Publication
Omar Shaban Ismail · EuroMeSCo / IAI · 2016
Chapter for EuroMeSCo on why Palestinian youth responses to the Arab uprisings differed, including the 15 March 2012 unity protests and later options.
The Arab Spring and the Palestinian Youth Movement: Different Challenges and Priorities Omar Shaban * * Director, Pal-Think, Gaza It can be stated with great confidence that the Palestinian people in general, and the Palestinian youth in particular, were the most excited of all the Arab peoples by the Arab Spring that began in December 2010 in Tunisia before spreading to Egypt and other countries in the region. They hoped that the Arab Spring would be the long-awaited means to bring about a more committed leadership of reformed Arab states to provide support to stop the Israeli occupation; to end their humiliating treatment by the Arab regimes; and to help in the process of Hamas-Fatah national reconciliation de facto stalled since the two parties’ Inqisam (division) in 2007. It did not take long for Palestinian youth to realise that their cause was being left behind by the Arab Spring, which turned into an Arab counter-revolution and massacres of protesting civilians if not open civil wars within relatively few months. Palestinian young people came very quickly to the conclusion that they would need to change their own reality through their own tools. These were highly constrained by the unique circumstances of the Palestinian environment.
This chapter discusses the key ways out of the impasse in which the Palestinian youth movement, which took different shapes in the Gaza Strip compared to the situation in the West Bank due to the different contexts as explained below, finds itself. It outlines some strategies that involve a series of structural steps and reforms, such as university reforms and elections, local elections and the promotion of civil and intellectual freedoms. To explain these strategies, it first provides a background to the political context, then it reviews the general hopes raised in Palestinian youth by the Arab Spring. The following section describes similarities and differences between the situation of Palestinian and other Arab youth. It then delves into specific Palestinian youth actions to redress its grievances between
2011 and 2015. It also analyses the persistent obstacles to these actions and deepened youth frustration as a result. It concludes with the way forward and some recommendations.
3.1 The Political Context
The West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip were occupied by Israel in 1967. Since then, these areas were under military Israeli administration until 1994 when the Palestinian Authority, PA, was created by virtue of the Oslo Peace Accord between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO, which was and still is the representative of the Palestinian people inside the Palestinian territories and among the diaspora. According to this agreement, the PA was given a very limited governing authority over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements are not part of the PLO and came into existence at least two decades after the PLO was established in 1964. These movements openly reject the Oslo Accords and routinely call for its cancellation. The first parliamentary and presidential elections occurred in 1996. These elections were boycotted by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. However, Hamas participated in the 2nd parliamentary elections which occurred in January 2006, leading to Hamas winning 74 seats of the 132 seats available and forming the government. Tension and bloody fights between Hamas and the PA occurred in the Gaza Strip throughout 2006-2007, which ended in June 2007 with the de facto political division of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that came under two separate authorities. The President of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, dissolved the government and dismissed Hamas, which – in response – rejected the presidential decree and remained in control of Gaza.
After Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007, Israel reacted by imposing the blockage of the strip and heavily restricting the free movement of people and goods from and into the territory. Palestinians from Gaza who were living in the West Bank were forced to go back, while leaving Gaza was restricted to “exceptional humanitarian cases.” Since then, the Gaza Strip has been periodically subjected to air, land and sea blockades by Israel and Egypt (Masi, 2014). As a result, the Palestinian cause has become more complicated and the Palestinian people have suffered not only the occupation but also the internal division between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In this light, while the main concerns of youth in Gaza has been on lifting the Israeli blockage, youth in the West Bank have mainly had to confront the internal political division.
3.2 The Arab Spring: Palestinian Youth Hopes
Before the Arab Spring, the Palestinian cause featured in the political rhetoric of most Arab regimes. Political action on behalf of the Palestinians and/or against the Israeli occupation was, however, extremely limited and divided. With few exceptions, each Arab regime’s political and financial alliances, and their understanding of their national security interests, moved either collective or individual Arab pressure on Israel, Fatah or Hamas to end either the occupation or the division far down their political agenda. Even the unprecedented 2008-09 Israeli war on Gaza had very little effect on these dynamics. This first of three wars on Gaza in six years was not game-changing in diplomatic terms or in the action of Arab states – as many Palestinians might reasonably have hoped that it would be.
The Palestinian people soon noted – for many with high levels of disappointment – that Palestine was not among the top priorities of the early Arab Spring: neither in Tunisia, nor in Egypt’s Tahrir Square. This was the case even if Palestine, and especially the second Intifada, had been one of the key mobilising agents of the rare mass demonstrations in the Arab countries across the previous decade. However, with pragmatism and understanding, Palestinians accepted that, at this early stage of their awakening, the Arab nations had to concentrate on the problems and demands of their own peoples, such as economic and social equality, democracy and transitional justice. It was hoped that once these demands were addressed, Palestine would be the next priority for the would-be newborn Arab regimes.
