Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, the PLO expressed a clear vision of what liberation meant. Yasser Arafat articulated it at the UN in his famous speech in 1974 and in other PLO statements. The diagnosis of Zionism was clear: a racist movement allied with colonialism. Israel is a racist state that discriminates against its Palestinian citizens and prevents the return of Palestinians it expelled. It is a settler colony intent on territorial expansion and the occupation of the lands of neighboring countries. The solution was also clear: establishing a secular democratic state in all of Mandatory Palestine, where Arabs and Jews would have equal rights. It was in this context that international support and solidarity at the official and unofficial levels declared Zionism to be racist, tirelessly reaffirmed the right of expelled Palestinians to return to their homes and lands, and affirmed the legitimate rights of Palestinians under Israeli occupation to resist their occupier.
Since the PLO began to waver in its vision and mission, recognized Israel's right to be a racist Jewish State and began to negotiate under US sponsorship in Madrid in 1991, the international friends of the Palestinian people have been thrown into a state of utter confusion. The first major concession that the PLO had to make in the context of Oslo was to allow the repeal of the international consensus on Zionism-as-racism and substitute for it the US and Israeli consensus, namely that Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East locked in a land dispute with its neighbors. One of the earlier accomplishments of the new consensus was the US-sponsored repeal of the 1975 Resolution executed in 1991. While in 1975 UN Resolution 3379 was supported by 75 countries (35 voted against and 32 abstained), the 1991 repeal was supported by 111 countries (25 voted against, 13 abstained).
Evidently, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc was a major loss for the Palestinian cause at the UN. However, the transformation of the views of Third World friends and allies, and of movements and individuals around the world, was brought about more by PLO concessions than by any other factor. Zionism has remained as racist in its ideology and practices as it has always been; but the PLO no longer wished to condemn it for racism. Our allies, some argued, could not be expected to be more pro-Palestinian than the PLO. Since the Madrid conference, and especially after Oslo, Arafat and his cronies began to circulate proposals and ideas that conceded the Palestinian people's right of return. It is in this context that the majority of the world that supported the Palestinian right of return (including the US until the mid-1990s) began to waver. As for the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance to occupation and racism, in the late 1980s and as a condition for a dialogue with the US that never materialized, Arafat had identified it, on US orders, as "terrorism" and "renounced" it. In light of Oslo, Arafat and the PA put a stop to the first Intifada and have been diligently trying to suppress the current one. Our allies and friends, as a result, began to waver in their support for Palestinian resistance. Moreover, when Arafat negotiated the Oslo deal and transformed the PLO from a liberation movement into an instrument of the Israeli occupation dubbed the Palestinian Authority, all countries with diplomatic boycotts of Israel wondered why they should continue them when the PLO and Arafat had established diplomatic contacts with a colonial state that practices institutionalized and legal racism. Israel's international diplomatic isolation was thus ended thanks to Arafat's deal.
I believe that the majority of Palestinians understood Oslo as a mechanism to liquidate the Palestinian national struggle against Zionist colonialism and racism and can indeed make such demands on our allies. Those intellectuals and movements who, at most, support an end to the occupation through "negotiations", and say little about the legitimate rights of the Palestinians to resist, and nothing about Israel's racist character or the refugees' right of return, must be called to account for following in Arafat's footsteps.
The reversal of the achievements that had kept Israel, in the eyes of much of the world, as a racist colonial outpost, was not only felt at the official level but also at the level of political movements and individuals for whom the PLO and Arafat were symbols of struggle against colonialism and racism. These same people were to join the international chorus of support for Oslo as the way to resolve the "conflict". So Palestinians could no longer ask that such individuals, movements, and countries be made to account for reversing their erstwhile support for the Palestinian cause, when all they did was follow the example of the PLO and Arafat.
When we look at the history of international solidarity with oppressed peoples we find many examples of compromised national leaderships. The collaborationist South Vietnamese government of Nguyen Van Thieu, for example, did not sway those in the international arena who supported the Vietnamese struggle for liberation. A collaborationist Mangosutho Buthelezi did not sway those who supported the South African struggle either. But those who supported the Iranian Revolution did not change their minds about the nature of the Shah's regime and the need to overthrow him when Khomeini took over, any more than those who supported the revolution against Haile Selassie changed theirs when Mengistu's Derg took over.
