Choosing the Right Strategy: Why the Palestinians Were More Successful in the First Intifada than in the Second?

Explaining Rebel Success: Strategic Interaction between Military and Political Factors

Why violence leveled against a state leads to vastly different outcomes has produced a rich literature which no single article or even a book volume-length work can do justice. Some of the theories explain success of the weaker sides in asymmetric confrontations between states as a function of relative resolve (Rosen, 1972, p. 171). Others claim that this anomaly is often the result of the rival’s regime type and political culture (Merom, 2003). Still others explain this anomaly on the ground of strategic focus and allocation of resources: Stronger rivals will often lose because, though they might be stronger than the opposition, their resources have to be spread across widely dispersed commitments (Mack, 1975; Ray & Vural, 1986). These theories have little explanatory power in our case; Israeli resolve to win in rounds of violence is hardly in doubt––the Palestinians are a major political problem and threat to Israel to which the latter must always devote considerable political, economic, and security resources (Inbar & Shamir, 2014, pp. 75–77); the regime type hardly changed between the rounds so that a constant factor can hardly explain variation.

Perhaps the variation in outcome can be explained in the Israeli state’s differential capacities in the two rounds of conflict as James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (2003) in a much-cited article would suggest. Following in the footsteps of leading theorists of the state, such as, Theda Skocpol, Dietrich Reuchemeyer, and Charles Tilly, they argue that the incidence and outcome of violence is mainly a function of the protagonist state’s administrative and repressive strength. Their argument dovetails with the more specialized counterinsurgency literature (Long, 2006, pp. 58–64). If, however, state capacity is the explanatory variable, the Palestinians should have had the upper hand in the second intifada compared to the first for two reasons. Several scholars, such as, Ethel Solingen (1998), argued in the course of the 1990s that the Israeli state weakened relative to society due to processes of globalization and the nexus between capitalism and globalization that necessitated the withdrawal of the state from society (also see Ben-Porat, 1993); on the cultural level, market capitalism increased the relative strength of civil society and empowered ideologies of individual self-fulfillment at the expense of collective sacrifice (Ben-Eliezer, 2006, pp. 32–33). The Four Mothers movement’s effective campaign in bringing about the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon five months before the outbreak of the second round of Palestinian–Israeli violence suggested the weakening of the Israeli state’s capacity to withstand pressures from elite segments in the Israeli society.

More relevant is Arreguin-Toft’s argument that it is the type of strategy the protagonists employ and the nature of the strategic interaction between them will dictate the relative success and failure of the protagonists. Arreguin-Toft identifies four ideal-type strategies two of which––direct attack, consisting of offensive movements to wipe out the capacities of the opponent to commit violence, and barbarism, the massive use of force against the civilian population––usually favor the state (Toft, 2001, p. 105). However, Arreguin-Toft’s focus on strategies of violence falls short in explaining some of the most important cases of asymmetric conflict between rebels and states. In Algeria, the French won conclusively on the battle field only to lose equally decisively the political war. As Merom Gill suggests, the solution then must lie outside the battlefield as well (Merom, 2002, p. 15). However, his alternative that societal norms in developed democratic states have changed in a manner that effectively prevents the use of direct force is also problematic in explaining variation in outcomes in the Israeli–Palestinian case (ibid.). Israel, it can be argued, used direct force in equal or greater measure in the second intifada, suggesting that democratic society when sufficiently threatened will act resolutely in a way that does not necessarily conform to the presumed norms of the upper middle and globalizing elite.

The article argues that rather than focusing on the strategy of the state (Arreguin-Toft), norms (Merom) or the strong state (Fearon and Laitin), to explain the relative success or failure of the Palestinians against the Israeli state, one would be better served to look at the choice of strategy by the “rebel,” the weaker side in the dyad. This is covered in the following section on Palestinian strategy in the two intifadas.

