The rise and demise of the left in West Bank politics: the case of the Palestine National Front.

INTRODUCTION

The origins of the predominance of President Yasir Arafat's Fatah organization in the Palestinian Authority and its rivalry with the Islamist movements can be located in a time well before the implementation of the Oslo Accords. Fatah's networks of patronage, which provide the organization with an underpinning for its current influence in the occupied territories, began to take shape in the mid-1970s.(1) It was then that the organization began to gain ascendancy in key political, administrative, and voluntarist associations in the West Bank. This ascendancy came at the expense of the left wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Jordanian Communist Party, thus opening the field to more conservative elements in Palestinian political life.(2)

The reasons for this shift in the relative influence of the conservative and leftist tendencies in Palestinian politics is to be found first in local Palestinian circumstances. Yet, the West Bank's political life was so-completely penetrated by outside interests that it is impossible to understand such changes without reference to Super Power rivalries, inter-Arab relations, and intra-PLO affairs.

This intensity of penetration by outside actors has been one of the distinguishing characteristics of Middle Eastern affairs since the time of the nineteenth-century Eastern Question. L. Carl Brown explains that, "the degree of penetration is perhaps best measured by the extent to which differences between local, national, regional, and international politics become blurred. That is, the politics of the thoroughly penetrated society is not explained - even at the local level - without reference to the intrusive outside [international] system."(3) The Palestine National Front (PNF) provides a case study of the consequences of this kind of intertwining of international and local affairs.

SOVIET POLICY AND THE PNF

Following the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Soviet Union turned its diplomatic efforts in the Middle East toward achieving a comprehensive resolution of the conflict. The ultimate goal of this diplomacy was to secure for the Soviets continued influence in the region by virtue of their role as one of the internationally recognized guarantors of the peace. This was part of a wider strategy in the early 1970s to reduce the risk of confrontation with the United States, especially as the US began to develop friendlier relations with the Soviets' communist rival, China.(4)

The Soviet vision of a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict called for an international conference based on UN resolution 242, Palestinian representation at the conference, and Israeli withdrawal from the land occupied in 1967. After 1974, Soviet official statements reflected the resolutions passed at the Rabat Arab summit conference that year, referring specifically to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but the possibility of a large role for Jordan in determining the fate of the territories was not ruled out.(5)

Thus, the occupied territories were a central concern in Soviet policy because it envisioned a two-state solution to the conflict. However, the PLO consistently refused until 1988 to support anything less than the complete liberation of Palestine, thereby blocking a two-state solution. It was in this context that the establishment of the Palestine National Front in the occupied territories in 1973 carried importance for Soviet foreign policy. Because the PNF considered itself an arm of the PLO and contained members of the Jordanian Communist Party (JCP), there was hope that the Soviets would be able to influence PLO policy through the PNF.6 More importantly, the PNF became instrumental in national institution building in the occupied territories. This proffered the possibility that the groundwork for a Palestinian state was in fact being laid, with the actuality on the ground leading events in the diplomatic realm. Such a development, with the participation of local, pro-Soviet activists, would have strongly supported Soviet diplomatic efforts and enhanced Soviet regional influence.

At least one scholar has claimed that the initiative for the establishment of the PNF came from the Soviet Union.(7) Others have placed emphasis on resolutions of the PLO which were made outside the territories,(8) Even Arabi Awwad, a member of the PNF, has supported this second view.(9) However, the forum in which he made this assertion was first and foremost an occasion for affirming Palestinian unity across geographical, political, and ideological divisions as resolved at the Fourteenth Palestinian National Conference (PNC).(10) At the time, some within the PLO doubted the communists' commitment to the nationalist enterprise, suspecting that they intended to develop the PNF as an alternative to the PLO in the territories. It was feared that the PNF would make a separate peace with Israel, thus leaving the Palestinians in the Diaspora permanently stateless. Awwad's comments were intended to dispel these suspicions and affirm his recognition of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinians.(11)

It is true that the decisions of the Tenth (1972) and Eleventh (1973) PNCs placed a new emphasis on political organization within the territories in order to resist absorption by either Israel or Jordan.(12) Despite this fact, there can be little doubt that the decision to form the PNF came from within the territories, before the October War.

A PNF activist, Ibrahim Dakkak, relates that representatives of the Jordanian Communist Party and nationalists from Gaza and the West Bank met in East Jerusalem early in 1972 and agreed on the need to establish the From. The JCP members were charged with writing the draft program. Copies of the program were later distributed to "select personalities," and, in the summer of 1972, representatives of the Front traveled to Amman, Damascus, and Beirut for consultations with various Palestinian organizations. The PNF published its program in the territories on 15 August 1973. The following November, in the wake of the war, the PNF's Central Committee met for the first time, revising a draft of a letter to the executive committee of the PLO.(13)

The timing of the meeting of the PNF's preparatory committee in 1972 corresponded roughly with the expulsion of the Soviet military from Egypt in July of the same year. As a result of the setback in Egypt, and of the 1971 coup in the Sudan with its consequent crackdown on Sudanese communists, the Soviets increased their efforts to promote national front governments which included communist elements. Also, in an attempt to compensate for their lost position in Egypt, the Soviet Union hosted a PLO delegation headed by Yassir Arafat.(14) Thus, the Soviets were moving closer to the PLO and promoting the national from idea as the PNF was first being organized in the territories.

