Can an Uprising Be a Science? The Model Behind the Intifada

[Can an Uprising Be a Science? The Model Behind the Intifada] What if an uprising could be studied like a system — with inputs, outputs, messages, and feedback? What if the stones, the protests, the resistance you've seen in headlines could be captured in a theoretical model, one that might explain not just one people's struggle, but uprisings anywhere in human history? That is exactly what one Palestinian scholar set out to do. His name is Bashir Said Mohammad Abul Qaraya, born on the nineteenth of August 1961 in the Gaza Strip. And his doctoral thesis in political science, supervised by Professor Nadia Mahmoud Mostafa, carried an ambitious title — The Palestinian Intifada's Model. Let's start with the question at the heart of it all. What exactly is an Intifada? The study didn't settle for a headline definition. It traced the word linguistically, explored its political implications, and examined how Arabs, Westerners, and Israelis each see the phenomenon differently. The definition it arrived at is striking. An Intifada, the study concluded, is a popular continuous resistance and comprehensive civilized confrontation, using all civilian and violent means, combining rising and subsidence. It emerges when a community faces injustice, corruption, backwardness, or weakness imposed by either a tyrannical inner power clinging to its own benefits, or an external colonial power seeking to plunder a people's will, efface their identity, exploit their land, and violate their sanctuaries. And yet — and this is crucial — the study insists that such a community can liberate itself, depending on strong will, sacrifice, and patience. But how do you turn that idea into a framework you can actually apply? The study built a model with two divisions. First, the Intifada's approach — an intellectual framework rooted in Islamic concepts and values, drawing on the experiences of the Arab and Muslim world and the global South. Second, the Intifada's system — an analytical framework designed to capture the phenomenon objectively. And here is where it gets fascinating. The study drew on Western theoretical models from the 1960s — Deutsch's communicative model, Easton's systemic model, Almond's functional model, and Parsons's model of the social system. It also benefited from approaches developed in the 1990s, when Western theory shifted from studying political systems alone to studying society itself and its interactions with the state. It even drew on Malik Bin Nabi's concept of the social relations network. The result? A framework that could, in principle, study Intifada phenomena in any human society. Then came the application. The study examined the Palestinian case from 1987 until 2007, while treating the long stretch from 1881 to 1987 as historical memory. It explored the roots of the phenomenon, the nature of the Palestinian political regime — the P.L.O., the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, the Oslo Accords, the choice between negotiation and resistance. It mapped the Intifada's society, its leadership, its grassroots organizations, the role of civil society and traditional institutions. And it analyzed the Intifada's messages — carried through stones, martyrdom operations, rockets, media, and political action — and their repercussions on Israel's politics, society, economy, and security, as well as on Arab, Islamic, and international attitudes. So what did the study conclude? Several things worth pausing on. It argued that the Palestinian success lies in presenting the Intifada as a developmental human model — a civilized project reflecting a cognitive model contradictory to that of capitalism and Zionism — and that despite colonial domination, the future favors the Intifada in the long term. Yet it also found real limitations. The Intifada's influence on Arabs and Muslims remained restricted by a lack of Intifada consciousness, and ruling elites contributed negatively by embracing peace as a strategic choice while dismissing resistance. The study found that the escalation of the Intifada weakens Israeli settlement awareness and erodes Zionist consensus on settlement. And it noted that the September events brought increased negative repercussions, exposing hostile American policy, a marginal European role, and weak official Arab, Islamic, and Palestinian positions. So where does that leave us? With a provocative idea. That an uprising is not chaos — it is a phenomenon with structure, memory, messages, and meaning. A phenomenon that can be studied, evaluated, and understood. The study's final insight is perhaps its most enduring: the effectiveness of any Intifada is closely tied to mechanisms of evaluation, criticism, and unity, to popular support, and to the ability to adapt to new conditions. Whether or not you accept its conclusions, the ambition remains remarkable — to take one people's struggle and transform it into a model for understanding human resistance itself.