| Summary/Abstract |
In the spring of 1988 the first intifada was in its early months and had already achieved two big accomplishments: It had fully mobilized the Palestinian population in a way not seen in prior resistance to the occupation, and, it had won for the Palestinians worldwide attention and considerable sympathy for their plight. There was, however, a gaping hole: the absence of strategy. When you asked Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) about how the intifada was to lead to the independent Palestinian state they said they were seeking, you got one of two answers: Either they said that the issue of grand strategy was up to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), or they invoked the idea of an international conference in which the Palestinians would be represented by the PLO and at which, somehow, the great powers — primarily the United States — would force upon Israel a Palestinian state and an end to the occupation.
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