The Palestinians are all too aware of the limited possibilities of obtaining their political rights without the support of the key Arab countries (especially Egypt) and the international community. Trying to do so without Arab support runs the risk of alienating key Arab countries, by seeming to make the Palestinian cause a priority over these states’ own domestic processes of reform. The Palestinian people in occupied Palestine, however, who suffer the existence of three overlapping authorities – the PA in the West Bank, Hamas in Gaza, and, crucially, the Israeli occupation of both areas – hurried to try to emulate the Arab Spring demonstrations. The young generations were especially enthusiastic that Arab Spring demonstrations seemed largely initiated and led by Arab youth, who for the first time in living memory at least seemed to have the power to challenge the “deep police state” with some chance of success.
3.3 A Palestinian Spring?
As the Arab Spring unrest started to unfold, the grievances of Palestinian youth might reasonably have appeared similar to those of youth elsewhere in the region, with the crucial distinction that the root causes of most of these grievances were ultimately determined not by their own governments but by a nearly 50-year military occupation. Like youth elsewhere, Palestinian youth had had to face decades of political authoritarianism and more or less violent repression of any political mobilisation that challenged existing power structures including both Israel and, since the Oslo Accords, the PA, but overwhelmingly the occupation. Their political and social horizons were limited by the lack of political freedoms and widespread unemployment, meaning very severely constrained options for political, educational and individual development, or for challenging the political system(s) as a whole on which their limited opportunities depended, and that determined every aspect of their lives.
Palestinian youth, however, also had very distinctive grievances related to the uniqueness of their situation, caught between the Israeli occupation, on the one hand, and, on the other, since the division, increasingly authoritarian rule by Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Palestinian youth did not have a single government to overthrow: in theory at least, they had three. A mass movement to overthrow the government of both parties at once, on the model of the mass movements elsewhere in the region, would thus have been incoherent: it would have left in place the de facto government of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza: the Israeli occupation. The premise for even slightly improving the freedoms and opportunities of Palestinian youth was therefore reforms or political dynamics that could lead to lowering the increasing authoritarianism of one or both Palestinian governing parties with a view to providing greater space for youth political action along the lines described at the end of this paper. Broader socio-political conditions, such as mass unemployment in Gaza, depended on larger factors such as Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza, and the international politics indirectly supporting or sponsoring it. If other Arab youth, then, could reasonably hope that overthrowing their authoritarian governments could lead directly (even if slowly) to fundamental improvement in their economic and social conditions, Palestinians knew that gaining greater political freedoms (e.g., freedom of expression) by ending the division of rival Fatah and Hamas governments could be only a first step. The more substantial change in socioeconomic conditions desired by Arab youth everywhere could, for Palestinians, only come about through a second stage in which an effective movement to end Israeli occupation would emerge from these greater freedoms.
3.4 Palestinian Youth Actions and Forms of Mobilisation
As already mentioned, Palestinian youth have been closely following the Arab Spring led by Arab youth with great admiration. They thus hurried to copy it with the ultimate aim of bringing positive change into their reality. One of the first concrete actions was to call for mass protest to end the division by using social media as in many other parts of the Arab world. The chosen date was 15 March 2011. This outbreak of youth activism was positively welcomed by Palestinian society in general, but was also confronted with significant worries and suspicion from the two national authorities, Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank.
On 15 March 2011, thousands of Palestinian youths gathered in the West Bank and Gaza, calling primarily to end the then 4-year-old division between Fatah and Gaza. This became known as the “15 March Movement”. Unfortunately but predictably, their movement was stillborn, meeting with severe policing measures from both national authorities in the West Bank and Gaza. Before the 15 March Movement, but also afterwards, Palestinian youth activism was characterised by a very high degree of political polarisation along party lines, especially so since the division was institutionalised in 2007. With some exceptions, and despite attempts to promote a youth movement more independent from political party control, much if not all national-level youth political actions remained constrained by taking place within the framework of rival political parties (e.g., their youth wings), including within universities. Any major attempt to develop a movement outside party-political dynamics became especially difficult once the division was institutionalised and Fatah and Hamas became especially wary of any mass political mobilisation that would escape their control or challenge their authority in the West Bank or Gaza.