It was not completely novel that the Jordanian Communist Party would take a leading position in a Palestinian national front movement. The origins of the JCP itself were with the National Liberation League (NLL), a communist-led national front which was active in the final years of the Palestine Mandate.(15) The League continued its activities in the West Bank under Jordanian rule and, in 1951, became the Jordanian Communist Party. Although illegal in Jordan as either the NLL or the JCP, the communists remained active through various front organizations. They were forced further underground when the Jordanian government banned all political parties in 1957 in response to the wave of anti-imperialist enthusiasm which swept the Arab world after the Suez War.(16)

In the period of underground activity, the JCP developed two wings. One, led by Fahmi al-Salfiti, adopted an accommodationist policy toward the Jordanian regime. A1-Salfiti denigrated the method of armed struggle generally, and particularly disdained Fatah, which he considered to have been influenced by the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood.(17) The second wing of the movement, under Fu'ad Nassar, favored guerrilla activities, and, in 1969, formed the commando organization al-Ansar, which survived only three years before being disbanded.(18)

After the Israelis occupied the West Bank in June 1967, occupation authorities considered Jordanian law to be the law of the land and selectively applied the 1957 ban on political parties as the political situation dictated.(19) Through the early 1970s, the Israelis tolerated the communists' existence and allowed them some level of political activity. Emile Sahliyeh speculates that this was because the communists favored political struggle over military, because "Rakah, the Israeli communist party, had a large Arab contingency," because the Israeli government did not want to antagonize the Soviet Union, and because occupation authorities wanted to "limit the influence of pro-Jordanian supporters."(20)

The PNF, as it took shape in 1974, included representatives of the Jordanian Communist Party, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Fatah, and the Ba'th Party, as well as labor, student, professional, and women's groups.(21) As such, the Front was a composite of communist and left-nationalist organizations. From the nationalist side, the PNF emphasized that the PLO was the sole representative of the Palestinian people.(22) In the same vein, the Front challenged at every turn Jordanian attempts to assume a leadership role in West Bank politics and resisted Israeli endeavors to absorb the occupied territories. The PNF program rejected "all suspicious solutions, like the Palestinian entity, the Civil Administration, the autonomy, the Allon Plan, the King Hussein Plan, the American solutions, and any other similar plans....."(23)

The PNF was markedly pro-Soviet in its diplomatic orientation, and this also supported its efforts at national-institution building. Like the PLO, the Front affirmed "the importance of [the Palestinian people's] relation with ... the socialist camp and the Soviet Union."(24) But more significant were the PNF's backhanded references to United Nations resolutions on which the Soviet Union hoped to base a comprehensive settlement. The PNF characterized Palestinian rights as "the rights which the United Nations has decided since 1947 and until now" and claimed that the Palestinian people demanded their rights "according to decisions taken by the international community."(25) This implied the endorsement of Resolution 242, which called for the recognition of Israel. The PNF's December 1973 letter to the PLO Executive Committee urged the PLO to attend the Geneva conference, which was based on Resolution 242. Likewise, it detailed the benefits of achieving an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and establishment of a Palestinian state in these areas.(26)

This, of course, was consonant with Moscow's vision of a two-state solution. However, the PNF could not afford to get out in front of the PLO leadership on this issue, and thus did not yet publicly urge acceptance of 242, recognition of Israel, or confining the future Palestinian state to the West Bank and Gaza. Events in 1974 seemed to hold out the possibility that the Soviet Union could influence the PLO through the PNF to be more accommodating in reconvening the Geneva conference. A few months after eight members of the PNF were deported from the territories in December 1973, they were permitted to join the Palestinian National Council. A PNF representative who met with Arafat at this time requested that a member of the Jordanian Communist Party be permitted to join the PLO Executive Committee, but he received no response to the request. Three PNF members were admitted to the Executive Committee, but none of them were communists.(27)

Representatives of the PNF were thus able to participate in formulating and passing the ten-point program of the Twelfth PNC of June 1974. The program called for the establishment of "the people's national, independent, and fighting authority on every part of Palestine that is liberated" as a stage in the total liberation of Palestine. This represented an interim compromise between those of the PLO who desired a two-state solution, and those who still held on to the ideal of the complete liberation of Palestine.(28)

This strategy, which originated within the Marxist DFLP, and in some circles of Fatah and al-Sa'iqah, represents a milestone on the path to the 1988 PNC at which the PLO recognized Israel and endorsed a two-state solution.(29) In contradiction to the PNF's proposal, the 1974 PNC's program specifically rejected attending a reconvened Geneva conference, as it also explicitly rejected Resolution 242. However, the establishment of a national authority was consistent with the phased program of state building which the PNF had originally advocated.

In 1974 and 1975, there was a sharp increase in acts of violence and general civil disobedience on the West Bank under the direction of the PNF. In response, the Israelis launched a campaign to eliminate the Front, and communists were principal targets for detention and interrogation. Sulayman Rashid al-Najjab was detained in June 1974 and accused of being the top leader of the Palestinian Communist Organization, a branch of the JCP.(30) He was al o accused of being second in command of the PNF. His deportation, and that of Arabi Awwad, diminished much of the proclivity within the PNF for military activity. The tendency within the Front which favored institution-building activities was, at the same time, strengthened under the leadership of Bashir al-Barghuti, communist editor of the east Jerusalem newspaper al-Fajr.(31)

THE PNF AND NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

National institution building was a process of making the territories independent of services provided by Israel or Jordan, as it was also an attempt to build independent representative institutions for the conduct of day-to-day political and administrative life. Thus, municipal administration, labor issues, and educational issues were patently nationalist as well as local issues. It was in these areas that the PNF was notably effective. After its initial repression in 1974 and 1975, the PNF resumed its activities in coordination with the PLO leadership in Beirut.(32) It was able to mobilize people on a mass scale because of the organizational framework established by the Jordanian Communist Party, as well as because of the rising prestige of the PLO at the inter-Arab and international levels in the period of 1973 to 1976.(33) Like its predecessor organization the National Liberation League, the JCP reached its supporters principally through high school and college student associations and, to a lesser extent, through labor and trade unions.(34)

The crowning achievement of the PNF was without doubt the victories of nationalist candidates in the 1976 elections for West Bank municipal councils. The elections were held as part of Israeli Defense Minister Shimon Peres's civil administration scheme, which was intended to cultivate a pro-Jordanian political leadership at the municipal level. This would permit continued Israeli control over the West Bank, without requiring direct Israeli administration. It was apparently hoped that the elections would duplicate the results of the 1972 elections, yielding an atomized group of leaders representing narrow local interests, rather than a unified leadership speaking for the Palestinian national movement as a whole(.35)