The fact that Arafat and the PLO dropped their opposition to a racist Israel and transformed themselves, under the guise of the PA, into enforcers of the occupation does not mean that international solidarity should support this transformation. Arafat's predicament with the Israelis in the last two years is based on his refusal to cooperate fully with all of Israel's demands, not on account of his struggling against Israeli racism and occupation. Countries, groups, and individuals should be able to make such distinctions.
This confusion and failure on the part of our international supporters is the outcome of the absence of a cohesive Palestinian movement or leadership that could provide an alternative to Arafat and the PA, as Mandela and the ANC provided to Buthelezi or the Viet Minh provided to Thieu. But this argument is a dangerous one. It ignores the fact that due to Arafat's and Israel's policies Arafat remains the only available leader of the Palestinians. Israel has been assassinating Palestinian leaders around the world for the last three decades, at an accelerated pace in the last two years of "target" killings, while Arafat's leadership and his monopoly of power prevented alternative leaderships from emerging. The Israeli occupation decided which Palestinians could conduct political activities in the occupied territories and which could not. The grass-roots leadership that emerged in the first Intifada was jailed, co-opted, killed, or marginalized by Israel and the PLO-cum-PA returnees. In this context it cannot be argued that the lack of an alternative Palestinian movement or leadership justifies the lack of international support.
Despite the confusion and disarray in which Arafat's concessions have thrown our friends and allies, the Palestinians continue to command much support across the world and inspire solidarity everywhere. If US and Israeli power intimidates states that supported the Palestinians before Oslo, political movements, intellectuals, and activists have not been so easily silenced. Many people from around the world have come to the West Bank and Gaza in the last two years to help fight the occupation and protect Palestinian lives. Many others write and speak on our behalf in the media and the press. Many more still march in demonstrations protesting Israeli violence in the capitals of Europe, North America and the Arab world, while others have begun campaigns to divest from Israel and to boycott it.
This is an important body of support looking for direction. In calling on the allies and friends of the Palestinians to remain steadfast, I am not discounting the immediate necessity for a unified Palestinian leadership to lead the struggle against Zionism. In all other successful national struggles it was always the national liberation movement that took the initiative and gave direction to international supporters. What is needed now is a Palestinian leadership prepared to lead the struggle for a non- racist state. By taking this initiative, it will galvanize existing support for the Palestinians as well as a worldwide constituency committed to fighting racism.
Palestinians are indeed attempting to build an alternative leadership against numerous odds. The recent Palestinian National Initiative is a step in the right direction for Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and it needs international support. In the meantime, Palestinian Israelis have a besieged leadership that also needs international support against the institutionalized racism of the Jewish State. Diaspora Palestinians unfortunately remain leaderless. While the struggle to establish a Diaspora-based movement to replace or take over the PLO has proved difficult in recent years, attempts continue in this direction.
Our foreign supporters must take a clear stance on the racially discriminatory laws and practices of Israel, on the right of the refugees to return and on the right of the Palestinians to resist Israel's colonial occupation. If Palestinians are too weak to oppose all the racist and colonial manifestations of Zionism, this in no way exonerates international solidarity groups and individuals from demanding an end to all racist states, especially Israel, the last remaining racist colonial state that justifies its racism by law. (Other states simply practice it). An oppressive state cannot be judged as less oppressive because it co-opted the leadership of the oppressed and liquidated the resistance.
The fact that the PA has a coterie of Palestinian intellectuals, who justify its collaboration and, like Arafat, derive their legitimacy from their pre-Oslo history, should not sway our allies. For them and the Palestinian people the co-opting of Arafat, the PA and a segment of the Palestinian intellectual class into the US-Israel orbit has indeed been a major loss. If international solidarity falls into the trap of backing a compromised Palestinian leadership and suspends its support for Palestinian resistance, the Palestinian struggle will be doomed. Now is the time for the friends and allies of the Palestinian people to affirm in clear, uncompromising terms their commitment to the justice of the Palestinian struggle and resistance to the Zionist colonial project. As several prominent Palestinians have asserted in the last decade, only a secular democratic bi-national state where Jews and Palestinians can have equal civil, political, economic, national, and cultural rights will ensure that justice is served and Zionism will come to an end. The Palestinians must try to create a unified leadership able of lead the struggle for a non-racist state. Given Israel's great power, however, the Palestinian people cannot do this alone. International solidarity will be crucial for the difficult task ahead.
