Each month, we will be conducting a review of a recent book that deals with issues relating to Palestine and/or the Israel/Palestine conflict. Books that are chosen for review can be academic or non-academic, historical or fictional. Next month we will be reviewing Palestinian and Israeli Public Opinion: The Public Imperative in the Second Intifada by Jacob Shamir and Khalil Shikaki. If you would like to suggest a book for review, please contact the Palestine Center.
"Palestinian Politics After Arafat" written by As’ad Ghanem
Hardcover:222 pages, Indiana University Press (January 5, 2010)
By Yousef Munayyer
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Courtesy Of "The Palestine Center"
As’ad Ghanem’s latest book Palestinian Politics after Arafat is just that type of contribution. In his analysis of the Palestinian national movement, focused on the post-Oslo period, Ghanem points out the various shortcomings of the movement at critical junctures. It should be noted that for Ghanem, the main agent in the national movement he analyzes is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in its multiple forms.
In an introductory and methodological chapter, the author outlines a number of different metrics for the success and failure of social movements. This first chapter is far more theoretical than the remainder of the book, which is largely a historical overview and discussion of relevant data. Though these metrics are varied and the academic literature on social movements is not completely in agreement on particular metrics for success and failure, Ghanem pulls on the common thread that binds the various approaches and uses this as the guide for the remainder of his study: “If we accept the argument that success means achievement of the goals that the national movement has set itself, it is clear that failure is a situation in which the national movement does not achieve these objectives, especially after a reasonable period of time has elapsed.”
So instead of selecting metrics that will allow him to trace the progress, or lack thereof, of the Palestinian national movement, Ghanem opts to identify a threshold beyond which a national movement is to be considered failed in an attempt to side-step disagreement on metrics within the literature. While some might argue that this approach takes the study out of the context of the preceding literature, it is unlikely to affect the veracity of his conclusions.
Setting the context for the national movement in the post-Oslo period, Ghanem discusses Israeli strategy during and just before the beginning of the Oslo period. He shows how their decision-making was based on eliminating the demographic threat of Palestinians, and moving the dispute from the direction of conflict resolution to conflict management. The argument is that Israel permitted Palestinians to practice partial self-determination via the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) but never permitted sovereignty. In this fashion, Israel was able to simultaneously marginalize the demographic threat, maintain its colonial enterprise in the occupied Palestinian land, and curtail both the resources and objectives of the PLO and the PNA as entities in the national movement.
Ghanem also provides various data on Israeli public opinion during the Oslo period which shows some flexibility toward making an agreement with Palestinians, but is still far from support for the minimum concessions necessary to meet the requirements of international law and basic Palestinian demands. In his first chapter, Ghanem indicates that the ability to convince the target audience is the measure of the success of a national movement. He concludes that the ongoing rigidity in Israeli public opinion is a reflection of the Palestinian movement’s inability to sufficiently argue the justness of their cause to the Israeli audience.
The argument continues with a discussion of the internal workings of the Palestinian national movement, the consolidation of control at the top -- first with Yasser Arafat and then with Mahmoud Abass -- and the movement’s reluctance to reform necessary institutions. The question of succession, which followed the death of Yasser Arafat, threw the Palestinian movement into a tailspin, as it was unable to reform its representative institutions in a way that would produce representative leadership to sufficiently fill the void left by Arafat.
The argument comes to a close with a discussion of the disintegration of the movement into rival camps between Hamas and Fateh, another factor which Ghanem argues in the introduction is a clear indication that the national movement has crossed the threshold of failure.
As’ad Ghanem’s study on the Palestinian national movement in the period after the Oslo Accords is an important argument that has implications not only on the future of the Palestinian movement, but also for those engaging this movement strategically, like foreign policy-makers around the globe. For Palestinians, this is a critical, introspective and absolutely necessary analysis of their movement for national liberation. For the rest of the world, this should serve as an explanation for why Palestinians urgently need the assistance of the international community to end Israel’s colonization and aggression: because thus far they have been unable to do so alone.
Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This book review may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.
The views in this review are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.
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