Has the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Become Islamic? Fatah, Islam, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades

ABSTRACT

Many indications in the latest round of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians suggest the Islamization of the conflict on the Palestinian side. How Fatah, the nationalist faction that has dominated the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and its principle fighting arm during the hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians since 2000, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, have related to Islam is a crucial dimension in answering the question of the extent to which the conflict has become Islamic. This article argues on the basis of an analysis of martyrs' obituaries published by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades that though they were often steeped in Islamic symbols, the considerable variation suggests that the use of Islamic symbols and allusions employed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades are affective rather than programmatic, designed to mobilize the public against Israel and thwart the expansion of the Islamic movements internally rather than to impact on the character of Fatah and the larger Palestinian political entity. While mobilization employing Islamic symbols is effective domestically, it is costly in an international system committed to a society based on states where raison d'état subordinates religious beliefs and goals. In the international arena, the state-centered nationalist discourse provides an edge over the Palestinian fundamentalist competition.

Notes

Ghassan Khatib, “One Way to Make Things Worse,” http://www.bitterlemons.org (2002). Khatib is presently the minister of labor in the Palestinian Authority.

Mamduh Nufal, a prominent Palestinian commentator and advisor, emphasized the Palestinian Authority's role in the outbreak of the intifada in a roundtable on the subject: “This current movement is distinguishable from the first intifada and is perhaps unique altogether. From the beginning, this movement was led and accompanied by the forces of the PA. It is not a mass movement divorced from the Authority nor did it burst in isolation from it, but to the contrary, took off as a result of a central decision taken by the authority before it became a popular movement. It occurred directly during Sharon's visit to al-Aqsa, when the organs of the political and security organs of the PA decided to defend al-Aqsa. Yasser Arafat regarded the visit to al-Aqsa a volatile point sufficient not only to ignite the fire on Palestinian soil but to inflame the situation outside the borders of Palestine. Decisions were taken regarding operational preparations, meetings were held for the participating forces of the Authority and it was decided to mobilize them towards al-Aqsa on Friday…. Directives were made to the security organs to enter it and defend it.” “Nadwa: Wujhat Nazar fi Tatawwurat al-Intifada wa-Ahdafiha,” Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, no. 47 (2001): 44. Nabil Amru (Amer), the former minister of parliamentary affairs in the Palestinian Authority and a close confidant of Arafat, was even blunter: “The intifada, all of it, is the making of the Authority, even if one ought not, out of sheer political wisdom, to adopt or say it.… but it is known, and those that know it thoroughly are the Israelis. This is why they know where to strike. The essential foe for them is the Authority…. The question is can we as the Authority adopt this within the political margin of maneuver offered. I think the answer is no.” “Hawar Sakhin Bayna Nabil Amru wa Islah Jad,” Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, no. 50 (2002): 13.

Robert Mali and Hussein Agha, “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors,” Journal of Palestine Studies 33 (2001): 163–75.

This series of events eclipsed by far the violent events of Land Day on March 30, 1976, in which six of Israel's Arab citizens were killed in demonstrations that lasted a single day.

Kull al-Arab (October 3, 2000).

Gal Luft, “The Palestinian H-Bomb,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 4 (2002): 2.

Khalil Shikaki, “Palestine Divided,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 1 (2002): 91.

JMCC Poll, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, no. 45 (May 29–31, June 1–3, 2002).

Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement 1918–1929 (London: Frank Cass, 1974), 41.

Ibid., 269.

Christopher Sykes, Cross Roads to Israel (London: New English Library, 1967), 116.

Hillel Frisch, “The Evaluation of Palestinian Nationalist Islamic Doctrine: Territorializing a Universal Religion,” Canadian Review in Nationalism 21 (1994): 57.

Nissim Mishal, Those Were the Years (Tel Aviv: Yedihot Ahronot Press,1998), 155. On this incident's continuing impact, see the report on a recent rally in Gaza sponsored by the PA's ministry of endowments and religious affairs that commemorated thirty-three years since the burning in Al-Hayat al-Jadida (July 22, 2002).

Rima Hammami and Salim Tamari, “The Second Uprising or New Beginning,” Journal of Palestine Studies 30, no. 2 (2001): 13.

Eli Rekhess, “The West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Middle East Contemporary Survey 5 (1981): 324–48.

Wendy Kristianasen, “Challenge and Counterchallenge: Hamas's Response to Oslo,” Journal of Palestine Studies 28, no. 3 (1999): 34.

Ibid.

Hammami and Tamari, “The Second Uprising,” 8–9.

Haaretz, July 11, 2002.

Israel Radio, July 13, 2002.

Ziad Abu Amer, Usul al-Harakat al-Siyasiya al-Filastiniyya fi Quta Ghazza (Accre: Dar al-Aswar, 1989), 83.

