Uncertainty and Disquiet Mark Intifada's Third Anniversary

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

*****   Uncertainty and Disquiet Mark Intifada's Third Anniversary

Lori A. Allen

October 8, 2003

(Lori A. Allen is an Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the
University of Chicago.)

Standing on a platform in the central traffic circle of the West Bank
city of Ramallah, a number of speakers urged a crowd of roughly 300
to continue the Palestinian intifada that completed its third year on
September 28, 2003. The men pledged their support to President Yasser
Arafat, confined since December 2001 to two rooms of the Palestinian
Authority compound a few blocks away. They demanded the release of
Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) member
imprisoned by Israel since April 2002 for his activities as a popular
leader of the uprising. As the orators shouted these exhortations, a
small contingent of boy and girls scouts from the nearby al-Am'ari
refugee camp snaked past the platform, the drums of their marching
band muffling the speakers' words. Ten adolescent boys raced yelling
down the street, briefly sharpening the vague anticipation that
Israeli army jeeps would enter town, but word quickly spread that it
was only a scuffle between teenagers. Apparently uninterested in
either the sloganeering or the earnest drumming of the scouts, the
onlookers resumed milling about, raising their voices so that their
conversations could be heard over the loudspeakers. Finally, prompted
by some inaudible command, the crowd began to move. At the beginning
of the uprising, demonstrators had frequently headed out near Israeli
checkpoints on the edge of town, but on this day, the marchers
meandered around the block, returning to the spot they had vacated a
few minutes earlier.

It was an apt symbol for prevailing opinions of the achievements of
the intifada to date. After three years, the two targets of the
uprising -- the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority (PA)
-- still stand. Most Palestinians admit that, in many respects, their
personal and collective political status has in fact deteriorated.
Militant groups' attacks on Israeli civilians inside the Green Line,
such as the October 4 suicide bombing that killed 19 Israelis in
Haifa, continue to arouse deep disquiet among Palestinians, disquiet
that is not limited to fear of Israeli reprisal. Confusion reigns:
what have we achieved? Where are we going? What is coming next?
Nobody seems to know. Qaddoura Faris, head of the Palestinian
Political Prisoners' Association, PLC deputy and current candidate
for a ministerial post, answered these questions of the hour with a
laugh half-sheepish and half-cynical, "Even we don't know." . . .

[The full text is available at
<http://www.merip.org/mero/mero100803.html>.]   *****

Comments on the article above?
--
Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
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* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
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