Knowing Your Adversary: Israeli Structure of Political Opportunity and the Inception of the...

Sociological Forum, Vol. 21, No. 4, December 2006 ( C© 2006)DOI: 10.1007/s11206-006-9041-3

Knowing Your Adversary: Israeli Structure ofPolitical Opportunity and the Inception of thePalestinian Intifada

Eitan Y. Alimi,1,4 William A. Gamson,2 and Charlotte Ryan3

Published online: 5 December 2006

Social movement scholars have suggested that opportunity structures are notobjective features of the world but must be constructed by social forces, in-cluding social movements. Here, we attempt to analyze how Palestinians liv-ing in the occupied territories constructed political opportunity during therun-up to the 1987 first Intifada. We analyze how the changing Israeli po-litical opportunity structure affected Palestinians’ framing of the structuralconditions they faced. In particular, we examine (1) how the consolidatingPalestinian movement within the occupied territories built the capacity for ashared, collective framing of events, and (2) how the movement adapted astrategy based on its understanding of the opportunity presented by divisionsin Israeli society concerning the occupation. Based on the analysis, we offerseveral insights into the Intifada’s dynamics and trajectories.

KEY WORDS: opportunity structures; contention; framing; repression; transformativeevents; mobilization.

INTRODUCTION

In contrast with other waves of confrontations during the first 20years of Israeli military occupation (1967–1987), the Palestinian Intifada—a “shaking off”—is distinguished by the unparalleled magnitude of

1 Department of Political Science, The Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem,Israel.

2 Sociology Department (McGuinn Hall), Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts,02467.

3 Sociology Department, 850 Broadway, UMASS—Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts, 01854.4 To whom correspondence should be addressed at e-mail: [email protected]

535

0884-8971/06/1200-0535/0 C© 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

536 Alimi, Gamson, and Ryan

contention. During approximately 6 years (1987–1992), Palestinians livingin the occupied territories sustained intensive contention. Numerous workshave focused on the Palestinian insurgents’ decision to avoid deadly vio-lence, their ability to successfully handle factionalism, and their framing ofthe Intifada as a non-zero-sum struggle with Israel (Kaufman, 1990; Kuttab,1988; Wolfsfeld, 1997). Analyzing the Intifada’s dynamics and trajectories,however, does not provide an understanding of the reasons for the spe-cific tactics employed by the Palestinian insurgents—an understanding ofthe developing Palestinian strategy of contention. We suggest that a centralcomponent in such a strategy has to do with increasing Palestinian sophisti-cation about Israeli politics. Awareness of the process of learning about andunderstanding their Israeli occupier can help us explain not only the ebband flow of Palestinian contention, but also the unprecedented, widespreadparticipation that characterized the Intifada.

Proponents of the political-process model attempt to account for theebb and flow of social movement activity by analyzing the balance of op-portunities and threats that challengers face rather than focusing solely ongrievances or organizational characteristics. Drawing insights from earlierstudies of collective action that stressed the dynamics of contention be-tween challengers and authorities, both McAdam (1999) and Tarrow (1998)suggest that contentious politics is triggered when changing opportunitiesand constraints—political opportunity structures—create incentives for so-cial actors who lack resources to realize their political claims.

Attention to interpretation and construction of meaning by socialmovement activists as they struggle for change—what McAdam origi-nally labeled “cognitive liberation”—has gradually permeated the field ofcontentious politics. Responding to criticisms of a structural bias in thepolitical-process model, students of contentious politics have accepted thepoint that opportunity is intrinsically ambiguous and must be interpretedand constructed by social movements. McAdam et al. (2001) reflect the shiftin emphasis: “Rather than look upon ‘opportunities and threats’ as objec-tive structural factors, we see them as subject to attribution. No opportunity,however objectively open, will invite mobilization unless it is (a) visible topotential challengers and (b) perceived as an opportunity” (43).

Various scholars in the field have suggested the benefits of integrat-ing a culturally laden with a structurally laden analysis (Benford and Snow,2000; Gamson and Meyer, 1996; Goodwin and Jasper, 1999; Jasper, 2004;Goodwin and Jasper, 2004; Klandermans, 1997; Kurzman, 2004a, 2004b;McAdam and Sewell, 2001; Meyer, 2004; Polletta, 1999). For example,Gamson and Meyer, in their attempt to specify the concept of politicalopportunity structure, argue that “justifications for strategic choices cen-ter on definitions of relative opportunity, and these are recurrent issues of

Knowing Your Adversary 537

contention within movements” (1996:283); and Meyer (2004) flags the valueof an “issue-specific conceptualization” of opportunity, while concludingthat we need to learn more regarding how collective actors share percep-tions, debate, reach common understandings, and act and reflect on theiractions as a collective force. Thus, for those traditionally seen as promot-ing a culturally laden analysis, this has meant increased attention to strate-gic choices by movement leaders in the face of changing opportunity/threatstructures; for those strongly associated with structurally laden approaches,this has meant a marked embracing of the interpretive work of social move-ment organizations.

Acknowledging the promise of such bridging, a growing body of workanalyzes how movements actually accomplish it. For instance, several writ-ers have looked at this bridging process in the civil rights movement,examining how the day-to-day actions of grassroots activists—mostly fe-male “bridge leaders” (Robnett, 1996, 1997) have translated structural op-portunity into action. In a similar vein, Payne (1995) demonstrates howMississippi’s civil rights activists worked within local organizing traditionsand networks to widen political opportunities (see also Barnett, 1993;Higginbotham, 1993). Additionally, a number of works have made thebridging process explicit in examining mobilization on other issues in dif-ferent contexts (see, for example, Alimi, 2006; Diani, 1996; Ferree et al.,2002; Noonan, 1995; Ryan et al., 2005).

