5. There is a distinction between tactical and strategic goals: The full retreat of the occupation forces from all the Palestinian lands including Jerusalem is but the first stage of the struggle that will continue through other means to implement the national goals.

In the winter of 2000, Dr. Kemal el Astal (a senior official in the Palestinian Office of Planning and Cooperation -- a de facto Ministry of Foreign Affairs) analyzed the political process between Israel and the PA on the eve of Camp David. In an article published in the magazine el Siasa el Falestinia, he wrote:

"The political solution is an expression of a temporary cease fire...the Arab-Zionist conflict is a cultural conflict that will continue even if a peace agreement is achieved....The region will continue to live under the shadow of this equation -- an incomplete peace and an endless war....The reconciliation is not historic....The struggle will go on in every ditch....We are in the process of a political arrangement, not a historic reconciliation."

The PA, Fatah, and the PLO are translating their perception of the "historic struggle" into usable tools in the overall confrontation against Zionism. The Palestinian "tool kit" includes a variety of means whose common denominator is the effort to destabilize the foundations of Israel as a Zionist state and to make the Palestinian side, in time, the stronger side in the equation of power.

The first goal, already achieved, was the exploitation of the Oslo process to liberate the first, albeit small, area of Palestine, which in turn allowed the struggle to be transferred into the depth of the Palestinian hinterland. The (expected) establishment of an independent and fully sovereign Palestinian state in the 1967 territories is perceived essentially as the construction of a bridgehead aimed at connecting the Palestinian diaspora to Palestine and deepening the political, social, and economic ties with the "Palestinian hinterland" within Israel (and within the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan), and threatening regional stability in a manner that serves Palestinian goals. The major tool consistently used by the PA to achieve these goals is the application of violence and terror against Israel. The outbreaks of violence that accompanied the period of the interim agreements with Israel (the Temple Mount tunnel, the Har Homa violence, the "Nakba Days," the "Days of Rage") were far from spontaneous popular outbreaks, as the Palestinians claimed. They were meticulously staged events ordered by the PA which used mainly Fatah (in conjunction with other organizations) to produce them, as a means of leverage on Israel to modify its positions on substantive issues.

By early 2000, the Palestinian decision to launch a "War of Independence and Return" was already maturing. The first indications were evident in the aggressive tone used by Arafat in speeches to his own entourage -- in his meetings with the Shabiba, the youth movement of Fatah, in Ramallah and Nablus. In those meetings (April 2000), Arafat dubbed the Fatah youth "the new generals" and threatened to "launch a new intifada" to force upon Israel the "establishment of an independent Palestinian state." Two weeks before Camp David, on June 25, 2000, and once again during a Fatah meeting in Nablus, Arafat openly spoke about the return to armed struggle: "We shall sacrifice our souls for Palestine....We are fighting for our land....He who has forgotten, let him remember Karame [an IDF action against Palestinian terrorists within Jordan's territory, that is celebrated in Palestinian historiography as the first Arab victory against the IDF], the Beirut campaign, and seven years of intifada. We are ready to write off everything and start all over again."

The final decision was taken immediately upon the conclusion of the Camp David summit, and what remained was to decide on the timing and the justification. Sakher Habash, in a detailed report on Camp David published in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on September 20, 2000, nine days before the outbreak of the intifada, wrote that "Brother Abu Ammar [Arafat] spoke in the language of a true believer, as a man who foresees what he and the sublime Palestinian people are facing -- the option of confrontation." After the summit, this message was translated into a sort of Order of the Day and distributed to the Palestinian national security forces in Gaza, after which they began preparing for the approaching outbreak of a violent campaign against Israel. In this document, entitled "The Campaign Has Started," it is written: "A call, a call, a call

December 2002               - 5 -               Outpost