Middle East Who's Running the Insurrection?

By Johanna McGeary/Jerusalem

In a sense, Khalil al-Wazir died for a biblical injunction: an eye for an eye. When an Israeli hit team assassinated the Palestine Liberation Organization's operations chief three weeks ago, the act was in retaliation for his role in masterminding a large number of P.L.O. terror attacks over the years. Yet al- Wazir's death was also intended to decapitate the intifadeh, the five- month- old uprising that has rocked the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank. As head of the P.L.O.'s "western-sector command," he was in charge of the organization's support for the rebellion. Killing him, the Israelis believed, would deal the uprising a serious blow.

But as the Israelis -- and P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat -- should know by now, the intifadeh seems to be running itself. Arafat and other Arab leaders have lent considerable rhetorical support to the uprising, as well as an undetermined amount and of financial aid. Just last week Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad held a surprise meeting in Damascus to assert their joint symbolic control over the uprising. The encounter was their first since 1983, whenAssad sent the Palestinian leader into exile after a long feud. "There are no differences among the one family," said Arafat after the meeting. "The outcome ((of the session)) will serve the interests of the Arab nation and the Palestinian cause and support the escalating of the blessed uprising."

With his prestige damaged by the murder of al-Wazir, Arafat evidently thought that making peace with Syria -- a leading exponent of the rejectionist, smash-Israel position -- would help him reaffirm his authority over the P.L.O. Assad, for his part, spotted an opportunity to assert his own championship of the intifadeh by embracing his old enemy. Yet as the pair were declaring their commitment to the rebellion, its true leadership remained where it has been all along: in the hands of the disaffected youths, middle- class shopkeepers, villagers and refugees in the occupied territories.

The intifadeh has given birth to a diffuse and decentralized underground of local popular committees and anonymous coordinators that has survived both the murder of al-Wazir and the arrest of nearly 5,000 Palestinians since December. Many of the local leaders are adherents of one P.L.O. faction or another, but they evidently do not take orders from anyone outside the occupied territories. Rather, decisions made within the occupied territories appear to be approved and ratified by the Palestinian leadership in exile.

At first, the uprising was a spontaneous outburst of angry young men, known locally as the shabab (an Arabic word loosely translated as "guys"), driven not by leaders but by the bitter frustration of 20 years of Israeli rule. As the uprising gained momentum, the established Palestinian political factions inside the territories belatedly sought control. In late January these familiar elements started to convert the spontaneous violence into a permanent, organized struggle for control of the territories. Temporarily burying their longtime rivalries, local members of the factions -- Arafat's Fatah as well as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, local Communists and Islamic fundamentalists -- put together broadly representative "popular committees" in almost every camp and village. The factions organized a loose coordinating body, the Unified National Leadership. "We are running the show, not those outside the territories," says a Palestinian who has become one of the leaders of the uprising in the West Bank. Like the other leaders, he insists on anonymity; call him Mahmoud.

A 30-year-old graduate of Israeli jails, Mahmoud has worked since February to stoke the fires of rebellion. His personal allegiance is to Fatah al- Intifadeh, a hard-line, pro-Syrian faction. His first assignment was to transform the informal activism of his home refugee camp into an efficient engine of protest. With seven other Palestinians representing most of the P.L.O. factions and one spokesman for unallied "independents," Mahmoud welded together a series of secret subcommittees charged with various aspects of the rebellion.

One of these groups oversees social-welfare tasks like organizing food and medical supplies for periods of curfew and supplying money to the poorer families. Another subcommittee ensures that foreign and Israeli journalists covering the uprising have access to the Palestinian side of the story. The most important committee is the one for "struggle operations." This supersecret, three- or four-member group decides what specific actions to take, from stone throwing to confrontations with the Israeli army. Once a tactic is approved, word is passed to the camp's or village's popular committee. From there, individual faction leaders mobilize their forces.

Each faction has its own "striking units," bands of dedicated activists who turn out on command to throw the stones, manufacture the Molotov cocktails, set up the road barricades and harass the army. "It's like a job," says Mahmoud. "This is their daily business." The striking units in his camp work from 10 to 6 every day, he says. "Now we are establishing new units to work at night." At this street level, there is relatively little factional rivalry or outside supervision. Only occasionally does each representative turn to his headquarters for orders. The closest thing to an outside agitator is Mahmoud, whose additional responsibilities as a "regional leader" take him to the rural areas in his sector to help set up new popular committees and coordinate policies.