The PNF and its organs opposed Peres's civil administration plan on the grounds that it was a means of legitimizing and perpetuating the occupation. Yet, the PNF-affiliated al-Fajr termed participation in the elections a "necessity" as it provided an opportunity for expression of popular will on the issue of representation of the Palestinian people and the "way of implementing international resolutions."(36) The elections were widely seen as a contest between the PLO and communists on one side, and the pro-Jordanian politicians on the other. Israeli authorities were aware by December 1975 that communists and PLO activists were forming unified lists to contest the elections which were scheduled for April 1976.(37) The week preceding the elections, the Israeli Labor party newspaper Davar predicted a defeat for pro-Jordanian elements in the elections. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin publicly criticized Peres's elections, saying that election of pro-PLO slates would weaken Israel's position internationally.(38)

When pro-Jordanian candidates failed to contest many of the council positions, the Israeli occupation authorities twice extended the deadline for registration of candidacy. Although the first deadline came only eleven days before the elections, editorials in al-Fajr criticized the extensions of the deadlines as violations of the electoral laws.(39) The night before the elections, Peres and Israeli military officers attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the pro-Jordanian mayor of Hebron, Shaykh Muhammad All Jabari to seek re-election. Jabari had been among the closest of West Bank leaders to the Jordanian government and had served as mayor in the 1940s. Although his principal opponent for the post, the communist Ahmad Hamzah al-Natshi, was deported to Lebanon two weeks before, Jabari refused to run(.40)

The brief (3-12 April) election campaign was conducted only a few weeks following the inflammatory and heavily publicized confiscation of Arab lands in the Galilee. Pro-PNF candidates organized themselves in nationalist electoral lists called national blocs, or variations on that name such as the National Front of Tulkarm and the National Progressive Bloc of al-Birah, and waged a press campaign for the ten days preceding the elections.(41)

The results of the elections indicated a complete reversal of the relative influence of the pro-Jordanians and the PLO supporters on the West Bank from what had prevailed at the time of the 1972 elections. By Moshe Ma'oz's estimation, about forty percent of the newly elected councilors and about thirty-three percent of the new mayors "were politically nationalistic and/or leftist radical."(42) Among the councilors, thirty-one or thirty-two were affiliated with the communist party. In the twenty-four municipalities where elections were held, fourteen new mayors were elected and ten re-elected; of 205 councilors, 153 were new.(43)

The larger West Bank cities, comprising Nablus, Hebron, Ramallah, and Tulkarm, particularly reflected the communist and nationalist successes in their town councils. In Bethlehem, the pro-Jordanian mayor Elias Freij was re-elected, but the second-highest number of votes went to the communist George Hazbun. Over the course of the next year, several of the mayors emerged as a mutually cooperating leadership which openly supported the PLO. Bassam Shaka represented the largest West Bank town, Nablus. Shaka had been a member of the Ba'th Party in his youth and had been deported by Jordanian authorities in 1957. Also among this pro-PLO leadership were Mayors Fahd Qawasmah of Hebron, Karim Khalaf of Ramallah, Hilmi Hanun of Tulkarm, Ibrahim al-Tawil of Halhul.(44)

The principal task of these mayors and their supporters in the municipal councils was to prevent Israel from absorbing the occupied territories, as well as to counter similar ambitions from the Jordanian side. Therefore, in an effort to reduce dependence on Israel, the mayors began to refuse Israeli grants and loans which had been formerly used to finance municipal services and development, as the Israeli government also reduced its budgetary appropriations for the West Bank. The proportion of Israel's contribution to West Bank annual municipal budgets fell from thirty percent in 1973-74, to eighteen and a half percent in 1975-76, to seventeen percent in 1977-87, and to about seven percent in 1979-80.(45)

In the spring of 1977, West Bank mayors began traveling to the Arab gulf states to solicit donations, grants, and loans. The money began to arrive in March from Palestinians living in Saudi Arabia who financed the purchase of electrical generators for the city of Nablus.(46) (The first of these generators was shipped from West Germany in September of 1979.)(47) Less than two weeks later, an editorial in al-Fajr called for twinning Palestinian cities with other Arab cities in order to appropriate responsibility for financing municipal development in the territories.(48) In the same month, the PLO, at the Thirteenth PNC, made public its intent to send support to the cities, though it expressed doubt about its ability to secure funding.(49)

By late April, Arab cities in the Gulf region had begun pairing up with Palestinian cities.(50) Mayors from various West Bank towns, including Bethlehem's Elias Freij, began traveling to the Gulf the next month with their engineers, presenting their municipal development plans.(51) While the mayors of Hebron, Gaza, Bethlehem, and al-Birah were abroad soliciting funds, Israeli officials expressed concern that Jordan was no longer the sole source of Arab aid and decided to investigate the sources and amounts on the mayors' return.(52) Israeli authorities then forbade the mayors of Nablus, Jenin, and Ramallah from taking their planned fund-raising trip, pending submission of their development plans to Israeli authorities.(53) It was not long after the election of the mayors that the independence of the West Bank nationalist leadership began to be curtailed and the strength of the leftist-nationalist coalition greatly diminished.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE PNF

The period of 1974 to 1976 was regarded within the Palestinian national movement as a high point of resistance in the territories, and the role of the Palestinian National Front was considered central.(54) But, by 1976, the dissolution of the PNF was well underway. The organization disappeared entirely by the following year and the factors which led to its demise were still effective, if not even stronger, by the time of the attempt to revive the organization in the fall of 1979. Inside the territories, certainly the most important factor in the collapse of the PNF was its repression by Israeli authorities.(55) This intensified under the Likud-Herut government which took office in May 1977. However, developments outside the territories also served to undermine leftist-nationalist cooperation in the resistance inside.

First among these developments was the military defeat of the PLO in Lebanon in the fall of 1976 and the increased subordination of the PLO to the Arab states in an agreement underwritten by Saudi Arabia. In June 1976, Syria intervened in the Lebanese civil war, siding against the PLO and its allied Lebanese militias. The Syrian army, supported by units of the Syrian-controlled Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) and al-Sa'iqah, engaged PLO guerrilla organizations. While whole units of the PLA and al-Sa'iqah defected from the Syrian side, Zuhair Muhsin, the leader of al-Sa'iqah remained aligned with Syria.(56) Thus, the PLO was subjected to a severe test of its integrity as an organization.

