Zamanin Muqawem [Olive Trees and Tobacco Leaves: Tales and Images from a Time of Resistance]. Doha: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

Chamberlin, P. (2012). The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ghabra, S. (2012). Hayat Ghair Amina: Jeel al-Ahlam Wal Iqhfaqat [An Unsafe Life: A Generation of Dreams and Shortcomings]. Beirut: Dar al-Saqi.

Haddad, T. (2016). *Palestine Ltd.: Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. *London: I.B. Tauris.

Hanieh, A. (2013). Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

Muna, Z. (2011). Muthakkirat Nazih Abu Nidal: Min Awraq Thawra Maghdura [The Memoirs of Nazih Abu Nidal: A Revolution Betrayed]. Beirut: Qudmus Publishing.

Palestine National Authority. (2009). Programme of the Thirteenth Government: Palestine – Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State. United Nations. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208331/.

Palestine Papers. (2011). September 17, 2009 - Meeting Minutes: Saeb Erekat and David Hale. Fanack. https://fanack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/archive/user_upload/Documenten/Links/Palestine_Papers/2009Setptember17_Erekat-David_Hale.pdf

Sayigh, Y. (1990/2022).* Al-Muqawwimat al-Iqtisadiyya Li-Dawlatin Filastiniyyatin Mustaqilla* [Economic Foundations of an Independent Palestinian State]. Ramallah: MAS.

Sayigh, Y. (1997). Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement 1949–1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Notes

[^1]:
The military wing of Fateh