Much remains to be done to develop concepts and methodologies thatallow researchers to understand how social movement actors construct themeaning of changing political conditions and translate that understandinginto collective action. This paper seeks to elaborate the process by which (a)social movement actors develop the capacity for a shared, collective framingof events as a reflection of changes in the structure of political opportunity,and (b) the movement adapts its strategy of contention based on such ashared framing.

Providing a valuable, non-U.S.-based case, we specifically examinehow the Palestinian activists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (hereafter“occupied territories” or, simply, “territories”) gradually constructed polit-ical opportunity during the years prior to and during the “first” Intifada.Numerous works have dealt with Palestinian discontent and processes ofmobilization to form grassroots organizations within the occupied territo-ries during the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Abu-Amr, 1988; Hiltermann, 1991;Robinson, 1997; Sahliyeh, 1986; Tamari, 1988). Our task here is to under-stand why the Intifada consolidated at this specific time. We will arguethat the consolidating Palestinian movement within the occupied territo-ries built the capacity for a shared, collective framing of events in spite ofthe constraints of military occupation. It then adapted a strategy based on


its understanding of the opportunity presented by divisions in Israeli societyconcerning the ongoing occupation.

We begin by delineating the forms and contours of the Palestinian–Israeli arena of contention, shaped as a result of the June 1967 occupa-tion. We proceed by elaborating the strategy that guided the research, thedata, and the measurement process. After presenting and discussing the keyfindings of the analysis, we offer concluding remarks in which we sketchseveral potential theoretical contributions and possible future research av-enues based on the research and conclusions drawn.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Israel’s decision to extend its domination over the West Bank and GazaStrip following the June 1967 War did not only change the structure of thedeep-rooted conflict. It also changed its dynamics by restructuring the re-lationship between the two antagonists. Indeed, beginning in June 1967,Israel acted as both the rival national movement, as had been the case dur-ing the British Mandate (1920–1948), and the sovereign power, while thePalestinians became an occupied national minority lacking any civic or po-litical rights and deprived of most human rights.

Concomitantly, the Palestinians’ space of action became, primarily,contingent upon Israel’s policy for the occupied territories as implementedmainly through military orders and regulations. This structural changeconditioned, to a large extent, the influence of regional and interna-tional factors during the period under study. The Israeli occupation turnedout to be the fulcrum of what would soon be the Palestinian national-social movement, which gradually developed within the occupied territories(Hiltermann, 1991; Taraki, 1990).

The post-1967 contentious arena generated new opportunities andthreats from the vantage point of the occupied Palestinians. Opportunitiesincluded Israeli initiatives designed to promote Palestinian acquiescence toits rule. For example, Israel acted to strengthen political forces that wereconsidered less threatening to its interest in maintaining its hold on the ter-ritories (Ma’oz, 1984) and allowed the formation of workers’ unions, volun-tary social organizing, and the establishment of higher education and me-dia institutions throughout the territories. It allowed monetary inflow fromoutside the occupied territories and the operation of private voluntary or-ganizations.

In spite of these incentives, the Palestinians experienced a multidimen-sional oppression and repression from a series of threatening initiatives.


Oppressive and repressive measures included systematic land confisca-tions, rapid expansion of Jewish settlements throughout the occupiedterritories, restrictions on freedom of movement and freedom of expres-sion, and punitive measures such as demolition of houses, deportations,and detentions against those suspected of resistance activity (Tamari,1988). Additionally, as of the late 1970s, Israel’s deepening involvementin Lebanon—as part of its systematic attempts to repress Palestinian na-tional sentiments and the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organiza-tion (PLO) in the region—brought about harsher policy measures towardthe Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This included DefenseMinister Ariel Sharon’s “strong hand” policy during the early 1980s, thegradual dismissal of several elected West Bank mayors, and the abolitionof the Gaza municipality in 1982, as well as the expulsion of the PLO fromLebanon in the summer of 1982 and Itzhak Rabin’s “iron fist” policy ofAugust 1985.

Nevertheless, by deciding to govern the territories and by allowing nu-merous Palestinian workers to enter Israel on a daily basis, Israel, in prac-tice, enabled Palestinians to gain firsthand knowledge of their occupier. Un-like Palestinians and Arab people residing outside the contentious arena,the Palestinians in the occupied territories gradually acquired a more so-phisticated understanding of Israel and the conflict. Many Palestinians wentinto Israel every day, mastered the Hebrew language, and became famil-iar with Israeli social and political institutions and with the fundamentalvalues and norms of Israeli society (see Daud Kuttab, in al-Fajr, June 21,1987: 15).

Israel’s decision to maintain control over the territories had a second,no less important consequence. The occupation produced an Israeli powerdeflation by deepening a systemwide internal division over the continuationof the military occupation and the future status of the territories. This deep-ening conflict resulted in a bold challenge to the authority of the state andthe democratic regime as a whole. This was manifested in the rise of po-litical violence, distrust of the system, and unprecedented violation of therule of law in a series of sociopolitical crises described below (Alimi, 2003;Barzilai, 1987; Sprinzak, 1995; Wolfsfeld, 1988).

Our central argument, then, is that the consolidating Palestinian move-ment within the occupied territories worked through formal and informalnetworks to build the capacity for a shared, collective framing of the divi-sions in Israeli society. The ongoing occupation, in this frame, was seen asopportunity for a strategy of contention, on the basis of an understandingthat Israeli internal conflict would shape how the Israeli antagonist couldand would respond. This framing of Israeli division and an understand-ing of how Palestinian actions were likely to effect Israeli domestic politics


combined to explain why the first Intifada occurred when it did and tookthe form that it did.