Palestinian Strategy in the Two Intifadas

Palestinian strategy in the first intifada differed from the strategy adopted in the following round of conflict that broke out in 2000. The strategy differed in two basic ways. In the first intifada, an attempt was made to limit the modes of violence to throwing stones and firebombs and refraining from the use of firearms and limiting that violence to within the West Bank and Gaza. In the second intifada, Arafat adopted the “Lebanese model” which assumed that Palestinian violence alone could repulse (dahr) the occupation, force the withdrawal of Israeli troops, and lead to the establishment of the Palestinian state. ² To do so, Arafat sanctioned cooperation between security forces and Fatah and the Islamic movements, which were loosely affiliated with the Follow-up Committee of the National and Islamic Forces. According to a prominent Palestinian scholar, the PA deliberately promoted militarization of the conflict so that the Israelis would target it (Barghuti, Nawfal, Abd al-Jawad & Hilal, 2001). Being a target of Israel’s attacks would salvage the PA’s legitimacy among Palestinians who had become increasingly alienated by the widespread corruption within the bureaucracy, lack of accountability, and disregard for human rights. ³ Suicide attacks reflected this all-or-nothing approach (Nawfal, 2002).

Opposition to Arafat and his “revolutionaries”, crystallized among two groups, the “statists” and prominent members of the Palestinian civil society. The “statists” comprised senior advisors to Arafat (Mamduh Nawfal and Hani al-Hasan), leading negotiators (Sa’ib ‘Ariqat, Nabil Sha’th, Mahmud ‘Abbas (Abu Mazin)), and strong men like Jibril Rajub and Muhammad Dahlan, the heads of Preventive Security in the West Bank and Gaza, respectively. They feared that such a strategy would lead to a violent Israeli reaction that could threaten the existence of the PA altogether (ibid.). The third group, which included many of the academic elites and heads of the larger Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) advocated a “popular” struggle approach along the lines of the first intifada. Many of the latter had been in the past active in front organizations affiliated to the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Communist Party.

Having made the argument and compared the relative cohesion between the two sides, we now proceed to analyze empirically why the Palestinians fared relatively better in the first intifada than in the second. Relative success is assessed along two dimensions: (a) how well the Palestinians achieved external political gains related to the creation of an independent state, and (b) what kind of an impact did the adoption have on the internal cohesion of the Palestinians.

External Political Achievements

The Palestinian achievements in the first intifada were substantial. In the two years prior to the Palestinian intifada, Israel had conducted intensive secret talks with Jordan over realizing the “Jordanian” option of restoring Jordanian rule over most of the West Bank, excluding the western side of the Jordanian valley which separated between Jordan and those areas and parts around greater Jerusalem. Those were to be placed under Israeli rule (Steinberg, 1992, pp. 173–174). The Palestinians were excluded entirely from the Jordanian–Israeli diplomatic process of 1986–1987, a regression from the position Israel had accepted in the Camp David Accords concluded between Israel and Egypt in 1978. According to those accords, local Palestinians were to receive political autonomy during a transition period of five years leading to final status talks between Israel and the local inhabitants with the participation of Egypt and Jordan. The talks were to begin in the third year from the signing of the agreement (The Camp David Accords, 1978).

Any attempt to continue along the exclusively Jordanian track came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the first intifada in December 1987. From April 1988 onwards, Jordan’s political position regarding the West Bank also began to conform once again to the decisions taken in the Rabat Summit in 1974, which had accorded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) the sole right to represent the Palestinians (Susser, 1990, p. 591). King Hussein, feeling threatened by an intifada that risked spilling over into Jordan and isolated on the regional Arab level so vital to Jordan’s economic and security well-being, announced in a lengthy speech on August 4, the severance of ties between Jordan and the West Bank (ibid., p. 590).

Movement favorable to the Palestinians also took place in the highly divided and Janus-faced Israeli side. On the right side of the unity government, unified by name only, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in April 1989 grudgingly called for territory-wide elections as the first step toward functional non-territorial autonomy. The Labor Party half of the unity government, much to the indignation of the government’s right side, became committed by mid-1988 to an international conference that would include Palestinians who accepted United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 242 and therefore, the recognition of the State of Israel (Steinberg, 1992, p. 183).

