Through Palestinian Eyes: The Emerging Leadership on the West Bank

...Nevertheless, it provides many answers to the question of why the Palestinian uprising in the territories occurred when it did and why it was 21 years in the coming...

...It is a valuable scientific study by a serious scholar of social and political developments in the West Bank...

...It is not necessarily the Israeli regime that frightens Sahliyeh's sources into concealing themselves...

...Their economic power declined because tens of thousands of workers from the West Bank found an array of attractive employment opportunities in the Israeli economy and no longer had to line up at the doors of Jordanian factories and other Jordanian enterprises to earn a day's wages...

...The question remains whether Palestinian nationalism, in its various incarnations, will be an equal disappointment...

...He then taught at Bir Zeit University in Ramal-lah on the West Bank, so he lived under Israeli rule and knows what it is like...

...He co-authored The West Sank Handbook A Political Lexicon (Westview, 1986), and wrote "Is the Occupation Brutalizing Israel...

...At one time or another they have included enthusiastic supporters of revolutionary Arab nationalism (either in the form of the Nasserism of the 1950s and 1960s or the Syrian Bathists of the 1970s), champions of an uncompromising military struggle and of terrorism, and advocates of the compromise some thought King Hussein's Hashemite regime might be able to achieve...

...To Emile Sahliyeh's credit, it must be said that despite his obvious natural sympathies toward his own people (which are made plain throughout the book), this is not a piece of propaganda...

...Indeed, it is difficult to find a work— even an academic one—that completely avoids some bias, whether for or against Arabs or Jews, Israelis or Palestinians...

...Unless the PLO adopts such measures, in whole or in part, it will not be included in the process of reaching a settlement in this area, and all the popular support it enjoys—as the intifada attests—will do it little good...

...This short biography of the author immediately raises the question as to whether this book is another piece of Arab propaganda...

...Particularly interesting are the book's conclusions...

...Sahliyeh describes the most prominent currents and groups that have operated on the West Bank during the 40 years since the establishment of the state of Israel...

...At the same time, many West Bankers, especially the younger generation, came to regard traditional leaders identified with the Jordanian regime as reactionary anti-nationalists, and the social prestige of this leadership sank even further...

...Danny Rubinstein is a columnist on Arab affairs for Davar, the Histadrut {Israeli labor union) newspaper...

...The Middle East conflict is so charged with emotion and the parties to it have invested such effort in courting public opinion the world over that we must ask of any new book on the subject: Whose side does it take...

...Jordan, the Palestinians' "sister state," which presumed to provide them with a national home, repeatedly let them down—first in 1970, when the Jordanians took up arms against the Palestinians (in Black September) and drove them out of the country, then three years later, when Jordan failed to join Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur War...

...The picture that emerges from Sahliyeh's book is that all the social and political elements involved in the conflict have come to failure, thus seeming to open the way for the PLO...

...All of these groups failed...

...No Arab or Palestinian leadership, or any political, social or military doctrine has succeeded in pitting itself against Israel...

...occasionally it is the Jordanian regime or rival organizations within the Palestinian national movement from which the sources prefer to hide their identities...

...The Arab world and pan-Arabism proved a disappointment...

...Sahliyeh's determination that Israel will have to negotiate with the Palestinians as part of the PLO, not as an alternative to it, may well be right...

...Sahliyeh provides a credible description of how the West Bank's traditional pro-Jordanian leadership, which was very powerful during the period of Jordanian rule over the West Bank (1948-1967), was steadily worn down and has all but vanished since the onset of the uprising...

...During the two decades of Israeli rule on the West Bank, these traditional local leaders lost the connections and influence they once enjoyed in Amman...

...Yes," in the April 1988 issue of MOMENT...

...Sahliyeh paints a portrait of a society undergoing accelerated modernization, building urban political elites on the ruins of a declining traditional leadership, caught in a tangle of ideological struggles (between communism and Muslim fundamentalism, for example) and at the same time trying to escape the threat, and perhaps also the challenge, posed by the state of Israel...

...BOOKS Through Palestinian Eyes: The Emerging Leadership on the West Bank In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics Since 1967 by Emile Sahliyeh The Brookings Institution, 198& 201 pp, $1095 Reviewed by Danny Rubinstein Emile Sahliyeh, an associate professor of international relations and Middle East politics at the University of North Texas, published this book about West Bank political leadership in the spring of 1988, so that most, if not all, of the work on it had been done prior to the intifada...

...Sahliyeh is a Palestinian from the West Bank who studied at the American University in Beirut and at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C...

...So far, it remains so, even though the entire West Bank wholeheartedly supports it...

...But these last months have again indicated that the PLO is still avoiding negotiations and is, moreover, incapable of making decisions that are vital for negotiations to begin: the cessation of terrorism, unequivocal recognition of Israel, acceptance of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the renunciation of the Palestinian Covenant...

...The result is that the author is forced to describe radical, quasi-clandestine bodies in a generalized manner, suppressing the names of leaders and activists, and avoiding detailed descriptions of how they operate...

...The general rise in the standard of living as a result of working in Israel, coupled with the savings sent by family members employed in the Arab oil states, has enabled almost every family of rural peasants to send its children to one of the nearly 20 universities and colleges opened in the West Bank since 1967...

...Sahliyeh explains how the spread of higher education, considerable exposure to the media, rise in the standard of living and mobility of the work force have altered the character of the small, insular Arab villages and neighborhoods and turned the broad masses into a body politic...

...Because the West Bank is under military rule, Sahliyeh is forced to conceal the identities of some of his sources and also to rely on anonymous sources—a serious drawback...

...Despite this failing, the book provides a revealing picture of Palestinian society in the West Bank and recent changes that have culminated in the intifada...

...For generations, the sons of the traditional leadership had enjoyed a monopoly on the acquisition of a higher education, but this too has changed— radically...

...In Sahliyeh's view, these social and political developments are working to the advantage of Palestinian nationalism—that is, the PLO...

...He believes that the intifada has put an end to the so-called "Jordanian option" (of negotiations between Jordan and Israel over the future of the territories)—and King Hussein's July 31, 1988 announcement of his regime's disengagement from the West Bank may confirm this reading...

...He devotes special chapters to the Communist party (which is officially banned in the West Bank but whose activities are quite open) and to fanatic Muslim groups...