Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (23 page)

Palestinians constituted a horrific violation of God’s covenants with the Jewish people. In 1995, a group of rabbis placed what they believed to be God’s imperative above the laws of Israel by issuing a decree instructing Israeli soldiers to resist orders to evacuate Israeli military bases in the West Bank.129 As Hamas’s martyrdom operations continued and as Israelis died as a result of them, Prime Minister Rabin came under increasing criticism for his leadership role in the Oslo Accords and he was assassinated by an Israeli named Yigal Amir on November 4, 1995. Amir maintained that his killing of Rabin was justified on the grounds that according to his understanding of Jewish law, any Jew who surrenders sacred lands to non-Jews should be punished by death.130 The assassination of Rabin was a major setback for the peace process.

Hamas’s martyrdom operations continued, as did the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Peace efforts represented by the Wye River Accords (which came into being in 1998) and the Camp David II negotiations (which took place in 2000) yielded no meaningful results.131 With stark and visible tensions between Israelis and Palestinians continually bubbling to the surface, in September 2000 Ariel Sharon, who was the leader of Israel’s conservative Likud Party, paid a very public visit to Jerusalem’s holy site of Haram al-Sharif (as Muslims call it) and the Temple Mount (as Jews and Christians call it). This site is very sacred to Jews and Muslims. Sharon made this very public visit accompanied by a security force of 1,000 and a variety of news outlets in many parts of the world reported his visit. Sharon’s stated purpose was to show that any Jew had the right to visit the holy site.132

The Second Intifada

Palestinians were deeply insulted by Sharon’s actions, regarded them as an insult to Islam, and launched a series of protests that included stone- throwing. Much like the killing of four Palestinians in Gaza by an Israeli vehicle in December 1987 brought to a head a multiplicity of simmering frustrations on the part of Palestinians, thus precipitating the first intifada, Sharon’s visit brought to a head similar frustrations which precipitated this second intifada, which lasted until approximately 2005, although the ending date of the latter intifada is disputed.133

During this second intifada, Palestinian youths threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers and military vehicles, while the Israelis responded with live ammunition. Three of the differences between the first and second intifadas were that during the second intifada participation was not as widespread among the Palestinians, no coordinated leadership body emerged, and the Palestinians used martyrdom operations and light

automatic weapons. For their part, the Israelis used weaponry that was much deadlier and more mechanized than during the first intifada. As the second intifada continued into 2002, the Israelis began to reoccupy portions of the West Bank and Gaza that they had given to the Palestinian National Authority earlier. Israel also imposed severe and far-reaching closures of the West Bank, which prohibited Palestinians in many cases from leaving their own neighborhoods and Israel closed most forms of internal commerce and business.134 Between the fall of 2000 and the summer of 2003, approximately 2,400 Palestinians and 780 Israelis died in the second intifada.135

Martyrdom Operations

One of the ways in which Muslims, such as members of Hamas, who engage in martyrdom operations justify their actions is the following. Many Muslims who engage in martyrdom operations view the seventh-century Muslims in and near Medina who fought against the non-Muslims (who sought to kill Muhammad and all other Muslims) as their model. According to Muslims who support martyrdom operations, much like many of those Muslims went into battle against the non-Muslims knowing or being fairly certain that they would die (largely because the Muslims were vastly out- numbered during those seventh-century battles) for the purpose of defend- ing Islam from destruction, so too contemporary participants in martyrdom operations know that they will die for the purpose of defending Islam. In the case of Hamas, for example, at least some of the participants in those mar- tyrdom operations believe that the Israelis have stolen land that rightfully belongs to Muslims, that they are attempting to destroy all Muslims and Islam, and that Muslims must defend themselves against that aggression. Thus, at least some of the participants in Hamas’s martyrdom operations believe that they are dying for a higher cause – that is, defense of Muslim lands and the hope that Muslims will regain most or all of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Thus, many members of Hamas and other Islamist organizations who engage in martyrdom operations do not view themselves as committing suicide (which, according to participants in martyrdom operations and other Muslims, Islam forbids); rather, many of these participants in martyrdom operations and their supporters see the par- ticipants in martyrdom operations as soldiers who are defending Islam, much like the Muslims who fought alongside Muhammad during the early seventh-century battles of Badr (624), Uhud (625), and Khandaq (627) were soldiers who justifiably engaged in armed combat to defend Islam and sometimes died in the process.136