Although Palestinians hardly celebrated the convening of the Madrid Conference in October 1991 and subsequent talks in Washington, it was nevertheless the first time that a Palestinian delegation, albeit jointly with the Jordanians and to the exclusion of the PLO, became negotiating partners with Israel in an international forum (Ashrawi, 1995, p. 201; Mansour, 1993, pp. 5–6). Even more noteworthy, the terms of the peace process spoke of a mandatory interim stage of 3–5 years of self-government (depending on the length of negotiations over final settlement beginning in the third year), in which territorial Palestinians would govern themselves.

What faltering rounds of negotiation in Washington failed to achieve was realized in the secret Oslo track, the signing of the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993 and subsequent agreements that brought the PA, a territorial autonomy, into being. From that point on, Palestinian state-building proceeded with a vengeance. By 1995, the PA had many trappings of a state with a budget of US$400 million, approximately one-third of the total GDP of the areas under its control and a 30,000-strong security force on the payroll (Garg & El-Khoury, 1994, pp. 7–9). Previous to the intifada, international aid to the Palestinians was estimated to be in the range of US$50 million annually. In short, the Palestinians had come a long way since the period prior to the intifada when they were effectively excluded from negotiations deciding their fate.

No comparable progress was made by the Palestinians in the second round of mass hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians that broke out in the end of September 2000. Palestinian achievements in the same time span of 7 years since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada were meager, if any. The positions taken by the Israeli side at the Camp David summit between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat in July 2000 under the aegis of an extremely energetic and involved United States President Bill Clinton provide a minimum benchmark against which to assess the Palestinian situation after the outbreak of the intifada in September (Mali & Agha, 2001, pp. 72–75). At Camp David, Israel offered to handover 89.5 percent of the West Bank and offered to swap the remainder with uninhabited territory bordering Gaza at a 10:1 ratio, effectively offering the Palestinians just over 90.5 percent of land (Kramer, 2000). The Palestinians, by contrast, demanded 97 percent of the West Bank and 3 percent in the form of a land swap involving Israeli land near the Gaza Strip on a one-to-one basis. Regarding Jerusalem, Israel offered the creation of the city of “al-Quds” which would include some villages within expanded municipality borders, a special regime in the old city and Palestinian personal custodianship over the Temple Mount. The Palestinians insisted on sovereignty over the whole old city excluding the Wailing War and the Jewish quarter.

A month into the conflict, the “parameters” offered by President Clinton to resolve the conflict seemed to suggest that violence was working in the Palestinians’ favor. The Palestinians were offered 94–96 percent of the West Bank and swapping 3–6 percent of the Israeli territory (Taba Negotiations, 2001). These “parameters” formed the basis for a subsequent round of talks amidst violence held in Taba in the Sinai in January 2001 in which Israel accepted the minimum amounts outlined in the Clinton parameters, that is to say, retaining 94 percent of the land and a 3 percent swap according to an European Community report on what transpired at the conference (ibid.).

Yet in June 2002, when President George W. Bush explicitly endorsed for the first time a Palestinian state, he offered much less. According to the Road Map, which crystallized from Bush’s speech, and endorsed by the United States, the European Union (EU), the UN, and Russia, the Palestinians were to receive in the first stage, an interim Palestinian state on 42 percent of the area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and in the subsequent two stages, a state with unspecified borders. ⁴ And whereas at Camp David implementation was to begin immediately, in the Road Map, any progress towards interim statehood was made contingent on the complete termination of Palestinian violence. Crossing that hurdle had become difficult by the time the Road Map was published due to the weakening of the PA in the face of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and truly insurmountable after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007, both for Palestinian domestic and international reasons (Frisch, 2008). Although the plan envisaged the establishment of the sovereign state of Palestine in recognized and final borders by the end of 2005, as of summer 2015, little progress has been made in implementing the document.

Even if the total Israeli withdrawal from all of the Gaza Strip completed in August 2005, including the dismantling of all settlements could be seen as one of the benefits emanating from Palestinian violence (such withdrawal was in any event implied in the understandings reached in Taba in 2001), it was more than offset by the corresponding loss of territorial control over the major towns in the West Bank known as area A which were placed, according to the September 1995 interim agreement between Israel and the PLO, under the sole authority of the PA, and by the loss of territorial inviolability from Israeli punitive measures over most of the Gaza Strip. Until April 2001, well into the wave of violence, Israeli troops rarely if ever penetrated these areas (Esposito, 2005). Since the Israeli offensives in the West Bank in March and June 2002, penetration into these areas by Israeli troops and undercover forces for the purposes of making preventive arrests have been taking place on a daily basis (Victims, 2005).