The Syrian invasion of Lebanon was preceded by the August 1975 US-brokered

Sinai II Agreement and the Egyptian abrogation of the fifteen-year Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union. This effectively left the Soviet Union with Syria as its only ally among the confrontation states.(57) The Syrian action against the PLO in Lebanon in essence forced the Soviets to choose between the PLO and Syria as its favored ally. Under the circumstances, the Soviets could do little more than criticize their Syrian ally and delay arms deliveries. As for the PLO, they received only token support during the crisis when the Soviets inched toward them by opening the PLO mission in Moscow in July. The mission had been promised two years before, and it was not accorded diplomatic status until 1981.(58) When the PLO Central Council made progress toward reconciliation within the organization at a December meeting in the Syrian capital, it merited a report in Pravda which noted that "almost all the Palestinian organizations (thirty-eight of the council's forty-two members) were present."(59)

In inter-Arab relations, this meeting of the Central Council in Damascus, with its overtones of PLO submission to Syrian authority, was part of a larger agreement at the inter-Arab level. The agreement was achieved at the Riyadh Conference scarcely two months previously. Hosted by Saudi Arabia, the conference was attended by the heads of state of Egypt, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon, as well as by Chairman Arafat. The parties effectively ratified Syria's position as peace keeper in Lebanon and preserved the PLO in Lebanon with Arafat as its leader. Further, the conference ended the quarrel between Syria and Egypt which was the result of Egypt's signing of the Sinai II agreement on disengagement with Israeli forces. Thus, Saudi Arabia, which, with Kuwait, orchestrated and underwrote the agreement on the basis of its financial power, emerged as a power broker in inter-Arab affairs.(60)

This level of influence from the conservative oil states was a new phenomenon, resulting from the OPEC oil price hikes of 1973 and 1974. The steep rises in the price of oil produced a massive shift in wealth from the western industrialized countries to oil producers - most notably, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. While, at first blush, use of the "oil weapon" appeared to indicate an adversarial relationship between Arab oil-producing states and western consumer states, the effect of the oil price hikes was to expand the realm of mutual interests existing between the two. The major OPEC producers developed huge current accounts surpluses, largely denominated in US dollars. The surpluses were invested most immediately in western banks, bond markets, and equity markets, with the largest single concentration of these funds invested in the US. At the same time, western businesses rushed to tap this wealth by selling arms and technology to these countries.(61)

In inter-Arab relations, the conservative Arab oil-producing states saw their regional influence increase with their financial clout. Most notable among them was Saudi Arabia, which had long-standing and close relations with the US. The Saudis also maintained a healthy fear of any movement bearing a leftist, anti-monarchical, or secular hue. Because of the confrontation states' propensity to rely on Soviet support, the Saudi government viewed the Arab-Israeli conflict as the main reason for the Soviet presence in the region, with its attendant radical influences.(62) This outlook underlay Saudi diplomacy which exerted a strong and decisive pull over inter-Arab relations.

The effect of this was to draw Syria and the PLO toward the western-oriented Saudi-Egyptian axis and to strengthen rightist tendencies within the PLO at the expense of the left. The PLO leadership had recently begun to reach out to the US as the new Carter administration took office in 1977.(63) Indeed, the Carter administration took an active interest in a peace settlement and agreed in October 1977 to a joint communique with the Soviets that referred to "the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people" - a true innovation in American diplomacy.(64)

The weakening Soviet position in the Arab world, the assertiveness of American regional diplomacy since 1973, and the new influence of the conservative Arab monarchies encouraged rightist elements within the Palestinian movement and raised false hopes of a US-imposed solution. The PNF activist Abd al-Jawwad Salih, in an interview a few years later, placed Arafat within this faction of the leadership and reflected bitterly on the latter's miscalculation: "I believe Abu Ammar [i.e., Arafat] was gambling on the Americans.... He believes that the Americans, through the Saudis, might give him a state."(65)

Over the course of the five months between the Riyadh Conference and the Thirteenth PNC in March 1977, both Damascus and the PLO moved toward reconciliation with Jordan.(66) These events reflected Saudi preferences for a major role for Jordan in the occupied territories, as they also indicated that some of the PLO leadership were emboldened to bank on the support of the western-oriented Arab states. In an interview following the Thirteenth PNC, Salih Rafit, a member of the DFLP, commented that "... the pressure from the reactionary Arab states continues to smash our independence, force us to make concessions to Jordan, and force us to establish a union with Jordan even before going to Geneva." The deported communist Ahmad Hamzah al-Natshi, in the same interview, agreed and commented that the PLO's right to represent the Palestinians as it was decided at the Rabat conference had become "merely theoretical."(67) From inside the territories, Mayor Karim Khalaf offered the same assessment.(68)

Despite the election of a large, pro-PLO municipal leadership on the West Bank, and despite this leadership's success in securing development funds from non-Jordanian sources, Jordan still maintained extensive channels of influence on the West Bank. Jordan controlled the religious establishment on the West Bank, many welfare institutions, and some labor unions, as it also maintained passport offices on the West Bank. It paid the salaries of the staff of many of these institutions. The largest Arabic newspaper in the West Bank and Gaza, al-Quds, was under Jordanian control as well.(69)

Further, funds which were raised abroad by the mayors' delegations could not be transferred directly to the West Bank. Instead, they were deposited in Jordanian banks in Amman. They were then distributed at the discretion of the Jordanian Bureau of the Occupied Territories, under the chairmanship of Adnan Abu Awdah, Jordanian Minister of the Interior. Money could be passed to pro-Jordanian mukhtars, teachers, and others, while money could be withheld from those who resisted Jordanian involvement in the territories.(70) Thus, one aspect of the PLO-Jordanian reconciliation which began in February 1977, was the PLO's dependence on Jordan to distribute funds in the West Bank.

