Promoting Democracy. Manal A. Jamal
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case are even more puzzling given the foundations put in place. They also shed light on the not so clear distinction between political society and civil society. This analysis builds on Frances Hasso’s work, which links opposition movements to the interaction between local “political fields,” that is, “the legal-cultural-historical-political environment within which a protest movements exists,” and globalized shifts.40 Although the political settlements were local developments, they cannot be assessed as separate from the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the main superpower.
The Nationalist Movement and Associational Life in Palestine: From Charity to Resistance and Mass Mobilization
In the absence of a full-fledged state, limited local government structures, and weak social service institutions, the various political organizations in the WBGS perceived the founding of mass-based organizations and more professionalized NGOs, and other social institutions more broadly defined, as necessary support for the national liberation stage.41 NGOs have played a crucial role in the mobilization of Palestinian society, in the provision of social services, and in the interest representation of various constituencies. By 1993, Palestinian NGOs accounted for 60 percent of primary health care services, 49 percent of secondary and tertiary health care, 100 percent of disability care, 100 percent of preschool programs, and a large proportion of tertiary education, agricultural extension, welfare, housing, and other services in the WBGS.42
Associations and civic organizations in the Palestinian territories date back to the Mandate period. During this period, Palestinians from the urban upper-middle and middle class established a number of charity organizations. Fifteen percent of NGOs that existed in 2000 were established before 1967, 12 percent between 1948 and 1967, and 3 to 4 percent in the Mandate period.43 Additionally, different sectors of Palestinian society, including the Communists, initiated efforts to organize the working class.44 Despite the various efforts of groups and individuals to establish some institutions during this time period, however, these organizations were urban-based and did not extend to all sectors of society. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1980s, associational and union activity increased dramatically, growing most rapidly after 1978.45 The rise of associations during this period extended to grassroots-based organizations, including charitable societies and cooperatives,46 professional associations and syndicates, and Islamist groups, including zakat committees.47 The DFLP initiated much of the associational activity during this period, especially after 1978.48 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of NGOs—but, importantly, not all—began to access Western foreign donor funding and to professionalize and institutionalize their operations. Then after the establishment of the PA, associational actors in the WBGS struggled to reconcile their relations with the incipient government and to shift their priorities to accommodate the burgeoning state-building phase.49
A number of factors coalesced to instigate these changes, especially related to mass mobilization in the territories. Most notably, the realization began to take root that Israeli military occupation would not be ending any time soon. The entrenchment of the Israeli military occupation and the myriad ways in which it would come to dominate the lives of Palestinians living in the WBGS were becoming more and more apparent. By 1974, approximately 45 percent of the employed West Bank residents and 50 percent of employed Gazans were working in Israel.50 Meanwhile, the continued confiscation of Palestinian lands, building of illegal Israeli settlements, and increased repression resulted in activists in the WBGS developing their own political agenda, which focused on resisting Israeli military occupation, and empowering Palestinian communities.
The increasing realization that only the Palestinians themselves, and not outside “benevolent” actors, could improve their daily living conditions extended across the Palestinian political polity more generally. In 1978, Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David peace accords, which included arrangements for the autonomy of the WBGS. The PLO, along with Arab countries, opposed these agreements, especially those components related to autonomy. To avoid “strategic marginalization,” the PLO recognized the necessity for a more systematic mobilization campaign in the occupied territories.51 A more organized presence of groups affiliated with the PLO would minimize chances that external actors, particularly Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan, would come to determine the fate of the Palestinians. Few if any of the individuals involved in the grassroots organizations were actively involved in armed resistance against the occupying power, and many members were not necessarily official members of the parent political organizations.
Associational and union activity that took place after 1975 often reflected factional competition, especially between Fatah and the Communist Party.52 Groups competed not only over who would control these associations and unions, but also over who would distribute the funds received from various Arab states.53 Recruitment to the mass-based organizations often started in high schools, and initiated activists into joining one of the different political organizations. Marwan Barghouti, a founding member of Fatah’s youth wing, Al-Shabῑbeh, and later student body president at Birzeit University, and one of the leaders of the first and second Intifadas, explained:
The late 1970s through the 1980s was the golden age of Palestinian popular, mass mobilization. The reception was amazing. In addition to our nationalist activities, we led critically important social initiatives. Al-Shabῑbeh (the Fatah youth branch), which recruited members from high schools, colleges and universities, for example, organized numerous volunteer campaigns, including anti-drug campaigns in the refugee camps. Our volunteer work involved cleaning and repairing streets, cleaning and restoring grave yards, painting schools, helping in the villages with the harvest of olives and other crops, and restoring and cultivating lands that are in threat of being confiscated by the Israeli military occupation authorities for lack of use.
Our structures were so extensive that the arrest of numerous Al-Shabῑbeh leaders could not undermine the movement. Leading up to the first Intifada, we had 8000 elected youth leaders representing Al-Shabῑbeh throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. An individual who was a formal member of Fatah or of Al-Shabῑbeh could organize a group if s/he had a minimum of fifteen members in the particular town or village.54
Indeed, the social dimensions of this work paved the way for the hundreds of thousands of recruits who would carry out the first Intifada.
As a result of the Iranian Revolution, Islamist associations, unions, and organizations also became more prevalent in the Palestinian territories, especially in the Gaza Strip, in the early 1980s. Much of the activity of Islamist organizations focused on social and cultural issues and community development. Islamist institutions play an important and very visible role in the provision of services in areas related to relief and charity work, preschool and primary education, rehabilitation of physically and mentally challenged persons, primary and tertiary health care, women’s income-generating activities, literacy training, the care of orphans, and youth and sports activities.55 It is important to note that these organizations differ vastly in the extent to which they are linked to one of the Islamist political organizations.
Though these organizations were affiliated with the political factions, for the most part they maintained varying degrees of autonomy. The organizations affiliated with the PCP, the DFLP, and the PFLP had Marxist-Leninist structures organized on the basis of democratic-centralism. Although these organizations were autonomous from the “outside” political organizations, they were often much closer to the respective political organization in the occupied territories. Often, these organizations maintained close contact with the grassroots, which allowed for input from these constituencies. Because of the sheer distance between the members and supporters of the political organizations in the occupied territories and their leadership in exile, most Palestinian factions accorded a flexible degree of autonomy to their associations, unions, and affiliated committees in the WBGS. Despite the overlap in membership of factions and grassroots organizations, there tended to be a lot of disagreement between the two. Leaders in the grassroots organizations, especially in the labor unions, played key roles and maintained that “they were the ones who really knew what was happening or were truly in touch.”56 Even more so was the degree of autonomy of the popular committees established during the first Intifada. As Ali Jaradat explained, “The decision to create the popular committees came from the grassroots committees themselves, and not from the political organizations. The grassroots committees had more democratic