RESEARCH STRATEGY

To demonstrate this, we analyze the development of collective atten-tion to and framing of crises and developments inside Israel (hereafter “cri-sis events” or “crises”—see below) by the Palestinian challengers. How didcompeting Palestinian framers in the occupied territories assign meaning totheir situation in general and to possible changes in the structure of politi-cal opportunities they faced in particular? What events inside Israeli societyinfluenced the convergence of meaning that led to the Intifada?

There were two stages to the research: several preliminary in-depthinterviews with Palestinian grassroots activists and Israeli journalists andofficials, followed by a systematic content analysis of Palestinian print newsmedia published during the 1970s and 1980s. The interviews, although un-systematic, provided useful information about the degree of interest in andfamiliarity with Israeli society among some Palestinian activists and abouthow their knowledge was gathered and circulated.5

Content analysis of news articles was the primary method used. It al-lowed us to look more systematically at the amount and nature of coverageof domestic Israeli crisis events, while examining changes in the coveragein various newspapers over time. Combining the two methods provided amore comprehensive picture of how Palestinian framers and readers con-structed meaning about domestic Israeli politics.

The goal of the content analysis was to examine systematically howPalestinian public discourse fluctuated during the various domestic Israelicrises. The content analysis was based on a sample of news articles obtainedfrom various West Bank newspapers published in the occupied territoriesduring two consecutive, yet analytically distinct, time periods: 1974–1986and 1987. In the first time period (1974–1986), we examined the extent towhich Palestinian print media were attentive to domestic Israeli politics, thedepth and scope of their familiarity with domestic Israeli politics, and howthe Palestinian media framed specific domestic Israeli crisis events. In the

5 Nine semistructured interviews were conducted between 1999 and 2000, including interviewswith five Palestinians and four Israelis. All Palestinian informants had lived in the occupiedterritories during the 1970s and 1980s and witnessed and/or were involved in the events thatoccurred before and during the Intifada, either as participants or grassroots leaders. The fourIsraelis included three journalists reporting on the occupied territories and a retired secu-rity service official who was immersed in the situation in the territories during the severalyears preceding the 1987 Intifada. The interview excerpts quoted here should be regarded asillustrative quotations only, suggesting the plausibility of our argument, not demonstrating it.


second time period (1987), we examined the meaning the Palestinian me-dia gave to their confrontation with Israeli forces, focusing on the rationaleprovided for their contention. We elaborate on this below.

Palestinian print media in the occupied territories are the only sys-tematic, available sources of data on the public discourse during theperiod under examination. After their establishment during the early1970s, West Bank print media became an important forum in the de-velopment and propagation of national awareness and identity (Najjer,1994; Shinar and Rubinstein, 1987), acting as political resources for thewidespread mobilization of Palestinians by frequently targeting less ac-tive Palestinians. In that sense, print media in the occupied territoriesdiffered from the PLO print media (e.g., Shu’un Filastiniya [Palestinianaffairs]) based outside of the territories. The latter tended to reflect is-sues and concerns of the PLO in particular and the Palestinian “peo-ple” (writ large) but were not grounded in daily life under militaryoccupation.

Each newspaper chosen was oriented to one of the Palestinian politi-cal organizations. This enabled us to identify trends within Palestinian pub-lic discourse in the territories that transcended a particular political ten-dency. We examined one weekly and three daily newspapers: a-Sha’ab (Thepeople), representing the radical factions inside the PLO, the Fatah organal-Fajr (The dawn), representing the more conservative factions inside thePLO, the traditionally moderate pro-Jordanian Al-Quds (Jerusalem), andal-Ahad (The covenant), a news organ of the Islamic organization Hezbol-lah. Although al-Ahad was affiliated with a political organization locatedoutside the territories and was not an integral part of the Palestinian move-ment, we included it because it was the only newspaper available that re-flected an Islamist voice, such as that of the Islamic Jihad, within the terri-tories. With the exception of al-Ahad, the newspapers were published anddistributed within the territories and/or East Jerusalem. The first three werealso the most widely distributed and circulated newspapers in the territo-ries, with an overall distribution of approximately 35,000 readers per day(Najjer, 1994).

During the first period examined (1974–1986), domestic Israeli divi-sions over the continuation of the occupation were marked by a series oftransformative crisis events of which eight were chosen for the contentanalysis. The decision to focus on these eight crises rested on numerousworks by Israeli scholars, all of whom argued that these crises reflected mostmarkedly the systemwide, post-1967 crisis that Israel has been experienc-ing (Alimi, 2003; Barzilai, 1987; Sprinzak, 1995; Wolfsfeld, 1988). FollowingMcAdam and Sewell (2001), we viewed these crisis events as, “specific andsystematically explicable transformations and rearticulations of the cultural


Table I. Operationalizing Israeli Political Opportunity Structure

Aspect of politicalopportunity structure Manifestation Crisis event/critical discourse momentCentrality of political

systemExtra-parliamentarism 1974: The unprecedented protest of military

officer Moti Ashkenazi against thegovernment.

1978: The foundation of Peace Now. Theconditional nature of military service,voiced in the officers’ letter on PrimeMinister Begin’s implementation of peacewith Egypt.

Depth of socialcleavages

Political violenceamong collectiveactors

1983: Assassination of peace activist EmilGrinzweig by an Israeli right-winger.