Khaled Khroub, review of Islam and Salvation in Palestine: The Islamic Jihad Movement, by Meir Hatina, Journal of Palestine Studies 31 (2001): 109.

Hatina, Islam and Salvation in Palestine: The Islamic Jihad Movement, 33.

The following table lists the speeches by day of commemoration and the date the speeches were published in al-Ayyam, a Palestinian newspaper published in Ramallah near Jerusalem.

• Table

Al-Ayyam, May 16, 2001.

Al-Ayyam, May 15, 1998; November 11, 1998.

A textual analysis of speeches given by other Arab leaders demonstrates to what extent religious sentiment pervades their speeches. President Mubarak cited three verses nine times in eleven public speeches he gave between 1999–2001. His speeches are also substantially longer; 3,000 words on average compared to 750 to 1,000 words. In none of Mubarak's speeches, moreover, did the verses appear at the beginning or the end, nor were they necessarily followed by religious salutations.

On the nonsegregated nature of the (Communist) Committees of Voluntary Action, see Al-Talia, July 17, 1982.

On the religious activities of the Shabiba, see for example a write-up on the Shabiba Committee for Social Action in the old city in Al-Bayadir al-Siyasi, no. 110 (July 14, 1984): 37. The report recounts how after cleaning the Temple Mount they attended as a group the al-Fajr prayers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Hatina, Islam and Salvation in Palestine, 33–34.

Interview with Dr. Fa'iz al-Aswar (Abu Abdallah) from Jihad al-Islami-Kata'ib al-Aqsa. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, January 23, 1996.

Alain Gresh, The Struggle Within (London: Zed, 1985), 34.

Nels Johnston, Islam and the Politics of Meaning in Palestinian Nationalism (London: Kegan and Paul, 1982), 71–72.

Muhammd Zahhar, one of the leaders of the Hamas movement in Gaza, spoke in an interview of waiting for the PLO and nationalism to self-destruct, of establishing the universal Islamic state, and of fighting the West. Muhammd Zahhar, “Hamas: Waiting for Secular Nationalism to Self-Destruct,” Journal of Palestine Studies 24, no. 1 (1995): 83.

Fatah, “The Constitution,” http://www.fateh.net/e_public/constitution.htm (accessed 5 March 2004). In the text in Arabic it is called “al-Nizam al-Asasi,” that should be more accurately translated as the Basic Order.

Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement—18 August, 1988. (n.p.: n.d.).

Fatah, “Al-Intilaqa-Istratijiyyat al-Thawra Hata al-Nasr,” http://www.fateh.net/public/alintilaka/index.htm (accessed 5 March 2004).

Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1993), S. V. “Al-Miradj.”

Kitab al-Sayyid Muhammad Amin al-Husayni fi'l-Ijtimaal-Islamial-Kabir li-Wufud al-Qura (Jerusalem, 1935), 1–2.

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Article 11.

Al-Ayyam, December 31, 1995.

John Moore, The Arab-Israel Conflict, vol. 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 37.

Matthew Kalman, “Terrorist Says Orders Come from Arafat, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade Leader,” USA Today, March 14, 2002.

Khaled Abu Toameh and Larry Derfner, “Yasser Arafat's ‘Martyrs’” U.S. News and World Report, 132, no. 9 (2002): 16.

Lamia Lahoud, “Palestinian Group Claims Killing of TV Chief in Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, January 19, 2001.

JMCC Poll, Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, no. 36 (2000).

Fatah, “Katai'ib Shuhada al-Aqsa,” http://www.fateh.tv/aboutus.htm

Ibid.

http://www.fateh.tv/17-01-2002.htm

http://www.fateh.tv/19-01-2002.htm

http://www.fateh.tv/21-01-2002.htm

http://www.fateh.tv/22-01-2002.htm

http://www.fateh.tv/27-05-01-2002.htm

http://www.fateh.tv/03-06-2002.htm

http://www.fateh.tv/06-07-2002.htm

“Report on Statements by Fatah's Hani Al-Hasan: Intifadah Is Reply to Israeli Aggression,” Al-Quds, November 28, 2000.

A textual analysis of the third issue of Al-Nashra al-Markaziyya (February 15, 2002), the official bulletin of Fatah, which covers approximately fifty pages of text revealed no specific reference to a verse, hadith, or to a specifically Islamic theme. The issues can be found in at http://www.fateh.net/public/newsletter/index.htm.

All of the sample of thirty-three announcements issued by the Al-Aqsa Brigades contained at least the Islamic salutation “in the name of Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate” or “Allah is Great” and twenty-two verses from the Koran appeared in them. The eighty-nine Fatah announcements analyzed included no such prelude or salutation and quoted only two verses from the Koran.

For a more extended discussion on why the international system favors national movements over religious, see Hillel Frisch and Shmuel Sandler, “Religion, State, and the International System in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” International Political Science Review, 25, no. 1 (2004): 77–96.