have no alternative but to buy Israeli products? Clearly, Palestinian
Islamists give priority to the anti-Israeli struggle over an anti-American or
an anti-Western perception: in Olivier Roy’s words, the Palestinian
case illustrates the “nationalization of Islamism.”9
I will conclude this section with the following paradoxical observa-
tion. While Palestinian Islamists have dissociated themselves from
campaign against the United States, the United States has associated
itself with the Israeli campaign against the Islamists. By outlawing
Hamas and Jihad under its antiterrorism fight, and cracking down on
financial support from American Islamic organizations to Palestinian
Islamists, the United States has upgraded local “terrorist” groups to
the rank of “global” ones, which, however one looks at it, is neither a
deserved honor nor a justified stigma.
The Left and Secularist Activists
The anti-Americanism—however mild—of the Palestinian Islamists
is clearer in comparison to the more accommodating line taken by
the secularists, including Fatah cadres, and those on the left among
Palestinian activists. It is interesting to note here that this was not the
case historically. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Palestinian resistance
organizations considered themselves as part of the third world anti-
imperialism. Some of these organizations, like the PFLP, argued that
instead of hitting the protégé, it was more efficient to hit the head.
Hijacking, anti-American operations, and operational alliances with other
movements, took place. Three important characteristics of the earlier
period should be noted:
1. The Palestinian armed organizations were not inside Palestine, but
in the neighboring Arab countries; this means that there was as
much incentive to strike Israeli or U.S. targets all over the world,
such as planes and embassies, as to carry out operations against
Israeli-controlled territory.
2. The Soviet Union, while distancing itself from the modus operandi
of the Palestinian armed organizations, was not, in most cases,
disturbed by their anti-imperialist, anti-American drive.
* * *
162
C amille Mansour
3. Jordan and later Lebanon provided a safe haven, or sanctuary, for
Palestinian armed organizations, insofar as the host state was inca-
pable of controlling them. A similar situation evolved much later in
Afghanistan, when the Taliban government, far from being able to
control Al Qaeda, was controlled by it. Jordan in the late 1960s,
Lebanon in the 1970s, and Afghanistan in the 1990s show that
transnational political violence by non-state actors can only be
sustained when these actors operate from a territory that is not
sufficiently controlled by its government.10
For the Palestinian left and the secularist activists, however, the
situation in the 1990s bore little resemblance to the earlier decades.
The three characteristics of the regional and international environ-
ment that helped explain their recourse to transnational violence no
longer existed. First, Palestinian resistance organizations no longer
had a sanctuary after their withdrawal from Lebanon in 1982, not
even in Syria (simplistic propaganda notwithstanding). Second, anti-
American and anti-imperialist slogans became obsolete after the
demise of the Soviet Union. Third, the Intifada and the Madrid-Oslo
process made the West Bank and Gaza—rather than Amman, Beirut,
or Tunis—the center of the Palestinian polity. While the secular
activists, including the Fatah, and part of the left were among the first
returnees, many PFLP and DFLP cadres, who had opposed the
Oslo agreements from Damascus, gradually became reconciled to
the new situation and arranged for their return to the Palestinian
territories. Thus, both the push and pull factors of the 1980s and
1990s worked against Palestinian political violence outside the
Israeli–Palestinian territory and in favor of integration into a process
conducted by the Palestinian leadership and involving a will to settle
the conflict with Israel through peaceful negotiations and American
assistance.
However, as we shall see in the next section, the hopes placed in
the Oslo process faded in the late 1990s. With the outbreak of
the Palestinian–Israeli confrontation in September 2000, secularist
and leftist activists were progressively drawn from participating in
unarmed popular demonstrations against the Israeli army, to shoot-
ing against the Israelis, and finally to suicide attacks inside Israel.
Not only was hitting U.S. interests off their agenda, but they—and
the governing elite—now had a pragmatist, instrumental approach
to the potential role of the United States in the Palestinian–Israeli
accommodation.
* * *
The Palestinian Perception of America
163
The Palestinian Leadership
The Oslo process and the establishment of the Palestinian authority in
the West Bank and Gaza have had important effects on Palestinian-
U.S. relations. The Oslo agreements opened the way for Israel to sign
a treaty with Jordan and to establish ties of differing importance with
a number of Arab countries. The centrality of the Palestinian question
in the Arab world became, perhaps, more operational than ideological.