Implementation ofcollective goals

Challenges toauthoritativedecisions

1975: The violent struggle over the Sebastiasettlement by the right-wing movementBlock of the Faithful.

1982: The forceful evacuation of the Yamitsettlement in the context of theIsraeli–Egyptian peace treaty.

Resistance to the ruleof law

Illegalism/socialcontrol

1984: The uncovering of the JewishUnderground—Jewish terrorism againstPalestinians.

Strength of stateinstitutions

Lack of legitimacyand trust

1982: Peace Now demonstrations against thewar in Lebanon and the massacres atSabra and Shatilla.

1986: General Security Service (Shabak)Affair—Secret Service and high officialinvolvement in the illegal killing of twoPalestinian terrorists before trial, and thepublic uproar over the concealment ofinformation and perjury during the workof the committee investigating the event.

and social structures that were already in operation before the event [whichbecame] turning points in structural change, concentrated moments of po-litical and cultural creativity” (102).

We treated these crisis events as “critical discourse moments” (Chilton1987; Gamson, 1992) because they stimulated public discourse about thefuture status of the occupied territories. In choosing to focus on these cri-sis events and the protest waves (see below), we make no causal claim,nor do we argue that events and/or media discourse cause change in pub-lic discourse. The crisis events served as a timeframe for measuring mediadiscourse, which, in itself, is an indicator of trends and changes in publicdiscourse. Table I illustrates the process of linking the types of political op-portunities and the critical discourse moments, and provides a brief intro-duction to the various crisis events (Alimi, forthcoming).


We focused on the Palestinian newspapers’ coverage during theweek following Israeli media attention to the given event. Within thisweek of coverage, we randomly sampled three issues of each newspa-per for each event’s coverage. The unit of analysis was a combinationof the news article headline, subhead, and first paragraph. The articleswere selected if they linked, implicitly or explicitly, internal Israeli af-fairs and/or Palestinian affairs in the occupied territories. For example,we included an article from July 1974 dealing with Palestinian threatsto strike in response to Israeli right-wing activists’ plan to settle inJericho, yet rejected an article published on the same day that dealtwith regional Arab politics. The sample included a total of 188 newsarticles.

The second period for comparison (1987) represented a time whenthe Intifada was gradually taking shape and showed a consistent in-crease in the level of confrontations between Palestinians and Israelis(Alimi, 2006; Robinson, 1997). For this period, we added the Islamic voiceof Hezbollah’s news organ: al-Ahad. By 1987, the Islamic voice withinthe Palestinian movement had become influential, as it had not beenearlier.

We broke the 1987 coverage into three waves of protest, begin-ning May 7, October 7, and December 8. Each protest wave repre-sented an intense period (more than three consecutive days) of clashesand involved a variety of incidents ranging from strikes and demon-strations to terrorist attacks. We followed the same measurement strat-egy used with the first period, with one exception. This time, the crite-rion for including a specific news article was whether it dealt with theconfrontations and their direct effects inside and outside the territories.We ended up with a sample of 84 items. We used two separate cod-ing sheets to analyze the news articles, after two rounds of testing forinter-coder reliability based on 30 randomly sampled, different articlesfor each round, using the Scott’s Pi coefficient as our statistical index(see Appendix).

FINDINGS

This discussion is divided into three major sections. The first attemptsto assess the extent to which Palestinians in the occupied territories were at-tentive to their adversary’s domestic crises; the second examines the mean-ing attached to these crises in the context of constructing answers for whatis the issue at hand and for how to think about it; the third section deals


30.9%

35.5%

15.7%

19.7%

21.8%

40.3%

43.8%

44.7%

47.2%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

al-Fajr (n = 57)

Al-Quds (n = 55)

a-Sha'ab (n = 76)

New

spap

er

Percentage of references

Yes

No

Unclear

Fig. 1. Reference to Israeli crisis events by newspaper.

with processes of the Palestinian framing of an opportunity to increasecontention—what can be done about the issue—as a collective framing ofpolitical opportunity during 1987.

Knowing Your Adversary

The depth and scope of Palestinians’ familiarity with the Israeli polity isimpressive, demonstrating general knowledge and familiarity with a rangeof issues and with the manifestations of Israel’s power deflation. The oc-cupation and the ongoing uncertainty and lack of control that Palestiniansexperienced acted as a central factor in developing a “need to know.” Thisneed was expressed by a Palestinian journalist in one of the interviews:“Palestinians put a lot of effort in gaining information on what was goingon in Israel; it became almost a “natural” interest of the occupied to knowits occupier . . . an interest that evolved into a need.”

The analysis of news articles provides ample evidence of the depth ofinterest and familiarity with Israeli polity reflected in the Palestinian printmedia. Figure 1 summarizes the amount of media attention given to thevarious Israeli critical discourse moments by the three newspapers in theterritories.

The findings suggest that Palestinian newspapers have been attentiveto the variety of Israeli crisis events. In terms of distribution among the


5

1

13

13

14

12

4

1

2

7

7

2

11

3

1

2

9

10

2

8

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Foreign policy

Economy

Cultural

Political system

Social control

Collective goals

Social cleavages

Legitimacy and trust

Soci

opol

itic

al is

sues

Number of articles

al-Fajr

Al-Quds

a-Sha'ab

Fig. 2. Reference to Israeli sociopolitical issues by newspapers.

newspapers, a-Sha’ab, with 76 articles dealing with Israel, has the largestnumber of articles that make direct reference to the crises, but Al-Quds andal-Fajr present similar proportions of such references. However, al-Fajr hasa larger percentage of articles (40.3%) that make no reference whatsoeverto the Israeli crises, compared with Al-Quds (30.9%). Al-Fajr‘s strongaffiliation to the Fatah-led PLO can explain this finding, reflecting the rela-tive distance kept by the PLO from the occupied territories throughout the1970s (Frisch, 1992).

