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| Volume XIV, Fall 2007, Number 3 |
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BOOK REVIEW
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A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine
by Hussein Agha and
Ahmad S Khalidi. Chatham House, 2006. 139 pages. $18.95.
Beverly Milton-Edwards
Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnic Conflict, Queens University
Belfast
Hussein Agha and Ahmad S. Khalidi are both well placed to undertake the task of presenting a
set of proposals or a framework that connects with internal dimensions of Palestinian national
security. The two authors are not only experts in their field, but they bring to their assessments
intimate experience of peace negotiation, conflict resolution and national-security concerns in the
Palestinian arena. One other and prominent feature of the authors that becomes apparent throughout
the text is the Diaspora voice in the debate about Palestinian national security. A timely
reminder that, even as energies are absorbed by events in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where
anarchy and conflict prevail, the security concerns of the Palestinian Diaspora should never be
ignored.
In the past, Agha and Hussein have been bold in making public the secret discourses of
peacemaking and the ugly realities of the asymmetry of power between the Palestinians and the
Israelis, and promoted debate about all important capacity building that would go towards achieving
a more fair and just peace for all parties. They have played key roles in the Oslo process, the
Palestinian experiment in autonomy, including the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA),
and the challenges that such changes have presented the PLO.
A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine can be read in a number of ways
and benefits from addressing more than one audience. The book's four-part structure and various
appendices can easily be utilised as a handbook for policy makers and others who are engaged in
the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with a specific focus on national security issues
and debates. Here the authors provide an easily digested and familiar framework that addresses the most common and salient features of national security debates across the globe. In this book, force
and violence, the role of the state, hard and soft power, and international and regional factors are
identified in terms of familiar discourse on national-security interests and needs. Under this
framework, however, Agha and Khalidi identify the specifics of the Palestinian context in order to
make sense of these wider debates.
The authors also remind the reader that, in terms of the doctrinal debates about national
security, the only state that the Palestinians find themselves in is one of limbo. The Palestinians
neither enjoy formal nation-statehood nor are dedicated purely to the insurrectionist tactics of a
liberation movement. This status works to undermine a sense of unity and security among constituent
Palestinian elements in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as well as the
Diaspora.
Using a range of arguments, the authors demonstrate the inherent tensions around nationalsecurity
assessments between the PA - as an institution of governance for some Palestinians -
and the PLO, as the constituent body of the Palestinian people including those in the Diaspora.
The Israeli factor in the debate, whether with respect to the present (lack of statehood) or the future
(possible Palestinian statehood) remains a major leitmotif of the dimensions of security outlined in
the book. Additionally, the relevance of the debate in the absence of a two-state solution is also
highlighted by Agha and Hussein and thus leaves the reader with as many questions unresolved
as resolved. The authors illustrate how national needs should be aligned to the means that they
have at their own disposal for defense.
This means that Agha and Hussein, in outlining the fundamentals of a national-security
doctrine, propose that formal non-offensive methods such as non-violent defense - civil disobedience,
sit-downs, mass mobilization etc. - should be institutionalized by the Palestinians
themselves. This does not mean that they reject the right to self-defense, which they see as a
legitimate right of the Palestinians or any other people, but rather that this right is asserted within a
broader framework of non-offensive defense. Nonetheless, it is clear that the two believe that this
approach will optimize the best means and assets that the Palestinian people possess, whether
within the structures of their own state or not.
There are, of course, flaws in this approach. Agha and Hussein try to anticipate their critics by
outlining aspects of the debate in which they believe that certain factors may need to be taken into
account or viewed as ameliorating issues. Much of this type of thinking is apparent in the fourth
section of the book, where they outline the Palestinians' changing strategic environment. There is
an astute reflection on the regional context, future threats, the impact of technological developments,
and the demographic challenge as both a potential strength and a weakness of the Palestinians
regarding national security.
There is smart thinking here on such issues, and it is further in evidence in the sections on
liberation versus state-building. Here the PA is identified as the embodiment of the dilemma that the
Palestinians face with respect to this issue. Should the PA, in terms of a framework for national
security, be the sole preserve of state-building, or should it pursue the goal of national liberation
until occupation is ended and a settlement that addresses refugee rights is forthcoming? Agha and
Hussein believe that this dilemma currently traps the PA and thus the fate of the Palestinian people.
They suggest that the PA decisively choose either state-building or resistance but not both.
Whether there is the energy or the will for such a decision within the structures of either the PA or
the PLO, however, is questionable.
Since the victory of Hamas and defeat of Fatah in the Palestinian legislative elections of
January 2006, an alternate discourse on national security - one that highlights the dichotomy
between state-building/governance and resistance/liberation - has created a chasm within the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The incorporation of Hamas into the fabric of the Palestinian polity both in the territories occupied by Israel and the Diaspora is, however, evidence of a perplexing
display of cognitive dissonance by the authors as they address the theme of a Palestinian nationalsecurity
doctrine and its constituent elements. At most, the impact on the Palestinian political
environment two decades ago of Hamas's insertion of itself, with its competitive and oppositional
challenge to the hegemony of the PLO, is referred to in passing by the authors as part of the
cleavages within the Palestinian national movement or internal opposition groups of the Islamist
variety. Surely as a result of this, and other aspects of the spirited defense of the PLO as a democratic
national movement that emerges in the narrative, there is cause to reflect on the ways in
which the authors choose to understand the national-security debate.
To be fair, Agha and Khalidi are explicit in stating from the very start of their book that they
seek to initiate a debate and offer relevant questions without "conclusive" answers. They are,
moreover, inviting the reader to bear in mind that some important aspects of this debate are not
addressed and that the book is not like a fly caught forever in amber but a live and dynamic
document designed to promote critique and debate. In this respect, while it is improbable that a
Palestinian framework for national security is likely to emerge in the near future, the authors have
furnished a document that is Palestinian in nature and not determined by foreign governments who
intervene at will to undermine the Palestinian national project.
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