Adding to the debit side of the Palestinian ledger has been the sharp decline of Palestinian political control over predominantly Arab east Jerusalem. Much of that decline can be attributed to the closing in 2001 of the Orient House, which served as the PA center of government in the city during the Oslo years. The building of a security wall and fence around most of Jerusalem in order to prevent suicide bombings has curtailed Palestinian access to Jerusalem (Lappin, 2008; Security Fence, 2005).

Palestinians not only achieved less in the second intifada but also paid a considerably higher price in human losses, declining economic welfare and freedom of movement than in the first. There was a 350 percent increase in Palestinian fatalities over the first seven years of the al-Aqsa intifada that broke out in September 2000 (4,414 fatalities), compared to 1,226 Palestinian fatalities during a comparable period in the first intifada and beyond (Fatalities, 2008). The curve was steeper still for limitations on freedom of movement. Whereas a maximum of 30 manned and unmanned road barriers existed in 2000 before the outbreak of mass violence constrained internal freedom of movement in the West Bank and the number increased to 320 in 2002 and to 526 in June 2006. Economically, gross national product (GNP) per capita in the PA in 2006 was 40 percent below the level it attained before its outbreak in 2000 (Report, 2007, p. 1).

Internal Solidarity and Cohesiveness

What strategy the Palestinians chose in the first and second intifada also had a major impact on the cohesiveness of the Palestinians, and to a more minor extent on Israel. While during the first intifada the Palestinians were relatively united and the Israeli polity divided, the opposite was the case in the second intifada.

Ostensibly, Israel faced the first intifada unified under a unity government but the government was hardly unified. Bipartisanship failed to work over the Taba land issue in the Sinai, the last vestige of peacemaking with Egypt, and more critically, regarding the Palestinians. In the last two years, both parties that made up the unity government literally worked at cross-purposes. The situation went from bad to worse after the 1988 elections held in November 1988 at the height of the intifada in which the Right-wing Likud and Left-of-center Labor almost tied, with 40 seats to the Right-wing party and 39 to Labor, reflecting the split over the future of the territories in the Israeli public opinion (Elazar & Sandler, 1992a, 1992b). The Likud received 709,305 votes against 685,363 for the Labor Alignment. Under the newly formed government, Minister of Finance Shimon Peres, who accepted the position reluctantly in order to bail out financially institutions historically linked to his party and federation, continued to engage in foreign policy to the dismay of both Likud Prime Minister Shamir and his Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin. The cleavage between the non-territorially based autonomy plan and Labor’s “Generals’ Plan,” calling for partition of the land of Israel/Palestine led to the downfall of the unity government in April 1990. A month previously, Labor accepted and Shamir rejected the five-point Baker Plan (ibid. p. 287).

For a brief moment after the 1992 general elections, there was a sense that Israel had finally extricated itself from the curse of polarization. A sizeable percentage of the Israeli public, weary from the tensions emanating from its deeply divided political elite, punished the Likud and voted for Labor, thereby removing Shamir and replacing him with Rabin. The respite, however, was short-lived as the two larger camps, Left and Right emerged almost equal in strength to once again debate the same partition/settlement expansion divide within the context, first of the Camp David and Washington talks and subsequently the Oslo negotiation track. Nothing reflected the polarization of the Israeli elite more than the narrow support of the 1993 Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements; 61 members of Knesset voted for the document, 50 opposed, with 9 abstentions, all of whom leaned more toward rejecting the Accords (Hattis-Rolef & Rekhess, 1993).

