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5_________________ The Intifada and State Building "We shall bum the land under the conqueror's feet. Let the whole world know that the volcano of resistance that the Palestinian people ignited will not stop until the Palestinian state-with Jerusalem its capital-is achieved."I Having linked revolutionary violence to independence so forcefully in its first communique, did the Unified National Command of the intifada (UNC) place equal emphasis on state building? Is it indeed true that the ideological shift from "liberation" to "independence" signaled, as one scholar claimed, "a new strategy for the PLO inside the Occupied Territories: building embryonic institutions of power" for the future state?~ And did such "embryonic institutions " of power actually take shape during the years of intifada? Ibrahim Abu Lughod has written that "unless the intifada is placed in comparative perspective and set up against the backdrop of the historical quest for Palestinian statehood, it is difficult to appreciate."] This chapter analyzes, specifically, the relationship between the intifada and the evolution of the state, rather than that between the intifada and the attainment of statehood . By examining the series of communiques issued by the UNC during the intifada, we can analyze the PLO's impact on the formulation of strategy during the intifada, the shaping of territorial institutions, leadership patterns, and conflict-resolution mechanisms. STRATEGY AND STATE FORMATION Before trying to analyze the empirical impact of the intifada on Palestinian state formation, it is important to first look at the relationship between intifada strategy and the formation of the state. The UNC communiques focused much more on national liberation than the academic literature, which concentrated on its revolutionary aspects, would lead us to believe. The assumption of the literature was that the participants in the intifada-the "insiders"sought to destroy the old social order in order to build the new.4 A focus on national liberation, however, involves diplomacy. usually achieved best by the outside. The discrepancy between the communiques and the academic literature has much to do with the authors' sympathies, but it also has to do with the fact that the PLO could more easily put pressure on the drafters of 93 94 COUNTDOWN TO STATEHOOD the communiques than upon scholars. Indeed, initial communiques were more revolutionary and emphasized the ability of the inside to beget the state. A notable example is the UNC's tenth communique, which announced its intention to "continue the popular and armed revolution until the [establishment] of the Palestinian state."5 However, as the population's ability to participate in mass demonstrations wore thin over time and PLO pressure on the inside increased, the communiques started to inform the Palestinian population that their sacrifices would facilitate independence, not through revolution, but rather through the convening of an international conference where the PLO would, like the FLN had for Algeria, capture the state: "Behold our glorious leadership registering, by way of intensive political activity, the most wondrous achievements ... on the path toward the international conference with full powers and Palestinian representation which will express the legitimate rights of our people: return, self-determination, and the establishment of the Palestinian state, rights recognized by most of the states of the world."6 Amid calls of violence and diplomacy, the state-building project of establishing a national authority proved to be a minor theme in the UNC communiques. Nor did the communiques ever spell out how localized popular committees, through which the intifada was to be organized, would be transformed into a national authority. Concepts like "national authority" and "people's authority" have never amounted to much in revolutionary contexts, still less in a national liberation movement split in two and facing the repression of a powerful state. Consider , for example, the first time a UNC communique mentioned the national authority: "The popular committees have spread all over the occupied homeland . Our people have begun to erect a new national life and to increase its national authority."7 Obviously, the reference is to the development of a countergovernmental structure whose dispersion would facilitate the eradication and replacement of the occupation regime. Similarly, Communique 55 two years later noted that civil insubordination and institution building were two sides of the same coin.8 Yet such calls were in no wayan exhortation to the "inside" to actually create a national authority. Rather, while the role of the inside was to wear down the enemy by perpetuating mobilization, only diplomatic efforts could lead to the creation of the state. Salim Tamari, probably...

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