The PLO-Jordanian relationship was formalized and tightened after the Baghdad Arab Summit Conference in November 1978, which was organized in response to the signing of the Camp David Accords. The conference established a "Steadfastness Fund" ostensibly to continue the fight for Palestine as Egypt embarked on a separate peace with Israel. More realistically, the fund was designed to control the character of the conflict and its consequences by constricting leftist tendencies.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Republic and Qatar pledged sixty percent of the funding. The Saudi pledge, at one billion dollars, was by far the largest. A total of $150 million was dedicated to the occupied territories, in addition to another $150 million which the PLO itself was to receive. Other funds were earmarked for Syria ($1.2 billion per year) and Jordan ($1.8 billion per year). The establishment of the Steadfastness Fund indicated the extent to which nonconfrontation Arab states - and particularly the conservative Arab states of the Gulf - were willing to involve themselves in influencing the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict. During the Second Baghdad Conference of March 1979, the PLO-Jordanian dialogue intensified. On 17 March, Arafat and King Hussein met and established a committee to distribute the $150 million "steadfastness" fund, which the first Baghdad conference had dedicated for the development of the occupied territories. The PLO-Jordanian Joint Committee was co-chaired by the PLO's Hamid Abu Sittah and Adrian Abu Awdah.(71)

The PLO, for all its mistrust of Jordan, found itself dependent on that country as a conduit for the funds. The left-wing guerrilla organizations - particularly the DFLP and the PFLP - opposed the relationship on the grounds that the benefits accrued disproportionately to Jordan. Although the Fourteenth PNC of January 1979 ratified the PLO-Jordanian dialogue, the DFLP's Nayif Hawatmah and the PFLP's George Habash renewed the call for the overthrow of King Hussein.(72)

In July 1979, World Marxist Review provided the medium for JCP member Naim Asshab to assess the state of PLO affairs. His comments provide a window on the position of the leftists in the Palestinian national movement at that point. Asshab criticized the Arab states which used their financial power to meddle in PLO affairs. In this vein, he claimed that Arab states had exercised pressure during the Fourteenth PNC to remove leftists from key PLO posts in order to win US recognition of the PLO. Asshab demanded that full control of material for the straggle in the territories be vested in the PNF and he warned that the dialogue with Jordan should not take precedence over the straggle against imperialism. He also justified a Soviet role in the region and defended a two-state solution to the conflict.(73)

The expanded influence of the conservative Arab states in PLO affairs as described by Asshab seems to be an amplification of trends well under way by 1977 and which, in some measure, led to the collapse of the PNF in that same year. In the PNF's March 1977 letter to the Thirteenth PNC, the Front expressed concern over schisms between left and right wings of the Palestinian national movement, as it also warned against anti-communist and anti-Soviet campaigns within the movement. The letter also pointed out the danger of the prevailing tendency of Arab states to involve themselves in PLO affairs, leading potentially to an accommodation of American strategy. Additionally, the Front emphasized in its letter the necessity of the PLO's attending a reconvened Geneva conference and of the impracticality of a policy aimed at the total liberation of Palestine.(74)

The PNF's letter could not have laid to rest doubts within the PLO leadership about the leading role of the communists. These doubts were expressed as early as 1975 within the PLO Central Council. The suspicions prevailed through the time of the failure to re-establish the PNF in the fall of 1979, as the rightist tendencies within the PLO were strengthened. Indeed, there were fears within the leadership at this time that the PNF was developing as an alternative leadership to the PLO and that the front was exhibiting too much freedom of action.(75)

The PNF collapsed as its activists in the territories found themselves between the hammer and the anvil. The PLO leadership on the outside effectively dissolved the Front by putting pressure on leftist elements, while the Israeli occupation authorities suppressed the Front inside the territories. Dakkak indicates that the forcing of the communist Bashir al-Barghuti from his position as editor of al-Fajr was one manifestation of the PLO leadership's tactic.(76) Sahliyeh's version of events emphasizes instead the fact that the PNF was not permitted to operate freely, while the mayors after April 1976 took the leading role in the movement on the West Bank.(77) Both agree, however, that the events on the outside were decisive in preventing the re-establishment of the PNF in 1979.(78) The attempt to reestablish the PNF was one of the events that reflected the left-right schism in Palestinian politics.

LEFT-RIGHT SCHISMS IN WEST BANK POLITICS

In the period following the signing of the Camp David Accords, open political activity, which had declined markedly during the previous year, resurfaced again in the occupied territories. At this time, the Israeli authorities permitted a greater degree of overt political activity in hopes of raising a local leadership that would aid them in implementing the autonomy provisions of the accords.(79)

Between 1 October and 7 November 1979, four public rallies were permitted in the territories. At the first, in East Jerusalem, a committee of West Bank leaders known as the National Guidance Council (NGC) was formed to coordinate opposition to the Camp David Accords, and it included several pro-Jordanian mayors. The rallies, under the NGC's sponsorship, gave expression to popular opposition to the accords. The third rally, held on 16 October at Bethlehem University, followed Jordan's announcement of its repudiation of the Accords. Thus, pro-Jordanian leaders such as Elias Freij and Hana al-Atrash (mayor of Bayt Sahur) were able to attend, though Freij was met with derision on the part of pro-PLO mayors Bassam Shaka and Karim Khalaf. (Anwar al-Khatib, pro-Jordanian former governor of the Jerusalem district, refused to attend the rally.) After the fourth rally manifested a high level of popular opposition to the accords, the Israeli authorities banned further rallies.(80)

Nonetheless, Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan attempted unsuccessfully over the course of the next year to persuade local leaders to come out in favor of the autonomy plan, for which he was vehemently criticized within the Israeli government for his willingness to meet with pro-PLO leaders.(81) Opposition to the Camp David Accords was the unifying factor in the National Guidance Council. Its twenty-three members had little else in common as a group. By Sahliyeh's estimation, ten council members were oriented toward the Fatah mainstream, four supported the rejectionist camp, and four were communists. While another four members tended to be pro-Jordanian, mayors Freij and al-Shawwa, as well as Anwar al-Khatib were denied admission to the NGC.(82)

Politics in the territories continued to reflect the inroads made by the supporters of the Fatah-Jordanian alliance against the left-nationalist and communist tendencies in the territories. With the formalization of the PLO-Jordanian relationship between the Baghdad summit conference of December 1978 and March 1979 PNC, the competition for the control of institutions in the territories intensified and turned in favor of the Fatah-Jordanian partisans as the conservative Arab states and the PLO-Jordanian Joint Committee withheld funding from leftist mayors and officials.(83) The most palpable manifestations of this rivalry showed itself in three cases: the labor dispute at the East Jerusalem Electrical Company, in the attempt to re-establish the PNF, and in the collective resignation of the West Bank mayors - all in 1979.