A deeper reason for the failure was disagreement within the youth movement itself. The main division lines concerned who and what should be regarded as the primary target of this movement and the question of whether several targets could be effectively confronted at once. Should they focus on the Israeli occupation first? Or should they instead face their own national authorities, which were and remain chronically divided? How could – and should – the protest movement focus on both simultaneously and, crucially, with real effectiveness? If the movement focused mainly on the West Bank or Gaza, how could it avoid being accused, by supporters of either Fatah or Hamas, of being just another tool in the political struggle between the two parties? If it left the occupation in the background of its slogans and actions, how could it avoid being accused of ignoring it by both Hamas and the PA? Was any “revolution” or sustained mass popular movement possible in the presence of an immovable occupation, and of the PA’s “security coordination” with Israel in the West Bank that further limited the possible size and place of protests to small areas in the major town centres tightly-controlled by the PA? The single major achievement of the 15 March Movement was to put pressure on both national authorities, which eventually led them to their first reconciliation agreement that was signed in Cairo in May 2011, followed by a second one in Doha in February 2012. These agreements, however, remained on paper only, until a more comprehensive agreement, the Beach Camp Agreement, was signed on 23 April 2014, in which Hamas and Fatah agreed on a national consensus government, which was born on 2 June 2014. All in all, the more general goals and means of the 15 March Movement thus remained tied to the broader dynamics of national politics, the programmes of political parties and the rivalries between their political programmes (e.g., supporting or opposing negotiations with Israel and/or on what terms). Both the Palestinian youth movement and the national movement claimed to seek to end the Israeli occupation and the division between Fatah and Hamas. The West Bank/Gaza division itself, however, also institutionalised disagreement on the means by which this could or should be achieved and on what organised mass youth political action to confront the occupation could look like in practice in each of the two parts of Palestinian territory which include the Gaza Strip and West bank cut off from each other.
With regards to the forerunners of the 15 March Movement, their goals and methods of action, the older Hirak Shebabi (youth movement) focused on “popular Intifada” methods of confrontation with Israel, especially around the West Bank wall. However, it remained confined to the West Bank, where some direct confrontation with Israeli soldiers still remains possible. In Gaza, since Israel’s 2005 disengagement, the possibility of direct popular youth confrontation with Israeli soldiers has been all but impossible, except for rare and exceptionally dangerous marches to the Israeli-imposed buffer zone. More recently, the latest, online-only incarnation of a youth-based protest movement in Gaza was named Tamarrod (uprising) to echo the protest mass movement that prompted the Egyptian army to depose Egypt’s elected President, Mohammed Morsi, on 30 June 2013, on the first anniversary of his election. The Palestinian Tamarrod in Gaza was predictably clamped down on by Hamas dissuasion, ahead of an announced “Day of Rage” on 11 November 2013 that did not materialise (Al-Ghoul, 2013).
Apart from weekly “popular Intifada” demonstrations against the West Bank wall and periodic exceptions (e.g. when short-lived Israeli-Palestinian negotiations restarted in August 2013), the only other national-level major popular demonstrations in the last few years took place in the West Bank in September 2012 against fuel and utility prices and the vastly increasing cost of living. While cost of living affects youth the most, the movement as such was not youth-led or youth-centred. Other protests have largely stayed confined to social media, with critics of the PA or its President on social media being not infrequently subject to arrest.
3.5 An Extreme Form of Resistance. Neither Intifada, nor Military
Resistance: the Habbah In early October 2015, an extreme form of resistance started in Jerusalem and the West Bank, in which Palestinian youth carried out stabbing attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers. As of February 2016, 162 Palestinians had been shot dead and 12,000 injured by Israeli soldiers or settlers, while 31 Israelis had been killed and 500 injured. This wave of reciprocal attacks, which continues to this day, directly followed the speech by President Abbas at the UN General Assembly in which he declared that the PA would not honour previous agreements with Israel unless Israel lives up to its commitments. Abbas accused Israel of having systematically violated the agreements that date back two decades and outline security, economic and other arrangements in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel during and after the 1967 war. Abbas said that there was no reason why the Palestinians should remain faithful to these agreements as long as the Israelis were not.
Many Palestinian, Israeli and international journalists, intellectuals and writers have sought to find a suitable terminology for this movement. Some call it Intifada, referring to the first Intifada which started in 1987, in which thousands of Palestinians protested peacefully against the Israeli occupation in both Gaza and the West Bank. The Second Intifada started in September 2000, when Israeli PM Ariel Sharon made a visit to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, an area sacred to both Jews and Muslims. As there are many differences between the two Intifadas and the current attacks, Palestinians have found it more suitable to call it a “Habbah”. The concept of Intifada (uprising) carries a wider meaning, whereby thousands of Palestinians from all community segments went out peacefully against the Israeli military occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. Another aspect is that the first Intifada, though it was a popular movement, was led by political and resistance factions, while the ongoing attacks are driven by individuals who have no affiliation to any organised group. While the 1987 Intifada was led by local leadership who was affiliated to PLO factions and others, the current Habbah is considered to be indirectly against the PLO leadership and the PA that are seen by Palestinian youth to be compromised, old and corrupt. It is indeed a series of individual actions that are not controlled by any leader.