We can learn more about the amount of media attention by asking towhat extent, if any, and in what ways the coverage framed the domesticIsraeli power deflation. Of the various topics relating to domestic Israelievents and development, which were most prominent? In order to answerthis question, we examined which of the various Israeli crises (treated asvarious aspects of opportunity structure) received the most coverage.

Figure 2 presents the variety of Israeli sociopolitical issues that ap-peared in the coverage of the three newspapers. For example, “foreign pol-icy” denotes a threat of war against Israel or diplomatic maneuvering, and“cultural” denotes religious or other symbolic issues such as an attempt byreligious parties to get permission for excavation at a site where it was be-lieved an ancient Jewish graveyard used to exist.

The internal Israeli issues that received the most extensive coverage inall three newspapers were Israeli difficulties with social control (e.g., overthe issue of illegal settlements), with collective goals (e.g., the struggle over


the evacuation of Yamit), and with legitimacy and trust (e.g., public protestover the Lebanon war and the Shabak Affair). The relatively small amountof coverage for the categories “political system” (with the exception of a-Sha’ab) and “foreign policy” (not treated here as an aspect of Israeli powerdeflation) are especially revealing. Clearly, manifestations of parliamentarystruggles, threats of war against Israel, and international pressure on Israelregarding the occupied territories—integral parts of several crises, includingthe Shabak Affair and the Lebanon war—were considered less newsworthy.

These media priorities are consistent with arguments made in regardto Palestinians’ disillusionment over international initiative and with theirinability to participate in the Israeli political system, which made parlia-mentary struggles less critical from their vantage point (Abu-Amr, 1988;Alimi, 2003). An article in a-Sha’ab from March 8, 1978, that deals with thepolitical tensions inside Begin’s government illustrates our point. After re-porting Israeli Defense Minister Weizman’s threat to resign from office inthe context of his objection to the government settlement policy, and theU.S. administration’s pressure on Begin on the same issue, the article goeson to reveal a much deeper analysis: “The objection to the settlements goesfar beyond the U.S. administration . . . we hear these days of a sensitive sec-tor among Israelis that condemns the settlement policy, and thinks it is ahindrance to just peace in the region. The letter sent by 300 reserve militaryofficers and soldiers . . . is the ultimate proof of our just cause.”

In short, the Palestinians in the occupied territories, as reflected in themedia discourse, were highly attentive to the Israeli sociopolitical scene.The analysis of the newspapers’ coverage reveals a deep interest in andsubtle “readings” of the internal Israeli power deflation when translatedinto various aspects of opportunity. We turn next to the ways in whichPalestinian newspapers framed the overall situation of Israeli power defla-tion and its implications.

Constructing Political Opportunity

Palestinian journalists made clear distinctions between Jewish solidar-ity during the 1970s and later during the 1980s. While impressed by thecohesion of the Israeli society during the 1970s, by early 1980s, Palestinianjournalists and their readers were aware of the disintegration of such unity.

As an illustration of “disunity” coding, consider the following excerptfrom al-Fajr (April 22, 1982) focusing on the violent resistance to the evac-uation of Yamit:

[Headline:] The evacuation of Yamit has begun; [subhead:] Kahana arrived at thesite to sympathize with his followers; [first paragraph:] Yesterday afternoon oper-


25.5%

9.3%

22.5%

40.8%36.5%

65.1%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1974--1978 1982--1983 1984--1986

Time

Per

cen

tage

of

Isra

eli c

ohes

ion Unity

Disunity

Fig. 3. Israeli cohesion by date of coverage.

ation “red dove” started, an operation designed to evacuate the Jewish extrem-ists from the Yamit settlement. The Israeli military radio announced soldiers willhave to use ladders in order to force their way into the houses in which the strong-holders have concentrated. . . . The extremists are reacting with violence, and throw-ing stones and sand-bags at the soldiers.

Figure 3 presents a bivariate distribution of Palestinian newspapers’ fram-ing of Israeli cohesion across three time periods. We grouped the vari-ous critical discourse moments (i.e. crisis events) into three broad periods,drawing on Sprinzak’s (1995) work on political violence in Israel. He ar-gued that 1981–1984 was the most contentious period inside Israel. Thus,crises between 1974 and 1978 (Ashkenazi, Sebastia, and Officers’ Letter)were grouped in the first time period.

While the period 1974–1978 shows a larger portion of articles framingIsrael as united, the two other periods tell a totally different story. Despitevarious crisis events during the 1970s, such as the unprecedented challengeto the government in 1974–1975 by the Block of the Faithful over the settle-ment in Sebastia, and the Officers’ Letter, Palestinian framers nonethelesspresented Israel in 1974–1978 as still enjoying a climate characterized bysolidarity and unity.

However, the framing of 1982–1983 crisis events, such as the Yamitevacuation, the mass protests over the Lebanon war, and the assassina-tion of Emil Grunzweig brought about a striking, statistically significantdifference in framing (p = 0.02; Cramer’s V = 0.42). This change con-tinues throughout the third period, 1984–1986, during which the uncov-


ering of the Jewish Underground and the Shabak Affair took place. Itseems that such crises, regardless of their nature and content (that is,whether involving challenges from the “Left” or “Right”) were increasinglyframed as significant manifestations of discord and disunity inside Israelisociety.