Whatever the ups and downs of Palestinian–Israeli relations between
1994 and 2000, Palestinian–American contacts intensified. For the
Clinton administration, relations with the Palestinians became an impor-
tant component of U.S. policy in the region and acquired a strategic
dimension because of their impact on Israel’s place in the region. This
relationship, likewise, compensated for any negative effect that
U.S. policy toward Iraq could have on Arab perceptions.
As for the Palestinian leadership, now that it had gained American
recognition and an open door to the White House, nurturing the
relationship became vital. This does not mean that it had any illu-
sions about weakening U.S.-Israeli ties, but, at least, it thought that
by maintaining intensive contacts with the U.S. administration, it
could involve Washington in the minutiae of the Palestinian–Israeli
relations in such a way as to give the administration a stake in a suc-
cessful outcome of the final negotiations. Certainly, the Palestinian
left would have argued that it was unrealistic to count on American
pressure to get Israel to halt settlement building, for example, but
neither the Palestinian left nor the intellectuals criticized the develop-
ment of Palestinian-U.S. ties. A positive image of the United States
emerged on the Palestinian street, and this reached a climax in December
1998 with President Clinton’s visit to Gaza.
It is possible that Bill Clinton became so entangled in the minutiae
of Palestinian–Israeli negotiations that he came to want a successful
outcome by the end of his term (January 2001) at any price. And suc-
cess at any price meant ignoring the situat
ion that had developed
on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza: expansion of the settle-
ments, mounting Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in their daily lives,
Palestinian loss of confidence in a fair negotiated outcome, and so on
and misrepresenting the gap between the negotiating positions of the
two sides. It was on this basis that he hastily convened the Camp
David summit in July 2000 in the conviction (or at least the hope)
that the weaker party, the Palestinians, would bend to pressures.
When this did not occur (though there was a real narrowing of the
* * *
164
C amille Mansour
gap), Clinton immediately put the blame on the Palestinian side. This
signaled the start of the downward slope in U.S.-Palestinian relations.
This is not the place to analyze the reasons behind the failure of
Camp David negotiations in July 200011 or to deal with the unfolding
Palestinian–Israeli confrontation, which broke out in September 2000.12
I will deal only with those elements that are necessary to understand
how the Palestinian leadership, in the conduct of its affairs, perceived
the role of America, first in the transition between the Clinton and
George W. Bush presidencies, and then after 9/11. During the last
three months of the Clinton administration, when the Intifada con-
sisted mainly of popular demonstrations against the Israeli military
(which already, during that period, exacted a heavy toll in Palestinian
lives), the Palestinian leadership tried to get Washington to recognize
Israel’s responsibility for the confrontation and requested the estab-
lishment of an international commission of enquiry. The Palestinian
objective was to improve their negotiating position on the final status
issues and to internationalize the path to a settlement by involving
other actors than Israel and the United States. In November, Clinton
acceded to the demand concerning the commission by constituting a
watered-down fact-finding committee under U.S. auspices and the
chairmanship of George Mitchell. Shortly thereafter, in December, he
presented to the two sides his “Parameters” for a final settlement,
which significantly improved, from the Palestinian point of view, what
was on the table at Camp David. However, in terms of the internal
calendars in Washington and Tel Aviv, it was too late. Bush replaced
Clinton in January 2001 and Sharon was elected prime minister in
early February.
Initially, the Palestinian leadership was not unhappy with George
Bush’s election as president. Encouraged by the Saudis, the Palestinians
thought that Saudi influence could be brought to bear on an admin-
istration whose pillar was the pro-Republican oil lobby. Very early,
however, it became clear that the Republicans, who had an interest in
the Gulf area, were driven by the idea that as long the Palestinian–
Israeli confrontation did not spill over into the region, there was no
reason to intervene. The Palestinians also soon realized that the neocon-
servatives, the other pillar of Bush’s administration, were against any
“nation-building” intervention as a matter of general principle and
had a pro-Sharon bias. Finally, the Palestinian leadership could not
help noticing that both groups wanted the new administration to dif-
ferentiate itself from its predecessor’s active approach. This was
expressed by the Administration’s formal abandonment of the Clinton
peace parameters no later than two days after Sharon’s election, its
* * *
The Palestinian Perception of America
165
insistence that Arafat make a 100-percent effort (impossible to measure
in any case) to end Palestinian violence as a condition before any
meeting with the American president, and its support of Israeli Prime
Minister Sharon’s definition of violence and conditions for a ceasefire
after the publication of the Mitchell Commission’s Report in April 2001
(thereby condoning, in effect, the Israeli battering ram tactics against
the Palestinians).