The labor dispute at the East Jerusalem Electrical Company in July and August revolved around bread-and-butter issues including tying the workers' wages to the Jordanian dinar instead of the rapidly depreciating Israeli shekel, family heath insurance plans, collective housing, and educational scholarships for workers' children.(84) Yet the dispute was more than this because the electrical company was a Jordanian firm, its board of directors chaired by Elias Freij. The workers in the dispute were represented by the General Federation of Trade Unions, one of the principal communist strongholds among West Bank institutions.(85) At the time of the dissolution of the Federation in 1981 (itself a consequence of the communist-nationalist rivalry), communists controlled twelve of the thirty constituent unions and held leading positions in the rest.(86)

Freij, apparently feeling that workers' demands could not be reconciled with the company's monthly losses of thirty million Israeli shekels, resigned and complained of communist and rejectionist agitation in the affair.(87) Leftist mayors favored Karim Khalaf as the replacement to Freij.(88) When the matter came to arbitration, it was done in Amman, through the PLO-Jordanian Joint Committee, thus indicating the weak position of the leftists in West Bank affairs at that point.(89) Predictably, the Joint Committee appointed a pro-Jordanian, Anwar Nusaybah, to chair the company.(90) In addition to having to submit to the will of the PLO-Jordanian committee, the Federation's position was also weakened by the fact that the Israeli newspapers Davar and Ha-Aretz published articles indicating that there were plans to substitute an Israeli directorate for the failing company's Arab directorate.(91) Thus, if the workers were to show any sense of nationalism, it would be difficult for them to push their demands. This outcome indicated the Fatah-Jordanian coalition's strength in the competition for the control of West Bank institutions.

The attempt to re-establish the PNF in 1979 also indicated that a struggle was taking place between Fatah and leftist politicians in the territories. The initiative for the re-establishment came from an eight-member preparatory committee in the territories, representing politicians who opposed the PLO's accommodation with Jordan. They therefore opposed completely the Joint Committee which made the Jordanian government a partner in West Bank political life and institutions, as they also demanded a general reduction in Jordanian involvement on the West Bank.

As with the first PNF, the West Bank communists took a leading role in initiating the organization and the formulation of its program. Representatives of the Ba'th Party, the DFLP, and a limited Fatah presence also were involved again. However, in the second formulation, the PFLP, which was not involved in the first PNF, was represented in the preparatory committee.(92) The PNF's leftist diplomatic orientation was clear from its policy declaration which called for a reorientation of the PLO's diplomacy by strengthening its ties with "progressive" Arab states, the socialist camp, and the Soviet Union.(93) The PLO Executive Committee's opposition to the program of the PNF was so strong that the Front did not survive the organizational stage. Its demise was hastened by the arrest of the Front's preparatory committee by the Israeli authorities in mid-October 1979.(94)

A third indication of the leftist leadership's conflict with the then-current orientation of the PLO was the collective resignation of the mayors in November 1979. This measure was taken in protest against the arrest and intended deportation of Bassam al-Shaka, following Israeli press allegations that Shaka had spoken in support of the PLO's March 1978 attack on a bus in which thirty-four Israelis were killed. Two days after the arrest, thirteen mayors, collectively resigned, while a second group including Qawasmah, Freij, and al-Shawwa favored a mediation attempt before resigning.(95)

The PLO leadership opposed the collective resignation and, in late November, the PLO-Jordanian Joint Committee blocked municipal funds held in Amman as a means of pressuring the mayors to reverse their decision.(96) A dissident voice was heard outside the territories from the DFLP's Nayif Hawatmah. In a speech reflecting the prevailing riff in the PLO leadership regarding the relationship with Jordan, Hawatmah supported the resignations and criticized the PLO leaders who attempted to discourage them.(97) In the event, all the mayors defied the PLO's orders and resigned, forcing the PLO leadership on the outside to change its stance to one of support. In early December, the occupation authorities rescinded the deportation order.(98)

The reaction to the Shaka incident marked the end of overt collective action by the elected, pro-PLO West Bank leadership, as it also marked the end of the influence of the leftists within this group. Within the next seven months, this leadership was restricted by pressures from both the Israeli side and the Fatah-Jordanian coalition in Amman. In June, mayors Khalaf and Shaka were maimed in assassination attempts conducted by Israeli settlers.(99) In this atmosphere, the National Guidance Council ceased to function. The institutions through which West Bank nationalist politics could be relatively openly conducted had been stifled completely by the summer of 1980. Over the next few years, the Israeli occupation authorities attempted without success to cultivate a compliant rural leadership to take the place of the pro-PLO mayors.(100) The futility of these policies was ultimately demonstrated by the outbreak of the intifada in December 1987.

CONCLUSIONS

Only a month after the collapse of the second Palestine National Front, the Soviet Union further undermined the standing of its advocates in the Arab and Islamic world with its invasion of Afghanistan. The invasion at first appeared to be a display of strength. But, with the benefit of hindsight, it now seems the invasion merely added to the string of setbacks for the Soviets in the Middle East since the early 1970s and represented a final, pointless attempt to hang on to Super Power status. Palestinian leftists saw their constituencies erode as the Soviet Union further sullied its reputation and failed as a counterweight to US influence and diplomacy. The PLO leadership continued to seek American recognition until contacts broke down during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and American diplomacy engineered the PLO's evacuation from Beirut with little regard for Soviet concerns.(101)

Inside the territories, a fledgling Islamist movement slowly emerged as the leftists saw their influence surge and recede. Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, later the leader of Hamas, established an Islamic center in Gaza in 1973. The Israeli occupation authorities initially encouraged the Islamists in order to offset the attraction of the PLO and the communists. Beginning in 1979, the Israelis even financed the Islamic movement until they realized their mistake and tried in vain to suppress the movement in 1984. Only four years later, the Islamists joined in the intifada.(102)

The intifada permitted the PLO to rerum its attention to the territories. With Israel compelled to forcefully quell a populist uprising, the PLO seized the opportunity at the 1988 PNC, recognized Israel, and demanded a two-state solution to the conflict. This had all been presaged by the Palestine National Front early in the previous decade. The PNF advocated the primacy of national institution building and resistance inside the territories, leading to an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. However powerful the logic of this approach may have been at the time, it fell victim to the interests which it threatened, both inside and outside the territories.

