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ajnabiehOddly, my recent posts are tending towards the ranty. I apologize for this.
I'm reading an interesting essay by Omar Barghouti, one of the leaders of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He published it in a collection of forward-thinking strategy essays written about "where to go from here" for the Palestinians in the post-Second Intifada period, published in 2006. (If anyone's interested, it's in the Journal of Palestine Studies, or I can send you the PDF.) It's a good history of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which is good, because I'm in need of such a thing that I didn't cobble together off websites. (Note to all social movements ever: document, document, document. Please. Love, all social scientists and historians ever.)
But there's something he's saying that's making me itchy. He's saying that, with good reason, outsiders ask why there isn't a unified national leadership for the BDS movement. He outlines the reasons why the PLO, the PA, and the other relevant Palestinian political bodies are unsuited for this task, and calls for a broadly unified, representative body that could do this work. All well and good. However, he says:
and
I read these quotes, and all I can think is:
You don't need a new PLO
You don't need a Palestinian ANC.
YOU NEED A NEW UNLU.
The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising managed to coordinate the entire first intifada with, basically, mimeograph machines and telephones. They wrote the text of pamphlets which determined Palestine-wide (and international) actions, including strike days, demonstrations, special women's activities--the thousands of small resistance actions, most of them nonviolent, that made up the intifada, and that made it one of the most shocking and, I'd argue, successful social movements of the 20th century. (I mean success very relatively here: the fear and shock of the intifada lead to the increasing opposition to continuing the occupation among the Israeli electorate, which eventually lead to the Oslo Accords...which lead to the expatriate PLO coming into political power, the dissolution of the political unity of the Palestinian people when faced with the problems of poor governing and little internal negotiation, the eventual collapse of the peace process, and now we're right back where we started, only a little bit worse. However, no matter what happened next, Oslo was a hell of a concession to win for a social movement.)
The PLO didn't direct the intifada. It was an expatriate organization, mainly; cut off by first the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (and Sinai, and the Golan) from Palestinian communities, and then ejected from first Jordan, and then Lebanon, by Israeli negotiation and military attacks, the PLO had almost no connections the Palestinians on the ground in the territories. While many Palestinians in the territories had allegiances to PLO-affiliated parties, like Fatah or the PFLP, they weren't bound to it in any clear way. The PLO couldn't have managed the intifada back then. It just wasn't there. The UNLU was a coalition of members of all political parties, on the ground, networked, with good alliances across the whole of Palestine, and able to operate under the radar of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Barghouti argues elsewhere that "Only the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, can theoretically claim to represent the entirety of the Palestinian people: inside historic Palestine and in exile." But the UNLU did this as well: its bayanat (pamphlets) were followed in towns, cities, and villages throughout Palestine, and are some of the most important discursive data we have for the first intifada. It make gestures towards representation, but more to the point, it was able to show its representativeness by getting results. People followed UNLU because they wanted to. And even if UNLU's members hadn't been arrested before the peace process, I doubt they would have ended up running the Palestinian state. That wasn't what they were there for. They were there to organize.
I wish I knew why UNLU has dropped out of our historical consciousness about the intifada. They organized a people with words alone, and helped totally change the politics of the end of the 20th century.
They also, IMHO, have the most badass name I've ever come across in Middle Eastern political history. I mean, come on: Unified National Leadership of the Uprising? Who doesn't want a piece of that action?
/rant
I'm reading an interesting essay by Omar Barghouti, one of the leaders of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He published it in a collection of forward-thinking strategy essays written about "where to go from here" for the Palestinians in the post-Second Intifada period, published in 2006. (If anyone's interested, it's in the Journal of Palestine Studies, or I can send you the PDF.) It's a good history of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which is good, because I'm in need of such a thing that I didn't cobble together off websites. (Note to all social movements ever: document, document, document. Please. Love, all social scientists and historians ever.)
But there's something he's saying that's making me itchy. He's saying that, with good reason, outsiders ask why there isn't a unified national leadership for the BDS movement. He outlines the reasons why the PLO, the PA, and the other relevant Palestinian political bodies are unsuited for this task, and calls for a broadly unified, representative body that could do this work. All well and good. However, he says:
"Where is your ANC [African National Congress]?" is a difficult and often sincere question that faced Palestinian boycott activists everywhere.
and
the PLO must be resuscitated and remodeled to embody the claims, creative energies, and national frameworks of the three main segments of the Palestinian people.
I read these quotes, and all I can think is:
You don't need a new PLO
You don't need a Palestinian ANC.
YOU NEED A NEW UNLU.
The Unified National Leadership of the Uprising managed to coordinate the entire first intifada with, basically, mimeograph machines and telephones. They wrote the text of pamphlets which determined Palestine-wide (and international) actions, including strike days, demonstrations, special women's activities--the thousands of small resistance actions, most of them nonviolent, that made up the intifada, and that made it one of the most shocking and, I'd argue, successful social movements of the 20th century. (I mean success very relatively here: the fear and shock of the intifada lead to the increasing opposition to continuing the occupation among the Israeli electorate, which eventually lead to the Oslo Accords...which lead to the expatriate PLO coming into political power, the dissolution of the political unity of the Palestinian people when faced with the problems of poor governing and little internal negotiation, the eventual collapse of the peace process, and now we're right back where we started, only a little bit worse. However, no matter what happened next, Oslo was a hell of a concession to win for a social movement.)
The PLO didn't direct the intifada. It was an expatriate organization, mainly; cut off by first the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza (and Sinai, and the Golan) from Palestinian communities, and then ejected from first Jordan, and then Lebanon, by Israeli negotiation and military attacks, the PLO had almost no connections the Palestinians on the ground in the territories. While many Palestinians in the territories had allegiances to PLO-affiliated parties, like Fatah or the PFLP, they weren't bound to it in any clear way. The PLO couldn't have managed the intifada back then. It just wasn't there. The UNLU was a coalition of members of all political parties, on the ground, networked, with good alliances across the whole of Palestine, and able to operate under the radar of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Barghouti argues elsewhere that "Only the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, can theoretically claim to represent the entirety of the Palestinian people: inside historic Palestine and in exile." But the UNLU did this as well: its bayanat (pamphlets) were followed in towns, cities, and villages throughout Palestine, and are some of the most important discursive data we have for the first intifada. It make gestures towards representation, but more to the point, it was able to show its representativeness by getting results. People followed UNLU because they wanted to. And even if UNLU's members hadn't been arrested before the peace process, I doubt they would have ended up running the Palestinian state. That wasn't what they were there for. They were there to organize.
I wish I knew why UNLU has dropped out of our historical consciousness about the intifada. They organized a people with words alone, and helped totally change the politics of the end of the 20th century.
They also, IMHO, have the most badass name I've ever come across in Middle Eastern political history. I mean, come on: Unified National Leadership of the Uprising? Who doesn't want a piece of that action?
/rant