Examining the newspapers’ practice of linking internal Israeli andPalestinian affairs provides an additional measure of the ways in whichPalestinian framers suggested how to think about the deepening division in-side their antagonist’s society. Palestinian framers and readers were makingsuch a link, perceiving it as one that connects the two conflict cycles—theexternal Palestinian–Israeli and the internal Israeli division—stressing theinterplay between the two. Grassroots activists in the occupied territories,according to one who was interviewed, grasped this interplay in a strategicmanner: “We realized that if we use deadly weapons we will fail to causea divide inside your society. We wanted to keep the momentum of fightsand conflict in Israel and not cause you to reunite by our use of guns. . . .

This was our way to strengthen those groups inside Israel that rejected theoccupation.”

According to a second Palestinian informant, Palestinians realized thatthe domestic Israeli conflicts were not a mere opposition to governmentpolicy as they are and should be in a democratic regime:

We paid careful attention to the conflict between those that wanted to continuethe occupation and those that rejected it and their struggle with your government.“[We asked, “But isn’t there an opposition in every democracy?”] Indeed so, butthe prevalent perception among Palestinians was that the scope of challenges andopposition inside Israel cut across any government whatsoever, and that there wereseveral groups such as Kahana and the settlers that actually challenged the corner-stones of your democracy; . . . their ideology stood in opposition to the rules, values,and norms of the democratic regime.

Throughout the 1980s, Palestinians were highly interested in both types ofchallenges to the Israeli government. The ascendancy of left-wing opposi-tion to the government policy and the growing magnitude of such oppo-sition balanced the picture from the vantage point of Palestinians in theoccupied territories. Such an understanding was supported by the framingin all three newspapers.

The categories “discouraging” and “encouraging” (see Table II) actedas indicators for Palestinians’ shared perception of threat and opportunityrespectively. An article in al-Fajr (May 24, 1984) was coded as “discourag-ing” because it quoted the Knesset chairperson as saying, in the context ofthe uncovering of the Jewish Underground, “We must puncture the eyes ofArabs and slay their bellies.” Another article in Al-Quds (May 26, 1984)was coded as “encouraging,” for emphasizing that “Peace Now strongly


Table II. Prognosis of Palestinian Situation by Israeli Crisis Event

Gross event Prognosis of Palestinian situation N = 163

Discouraging Unclear EncouragingAshkenazi (1974) 100% (1) 1Sebastia (1975) 37.2% (16) 44.2% (19) 18.6% (8) 43Officers’ letter (1978) 22.2% (6) 29.6% (8) 48.1% (13) 27Yamit evacuation (1982) 64.3% (9) 35.7% (5) 14Protest over Lebanon (1982) 9.1% (2) 90.9% (20) 22Grinzveig assassination (1983) 25.0% (3) 16.7% (2) 583% (7) 12Jewish underground (1984) 26.7% (8) 43.3% (13) 30% (9) 30Shabak affair (1986) 14.3% (2) 7.1% (1) 78.6% (11) 14

χ2 = 57.30.p < 0.05.Cramer’s V = 0.41.

condemns Jewish Underground activities in the occupied Arab lands.”Table II shows this growing perception, presenting the cross-tabulation be-tween “prognosis of the Palestinian situation” and the various Israeli crisisevents.

Only after the Officers’ Letter of 1978 did the “encouraging” framebecome dominant. While there is a temporary shift back to the “discourag-ing” frame following the Yamit evacuation, throughout the ensuing crises,the “encouraging” frame dominates. Even after the uncovering of theJewish Underground, unquestionably an anti-Palestinian development in-side Israel, the newspapers’ coverage framed the crisis event as more en-couraging than discouraging.

In sum, all three newspapers characterized the lack of Israeli unity andsolidarity, the interplay between internal Israeli division and the conflictbetween Israel and the Palestinians, and the Israeli power deflation result-ing from the division as favorable and encouraging for Palestinian nationalaspirations.

Activating Mobilization

Several Intifada researchers have labeled 1987 as the “year of discon-tent.” Contention continually escalated in the occupied territories, includ-ing, for example, the taking over of the Balata refugee camp in February1987 (Alimi, 2006; Robinson, 1997). It is plausible to suggest that throughconfronting the Israeli military, Palestinian activists tested whether condi-tions were indeed ripe to trigger contention.

The final part of the analysis addresses whether Palestinian ac-tivists’ framing of Israel’s power deflation encouraged them to urge their


constituency to mobilize for action. To accomplish that, we examined an-swers given to the question: What should be done about the issue at stake?While such encouragement is important, we should note that we cannot pre-dict with certainty how people will respond to such calls (Gamson, 1992). Itis possible that in a repressive, high-risk, political setting—like that of thePalestinians under military occupation—the process of mobilization for ac-tion might lead to the collective perception that action would be costly andineffective.

The framing task implied by the question What should be done aboutthe issue? concerns a call to arms or a rationale for engaging in ameliorativeaction. Action mobilization is about the reasoning for action, a rationalethat motivates participation if it is framed in a way that effectively encour-ages action (Snow and Benford, 1988). For example, one effective framingsuggests the possibility that conditions are ripe and that change is possibleand within reach.

Using the dataset for 1987, we distinguished between “rhetoric of ac-tion” and “rhetoric of reaction.” Complementing Hirschman’s rhetoric ofreaction, which stresses pessimism and risks entail in action, Gamson andMeyer (1996) suggest a corresponding counterrhetoric that stresses opti-mism and aims at convincing potential challengers that action for change ispossible and desirable. Thus, whereas the rhetoric of action has themes ofurgency, agency, and possibility, the rhetoric of reaction emphasizes jeop-ardy, futility, and perverse effects.

