Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1993

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Political Science

Major Professor

Robert L. Peterson

Abstract

This study addresses the paradoxical nature of leadership as it promoted and directed the first two years of the Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. It attributes the success of these early years to the fact that the internal political leadership, officially the Unified Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) was willing to maintain a dialectic with the Palestinian social leadership, which operated at the grassroots level: a relationship which was new to the national movement.

Both social and political leaderships emerged throughout two decades of life under Israeli military rule in the territories occupied after the 1967 Six Day War. Following the uprising's initial "explosion," 9 December, 1987, the social leadership reconstituted itself immediately as the popular committees, which sprang up in all localities throughout the Territories to help communities address immediate problems brought on by Israeli reprisals. The UNLU, which contained a representative from each political faction, coalesced within a month of the outbreak of the Intifada to coordinate resistance activities and to promote policies of non-violence and civil disobedience by means of communiques which it issued every two weeks.

The present research examined the process of decision-making and of policy implementation by means of interviews with former UNLU members, representatives of political factions, and political activists within the OT (Summer, 1992). This process was found to reflect democratic values throughout the first eighteen months, but became more narrowly circumscribed following an apparent take-over by Fatah in mid-1989. Additionally, the research examined the communiques and undertook a frequency analysis of policy changes (across five categories) throughout the first two years. It found that policy changes, while influenced chiefly by Israeli policies of reprisal, also reflected the dynamics of a leadership partitioned into internal and external sectors. Finally, the dynamics of the Palestinian uprising were examined within the context of theories addressing the rise of social conflict. An explanatory model is offered which suggests three theoretical approaches be integrated to explain the appearance and persistence of the Intifada: Skocpol's structuralist approach, the Gurr/Davies/Burton psychological-deprivation approach, and Tilly's approach highlighting mobilization.

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