Palestinians Divided

The intifada has crystallized two important trends within Palestinian politics and society. The first, a split between old and young within the nationalist movement, has greatly constrained the PA leadership's capacity to manage the current crisis and engage in substantive negotiations with Israel in the short term. The second, a broader decline in the power of the nationalists relative to the Islamists (such as Hamas), has created a long-term challenge to the nationalists' ability to lead the Palestinian people.

When the Oslo agreement was signed in September 1993, two-thirds of Palestinians immediately supported it. (1) Their expectations were high: Oslo was supposed to usher in the end of occupation, the establishment of an open and democratic political system, and a quick improvement in economic and living conditions. But the golden era of the peace process did not last long. Palestinian popular approval of the Oslo process peaked at 80 percent in early 1996, and support for violence against Israeli targets bottomed out at 20 percent. Just before the Palestinian general elections in January of that year, support for Fatah, the mainstream nationalist movement headed by Arafat, reached the unprecedented level of 55 percent, and Arafat's own popularity leaped to 65 percent. Meanwhile, support for all opposition groups combined -- both nationalist and Islamist -- dropped to 20 percent, down from 40 percent two years earlier. When the current Palestinian political system came into existence after those elections, it had real legitimacy. Seventy-five percent of eligible voters participated, despite the call by opposition groups for a boycott. Arafat received more than 70 percent of the vote, with about 22 percent casting blank ballots and only 8 percent voting for his rival, Samiha Khalil. Fatah won 77 percent of the seats in the new Palestinian Legislative
Council (PLC).

Between 1993 and 2001, with the sole exception of 1994, Palestinian support
for the Oslo agreement never dropped below 60 percent. But Palestinian hopes
began to fade away as a result of both Binyamin Netanyahu's election as
Israel's prime minister in mid-1996 and the continued building of Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Palestinian expectations
that the peace process would soon lead to statehood and a permanent
settlement dropped from 44 percent during Shimon Peres' prime ministership
in 1995-96 to 30 percent in the first year under Netanyahu. Four years
later, with Ehud Barak having replaced Netanyahu and Jewish settlements
continuing to expand, expectation of a permanent settlement sank to 24
percent. Once Ariel Sharon won election as Israel's head of government in
early 2001, a mere 11 percent of Palestinians clung to that hope.

The loss of confidence in the ability of the peace process to deliver a permanent agreement on acceptable terms had a dramatic impact on the level of Palestinian support for violence against Israelis, including suicide bombings against civilians. In July 2000, after U.S. President Bill Clinton's failed attempt to broker a final peace settlement at Camp David but before the eruption of the second intifada, already 52 percent of Palestinians approved of the use of violence; a year later, that figure reached the unprecedented level of 86 percent. Other casualties of Oslo's demise have been the popularity of Arafat and that of his Fatah organization. The Camp David summit brought Arafat's popularity, which had been dropping steadily since 1996, down to 47 percent. A year later it hit 33 percent. Support for Fatah, meanwhile, dropped to 37 percent in July 2000, and a year later fell to 29 percent.

Surprisingly, before the intifada the Palestinian Islamists did not significantly benefit from Arafat and Fatah's decline -- deserters from the mainstream nationalist cause simply chose to remain on the political sidelines, and the Islamists' support levels hovered consistently around the mid-teens. The intifada changed that dynamic, however. By July 2001, the Islamists' popularity had increased to 27 percent. And for the first time ever, support for Islamist and nationalist opposition groups, combined at 31 percent, surpassed the 30 percent garnered by Fatah and its allies.

The collapsing peace process and deteriorating economic and living conditions are not the only factors bleeding the ranks of Arafat and Fatah's supporters. The Palestinian public's evaluation of the status of Palestinian democracy, official corruption, and governmental performance have moved from bad to worse over the past six years. In 1996, 43 percent of those surveyed gave Palestinian democracy and human rights a good bill of health; by 2001, only 21 percent agreed. Over the same period, positive evaluations of the performance of PA institutions dropped from 64 percent to 40 percent, and the belief that the PA was corrupt increased from 49 percent to 83 percent.

The intifada has only aggravated the Palestinian public's disappointments. The unrelenting Israeli siege and closure of Palestinian territories, with the consequent debilitating restrictions on movement, have practically halted Palestinian civil, social, and economic life. In July 2000, fewer than one-third of Palestinians believed that violence would help achieve goals in ways that negotiations could not; a year later 59 percent had come to that conclusion. Indeed, after nine months of the intifada, 71 percent thought that the fighting had already had such an effect.
The perceived failure of the peace process, combined with a highly negative assessment of all issues related to PA governance, delivery of services, and leadership, damaged the legitimacy of the PA and the nationalist old guard it represents. It created an opportunity for other forces within the Palestinian community to step forward, and this is precisely what the younger generation of leaders did in the fall of 2000 -- taking advantage of Sharon's provocation and the subsequent turmoil to seize the moment and challenge their internal rivals.

The figures cited here are based on more than 75 surveys conducted by the author in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including Arab East Jerusalem, in 1993-2001. The sample size in each of the surveys ranged between 1,300 and 2,000 people in face-to-face interviews. Details about the survey methodology are available at the Web site of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (http:/www.pcpsr.org).