Intifada Leaders Admit They’re Losing Control : Arabs Question Fruits of Anti-Israel Struggle; Discipline Failing in Killing of Collaborators

JERUSALEM —  For the first time, the top leadership of the Palestinian uprising admits to losing a measure of control over followers as grass-roots activists press to use more violent tactics to fight Israel’s occupation and a restless population begins to seriously question the fruits of 20 months of painful struggle.

There has been a breakdown in control of street and town organizers over the killing of collaborators suspected of informing on Palestinians. An upsurge of killings of Arabs by Arabs has raised alarm bells among the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising in the Occupied Territories, the self-styled central authority of the revolt.

Dictates in leaflets issued by the Unified Leadership are, in large part, ignored. Only the dates of general strikes make an impression on the public; and even in those cases, stores can be seen opening with impunity despite calls for commercial shutdowns.

Workers Caught in Middle

Workers complain under their breath that the leadership is forcing them to give up jobs inside Israel as an symbol of rebellion but is not offering any alternate means of making a living. In some places, masked shebab, as the youthful street enforcers are known, spend as much time keeping Arabs from going to work as they do throwing rocks at Israeli army patrols.

The malaise indicates impatience with the pace of peace efforts, Palestinian activists and observers say. Israeli suppression of the uprising is taking a steady toll of lives among the 1.7 million residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. More than 550 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Another 90 have been killed by Palestinians themselves. The feeling is growing that there is little to show for it all.

“We seem farther away from a Palestinian state than we were a year ago,” said a young member of a “hit team,” one of the units responsible for carrying out orders of the Unified Leadership. “And we are losing the cream of our youth.”

Palestinian nationalists worry that the intifada, as the uprising is called in Arabic, could begin to feed on itself and break down into random squabbles. Arab and Israeli analysts concur that such a day has not yet arrived.

Nonetheless, a recent outbreak of killings by Palestinians of other Palestinians suspected of collaborating with the Israelis is viewed as a symptom of waning discipline. Most of these killings have taken place during the last three months, and leaders openly admit that “errors” are being made.

Emissaries from the leadership have been touring inflamed towns and villages to persuade local activists to go easy on suspected collaborators and take steps to “educate” rather than kill them.

“Like any people in a revolution who are trying to get rid of collaborators, sometimes there is a mistake. An innocent pays the price,” said Faisal Husseini, a top nationalist leader, in an interview. “We are trying to convince our people to educate the collaborators rather than kill them. We would like to win the collaborators over to us, not lose them.”

The most recent public directive from the Unified Leadership called “upon the masses not to eliminate any collaborator without a central decision . . . and not before he is given advance warning and a chance to repent.”

Husseini made it clear that the call is a test of strength of the leadership’s authority.

“We expect collaborator deaths to be reduced,” he said flatly.

Only four months ago, activists boasted that each and every “execution” was the result of a thorough probe authorized by the chain of command up to the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is based in Tunisia and claims overwhelming support in the West Bank and Gaza.

The same activists now blame the killings on unchecked “decentralization” of authority. Youthful street commanders impassioned by the growing number of their own casualties are striking out on their own, turning the campaign against suspected collaborators into an outlet for revenge.

“When you give power and legitimacy to young men who are ready to die, whose blood is running hot, who open their shirts and yell ‘Shoot me!’ to the Israelis, when you give these people independence to run their affairs, there will be hundreds of mistakes,” said a Palestinian observer close to the central leadership.

Last week, the Unified Leadership issued a special leaflet that outlined the “right” way to handle cases of suspected collaboration. It told the story of Abwein, a West Bank village in which four suspected collaborators were at one point condemned to death.

Because of the grave judgment, the villagers sought advice from local lawyers. After looking into the case, the lawyers recommended that the suspects be treated leniently. None was executed.

“If it were not for the coolness of a few people, there could have been four more dead--without reason,” said a representative of the leadership who visited the town after the issue was settled.

Such practices are meant to dam a flood of brutality that has risen steadily in recent weeks. For example in Gaza, a youthful mob axed and knifed to death a Palestinian worker who refused to give up a new identity card issued by Israeli authorities.

In Nablus, a man known as an alcoholic and drug addict was beaten and burned to death by masked abductors. Residents blamed the assault on a morality campaign by Muslim fundamentalists.

In Biddiya, a schoolteacher was slain in class. Although there were reports of suspected collaboration, there was no published explanation for his killing, as is usual in clear-cut cases.

While Palestinian leaders move to keep the revolt from imploding, grass-roots activists are clamoring for a green light to step up violence against Israelis. As the toll of Palestinian dead, injured and jailed climbs, activists are asking why they should not concentrate the violence for greater impact.