In particular, the ongoing Habbah is driven by a number of factors. The failure of the political process between the PA and the Israeli government over a very long period, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)’s escalation in Jerusalem, along with settler violence are the main reasons behind the beginning of the existing uprising. In this light, the status quo in the West Bank is fragile and not in fact as calm as it was represented. This may be a consequence of the Palestinians’ division since 2007, which has caused a state of frustration affecting all Palestinians politically, economically and socially and prompting the outbreak of youth frustration in particular. The leading contributors to this rebellion are the youth and women who do not belong to any political faction. Participants have no defined political background: neither Islamist nor liberal. This has prevented political parties from being able to organise the Habbah and has reduced their ability to influence the rebellion. The generation of the Habbah is the one born after the Oslo Accords. These youths have generally been analysed as politically “weak,” unable to effect change, commonly derided as only caring about sitting in front of TV or PC screens chatting or discussing their fancy stylish hairdos. Many analysts previously thought that this generation was not even slightly devoted to Palestine or the national cause. This view has, however, totally been turned upside down by the recent Habbah. What this outbreak of frustration and violence among the Palestinian youth ultimately shows is that there is a dangerous trend towards individual and community radicalisation against the backdrop of the stalemate of the political process.
3.6 “Arab Winter”, “Palestinian Winter”: Disillusion and Radicalisation?
Palestinian youth have noted the failure of the Arab Spring to bring about a fundamental change for the better. They have watched developments in Syria, Libya and Yemen as the Arab Spring turned into intra-Arab bloodshed and fierce and bloody counter-revolutions involving large-scale massacres of civilians. Events in Egypt have been particularly disturbing for Palestinian youth. A September 2015 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) poll found that 80% of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians believed Palestine was no longer the primary Arab cause,47 suggesting that whatever hope had been invested in the Arab Spring creating new Arab regimes strong enough to stand up to Israel is long gone.
Young people have thus begun to look for other options that might have better chances of changing their reality than following others’ revolutions. Nor can they simply replicate the Arab Spring model in what is arguably a uniquely complex and challenging environment for any mass protest movement, both in terms of the possibility of protest and in terms of the slogans that it could effectively arouse. Where others could chant “al-sha’b yurid isqat al-nizam” (“The people want to overthrow the regime”), Palestinians, faced with the Israeli occupation as their key nizam (regime) could chant only “al-sha’b yurid inha’ al-inqisam” (“The people want the end of the division”). Even achieving the end of the division, however, was too much for a mass protest movement: it served the interests of neither of the two Palestinian governing authorities, in 2011 or since, despite many formal reconciliation agreements between the two (ICG, 2015).
Politically, the decline of possibility was enshrined by the overthrow of Morsi, in July 2013. Under President Sisi, who replaced President Morsi, the “war on terror” targeting the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Hamas is both affiliated and identified by the Egyptian regime, left no realistic prospect of positive political change in Egypt in the long term. By way of example, an Egyptian court listed Hamas as a terrorist organisation (the decision was later overruled for political reasons).48 Crucially, Egypt has, for the first time since they were dug in 2007, destroyed almost all of the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that 47 PCSPR survey, 2015 http://www.pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/poll%2057%20pressrelease%20English.pdf 48 See “Egypt court overturns Hamas terror blacklisting”, BBC News, 6 June 2015. Retrieved November 7, 2015, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33034249 had enabled Gazans to survive the Israeli-Egyptian siege. On 19 September 2015, it began to carry out its plan to flood the very few remaining tunnels and the entire border area with seawater. President Sisi has also used the now Daesh-affiliated but decades-old insurgency in Sinai, which exploited the tunnels to smuggle weapons in and out of the Gaza Strip, to justify closing the Rafah crossing entirely for all but a very few days since Sisi’s takeover over two years ago.
The status of the Rafah border crossing that connects Gaza with Egypt through Sinai may seem a merely technical issue. It is, however, the ultimate symbol of the blocked national-level political horizons that this chapter describes, comparable only to the 2-3 years from 2007-10 immediately following the Palestinian “civil war” of June 2007 an…
Topic: Palestinian Politics — Arab Spring · youth · 15 March · reconciliation · EuroMeSCo — Text © EuroMeSCo / IAI — archived here with attribution to the source. — Original source