Polarization Over Palestine : Jewish, Muslim Militants Threaten to Fill Political Vacuum

Along with tens of thousands of other Palestinians, Muslim fundamentalists have been active in the 10-month-old uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Their radical program for a Muslim state in all of historic Palestine challenges the demands of the Palestine Liberation Organization for a national state in part of Palestine almost as completely as it challenges the existence of Israel. On the Israeli side of the conflict, Jewish fundamentalists, armed with a militant Messianic program, reject the central tenets of Zionism as vigorously as they do the claim of Palestinian Arabs to any rights in the land that each people calls home. Ironically, however, the rise of extremism in each camp may signal a more basic trend toward accommodation between them.

On the ideological level, Muslim fundamentalists reject nationalism as a Western idea pitting Muslim against Muslim. They reject as well the pseudo-Marxism that many PLO groups use to embellish their political objectives, and they fervently oppose the Palestinian communists, who often play a key organizational role in the occupied territories. On the tactical level, however, the Muslim fundamentalists share with the PLO a desire to end Israeli occupation. Until recently they appeared to have put their disagreements aside for the good of the intifada --the wave of demonstrations, civil disobedience, strikes and violent attacks that began last December.

But now there are signs of a breakdown in the alliance between the Muslim fundamentalists and the Palestinian nationalists. The Unified National Command of the Uprising, which has issued most of the leaflets coordinating the intifada, was so named because it “united” leftist Palestinian representatives, mainstream Fatah nationalists and Muslim activists. The name still appears on its leaflets. But in April a rival organization, the Islamic Resistance Movement (known by its Arab acronym, Hamas), broke away from the unified command, refusing to cooperate with its leftist members.

In late August Sheik Ahmad Yasin, the leader of the Muslim fundamentalists in the Gaza Strip, condemned the PLO for proposing negotiations whose objective would be the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. And within the last two weeks conflicts have erupted between Hamas and the unified command over whose demonstrations and slogans should take precedence. This rivalry shows how difficult it has become for the PLO to control the popular energies that the uprising has unleashed.

On the Israeli side, the influence of fundamentalism is even greater. Organized loosely within an umbrella group of 15,000 to 20,000 activists known as Gush Emunim, or Faith Bloc, Jewish fundamentalists are concentrated within the more than 140 West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements. Their message includes exaltation of Jewish chosenness in a hostile world, rejection of Zionism as a path toward integration of the Jewish people into the family of nations, insistence on Jewish rule of the whole land of Israel at any cost, and proposals to solve the “Arab problem” by open warfare on Palestinians. According to current polls, the fundamentalist parties to the right of the hard-line Likud Bloc are likely to command between 12 and 16 seats in the Israeli parliament following the Nov. 1 vote--an election whose outcome is likely to be decided by one or two seats.

But the intensity of feelings and fears aroused by the Palestinian uprising have hurt as well as helped the Jewish fundamentalist movement. According to current polls, both the proportion of Israelis ready to negotiate with the PLO and the proportion supporting fundamentalist solutions are on the increase. In a poll conducted in August, 60% of Jewish Israelis said that they favored talks with the PLO if that organization accepts U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, recognizes Israel and abandons terrorism. On the other hand, polls now commonly report that approximately 40% of Jewish Israelis say that they support a mass “transfer” of Arabs from the country. Thus it is likely that the bitter election campaign under way between the Likud and the compromise-oriented Labor alignment is mild compared to the truly dangerous struggles that will erupt when either the Likud, with its fundamentalist allies, or Labor, with its liberal-dovish and Arab partners, tries to form a government after the election.

Fundamentalists capitalize on the fear of the “other” and the hope that, despite all odds, their fondest dreams can come true. They put the purity of their vision ahead of their peoples’ yearnings for a livable peace--yearnings that now appear finally to have produced both Israeli and Palestinian partners for meaningful negotiations. It is precisely because of this new potential for peace, brought about by an uprising that has aroused both fears and hopes, that even more violence, accompanied by an escalation of threats and rhetoric, is to be expected on both sides.

But the very bitterness with which Jewish and Muslim extremists are now insisting on their views is evidence that, however elusive, common ground now does exist for agreement between Palestinian and Israeli moderates.