NOTES

1. The question of patronage in the Palestinian Authority surfaces in Graham Usher, "Palestinian Leadership in Despair," Middle East International 562 (7 November 1997): 3-4; Usher, "Extortion and Torture: Behind the Territories' Other Political Economy," Ibid. 583 (18 September 1998): 17-18; Khalid Amayreh, "Arafat's Reshuffle," Ibid. 577 (19 June 1998): 4.

2. For a brief overview of these developments, see Salim Tamari, "Left in Limbo: Leninist Heritage and Islamist Challenge," Merip Reports no. 6 (November-December 1992): 16-21.

3. L. Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Games (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 5.

4. Galia Golan, Soviet Policies in the Middle East (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 98; Nadav Safran, Israel: The Embattled Ally (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1981), pp. 432 ff.; Adam Ulam, Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970-1982 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 39 ff. See especially 44-47, 52-53, and 59-60.

5. Robert O. Freedman, Soviet Policy Toward the Middle East Since 1970, 3d ed. (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1982), pp. 257 ff., 285 ff., and 308309; Golan, Soviet Policies, pp. 113 if.

6. Galia Golan, "Soviet-PLO Relations and the Creation of a Palestinian State", paper no. 36 (Jerusalem: The Soviet and East European Research Center, 1979), pp. 6 ff. and 21 ff.

7. Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980), p. 165.

8. Moshe Ma'oz, Palestinian Leadership on the West Bank: The Changing Role of the Arab Mayors Under Jordan and Israel (London: Frank Cass, 1984), pp. 106-108 and 114 ff.

9. "Discussion: Issues in the National Struggle in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," Shu'un Filastiniyah 118 (September 1981): 55-56.

10. Ibid., pp. 46-57, and passim.

11. Ibid., pp. 66-67.

12. Ma'oz, p. 114.

13. Ibrahim Dakkak, "Back to square One: A Study of the Re-emergence of the Palestinian Identity in the West Bank, 1967-1980," in Alexander Scholch, ed., Palestinians Over the Green Line: Studies on the Relations Between Palestinians on Both Sides of the 1949 Armistice Line Since 1967 (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), p. 95.

14. Freedman, pp. 75-76, 83-89, 103-104.

15. Musa Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948 (London: Ithaca Press, 1979), pp. 165, 185 ff.

16. Amnon Cohen, Political Parties in the West Bank Under the Jordanian Regime 1949-1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 28-33.

17. Emile Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics Since 1967 (Washington, DC.: The Brookings Institution, 1988), p. 90; Fahmi Salfiti, "The Situation in Jordan and Communist Tactics," World Marxist Review 10-11 (October-November 1968): 89.

18. Sahliyeh, p. 91; Golan, "Soviet-PLO Relations", p. 21.

19. Amnon Kapeliuk, "Communists in the West Bank," New Outlook 4 (May 1980): 19.

20. Sahliyeh, p. 93.

21. Ibid., p. 53.

22. Dakkak, p. 77; "Letter to the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization from the Palestine National Front in the Occupied Territories, 1 December 1973," Journal of Palestine Studies 3 (Spring 1974): 187188; "Part of the Declaration of the Palestine National Front in the Occupied Territories on the Issue of Representation of the Palestinian People and Their Just Rights," al-Watha'iq al-Filastiniyah al-'Arabiyah li 'Am 1974 [Palestinian Arab Documents for the Year 1974, cited hereafter as PAD 1974] (Beirut: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1976), p. 30.

23. Quoted in Dakkak, p. 77. See also PAD 1974, p. 30.

24. Ibid., the second source, pp. 30-31.

25. Ibid. p. 31.

26. "Letter to the Executive Committee," pp. 189-190.

27. Naim Asshab, "Program for National Palestinian Unity," World Marxist Review 7 (July 1979): 59. Communists were admitted to the PLO Executive Committee at the 1987 PNC. Golan, Soviet Policies, p. 123.

28. Alain Gresh, The PLO: The Struggle Within, trans. A.M. Berrett (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1985), p. 166 ff.

29. Ibid., pp. 138 ff., 144 ff., 157 ff.

30. "Documents: Torture and Terror in the Occupied Territories," al-Tali'ah 11 (November 1974): pp. 125 ff.

31. Sahliyeh, p. 93.

32. Helena Cobban, "Arab Resistance Wind Blows on the West Bank," Christian Science Monitor, 16 December 1976, p. 8.

33. Ma'oz, p. 116.

34. Sahliyeh, pp. 116 ff., Cohen, pp. 60-70.

35. Ma'oz, p. 133-135.

36. Al-Fajr, 23 November 1975, p. 1. All citations of al-Fajr refer to the Arabic-language daily, not to the English weekly.

37. Al-Fajr, 30 December 1975, p. 1. Citing the Jeursalem Post.

38. Al-Fajr, 5 April 1976, p. 1; ibid., 6 April.

39. Al-Fajr, 2 April 1976, p. 1.

40. Ma'oz, pp. 8-9, 25, 134, 136.

41. See the front page of any issue of al-Fajr, 3-12 April 1976. See especially the 12 April issue.

42. Ma'oz, p. 137.

43. Ibid., pp. 136-137.

44. Yehuda Litani, "Leadership in the West Bank and Gaza," The Jerusalem Quarterly 14 (Winter 1980): 103-105; Ma'oz, pp. 138-139.

45. Ibid., the second source, p. 142.

46. Al-Fajr, 16 March 1976, p. 1. An interview with the mayor of Dura indicates that, prior to that time, grants to the West Bank had come only from Jordan and Israel. Al-Fajr, 13 March 1976, p. 4.