Beit Omer (pop. 6,000) was a quiet village during the first two months of the uprising. Then one day in February, Israeli soldiers came to town to break up a small after-prayers demonstration. The shabab began to set up roadblocks and throw stones. The army responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and finally with live ammunition, killing three Palestinians. "We were never politically active before those deaths," says the village's headman, 73-year- old Issa Mohammad Breigiet. Now, he says, "the intifadeh is not one place or one person. It belongs to all Palestinians, and we have to contribute to that."

After the killings, an eight-day curfew, and the arrest of 20 men from the village, Beit Omer formed a popular committee. The shabab in charge kept Breigiet as the village's symbolic head, thus ensuring that the familiar leadership would remain a part of the new order. But the protests and other active demonstrations in Beit Omer are in the hands of the village youths. They decide when to close the road to Hebron, when to prevent villagers from going to work in Israel. They distribute leaflets from the Unified National Leadership and organize shop closings and labor strikes. "When it comes to these things, the people are notified," says Breigiet. "The young do not consult us. They do it on their own." The local shabab insist they receive no specific instructions from outside, though organizers like Mahmoud visit periodically to provide general tactical advice.

For the most part, initiative comes from the street. "The role of the P.L.O. leaders outside is to adopt what the people here decide," says Mahmoud. The popular committees are at best loosely coordinated by regional commanders of the major Palestinian factions. Different factions are stronger in different areas: the fundamentalists dominate in Gaza, for example, while radicals are powerful in Bethlehem and Hebron.

The regional commanders in turn serve as liaison with the Unified National Leadership, the shadowy central committee that includes one representative each from Fatah, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, the fundamentalists and the Communists. The Unified National Leadership's job is to take the ideas submitted by each faction and draw up a broad strategy to intensify the uprising. The Unified National Leadership has no permanent members; its composition changes frequently to confuse Israeli intelligence. If one member is arrested, someone else from his group takes his place.

Rank-and-file participants in the uprising find out what is expected of them by reading the leadership's anonymous leaflets, which are dumped each week on street corners or passed secretly hand to hand. The leaflets provide only general lines of resistance; it is the shabab in the camps and villages that - keep the uprising alive. Lately the leaflets have been aimed at crippling the Israeli system that administers the occupation and at discouraging residents from cooperating with the Israelis.

The Palestinians are also seeking to create an alternative set of institutions and services inside the territories. Toward that end, they are building on an established network of nationalist organizations and self-help societies that have evolved in place of political structures, which the Israelis have forbidden. The Palestinians have drawn on the mosques, traditional centers of guidance that are now under the leadership of the fundamentalists. Though some financial aid has arrived from abroad, more has been raised inside the occupied territories, by intimidation as well as voluntary tithe. The Arabs' ability to survive the deprivations of five months of rebellion without faltering remains a major frustration for Israeli authorities.

The war in the occupied territories last week was focused on the Arab strike that has paralyzed commercial activities there since last December. The Unified National Leadership has decided that Arab shops may open for only three hours every afternoon. Israeli authorities last week ordered the shops to remain open all day or be closed for good. They jailed 14 shopkeepers in East Jerusalem for refusing to obey. Said a senior Israeli police official of his side's strategy: "The logic is that the intifadeh does not determine what happens. We do."

Trying to keep the upper hand is a problem not just for Israel but also, in an important respect, for Arafat's Fatah. The more radical Palestinian factions see the new militancy in the territories as an opportunity to expand their influence and erode the traditional authority of Fatah. As the advocates of increasing the action, the radicals are developing significant new strength among the shabab.

Outside the occupied territories, the mainstream factions appear to be stepping up conventional acts of terrorism. Within a 48-hour period last week, two groups of gunmen linked to the Democratic Front penetrated Israel's northern border. One three-member group killed two Israeli soldiers before it was wiped out. In the battle for the hearts and minds of the Arabs in the occupied territories, P.L.O. leaders on the outside may be turning to violence to retrieve the mantle of leadership they fear is being usurped by an unplanned and untamed new order.

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Beit Omer