The analysis below examines the relative prominence of the two typesof rhetoric as they fluctuate over the three waves of protest (May, October,and December of 1987) and in the various newspapers. For example, wecoded an article in Al-Quds (October 10, 1987) as promoting reaction for itsemphasis on “perverse effects” in its coverage of the escape of Palestinianactivists from Gaza prison and the ensuing armed confrontation with Israeliforces, during which several of them were killed:

[Headline:] Wide scope military measures and searching activity in the Gaza strip;[subhead:] Military sources: we shall check under each rock and in each corner;[first paragraph:] Wide searching operations were initiated in order to capture theremaining fugitives.

In covering the same event, al-Fajr emphasized “agency”; therefore, wecoded the article as promoting action:

[Headline:] Armed confrontation in Gaza; [subhead:] Palestinian spokesperson:many Israelis were killed; Israeli spokesperson: four Palestinians and an [Israeli]intelligence man were killed . . . during a confrontation between Israeli forces andan armed Palestinian squad of the Islamic Jihad organization.


Source: Eitan Y. Alimi, “Constructing political opportunity,” (Mobilization: An International Journal 11(1):67–80).

100 %

57 .1%

88 .9%

40 %

100 %

67 %

100 %

44 .4%

16 .7%

0.00 %

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

May 1987 (p = .01) October 1987 (p = .03) December 1987 (p = .16)

Month

Rhe

tori

c of

act

ion

Hizbolla's al-AhadPLO-oriented a-Sha'abPLO-oriented al-FajrPro-Jordanian Al-Quds

Fig. 4. Type of rhetoric by newspaper and by data. (Source: Eitan Y. Alimi, “Constructingpolitical opportunity.” Mobilization: An International Journal 11(1):67–80.)

The article in Al-Quds does not encourage action—it stresses the military’sthreatening reaction and uses an Israeli source. The article in al-Fajr relieson Palestinian sources and reports on the death of “many Israelis” during aconfrontation following the escape, a contentious action not mentioned byAl-Quds.

There is a clear association between type of rhetoric and newspaper.The results are statistically significant, with a strong measure of association(Cramer’s V = 0.51) demonstrating Al-Quds’ moderate style (77% reac-tion coverage), the mixed coverage by al-Fajr (36% reaction) and a-Sha’ab(14% reaction), and pure action rhetoric of the newspaper of the IslamistHezbollah, al-Ahad (0% reaction).

It is especially important to note how this association varies over thethree protest waves, as illustrated in Fig. 4. The statistically significant as-sociation between “newspaper” and “type of rhetoric” disappears overtime. While remaining statistically significant in the May wave of protest(p < 0.01) and in the October wave (p < 0.03), in the December waveof protest, the statistically significant association disappears (p < 0.16). Aconverging trend supporting rhetoric of action emerged among the news-papers over time, showing a shift toward al-Ahad‘s action framing by theother three newspapers.


Table III. Type of Rhetoric by Reference to Israeli Arena

Type of rhetoric Reference to Israeli arena N = 23

Unfavorable toPalestinians

In favor ofPalestinians

Rhetoric of reaction 89% (8) 11.1% (1) 9Rhetoric of action 42.9% (6) 57.1% (8) 14

Yates correction = 3.13.Fisher’s exact test: p < 0.05.Phi = 0.46.

While this pattern is more straightforward with regard to the PLO-oriented a-Sha’ab and al-Fajr, coverage in the pro-Jordanian Al-Qudsshows a less clear-cut trend. A simple explanation is that the lack of proac-tive coverage by Al-Quds in October 1987 (and note that even duringDecember, its proactive coverage does not go above 40%) is related tothe newspaper’s lack of explicit identification with the Palestinian nationalmovement. A more nuanced explanation would include additional factorssuch as the level of Israeli countermeasures and the interaction with Jewishsettlers, both highly intense during 1987 (Lesch, 1990).

This prominence of calls for action did not occur in a vacuum. Thenewspapers’ emphases on action framing were largely related to the reac-tion in Israel to the confrontations, and less related to the actual military re-action on the battlefield. Palestinian activists fully grasped that the army’sreaction to the confrontations was a by-product of the events and devel-opments inside Israel. They recognized that no real separation existed be-tween Israeli society and the Israeli army—that the army was a microcosmof Israeli society. In that sense, Palestinian activists understood that theyshould look beyond the immediate reaction of Israeli soldiers and that, intheir calls for action, they should attend to the dynamics of events insideIsrael. One Palestinian interviewee put this most vividly, arguing that “wecertainly sensed and understood that during the months before the upris-ing IDF’s actions and activities were far from enjoying a full backup by theIsraeli public. . . . We simply acted against the soldiers in a provoking man-ner as an indicator for what was going on behind them.”

Again, this comprehension received parallel expression in the newspa-pers’ coverage. As Table III shows, despite the relatively small proportionof references to internal Israeli reactions (26%), the mere existence of ref-erences to whether or not Israeli reaction is favorable for Palestinians istelling because it suggests that Palestinians were attuned to how increasedcontention was affecting Israeli politics.

Clearly, action rhetoric is significantly associated with Israeli reactionsthat are framed as favorable for Palestinians. This is well illustrated by an


article in al-Fajr on December 11, 1987, which states that Israeli observersthink that “the worsening of the situation in the occupied Gaza Strip, whichhas continued for months, leads many Israelis to doubt the utility of theirpresence in the Gaza Strip.”

