holding the balance. Instead of giving in to their
demands, Labour and Likud agreed on a ‘National
Unity’ government, shared between Shamir and
the Labour leader Shimon Peres. Such a divided
Cabinet could follow no decisive policies. The
paralysing division of the Israeli electorate contin-
ued, with Likud supporters favouring hardline
policies on the West Bank and the Palestinian
question, and Labour supporters more ready to
find a compromise solution. The result, as a new
generation of Palestinians on the West Bank and in
Gaza grew to manhood, was a violent challenge to
the continued Israeli occupation – the uprising, the
intifada, that began in December 1987. Israel’s
young conscripts were ordered in to re-establish
control. Civil conflict is brutalising. Inexperienced
Israeli soldiers were unequal to the task of dealing
with stone-throwing young men and children; in
frustration bullets were fired, unarmed Palestinians
killed. A military curfew was imposed, which alien-
ated the Palestinians still further.
Yasser Arafat was one of the great political sur-
vivors, a familiar figure on the world’s stage until
his death in November 2004; he had dedicated
his life to creating a Palestinian state. Through
terrorism the Palestinians succeeded in drawing
global attention to their cause when neither
their Arab brethren nor the rest of the world
cared. For the Arab nations the Palestinians were
pawns to be supported or rejected as their own
interests dictated, and the PLO fighters were
fractious and rebellious ‘guests’ of their host
nations. Thus the PLO were successively expelled
from Jordan, Egypt and the Lebanon. But Arafat
had succeeded in dominating the mainstream of
Palestinians in 1969 as chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organisation. During the 1970s he
supported terrorism as the only effective weapon
the Palestinians had. In 1974 at the Arab summit
in Rabat the Arab nations accepted the PLO as
the authentic voice of the Palestinians, a step
forward that implied independence not only from
Israel but from Jordan’s King Hussein. Arafat
came to recognise that continued terrorism would
now harm his cause, which needed world support.
Bitter enmities developed between him and those
Palestinian factions that continued their campaign
of terrorism. But he would not condemn indi-
vidual terrorist attacks against Israel either, for
fear of losing support among the Palestinians who
regarded these fighters as martyrs. So he spoke in
two contradictory voices: to the West he gave
assurances, which he promptly denied giving
when speaking to his own people.
During the 1980s Arafat worked out a ‘legiti-
mate’ strategy for creating a Palestinian state. It
would have been unrealistic to have as its objective
the destruction of Israel and the retaking of the
whole of Palestine. Instead, a mini-state solution
emerged. The Palestinian state would comprise
the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. To gain
the support of the US, Arafat in December 1988
publicly renounced terrorism and accepted Israel’s
right to exist. Talks between the US representa-
tives and the PLO were held sporadically, but
ended when Arafat once more appeared to con-
done terrorism in practice. Meanwhile, in Israel,
Shamir resisted all US pressure to consider some
form of genuine Palestinian autonomy, exchang-
ing Gaza, the West Bank (or most of it) and East
Jerusalem for peace. The Israeli right also rejected
any direct negotiations with the PLO. Israeli opin-
ion, however, was deeply divided and the rest of
the world was losing patience with what appeared
to be Israeli intransigence. The continued killing
of Palestinians, and the indiscriminate shooting
on the Temple Mount in October 1990, after
Palestinians had hurled stones at praying Jews,
further alienated world opinion.
Yitzhak Shamir’s coalition with Labour had col-
lapsed the previous March in bitter disagreement910 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY
The Gaza Strip. A hazardous posting for Israeli con-
scripts and a hellish place to live for Palestinians. ©
Associated Press, AP