As divisions between Left and Right deepened in the Israeli elite over the fate of the territories, the first seeking a partition solution and the latter continued state-building through settlement, the Palestinians exhibited a relatively high degree of unity. One of the major divisions between the outside PLO and the aspiring local elites crystallized over local elections. This debate reflected the struggle between the evolutionary state-building approach favored by the territorial Palestinians in the initial stages of the intifada and the international diplomatic approach favored by the diaspora-centered leadership was resolved conclusively to the favor of the latter. Thus, the right to hold municipal council elections, which was a prominent feature in the early calls of the UN Command (UNC; Call no. 2, 9 January 1988 and Call no. 6, 3 February 1988), the territorial command, was replaced under PLO pressure, by a demand that they be held only UN supervision (Call no. 18, 28 May 1988; Call no. 20, 24 June 1988; and Call no. 26, 27 September 1988) and then by October, was omitted altogether (Call no. 27, UNC, 9 October 1988). This rejection took place 2 months before the Shamir plan calling for territory-wide elections in April 1989. Following the PLO’s declaration of the Palestinian state on 15 November 1988 based on UN Resolution 181 which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, the only agreed upon venue for solution was an international conference.

The PLO also succeeded easily in quashing most of the opposition in the territories. If in the initial stages there were indications that the PLO set its “spokesmen” and notables against attempts by the intifada’s organizational leadership to cluster around the UNC by demanding a campaign of civil disobedience against the occupation, such as, the burning of identity cards issued by the Israeli authorities and the boycotting of Israeli goods produced by local Arab producers, far more radical than those which had appeared in earlier calls issued by Palestinian factions in the territories themselves. A modus vivendi emerged between the diaspora center and the UNC local leadership in which the UNC dropped its demand for local elections and thus its role in formulating strategy and the PLO in turn agreed to cease attempts to circumvent the UNC’s sole leadership in the territories as the arm that executed the PLO policy. The UNC agreed to sign off its calls identifying with the PLO and increasingly made reference to the PLO (Mishal, 1989, p. 47).

Hardly by coincidence, the event in which the Palestinians demonstrated the most unity took place at a time the intifada arguably reached its zenith. The successful convening of the Palestinian National Council in November 1988, the overwhelming vote in favor of the official political statement, despite its acceptance for the first time of UN Resolution 242 that implicitly recognized Israel (291 in support and 47 against) and the decision of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to remain within the PLO fold despite its opposition to the document and in contrast to its behavior in previous years in which it boycotted PLO events, reflected the high degree of Palestinian unity under Arafat’s leadership (Teitelbaum, 1998, p. 247).

One could hardly deny that in the course of the intifada the creation of the Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, created a strong Islamic opposition. Nevertheless, as the subsequent establishment of the PA proved, the nationalists still enjoyed hegemony. Any doubts on that score were dispelled in the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 1996. The massive turnout, particularly in the Gaza Strip (90 percent), where Arafat’s PA had governed the longest, was a sharp slap in the face to both the Islamic and Left-wing opposition (Tamari, 2002).

One gets a good sense of Palestinian cohesion and its palpable absence on the Israeli side by juxtaposing the two major political events during the first 2 years of the intifada, both held in late 1988. While the Palestinians succeeded in convening the Palestinian National Council and united behind its program that suggested the partition of former mandate Palestine, in the Israel case, the Israeli general election results dramatically reflected a people divided and torn over the issue of partitioning the Land of Israel.

In the second intifada, the situation reversed itself as the Israeli public became more united and the Palestinians more divided. Conclusive proof of a degree of unity within Israeli ranks may be found in the two elections held during the height of the al-Aqsa intifada. In the February 2001 elections for the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, head of the Likud, won a landslide victory over incumbent Ehud Barak, with Sharon garnering 62.4 percent of the vote compared to only 37.6 percent of the vote secured by the incumbent (Sandler & Mollov, 2004). In the 2003 Knesset elections, the Likud under Sharon’s leadership made a major comeback jumping from 19 seats in the 1999 elections to 38, against a meager 19 seats secured by the Labor, its lowest representation since the establishment of the state. The Labor Party was the major force behind the insistence of creating a Palestinian state. No less telling was unprecedented victory of the centrist Shinui party with a staggering 15 seats, a party noted for focusing on “religious coercion” but having little or no interest in the Palestinians or the peace process. Kadima was now easily able to lead the Right and Shinui into a coalition characterized by considerable consensus over the Palestinians to form the widest coalition to date short of a unity government. As Gerald Steinberg and Jonathan Rynhold pointed out, “[W]hile different approaches to the peace process continue to be espoused in Israel, public opinion has been characterized by consensus more than at any time since 1967” (Steinberg & Rynhold, 2004, pp. 200–201). Israelis wanted first and foremost security as quickly as possible with some long-term prospects of a peace process with the Palestinians.

