The Brothers' new clothes
International Viewpoint #242 February 1993
After two decades of silence on the national question, Islamic fundamentalists in Palestine have made a noisy entry back onto the terrain. Why did this current, which upon its foundation in 1935 centrally addressed the question of Palestine, cease to do so in the 1950s; and why has this question now once again become their major preoccupation? DALAL BIZRI
To speak of the fundamentalist
T
current between 1927 and 1980 one must return to the Muslim Brothers. This organization which was founded in Egypt in 1927, was the core of the fundamentalist formations set up at that time in the Arab East. These formations defined themselves by their opposition or collaboration with the Muslim Brothers.
The founder of the Muslim Brothers, the Egyptian Sheikh Hassan El Banna, stressed the importance of the Palestinian question early on. In his letters to members of the movement, he advanced a domino theory which put great emphasis on the Palestinian question both from a strategic and a doctrinal point of view. This question also gave the Brothers an opportunity to break out of the confines of the Egyptian
Thus, in 1935, the leadership sent two of its members, Abdel-rahman Saati and Mohammed Assad Hakim on an official mission into Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, where the first collaboration between El Haji Amin Husseini and the Muslim Brothers took place.
This lasted until the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 when the Muslim Brothers were forced to retreat to Egypt where their organization was disbanded and they underwent their first test with the assassination of their leader, Hassan Al
Banna in 1949.
The 1935-1948 period saw the establishment of support committees and groups of armed volunteers for Palestine and the participation of the Muslim Brothers of the Arab East under the organizational and political leadership of the
Egyptian Brothers.
Between 1949 and 1953, the Brothers' activities on this quesiton were dispersed. The last was the 1953 campaign against the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Sinai.
Afterwards, the Palestinian question fell out of sight and the preoccupations of the Palestinian Brothers shifted towards problems far afield from their national identity. For example, until recently, they participated in the war in Afghanistan on the side of the fundamentalist fighters. The Palestinian Muslim Brothers contributed ideological and material support to the Afghan cause where many of them enrolled in the anti-government forces. Sheik Abdallah Azzam and his sons died at Peshawar the base camp of the Afghan Mujahedin in Pakistan.
This Sheikh, who had been known for his membership of the Muslim Brothers, assured the logistical support of Arab groups who fought there with the Afghans.
### Morality campaigns
Another example illustrates how the activities of the Palestinian Brothers and the Arab Brothers resembled each other: the "morality" campaigns, the best known example of which was known as the "croissant campaign" because of the attacks perpetrated by the Brothers in the West bank and Gaza against cafes and stores that sold alcoholic beverages, and cinemas. They hoped to force the inhabitants to renounce Western music and jewelry.
There are other factors that inspire scepticism towards the current interest shown by the Palestinian fundamentalist current in the national strugle against Israel. The most telling is the fact that the Israeli government closed its eyes to the growing activity of the Brothers in the mid-1980s believing that their competition with the PLO would weaken the Palestinian ranks.
We should also mention the material support that came from Arab countries with little desire to fight against Israel, and finally the persistence of a tendency in the Brothers that considered interest in the Palestinian question as suspect. This tendency is currently represented by Mohammed Ali Qotb, the successor of Sayyid Qotb, the leader of the Egyptian Brothers executed during Nasser's rule, who declared in 1980 that "Arabs or Muslims who are interested in the Palestinian question and make it a key element in the struggle against Zionism, imperialism and western capitalism, have short memories. They forget that the fall of the Ottoman state was the principal political objective of the destruction of the eastern gateway and of the aggression against the Islamic world."2
While it is useful to recall such facts which cast doubt on the sincerity of the fundamentalists in their fight against Israel and
1. A leading Palestinian figure in Jerusalem during the period of the British mandate. He defended the interests of the big Palestinian landowners.
2. Zyad Abu Amru, Le Movement Islamique en
Cisjordanie et à Gaza, Beirut, 1989.
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International Viewpoint #242 February 1993 to show the political complexity of the politics of the Arab East, they do not detract from the importance of two essentials of the
Throwing doubt on the stated intentions of the Palestinian fundamentalists is not enough for us to know the dynamic of this movement now that it has got involved and is under pressure to maintain its legitimacy
The present strength of the fundamentalist current in the Occupied Territories and the extension of its activities against the occupation are corroborated by the facts. These include the participation of the fundamentalists in the intifada, their victimization in the wave of arrests, including of Brothers, the banning of their movement by Israel, their slogans against Israel, their first public political attacks on the policies of Jordan's King Hussein in 1988, to the point that even the non-fundamentalist nationalist tendency has avoided confrontations or public demonstrations against them.
For the first time in the Occupied Territories, two forces lead the intifada: "the national movement and the fundamentalist movement; each can back up words with deeds and receives in return the support of the people". 3
Why the shift?
Why have the Palestinian Brothers made such a shift? There are two main reasons. The first involves the experience under the nationalist Egyptian leader Nasser, the second relates to the specific features of the intifada. These two interconnected reasons were at work both in the cessation of the struggle against Israel and in its resumption.
Two aspects of the relations between the Muslim Brothers and the Nasser experience are relevant here. On one hand, the bloody struggle between the Brothers and the regime, and the other, the cultural and ideological hegemony of Nasser and the effects of this hegemony on the action and thinking of the Brothers.
After the 1952 overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy by Nasser's Free Officers, a two-year struggle for power between the Brothers and the regime ensued. Peaceful at first, it became bloody, ending in a wave of repression that saw many Brothers sent to prison.
The Palestinian Muslim Brothers were not spared from each wave of repression of the mother organization, which automatically led to a hunt for Muslim Brothers in Gaza (from 1948, Gaza was under Egyptian administration while the West Bank administration was returned to Jordan - both territories were seized by Israel in 1967). 22
With Nasser's victory the Brothers lost all organized existence; they no longer had branches, offices, propaganda campaigns, youth trips and so on.
Betwen the first wave of repression in 1954 and the second in 1965 a negative vision of Nasser developed among the Brothers which achieved its apogee in the person of Sayyid Qotb. For him, it was no longer possible to consider Nasser as anything but a competitor opposing Arab nationalism to the Brothers vision of Islamic states. Furthermore, Qotb proclaimed the impious character of Jahiliyya (orginally the name given to pre-Islamic Arab society), but which he defined as "any society that is not devoted to the adoration of the one and only god.... that is, all of today's societies;"4
In using this term he had certainly Nasser's regime in mind, summing up his doctrine in a single slogan: "Islam or Jahiliyya". Later the Brothers would use this term in different and often confused ways. But what is important in the adoption of this formula is the fact that it rose together with the rise of Nasserism, whose central concern was the Palestinian and Arab national causes in oppostion to the West and its support for Israel and the strangling of Arab aspirations for liberation.
The rise of Nasser's struggle against the West occurred at the same time as the repression of the Brothers and involved Nasser's ideological and cultural hegemony over all the nationalist currents in the anti-Western camp: the Communists, the Baathists and the Arab nationalists whose relations with Nasser himself changed according to political circumstances but who did not break with the Nasserian overall ideological framework.
This influence spread even to the Brothers themselves and to some of their groups outside Egypt. During the third aggression in 1956 the Brothers in Jordan, Syria and Iraq sent letters of support to Nasser.S
At the same time, the Brothers inevitably came under the wing of those Arab regimes most opposed to Nasser like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The West Bank Brothers, attached to the Jordan section since 1948, had excellent relations with King Abdallah. The latter considered the Brothers as an "attractive religious movement for the youth" which contributed to "holding back the influence of communism".6
The relations between the Jordanian Brothers and the regime was often tense and difficult. Nevertheless, this was the only organization legally tolerated. They participated under various guises in political life, including legislative elections. Though there were concrete changes in this practice which will be dealt with below, it is important to stress that the Brothers' justification of their alliance with the throne since the 1950s revolved around the "Nasser problem".
In this regard, Yussef Azzam remarked, "We allied ourselves with the King because if Nasser had entered Jordan and installed a friendly regime, it would have meant the liquidation of the Brothers".?
Saudi Arabia put itself forward as the polar opposite of Nasser and the Brothers found physical, political and economic asylum there. The Saudi kingdom and all the countries in its orbit were considered both as a source of funds unavailable in Egypt and Gaza, and as a source of political succour since they shared a common enemy. Saudi aid to the Brothers is well known.
It suffices to note that through the influence of Nasserism over the hearts and consciences of all the enemies of Israel, the Muslim Brothers found themselves automatically on the other side.
In government camp
In memoirs circulated in Bahrain in the 1950s a leader of the Palestinian brothers held that "The Brothers found themselves isolated, accused, persecuted because of their hostility to Nasser. They did not hesitate to oppose the popular movement, which led them to automatically join the government camp."?
What arguments are there to justify giving special importance to the relations between the Brothers and Nasser on one hand, and the impact of the Nasserian experience on the other, as an explanation for the eclipse of the Palestinian Brothers inside the national movement in the 1950s, 60s and most of the 70s?
Here, three of the most salient points will be discussed. These are the founding of Fatah and the circumstances surrounding it, the self-justification of the Brothers as to their own silence in the face of the bloody repression of the Palestinian resistance by King Hussein of Jordan in 1970, and finally, the nature of the precise historical moment at which the Brothers and the fundamentalists reappeared in Palestine
3. Ibid.
4. Sayyid Qotb, Maalem fi-t-tariq, 1967.
5. This was a joint attack by Israel, Britain and France on Egypt in October three months after the nationalization of the Suez canal
6. Iyad Berguti, Les Armes et la Politique dans les territoires Palestiniens Occupés, Centre Zahra d'Etudes et de Recherches, Jerusalem, 1990.
7. Le Movement Islamiste (op cit). On these links see Zanad El Khatib Iyad: Les Courants Politiques en Jordanie et Texte du Pacte National Jordanien, Amman 1991.
8. "Le Movement Islamiste Arabe Contemporain et la Guerre du Golfe: Esquisse de Deux Concepts Eclatés" Dalal Bizri, Peuples Méditerranéens, November 1991.
9. Abdallah Abu Gaza: Avec le Movement Islamique dans les Pays Arabes, Kuwait, 1986.
International Viewpoint #242 February 1993 dan's King Abdallah, and they became part of the Muslim Jordanian Brothers.
In the framework of this allianme which became ever firmer over twenty years, until 1967, the Brothers in Jordan were "natural" allies of the crown in its fight against various leftwing forces: nationalists, communists, Baathists, Arab nationalists and Nasserites; they did not restrict themselves to giving ideological backup to this campaign, but also physically participated on several occasions. At the height of the clash of "Black" September in 1970 between the king and the anti-imperialist forces, the Brothers explained their support for the throne in terms similar to those advanced to justify their reasons for refusing to join Fatah: "The Palestinian Bro-
"As the intifada enters its sixth year..." Arrow: "Washington negotiations" making clear their determination to fight against Israel.
The memory of the clash between the Brothers and Nasser was certainly present amongst the militants who founded Fatah. The document presented at the time by Khalil El Wazir (Abu Jihad) to the leadership of the Muslim Brothers calling for the creation of a parallel organization to fight against Israel, stipulated that "this organization will not hoist the Islamic colors in its slogans or activities".
Addressing members of the Brothers who were interested in joining him he called on them to "cast off their distinctive clothing and put on Palestinian garb". He stressed that the organization would "establish links between the Brothers and the masses and break out from the Nasserite ostra-
Anyone who knows the background to the foundation of Fatah knows that its first leaders were members of Abu Jihad's fundamentalist organization — Slim Zaanun, Salah Khlaf (Abu Iyad), Assad Saftaoui and Yasser Arafat. This led the Egyptian Brothers to believe that this was a movement of the Brothers. In fact, Fatah's foundation created so much confusion in the ranks of the Palestinian Brothers that they forced Fatah's founders to state explicitly that they had broken with the Brothers.
Thus, when some members of the Brothers decided to found a fighting organization against Israel, they knew that they had to take their distrance from their parent organiztation and were for a long time after accused of opportunism by the Brothers for having broken with them.
With the passage of time, it is now clear that this was a realistic and far-sighted choice resting on an analysis of the impact of Nasserism on all anti-Israeli forces.
The pretexts advanced by the Brothers in refusing to enrol under the Fatah banner in 1957 are likewise quite revealing. They were of two kinds: the first is in contradiction with their current determination to lead the fight against Israel: "The confrontation with Israel will not be the work of a small portion of our nation, which amounts indeed to less than a thousandth part; all its forces must be mobilized for the struggle.. we must change the situation, either by convincing our governments to change their position, whether by exercising popular pressure which will force them to change, or by setting off a popular general revolution which will bring down these governments who have capitulated to colonialism and replace them by good governments."0
This argument is in contradiction with the current readiness of the Brothers to fight since it is obvious that the conditions for the struggle posed here are no more fulfilled today than in Nasser's time.
The second type of argument in the name of which the Brothers refused to enroll in Fatah clarifies their basic position. These arguments are connected to their conception of hegemony. "The possibility that Fatah can develop and attract many members and sympathizers, implies that this popular support will not go to the Brothers and to Islam, but to the project of the liberation of Palestine". The solution is for "the Brothers to redouble their efforts in order to realize the victory of their project, to promote their movement, for if the latter triumphs, this will liberate Palestine."
We will see that the Brothers calculations were right. When the struggle against Israel was led by Nasser or by movements that were culturally and ideologically inspired by it, the Brothers refused to participate as one of its components. But, with the decline of Nasserism, in all its different aspects, the Brothers raised high the national flag and placed themselves at the head of this struggle.
As noted above, the West Bank Brothers received friendly treatment from Jorthers considered that the struggle against the invaders (the Israelis, must at that stage (1970), have two prongs: on one hand, there must be resistance to the occupation inside led by the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories, with all that that involves in terms of the preparation of arms and so on; and on the other, action from the outside to attack the enemy in order to make it leave by force." As far as Nasser in particular is concerned, they held that "the general climate in the Arab world is hostile to the Muslim Brothers because Nasser and his regime are hostile to it. In spite of the blow against this regime represented by the defeat in 1967, it retains a certain influence in Jordan and in Palestine. And all the organizations are hostile to the Brothers"."!
The revival of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism dates from the beginning of the 1970s; that is from the time when the failure of the Nasserian project to produce an Arab revival became obvious, coinciding with the resurrection of a fundamentalist current and its capacity to tackle most of the burning questions, even if in its own special way.
Only the Palestinian branch was absent from this process. "Hamas", the incarnation of the Brothers fighting against Israel, was founded only in 1987 and waited until August 1988 to unveil its programme. The lag was due in part to the "Nasser problem" and its consequences, in the name of which the Brothers did not participate in the struggle, and in part to the reasons for its return to the Palestinian scene.
It is useful to compare the late arrival of the Palestinian to that of the Lebanese fundamentalists. I have shown in an another article that one of the specificities of the
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Dallal Bizri: "Parole Libanaise de la Langue Islamiste" in Le Liban Aujourd'hui, ed. CNRS, Paris 1992.
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International Viewpoint #242 February 1993
Lebanese current was related to the conditions at the time of its emergence back in 1982, that is, soon after the departure of the Palestinian factions from Lebanon following the Israeli invasion and the subsequent weakening of the Lebanese national movement.
The alternative responses which arose after the June 1967 defeat had lost the initiative in the national struggle, creating a vacuum that was soon filled by the fundamentalist current which emerged strengthened.
### PLO suffers defeats
The reasons for the Palestinian delay are similar: The PLO, the popular alternative power for the Palestinians, suffered a series of defeats which led it to progressively move away from its founding political and military objectives. In addition to the departure of all its factions from Lebanon, followed by another defeat when it tried to return (Tripoli 1985) there was a split inside its biggest organization, giving rise to "Dissident Fatah" in 1985.
The PLO made a turn towards seeking a political solution, in a context that offers no gurantees, but has encouraged "tactical" prudence and tantalizing diplomacy. This retreat coincided with the rise of the Lebanese "religious resistance", especially at the beginning of 1983. It targeted the Israeli occupation forces and also the centres of the multinational forces and was characterized by an offensive and suicidal profile that had a big impact.
The operations of the "religious resistance" gave a new boost to the Palestinian fundamentalist current inside Israel, and stimulated the foundation of Palestinian organizations that resembled one of the principal Lebanese factions, Hezbollah.
The failure of Palestinian nationalism, and the growth of its fundamentalist equivalent in Lebanon underscored the local vacuum that the Palestinian fundamentalist current was to fill with astonishing rapidity, as if, during all these years, it had been preparing itself ideologically and organizationally as an alternative to the lay nationalist
A remark by Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, expresses this situation well: "When all the doors close, those of God open", in other words, when non-Islamic ideologies experience a leadership crisis, ideological Islam remains. The same was said in a pamphlet distributed by the Brothers in Gaza and the West Bank entitled "The Absent Truth" which held that *the currents that have failed in the course of twenty years in Palestine can today no longer claim a monopoly on the Palestinian 24
This is the lesson drawn by all the texts written by Muslims that appeared in the that once the failure of the nationalist, liberal and socialist ideologies had become evident, the time had come for the return of
The fundamentalist current could not put forward its claim to be forging a new leadership without the changes created by the establishment of its hegemony over the
The hegemony of fundamentalism has taken various forms since the start of the 1970s. In the Palestinian case the signs of this change of fortune have not been limited to the obvious institutional religious activities — religious services, libraries, book sales, universities, mosque building, collection of contributions and so on. Fundamentalist hegemony shows itself in the fertile terrain in which such activities can flourish and the popular welcome they have received. The rebirth of religious identity has been grafted onto the Palestinian national identity and religious references have increased their weight.
The marriage of the religious and national identities gave the intifada a particular character, revealed in many studies done in the Occupied Territories. A poll of Palestinians from the Territories found that 55% considered that religion must be part of their social life, 76% considered Islam to be their frame of reference and that 26.5% wanted a regime based on the Islamic Sharia.
Before dealing with the intifada as the catalyst in the resurgence of the fundamentalists, I want to make two points:
The first is that, contrary to what has subsequently been suggested, the intifada's origins were entirely autonomous. Neither the PLO, nor the Arab regimes nor pro-fundamentalist forces organized the uprising, which came from the depths of the Palestinian people itself, sometimes with an amazing spontaneity shown in the extraordinary boldness of the first waves of demonstrators. An Israeli writer has described their audacity: "they do not give way in the face of gunfire, fiercely attacking tanks and trying to tear the weapons from the hands of the soldiers". 14
This leads us on to a second characteristic of the intifada: it has seen the explosion of long suppressed despair among the Palestinians. This is to some extent the product of the setbacks of the PLO; the Palestinians of the interior, tired of counting on this "external leadership" took their fate in their own hands.
The second reason is the social despair of those who formed the first wave of the intifada — the deprived of the camps, especially in Gaza and in particular in the Jabaliya camp.15 Their first cry was "why do you not let us act? It would be better to die".
Spontaneity and despair
Paradoxically, the spontaneity and despair which sparked off the intifada also gave it its national character and made the "Palestinianization" of the Brothers inevitable. The paradox here is that the Brothers' see themselves in terms of the whole Islamic 'Umma while the intifada appeared from outside as nationalist.
All the political currents, including the fundamentalists with their global ideology, became Palestino-centric both in their grasp of the problems and in their activity. If they had not made this turn they would have lost influence.
There is ample evidence that the Palestinian fundamentalists in general are organized around the Palestinian axis.
For example, Hamas asserts in its founding charter its total opposition to all initiatives, peaceful solutions and international conferences aimed at solving the Palestinian question, since they believe that conferences cannot meet demands nor give back stolen rights. Conditions are put on positive collaboration with the PLO: including the rejection of UN resolutions 181 (1947), 242 (1967) and 338(1973) and the demand for Hamas to have 40 to 50% of the seats in the
These positions can be compared with those of the Egyptian Brothers who once formed the ideological, political and even organizational leadership of all the Arab and Muslim Brothers. Today, the Egyptian Brothers have totally different positions on the Palestine question to the "Brothers" in Palestine itself. They have welcomed the various peaceful solutions, accepted the US and its regional role and they support the creation of a Palestinian state on some par-
The Egyptian Brothers have maintained good relations with Arafat and the PLO against whom Hamas is waging a sruggle for power. They recognize the PLO as the leadership of the Palestine struggle and organized a campaign of material aid in the winter of 1988.
The second item of proof that shows the centrality of the Palestinian axis, and the one I consider the most important, is relateid to Hamas' conception of "levels" and of "patriotism". The Hamas Charter states that "the Palestinian question exists at three levels; a Palestinian level, the Arab level
13. Le Movement Islamique., op cit.
14. Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Intifada, 1991.
15. It was at the Jabilaya camp that the intifada started on December 8, 1987.