Dynamic of the
Palestinian uprising TWO THIRDS of the population of Jordan are Palestinians. Some 800,000 people are registered as having fled from the Zionist forces. Of those, about 200,000 continue to live in refugee camps in conditions of the greatest deprivation and without hope. And yet, after months of a mass uprising of their compatriots living across the Jordan river under Zionist rule, the Palestinians in Jordan have not been heard from.
A report from the Bakaa camp outside the Jordanian capital of Amman did appear, however, in the February 17 issue of Le Monde, which both explained the difficulty the Palestinians have in expressing themselves and revealed what they are thinking.
homes. "This life is not good for us; we must go home," an elderly woman said.
A camp doctor, Nabil Hesh, said: "Here, as on the West Bank of the Jordan, patience has evaporated because there is no longer any outside support."
A young woman told Maurus: "The detonator was the Arab summit in Amman. Up until then, the people held on to a feeble
F COURSE the camp is • open," Veronique Maurus wrote. "But it is so closely watched by the Jordanian security forces that a foreigner is immediately sealed off. The people you try to talk to say immediately that there is no right to discuss politics." But once you manage to find shelter from the ever present surveillance, you find that "politics is all that people talk about" and that "the uprising on the West Bank, which is called 'the revolution' here, is seen as the expression of real Palestinian self-determination after decades of manipulation by Israel, the Arab states and even the PLO, which is accused clearly of impotence and collusion with "politicians'"
Most of the refugees have relatives in the occupied territories. "At first incredulous, then surprised by the persistence of the rebellions, they are now following the events passionately, hour by hour, better informed by the 'Arab telephone' than by the Jordanian press, which for a long time remained silent, and has kept a deliberately measured tone for fear of stirring up feelings."
"It is as if a cage burst and let us out," a young Palestinian said.
"A man of a mature age," Maurus said, looked further ahead: "There will be a revolution, here and everywhere we are oppressed. All compromises have to be rejected. If this revolution is sponsored by the Arab governments of the PLO, it will be aborted."
Camp inhabitants of all ages reportedly showed the same determination: "We have nothing to lose." A young woman, dressed in Islamic fundamentalist style, said "This is a prison." Her mother said "We are free but we have nothing to do outside. The 28 men cannot find work any more, and young people and women have no money to go International Viewpoint #139 • April 18, 1988 out."
The situation in the camp, always wretched, has been made worse in recent years by the international economic crisis. Men who had been able to find work in the oil industry and send money home, have now had to fall back on their families and increase the pressure on the inadequate housing offered by the camp.
Legally, after 20 years, the camp remains "temporary." It is not permitted to build any permanent structures. But more people are born in the camp every year than leave it. The opportunities for another life are limited. But also the people tend to cling to the camp as representing their identity and their hope of someday returning to their hope of an international settlement. They found that the summit did not take up the Palestinian problem. This so-called Summit of Harmony, as they called it, was a Summit of Deception."
The camp was a tinderbox, Maurus wrote. "Without any illusions about the possibilities for 'help' from the Arab states, disillusioned by a gagged and impotent PLO, the forgotten people of Bakaa seem themselves ripe for rebellion." She quoted one of her informants as saying, "At the beginning, the refugees believed that the PLO was everything. Now the PLO has been hemmed in by Arab governments that are strangling us. It cannot make a move without permission. The people have realized that they have to help themselves." * • See also articles on page 3
The leadership of the uprising "WE ARE FACING a violent uprising led by a nuclei of activists enjoying the support and cooperation of the population," General Ehud Barak, number two in the Israeli army command, has admitted. (Le Monde, February 19, 1988). "If there is organization, it exists only on the local level." Yves Heller, Le Monde correspondent in Jerusalem, quoted Palestinian sources as saying that ongoing coordination was limited to individual camps, villages, cities, or sometimes neighborhoods, and that it was organized by committees of young activists. On the other hand, a "United Leadership of the Uprising" has called Palestinian actions throughout all the territories under Israeli administration.
The autonomy of the committees has come to be considered a virtue in the movement, Heller wrote. "A Palestinian source stressed that both 'notables' and former cadres' of the national movement still free have been excluded from them. This is for two reasons. One is tactical. These people are often well known to the Israeli authorities and live more or less under surveillance. The other is political. A lot of young militants think that they could not adjust to this new form of resistance'." *