In 2005, in the midst of continuing martyrdom operations by Palestinians, under the leadership of Ariel Sharon the Israeli government evacuated all of

the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. At least some Palestinians viewed the withdrawal of the settlements as coming as a result of the Palestinians’ resistance tactics including the tactic of martyrdom operations.137 Even though Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, through a long and complicated series of events Fatah came to govern the West Bank while Hamas came to govern Gaza. The prospects of a Palestinian state and for Israeli-Palestinian relations remain unclear, although in their own ways Hamas and Fatah hold considerable sway among Palestinians.138

Palestine Worldwide

For some Muslims, the Palestinians’ struggle against the Israelis, and by extension the Palestinians’ resistance to the United States and other supporters of Israel, constitutes a microcosm of what they believe to be their own struggles against the injustices of various regimes in the majority- Muslim world and their frustrations with the West and Israel.139 Television and radio stations, newspapers and magazines, websites, and other forms of media, to which many Muslims are exposed, carry information and images almost daily that show the enormously difficult circumstances under which the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live.140 While not minimizing the various specificities of the Palestinians’ situation, one could conceptualize the Palestinian struggle in monadic terms; that is, as a kernel onto which is inscribed the ongoing history and struggles of some Muslims and even of non-Muslims who are struggling against injustice. Thus, the Palestinians’ circumstances can be viewed as a microcosm of the ways in which some Muslims and non-Muslims may perceive their own struggles against injustice. This way of interpreting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict draws on the work of the twentieth-century intellectual Walter Benjamin who suggested that a single piece of art can be monadic (or microcosmic) in relation to the larger idea of Art in a similar way that an individual cell contains the genetic code for the entire body.141 In this vein, many Muslims and non-Muslims, who may be engaged in struggles against oppression, see their lives reflected in those of the Palestinians and the Palestinians’ lives reflected in theirs. For example, some Islamists in Egypt who struggle against the government symbolically identify their resistance with that of the Palestinians; at the same time, the members of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the members of al-Qaida across the world symbolically identify themselves with the Palestinians and identify all of the Taliban’s and al-Qaida’s enemies with the United States and Israel.142

There are also several cases outside of the majority-Muslim world where the Palestinians’ resistance has been identified with groups who are

struggling against oppression, such as some members of the following groups: anti-apartheid activists in South Africa, Tibetans who are resisting the Chinese, and African-Americans who oppose prejudice in the United States.143 Concomitant with these dynamics, the second Palestinian intifada prompted the emergence of the International Solidarity Movement and other groups who viewed themselves as committed to bringing their understandings of global solidarity to the Palestinians’ resistance against the Israelis; these and some other groups have cooperated organizationally and some of them espouse the slogan, “We are all Palestinians.”144

At the same time, the Palestinians’ protest continues to be a common theme at the World Social Forum and other meetings where the attendees view themselves as associated with what they understand to be international justice.145 There are people in various parts of the world who believe that they have a stake in the Palestinians’ cause and these people could be categorized under what Benjamin has termed “the tradition of the oppressed”; that is, different groups of people who view themselves as sharing certain similarities in light of the injustices that they believe are being perpetrated against them.146 Scholars and activists such as Eqbal Ahmad (a late twentieth-century Pakistani writer, journalist, and anti-war activist), Barbara Harlow (who is the Louann and Larry Temple Centennial Professor in English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin and is affiliated with several departments and programs there), and Edward Said (a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York City) have explained what they believe to be the similarities between the Palestinians’ resistance and the political protests of other groups who view themselves as resisting injustice.147

In a work first published in 1993, well before the second intifada and the global solidarity movement that arose in tandem with it, Said wrote presciently of that solidarity movement, stating there was “an elusive oppositional mood … an internationalist counter-articulation” that was closely linked with “antisystemic movements” in various parts of the world.148 Said believed that “the struggle of the Palestinian people” is “a byword for emancipation and enlightenment” for oppressed people in many parts of the world.

In the midst of these realities, the United States has adapted Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians as one strategic and tactical model for its own battles against Islamist militants, as well as Iraqis and Afghans who oppose the United States’ military activities in those countries. The United States’ policies with respect to Iraq, for example, mirror, in some respects, the policies that various Israeli regimes have implemented

against the Palestinians. Such policies and practices include at least ten components: