Promoting Democracy. Manal A. Jamal

that they would ultimately play an important role in the liberation of Palestine. In the aftermath, a number of Palestinian guerrilla organizations emerged.5 The ANM’s Palestinian branch, along with three other small guerrilla organizations, founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1967. In 1968, the Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command broke away from the PFLP. Then in 1969, another group splintered from the PFLP, and called itself the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (now called the DFLP).6 These groups were predominately leftist in their orientation and would come to be among Fatah’s major opposition. Fatah, the PFLP, and DFLP would come to represent the largest Palestinian political factions in the PLO, and play an important role in mass mobilization in the occupied territories, amassing substantial followings.

      Communist Party activities in the Palestinian territories date back to the early 1920s, though the party became increasingly active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.7 The West Bank Communists were firmly committed to mass mobilization and nonviolent protest.8 In 1969, they reactivated the General Federation of Labor Unions, and later played a leadership role in the founding of the voluntary work programs among university and high school students.9 In 1982, the West Bank Communists founded the PCP, despite the protests of the Jordanian Communist Party.10 In 1987, the PCP joined the PLO.

      Beginning in 1968, the DFLP, soon followed by the PFLP, began its transformation from a pan-Arabist organization to a Marxist-Leninist organization. These organizations were concerned with fundamental social and political change in Palestinian society, as well as throughout the Arab world. Both groups also initially called for the creation of one secular democratic state in which Christians, Jews, and Muslims would enjoy the same political rights. In the early 1970s, the DFLP began to entertain the idea of creating a binational state that would represent the Palestinian and Jewish communities, and later called for a sovereign state in the WBGS. The Palestinian Communist Party, PCP (later named the Palestinian People’s Party, or PPP), on the other hand, limited its struggle to ending Israeli occupation of the WBGS, and the establishment of an independent state in that territory.11 Although the early record of Fatah’s military operations was quite humble, the high losses that they were able to inflict on the Israeli military during the Karameh battle of 1968, further reinforced the strength of the organization.12 The growth of the guerrilla organization imposed its own logic on the structure of the PLO. By the fourth Palestine National Council (PNC) meeting in 1969, it was a foregone conclusion that Fatah, because of the seats allotted to it, and the support it enjoyed from independents, would be able to elect the leader of its choice to head the PLO. During that meeting, the delegates elected Yasir Arafat as chairperson of the organization.

      During the 1970s, the internal organization of the PLO was rationalized, enlarged, and consolidated, and beginning with the Lebanese civil war until its expulsion from Beirut (1975–82), the economic and social functions of the PLO were dramatically expanded. Among the divisions of the PLO established were the Palestine National Fund, the Department of Education, the Red Crescent Society for Health Services, Departments of Information, Popular Mobilization, and the Occupied Homeland, a research center, an economic development center, and a social affairs institute.13 By the mid-1970s, the PLO had developed the structures of a de facto government in exile.14

      The decisive shift in terms of mass mobilization and associational activity in the WBGS took place in 1972. The PLO’s defeat in Jordan in 1970 culminated in the Palestine National Council’s 1972 decision to shift the locus of attention to the occupied territories and to incorporate the masses into the struggle.15 Hence, at the tenth session of the PNC, the members passed resolutions calling for new trade unions, student groups, women’s groups, welfare organizations, and other mass-based organizations that could mobilize the population in the territories under the auspices of the PLO.16 By the end of the 1970s, an alternative strategy had emerged that involved supporting grassroots efforts in the WBGS.17 Following the example of the PCP, then not part of the PLO but an early pioneer of mass mobilization efforts in the WBGS, the leftist factions of the PLO, the DFLP and PFLP, and later Fatah, followed suit in the latter part of the 1970s.18 In time, the Palestinian population began recognizing the establishment of grassroots organizations as the new standard mode of sociopolitical organizing. They also began to identity this grassroots expression as proof of the strength of the political factions and as a reaffirmation of their presence on the ground.

      In the 1980s, activists in the WBGS founded a number of political organizations that would come to play a significant role in Palestinian contemporary politics, and amass significant followings. Although Muslim Brotherhood activities in the Palestinian territories date back to the 1940s, Islamist associations, unions, and organizations became increasingly prevalent in the early 1980s following the Iranian Revolution. In the mid-1980s, Islamic Jihad splintered from the Muslim Brotherhood, and established itself as a separate organization. Most notably, the Islamists founded the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas), in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the first Intifada. Following the initiation of the Madrid peace process, a schism emerged in the DFLP between those who supported the peace process and those who opposed it. Subsequently, supporters of the Madrid peace process broke away from the DFLP, and founded the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA), a splinter faction of the DFLP that supported the Oslo Accords.

      The Rise of the Salvadoran Organized Opposition

      El Salvador too has a rich history of political parties, but here I focus only on those institutions, including the Catholic Church, that would come to play a critical role in mass movement mobilization, and later in the establishment of NGOs, effectively laying the groundwork for a future civil society in El Salvador.19 One of the oldest political forces in El Salvador is the PCS, whose roots date back to the late 1920s.20 As a result of the economic recession of the period, international coffee prices crashed and social unrest ensued in El Salvador. Rising rural unemployment fueled strikes and protests. Although members of the Salvadoran oligarchy ruled the country directly until 1931, they were incapable of controlling the unrest. It was during this period that El Salvador’s long history of struggle against socioeconomic inequality assumed the ideological framing of the PCS’s Marxism-Leninism. The Salvadoran government outlawed the PCS in 1932. During that year, the government violently suppressed the insurrection led by the Communist leader, Farabundo Martí. By the end of the matanza (massacre or slaughter), the Salvadoran government was responsible for the killing of over 30,000 campesinos (farmers). Many regard the 1932 matanza as a culmination of another settler-colonial project also reflecting bitter indigenous resentment against Spanish land-owning usurpers.21 The magnitude of the 1932 conflict molded the repressive nature of subsequent government regimes that would have little tolerance for dissent.

      Between 1931 and 1979, a series of military dictatorships ruled over El Salvador. In 1960, well-to-do middle-class professionals founded the Partido Demócrata Cristiano (Christian Democratic Party, PDC), an anti-Communist party that upheld social Christian principles.22 By 1972, the PDC had amassed a substantial following and became a key target of the military dictatorship’s oppression.23 Meanwhile, the military institutionalized its political participation through the creation of political parties; two main parties were the Partido de Reconciliación Nacional (Party of National Reconciliation, PRN) and the Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Democrácia (Party of Revolutionary Democratic Unification, PRUD). The political-military organizations would emerge from a tactical disagreement within the PCS in the late 1960s. Disagreement within the party regarding the legitimate means of struggle and whether or not the party should adopt armed struggle resulted in proponents of armed struggle breaking away and establishing the first of the military political organizations—the FPL in 1969 and the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (Revolutionary Army of People, ERP) in 1972. Subsequent divisions would result in additional political military organizations, each of which would play an important role in establishing popular organizations.

      One of the key tactical differences that distinguished the political-military organizations from one another was their approach to armed struggle. Although both the ERP and the FPL advocated armed struggle against the regime, the FPL upheld a political-military strategy. The ERP’s constituencies extended to the young Communists, youth from the PDC, and radicalized sectors of the Salvadoran bourgeoisie.24 By the mid-1970s, another schism emerged in the ERP regarding the need to accompany military struggle