CONCLUDING REMARKS

We have argued that the consolidating Palestinian movement con-structed a shared perception that the division in Israeli society regardingthe ongoing occupation created an opportunity to trigger contentious poli-tics leading to the 1987 first Intifada. To support this argument, we used asystematic content analysis of Palestinian news articles published during the1970s and 1980s, supplemented with several informative, although unsys-tematic, in-depth interviews with Palestinian grassroots activists and Israelijournalists and officials.

What conclusions can we draw from the analysis? To begin with, wesaw that the Palestinians in the occupied territories were highly awareof and attentive to domestic Israeli crisis events. Palestinian framers in-creasingly read the Israeli government as suffering a lack of legitimacyand trust, and as experiencing difficulty both in implementing authorita-tive decisions and in coping with illegal activities. In short, they recognizedthat the developing disunity in Israel was creating a deflation of govern-ment power. Second, Palestinian framers gradually made a link betweenthis domestic Israeli power deflation and the issue of occupation, draw-ing considerable encouragement from the loss of legitimacy and trust inIsraeli governance as manifested by both left-wing and right-wing chal-lenges. The developing disunity in Israeli society was, accordingly, framedas encouraging for Palestinian national aspirations. Finally, we learnedthat during 1987, a significant, gradual increase in calls for action oc-curred along with a converging process among the various newspapers. Pa-pers that had been less activist joined their more activist counterparts asvarious political factions within the Palestinian movement became moreunited.

This analysis has theoretical implications for the bridging of culturallyladen and structurally laden approaches, offering insights into the inter-play between types of opportunity structures, types of mobilization, andprocesses of framing (Diani, 1996; Flacks, 2004). During most of the firstIntifada, a nonviolent, disruptive mode of action dominated, coupledwith a non-zero-sum framing vis-a-vis the Israeli public and the interna-tional community (Alimi, 2003; Wolfsfeld, 1997). Such interplay is clearly


expressed in the words of Hanna Siniora (1988), editor of al-Fajr at the time:“Palestinians must talk to the Israeli populace, the Israeli electorate; . . . Weare simply repeating what was done by Gandhi in India. . . . The importanceof this movement is that . . . it does not alienate the international communityor the Israeli worker” (7).

Are the processes of constructing opportunity or threat inside the ad-versary’s arena generic enough to be applied to other conflicts? First, theyseem especially relevant to conflicts with strong power asymmetries. Un-derstanding the politics of one’s adversary is especially important for theweaker party or challenger. As has long been recognized, internal divisionon the part of an adversary creates opportunity, and often there may be astrategy that exacerbates such division and thus increases the opportunityfor successful collective action. Often nonviolent, direct action—includingdisruptive tactics—is more effective in maintaining the adversary’s ambiva-lence about how to respond than are violent acts that unite the more pow-erful adversary in support of violent countermeasures. Understanding thedivisions in Israeli society, Palestinian activists’ ability in the first Intifada tomaintain a limited-violence mode of action—sometimes contrary to Tunis-based PLO directives, proved to be a major factor in maintaining the divi-sions inside Israel.

The case of the al-Aqsa Intifada, which began in the Fall of 2000, seemsto present a mirror image of the first Intifada. If the leaders of the firstIntifada understood the effectiveness of disruptive tactics, how is it that thesecond Intifada seemed to rely on tactics that united Israeli society insteadof exploiting divisions? This question is beyond the scope of this paper, butwe can speculate about this difference.

We suggest that the radicalization process was interactive, affectingboth sides. The 1987 Intifada was initiated and guided by Palestinianswho had grown up and were living inside the occupied territories,many of whom had served time in Israeli prisons, while many otherspractically lived as workers inside Israel. They were pragmatic aboutwhat could be realistically achieved rather than driven by ideology orthe search for revenge, as was the case with many Tunis-based PLOactivists.

In contrast, as a result of the Oslo Accords, beginning September 1993,power shifted to leaders of the Palestinian Authority who had been liv-ing in exile during the first Intifada, and to ideologically driven, Islamicchallengers such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. These Islamic forces werestrengthened by the repressive Israeli response and the weakening of theinfrastructure maintained by the Palestinian Authority during the secondhalf of the 1990s.


It is possible that the efforts of Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Pres-ident Clinton to conclude a final status agreement during the Camp Davidsummit of summer 2000—and the provocative visit to the Temple Mountby Sharon shortly thereafter—were perceived as threats by those same chal-lenging forces within the Palestinian national movement. In the process, thestrategic insight of the first Intifada about the nature of the Israeli adversarywas lost, and the opportunity created by domestic Israeli divisions was lostwith it.

APPENDIX: INTER-CODER RELIABILITY

Variable Agreement percentage Scott’s PiIsraeli cohesiona 75% 0.69Prognosis of Palestinian

situationa81.5% 0.77

Type of Israeli sociopoliticalissue covereda

84.9% 0.77

Linking Israeli sociopoliticalissue with Palestiniansituationa

85.5% 0.78

Reference to Israeli criticaldiscourse momentsa

96% 0.89

Type of reference to Israeliarenab

88.6% 0.76

Type of rhetoricb 90% 0.82aBased on 30 articles—Coding sheet for 1974–1986.bBased on 50 articles—Coding sheet for 1987.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank Sharon Ashkenazi, Dimitry Epstein, and GalEngelhart for their help with the coding process, and Wasfi Kailani andMorag Segal for their help in the translation of the texts. We would alsolike to thank four anonymous reviewers for Sociological Forum for theirinsightful and constructive comments.

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