“Why lose 15 of our people over 15 days? No one cares. Let’s lose 15 in a day--but take some Israelis with us,” said the leader of a hit team in Bethlehem.

Such inflammatory demands are resisted by public figures such as Husseini, who contend that an upsurge in violence would be bad for the Arab image and bring on greater repression. But in an apparent nod toward the emotions that underlie the demands for greater violence, he predicts that outbursts of rage are inevitable.

“It is a natural thing. When so many lives are being lost, some individual is bound to lose control. The actions will surely cause high casualties on the other side,” he said.

Husseini pointed to the attack on a civilian bus by a lone Palestinian in July as an example of the grim possibilities. The Palestinian steered the bus into a ravine; 16 passengers were killed in the crash.

Differences Resurface

Splits among factions of the uprising, grouped within the PLO and also in Muslim-affiliated organizations, have usually been submerged in the name of unity, but they have never disappeared. Now, during stressful times, the differences re-emerge in contradictory commands and practices of different groups.

The PLO-led Unified Leadership and Hamas, the largest Muslim grouping in the uprising, recently clashed over whether schoolchildren should attend class on days designated for general strikes. The command said no, Hamas yes, and a few tense days followed as pro-PLO youths tried to keep students at home while Hamas activists encouraged them to attend class.

Eventually, the Unified Command and Hamas reached an agreement permitting classes to go on even during strike days.

Factions in the uprising are still calling for different days for strikes, offending merchants who feel that they lose more than enough days to political activity without having to join wildcat shutdowns.

Worse, in the eyes of some grass-roots activists, factional leaders are forcing the closing of stores among owners aligned with one group while letting favored merchants stay open.

In East Jerusalem, the store of one merchant was recently burned to the ground by local activists; others on the same street were left unmolested--and open after the usual closing hour of 12 noon.

Worker resentment has risen over efforts by the underground leadership to battle an Israeli plan to issue magnetized cards to each and every male resident between 16 and 60 in the Gaza Strip.

The nationalist leaders have forbidden workers in Gaza from going to work for two weeks and from the West Bank, for a week, to protest the cards. Shebab collect the cards from hapless workers who view the identification as a means to a livelihood, however meager.

“How am I going to feed my children?” asked Ahmed, a construction worker, when confronted by a shebab recently on a road leading out of Gaza. “I support the uprising. It is good for the uprising if we eat.”

There is no clear idea what will happen when the two-week strike period is up. Will the workers be permitted to use their cards and go into Israel? If so, why was such an big issue made of the cards at all?

Husseini, who resides in Jerusalem, plays down the tensions caused by the work stoppage.

‘Win Some, Lose Some’

“This is but one battle of many we are fighting along the way. We win some and lose some, but the path remains the same,” he said.

Palestinian leaders and observers say frustration has grown because diplomacy abroad, spearheaded by PLO chief Yasser Arafat, has shown little promise. There is no evident step toward ending or reducing the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians are being killed by Israeli soldiers at the rate of 20 to 30 a month. The teen-age group is being hardest hit, and there is no longer an outcry in Israel or abroad over the bloodletting.

By all accounts, the off-and-on PLO dialogue with the United States, which began last December, has reached a low point. An offer by the PLO to appoint a delegation of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, supplemented by Palestinians abroad, has gone nowhere. Israel is sticking to its proposal to hold local voting without PLO participation.

“We have been dealt a severe blow by the United States,” contended Saeb Erakat, a nationalist leader from Jericho. “This turtle diplomacy appears to have no end, no goal.”

In the meantime, local residents are being treated to a spectacle of conflicting political messages coming from Arafat and local leaders.

No more than two months ago, Arafat gave his stamp of approval to meetings between local Palestinians and representatives of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Last week, in Jordan, Arafat announced a ban on all such meetings. Shortly afterwards, Husseini announced that the ban only applied to secret meetings with Shamir; anything out in the open would be permitted.

“To say the least, this has all created confusion among our people,” said a Palestinian political analyst. “Unity must now be a priority.”

Israeli officials view the setbacks of the uprising with caution. None are predicting a quick end. They point out that although dispersed leadership may create a lack of discipline, it also makes it all but impossible to crush the uprising. The elimination of no single figure or group would bring it to a halt.

For the moment, Israel is using two-fisted tactics: pressuring the general population through heavy taxation, confiscation of property, demolition of homes and arrests while striking down street activists.

Soldiers are now permitted to shoot at anyone wearing a head covering or fleeing orders to stop. Undercover agents have been seen killing activists in the street. And the numbers of arrests are increasing. Israel estimates that about 9,000 Palestinians are in jail at any one time. Foreign relief workers put the figure at 16,000.