As the Israelis became more united, the Palestinians became polarized and factionalized, even dramatically so. The hegemony, the PA, its Fatah militia (which quickly degenerated into militias), and the security forces enjoyed over Hamas dissolved. Israeli punitive measures against the PA for its involvement in terrorism weakened the PA, ⁵ while Hamas gained support from playing a lead role in fighting Israel. For the first time in the history of the resurgence of the Palestinian movement in the 1960s, Hamas took the lead over Fatah in acts of violence, principally suicide bombings, and the toll such violence imposed on the Israeli enemy. According to the Israeli General Security Services, Hamas was responsible for 40 percent of the 142 suicide acts between September 2000 and March 2005, compared to 27 percent for the al-Jihad al-Islami and only 23 percent for the nationalist Fatah militia (Suicide Bombings, 2006, p. 13).

Some of the movement’s growing popularity could also be attributed to deeper religious currents. A poll conducted in the territories in March 2000 showed that an overwhelming percentage of the respondents (85.8 percent) felt that the PA should be more religious than it was. The importance of religion is also indicated by the very title given to the hostilities that began at the end of September 2000: al-Aqsa intifada. Al-Aqsa is the name of the mosque situated on the Temple Mount/Harem al-Sharief in Jerusalem, holy both to Jews and Muslims, where the first acts of violence took place.

Hamas’ rising stature led to increasing tensions between the nationalist camp and Hamas and soon degenerated into modes of violence that challenged the legitimacy and preeminence of the PA. Already in October 2002, members of Hamas killed in the Gaza Strip the head of the anti-riot unit, termed by the Hamas “the death squad” to avenge the death of a relative killed by members of the unit a year previously during Hamas demonstrations against the PA (PA Security Men, 2003). Hamas publicly afforded protection to the killers who publicized their action (Schanzer, 2003). This was the first of dozens of assassinations of senior security force personnel and counter-assassinations of Hamas and Jihad al-Islami supporters against members by the security forces and Fatah in the succeeding years.

Politically, the situation rapidly deteriorated after the death of Arafat in November 2004. At first, the Hamas decision to contest local and later legislative council elections created a wave of optimism. Yet once the Hamas government was formed after the movement’s stunning electoral victory in January 2006, the question of whether control of the security agencies would be in the hands of the popularly elected presidency or the newly formed Hamas government loomed large. For Hamas, the answer was indisputable. The security forces were to be under the control of the Hamas prime minister, and more specifically, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior. This was in accordance with the most judicious reading of a basic law Abbas himself had drafted when he was the prime minister in an attempt to achieve some autonomy from President Arafat. Abbas took on Arafat’s mantle and assured his supporters that the security forces would be under his jurisdiction rather than under the cabinet or the minister of interior. His position obviously dovetailed with the disposition of most of the personnel serving in the forces. During the elections in which the security forces cast their votes separately, an overwhelming percentage voted for Fatah (Abu Khudayr, 2006).

Hamas responded by setting up the Executive Force in April 2006. The Hamas Minister of Interior, hardly by coincidence, publicized his intention to set up the new PA security force in a meeting with the public that took place in a mosque in Gaza that was known as a bastion of Hamas power (Al-Lawh, 2006). Abbas immediately responded by declaring the new force illegal and ordered in an official presidential edict that it be dissolved. In a meeting of the PLO Executive Council, he claimed that the attempt to transform Hamas’ military arm into an official security force of the PA could begin a round of internal strife that had to be avoided at all costs. From May 2006 onward, waves of open warfare took place between the various security forces belonging to the PA, the Fatah militia, and Hamas, culminating in June 2007 in the violent Hamas takeover of Gaza and the establishment of two governments.