47. Al-Fajr, 5 September 1979, p. 4.

48. Al-Fajr, 24 March 1977, p. 1.

49. Al-Fajr, 4 May 1977, p. 1.

50. Al-Fajr, 27 March 1977, p. 1.

51. Al-Fajr, 4 May 1977, p. 1; 11 May, p. 2; 15 May, p. 2; 23 May p. 3; 24 May, p. 2.

52. Al-Fajr, 4 May 1977, p. 1. Citing Ma'ariv.

53. Al-Fajr, 16 May 1977, p. 1.

54. "Discussion," Shu'un Filastiniyah, p. 57; Dakkak, p. 78.

55. "Interview: Fahd Qawasmah Talks About His Experience in the Mayoralty of Hebron and in Political Work," Shu'un Filastiniyah 107 (October 1980): 41.

56. R.D. McClaurin, "The PLO and the Fertile Crescent," in Richard Augustus Norton and Martin H. J. Greenberg, eds., The International Relations of the Palestine Liberation Organization (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 1989), p. 38.

57. Freedman, p. 236.

58. John C. Reppert, "The Soviets and the PLO: The Convenience of Politics," in International Relations of the PLO, pp. 120 and 122.

59. Golan, The Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization, p. 200.

60. Gresh, p. 203; Freedman, pp. 265 ff.

61. Sharif Ghalib, "Some of the Oil Dollars Become Oil Deutsch Marks," Euromoney (April 1979), pp. 83 ff.; Christopher L. Bach, "OPEC Transactions in the US International Accounts, 1972-1977," Survey of Current Business (April 1978), pp. 23 ff.; "The Race to Export to the Middle East," Banker 125 (March 1975), p. 285.

62. William B. Quandt, Saudi Arabia in the 1980s (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1981), pp. 30-31.

63. Jamal R. Nassar, The Palestine Liberation Organization.' From Armed Struggle to the Declaration of Independence (New York: Praeger Press, 1991), pp. 153-154.

64. Steven L. Spiegel, The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 338.

65. "Interview: 'Abd al-Jawwad Salih," Merip Reports (November-December 1983): 27.

66. Al-Fajr, 9 March 1977, p. 1; 10 March, pp. 2 and 4; Gresh, p. 204.

67. Al-Fajr, 23 May 1977, p. 4. Citing The Middle East.

68. Ma'oz, p. 144.

69. Litani, pp. 102-103.

70. Salim Tamari, "The Palestinian Demand for Independence Cannot Be Postponed Indefinitely," Merip Reports 100-101 (October-December 1981): 23-24; Asher Susser "Jordanian Influence on the West Bank" Jerusalem Quarterly 8 (Summer 1978): 59-61; Abraham Sella, "The PLO, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Ibid., p. 75.

71. Elie Rekhess, "The West Bank and Gaza Strip" in Middle East Contemporary Survey (cited hereafter as MECS III), 1978-1979, Colin Legum, Haim Shaked and Daniel Dishon, eds. (New York: Holmes and Meir Publishers, Inc., 1980), pp. 317 and 324; Daniel Dishon, "Inter-Arab Relations" in Ibid., p. 317.

72. Asher Susser, "The Palestinian Liberation Organization" in MECS 1979-80 IV(1981), p. 250.

73. Asshab, World Marxist Review pp. 57-59.

74. Dakkak, pp. 77-79.

75. "Discussion" Shu'un Filastiniyah, pp. 47-48, 57, 60-62, 64, 66-67.

76. Dakkak, pp. 78-80.

77. Sahliyeh, pp. 62-63.

78. Ibid., pp. 77 ff.; Dakkak, p. 85.

79. Rekhess, MECS III, pp. 333-334.

80. Ibid., pp. 315 and 333-334; Rekhess, MECS IV, pp. 273-274.

81. Al-Fajr, 1 September 1979, p. 2 and 8 September, p. 2; "West Bank Mayors: US Policy Is Always Against Us," Merip Reports 83 (December 1979), pp. 6, 7, and 9. Dayan held the post of Foreign Minister as an independent in the Herut-Likud government until October 1979. Itamar Rabinovich and Yehuda Reinharz, eds., Israel in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), Appendix.

82. Sahliyeh, pp. 72-73, p. 73 note 56, and p. 102 note 48.

83. "West Bank and Gaza," The Economist 7127 (22 March 1980), p. 43.

84. Al-Fajr, 16 April 1979, p. 5.

85. Al-Fajr, 15 July 1979, p. 4.

86. Sahliyeh, p. 104.

87. Al-Fajr, 2 August 1979, p. 1; Dakkak, p. 100 note 146.

88. Ma'oz, p. 75.

89. Al-Fajr, 9 August 1979.

90. Ma'oz, p. 175.

91. Al-Fajr, 16 August 1979, pp. 1 and 5.

92. Sahliyeh, p. 78-80.

93. Arabi Awwad, "On Palestinian National Unity," Shu'un Filastiniyah 94 (September 1979): 139.

94. Sahliyah, p. 80; Al-Fajr, 13 October 1979, p. 1. Citing Yidi'ot Aharonot.

95. Rekhess, MECS IV, pp. 270 and 272.

96. Ibid., p. 283.

97. "Speech by Mr. Nayif Hawatmah, Secretary General of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 18 November 1979," PAD 1979 (1981), p. 486.

98. Rekhess, MECS IV, pp. 173 and 272.

99. Sahliyeh, pp. 83 ff., and Ma'oz, pp. 195-199.

100. Salim Tamari, "In League with Zion: Israel's Search for a Native Pillar," Journal of Palestine Studies 12 (Summer 1983): 41-56.

101. Spiegel, pp. 418-419.

102. Dilip Hiro, "The Rise of Hamas (1): Israel's Nemesis," Middle East International 562 (7 November 1997): 17-18.

Weldon C. Matthews is an assistant professor of history at Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania. The author wishes to thank Professors Rashid Khalidi and Valentine Moghadam for their criticisms and invaluable comments.