It is necessary, at this point, to summarize the Palestinian leader-
ship’s attitude toward the militarization of the Intifada, because this is
intimately related to its relations with the U.S. administration. I have
explained elsewhere13 that the leadership—because of the constraints
imposed by its dual nature (a quasi-state structure and a national lib-
eration movement), the restrictions on its territorial jurisdiction, and
fears for its own survival—acted as the “overseer” of the uprising rather
than as its “general staff.” This meant, from a declarative standpoint:
asserting that the root of violence lay with Israel even while carefully
refraining from referring to Israel as the enemy; remaining silent when
actions by different Palestinian groups were undertaken against the
Israeli occupying army, while condemning suicide operations and reit-
erating each time its opposition to the killing of civilians, whether
Israeli or Palestinian. From a practical standpoint, the overseer approach
meant arbitrating between different Palestinian activist groups, letting
things happen, and seriously intervening in favor of a cease-fire only
Palestinian population could be expected. The reasoning behind the
approach was that as long as Israel (or at least Washington) did not
compensate the Palestinian leadership with a tangible reward relating
to the peace process, the Palestinian leadership would not be in a position
to control the street.
The Bush administration’s lack of interest in an Israeli–Palestinian
peace process, its permissiveness concerning Israeli military measures
in the West Bank and Gaza, and the gap between the administration
and the Palestinian leadership on the cause of the violence show that
a low ebb in Palestinian–American relations predates the 9/11 attacks
on New York and Washington. However, when the attacks occurred,
the Palestinian leadership very quickly understood their implications:
on the one hand, fears that the neoconservative argument describing
all forms of Palestinian struggle against occupation as “terrorism” (and
thus lumping it indiscriminately with Al Qaeda) would be strength-
ened, and, on the other hand, hopes that the viewpoint of Secretary of
State Colin Powell would prevail, according to which America would
need calm in the Middle East and Arab support in order to focus on
* * *
166
C amille Mansour
identifying, locating, and pursuing those directly responsible for the
attacks. At this delicate juncture, Arafat hastened to line up behind
Washington and tried to calm the situation on the ground. He was
keen to show that he held one of the keys for American access to the
Middle East (in terms of influencing how America is seen in Arab
opinion) and that he knew how to use this key positively and unhesi-
tatingly (ahead of Egypt’s Mubarak, for instance, who was far more
reticent). This app
roach seemed to bear some fruit, as testified by the
administration’s displeasure with an Israeli attempt to escalate in the
two or three days following 9/11, considered as a cynical exploitation
of the tragedy, pressure on Tel Aviv for a cease-fire, and hints that
there would be movement toward a Palestinian state.
In mid-October, the Palestinian leadership could claim that its
status in Washington, while lagging very much behind its level during
the Clinton era, was better after 9/11 than it was before. However,
several factors quickly shattered this optimism: the seemingly easy vic-
tory against the Taliban and bin Laden’s forces in Afghanistan, thus
silencing those in Washington who claimed that America needed the
support of Arab and Islamic countries; the tilt in the internal power
struggle in favor of the neoconservatives; the affirmation by the latter,
now virulent unilateralists allied with Christian fundamentalists, of an
arrogant imperial America ready to fashion regimes sympathetic to
America and to combat terrorism everywhere, especially in Muslim-
inhabited areas. In the Palestinian–Israeli arena, the triggering event
that gave the upper hand to the alliance between American neocon-
servatives and Ariel Sharon was the assassination (October 17) of an
Israeli minister of the extreme right, Rehavam Ze’evi, an outspoken
advocate of transferring the Palestinians outside Palestine, by mem-
bers of the PFLP in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of their leader,
Abu Ali Mustafa. From that point on, Palestinian–U.S. relations
witnessed an aggravating deterioration whose tempo appeared closely
linked to the deterioration on the ground: targeted assassinations of
Palestinians by Israel, suicide operations against civilians in Israel, closure
of Palestinian towns and villages, shooting at Israeli soldiers and settlers,
land grabs by and for Israeli settlers, and, finally, reoccupation of the
entire West Bank and parts of the Gaza Strip.
Many observers have argued that the Palestinian leadership, what-
ever the merits of its case, failed to grasp the gravity of the 9/11 shock
on America and the almost absolute American tendency to view any
Palestinian violence as terrorism, and thus failed to take all the meas-