Disunity was also rife with the nationalist camp itself. Some of it had to do with tensions between the “outside” leadership and the “inside” and younger activists in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, dating back to the Madrid process but became even more marked with the establishment of the PA in 1994 (Rubinstein, 1993). The “inside” activists felt they did not receive their due in the newly created PA and tried to build up their power base by conducting internal elections within Fatah. While Arafat sought to weaken rather than destroy Fatah’s popular base, he still needed the organization’s weight to counteract the Islamic opposition. The move was thwarted by Arafat and only in Ramallah did such elections take place in October 1994 (Amer, 1995, p. 66). Strains also emerged between the 13 security agencies Arafat had set up in the first years of the PA and between these security agencies and the Fatah militia.

During the low-intensity conflict between Israel and the Palestinians after September 2000, these tensions often degenerated into open battles between the various Fatah militias and the PA’s security forces. Its high point occurred when Arafat in the summer of 2004 placed the commander of military intelligence known for his enmity toward the Fatah militia as the head of security in Gaza. The nomination came in the wake of a series of armed kidnappings. Thousands of Fatah militia members and their supporters protested Arafat’s choice and torched the military intelligence building in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis where forces loyal to the newly appointed PA security chief were stationed. Arafat’s men fled the structure as a result (Roglar, 2004) “There is a crisis. There is a state of chaos in the security situation,” pronounced Arafat’s Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei after submitting his resignation to Arafat (ibid.).

As preparations for the legislative elections proceeded, tension between the “inside” young guard and the “outside” senior leadership arose over holding primaries to popularly choose the candidates for both the national list and the districts (PMC, 2004). Immediately after primaries were held in some parts of the West Bank and in Jerusalem, Abbas presiding over the Fatah Central Committee claimed that “cheating was massive” and on that basis decided to halt the staging of primaries. ⁶ The differences between the inside and outside culminated in the decision of three former rivals from the “inside” to form an independent list but not before armed Fatah groups broke into the Central Elections Commission regional offices to protest the moves of the outside old guard (Musallahun, 2005). Gunfights broke out at Fatah headquarters in the city of Gaza between Fatah supporters of the President and those loyal to the heads of the Fatah militia. Criminal gangs, taking advantage of the anarchy within nationalist ranks, had raided the central prison in Gaza to free prisoners (Hamdan, 2005).

Conclusion

In the first intifada, the Palestinians chose a strategy of limited violence beyond the Green Line, which helped maintain unity within the Palestinian camp and polarized the Israeli political elite. This state of affairs led to political concessions, the most important being the creation of PA under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. In the second, the Palestinians employed a strategy of indiscriminate “barbaric” terrorism that made no distinction between Israel within the 1967 Green Line and West Bank. Both suicide bombings, responsible for nearly half of Israeli deaths, and rocket launchings from the Gaza Strip, were almost exclusively aimed at areas within Israel. Palestinian strategy in the second intifada, instead of dividing the Israelis, united them and divided the Palestinians themselves. Such a strategy strengthened Israeli resolve against political concessions with the result that Palestinians achieved little gains, if any at substantially greater human and material costs.

The comparison between Palestinian strategy and its consequences in two long rounds of conflict with the Israeli state suggests two important theoretical and empirical findings. First, it is not so much the strategy employed by the stronger side that determines outcomes as Arreguin-Toft suggests, but the strategy employed by the weaker actor in conflict. Employing a strategy that polarizes the political center of the opponent and weakens its resolve is critical to the insurgent’s ability to succeed against its stronger opponent. In the first intifada, the Palestinians were able to polarize the foe’s political center. In the second intifada, the Palestinians failed to do the same at substantial human, material, and political costs, including a civil war in 2007 and the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Second, in the theoretical literature on terrorism, there is much discussion on the boomerang effect of the state’s overreaction to terrorism and insurgency that leads to increased mobilization behind the insurgent. The findings of this article strongly suggest that a strategy of barbarism, such as, suicide bombings, may harm the insurgent in much the same way as overreactions by the state.