(Accord between the Government of Jordan, which has confirmed it to the Government of the United States, and the Foreign Minister of Israel, pending the approval of the Government of Israel. Parts ‘A’ and ‘B’, which will be made public upon agreement of the parties, will be treated as proposals of the United States to which Jordan and Israel have agreed. Part ‘C’ is to be treated with great confidentiality, as commitments to the United States from the Government of Jordan to be transmitted to the Government of Israel.)

A three-part understanding between Jordan and Israel

A. Invitation by the UN secretary general: The UN secretary general will send invitations to the five permanent members of the Security Council and to the parties involved in the Israeli–Arab conflict to negotiate an agreement by peaceful means based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338 with the purpose of attaining comprehensive peace in the region and security for the countries in the area, and granting the Palestinian people their legitimate rights.

The relevance of the Usuli/Akhbari controversy

A received notion of contemporary Shi'i law is the major division in the history of Ja'farism between two schools of law, the Usuli and the Akhbari madhhabs (schools), and the dominance of each alternatively since the emergence of Shi'i fiqh. Since the end of the eighteenth century however, it is generally acknowledged that Shi'i law came under complete control of the Usuli school.

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the two schools, and some good research carried out on the earlier periods of Akhbari dominance, at the beginning of the Safavid period, as well as the critical period in the eighteenth century that saw the triumph of the eponym of the present Usuli school, Al-Wahid al-Behbehani, about whom very little is known.

The present analysis is less concerned by the establishment, rise and wane of Akhbarism and Usulism than with the present perception of the debate by modern Shi'i jurists. The emphasis on the contemporary perception is partly related to the difficulty in accessing early documents. But it is also premised on the necessity to emphasise methodologically the relevance of the controversy on the present structure of Shi'i law. Whatever the earlier dissensions and their historical dimension, the differences have to some extent become mooted, since the Akhbari school has been discarded for over two centuries. Usulism rules unchallenged. The extremely limited geographical sway of Akhbarism confines its role, by contrast, to that of a revelator of Usuli characteristics: the distinguishing features of contemporary Usuli Shi'i law can be more clearly perceived in the light of their contrast with Akhbarism.

Camp David: wheeling and dealing

Three determined leaders, Begin, Sadat and Carter, met at Camp David between 5 and 17 September 1978, to shape the Accords (for details see Appendix A).

Begin was determined to achieve a separate peace with Egypt that was in no way connected to a home rule arrangement in the West Bank and Gaza. Sadat was committed to fundamental Egyptian interests and the promotion of some sort of success on the Palestinian question. ‘I am committed to my speech delivered in the Knesset. It is the Egyptian plan’, he declared before his departure for Washington. But that was not the case. Since February 1978, both Carter and Sadat seemed to be thinking of an Egyptian–Israeli Accord only loosely connected to an attempt to negotiate an agreement on the Palestinian question. It was when Sadat proved reluctant to put forward a clear proposal on the West Bank and Gaza that Carter concluded that his real interest was a bilateral Egyptian–Israeli deal. Linkage, Carter began to think, was not that important and, in any event, it should not obstruct the search for a bilateral agreement.

Carter was committed to a positive political achievement that would do credit to his personal involvement, to advancing US interests, and to Israel as a strategic ally. ‘Our number one commitment in the Middle East is to protect the right of Israel to exist, to exist permanently and to exist in peace’, he declared early on in his term of office. At Camp David President Carter was subjected to a great deal of pressure and counter-pressure.

No intellectual theme has been more prominent in the Middle East of the twentieth century than the idea of the state. In one way or another, most ideas debated have been closely connected to the ideal form of the state, and nearly all the directions that such a debate could have taken have been probed. The gamut of political theories concerning the state was so wide that it allowed for any ideology, no matter how remote from the society where it was proposed and how thinly connected to its cultural milieu, to find an association with or to curry favour as the ideology of some Middle Eastern group.

It is true that most other countries of the world have witnessed to some extent a similarly wide range of state theories. But a characteristic of the Middle East lay in the difficulty of accepting the classical nation-state which, by the late 1950s, was established in most countries of the world. To date, the reluctance of the debate to deal with nation-states in their present form has been a major indication of the resilience of radically different projections and their claim to order societies in the Middle East according to alternative schemes.

Parallels can of course be found with other areas. South East Asia and Africa have had similar problems of state identity, and the Vietnam and Korean crises, as well as the South-African situation, have seen divisions and controversies which foreshadow and echo the Middle Eastern situation.

The Intifada and beyond

The Western media date the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) from 9 December 1987 when serious disturbances were sparked off in the occupied territories following a road accident in Gaza involving an Israeli vehicle and resulting in the deaths of four Arabs. But, during a long interview with the present writer on 15 November 1988 at the end of the PNC meeting in Algiers, Yasser Arafat pinpointed the Sabra and Shatila massacres of September 1982, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as the landmark, for it was then that he appealed to his people under occupation to move in defiance. According to him, incidents started building up from that time, sometimes unreported, sometimes with ferocity but always with momentum. Arafat listed these with amazing precision. His claim seemed credible judging by the increased awareness on the part of the Palestinians under occupation of each subject debated and each step taken during the November 1988 PNC meeting, even before any reporting in the press took place; the reading of the ‘Palestinian Document of Independence’ in Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem at the same time as Arafat was reading it in the PNC meeting (see below); and the simultaneous celebrations afterwards, both in Algeria and the occupied territories. These all signified remarkable co-ordination.

Law as Lingua Franca

In recent years, a renewed interest in Islam as a worldwide active social phenomenon has appeared. This has resulted in a flurry of works of sundry types on the theme of resurgence, revivalism, re-emergence of political Islam, also dubbed revolutionary Islam, radical Islam, militant Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, or more simply Islamism.

The issue of Islam as a socially turbulent phenomenon was approached by countries and disciplines: history, sociology, anthropology, politics. Questions were being posed in the worried and intrigued West, but they were also being asked in the East, where answers had an immediate political relevance. Naturally, the concerns were different according to the groups' varied interests. The common underlying concern, however, was for stability, or its converse, foiled or successful revolution. Depending on the position of a group in a particular state, fear, concern, or hope alternated.

This research tries to look into the thought of the resurgent Islams behind the first layer of enthusiasm or despair, to determine how the new vindicated outlook was shaped, and to examine whether there were any new ideas in the alternative system at all. In this longer perspective of the history of ideas, ideas could be ‘new’ only in comparison with earlier outlooks.

The planned year of action

According to conventional Arab wisdom, 1985 was to be the year of action in the American political cycle. Having assumed that the US could take no foreign-policy initiatives before its presidential elections were over, moderate Arab leaders had high hopes of the re-elected President Reagan acting decisively on the question of a comprehensive Middle East settlement.

The same conventional wisdom held that it was in the US national interest to bring Israel to accept a settlement of the Palestinian question based on the restitution of minimum, but essential, Arab rights, as advocated by America's Arab friends in the Middle East. In so doing, the US would not only refute the accusations of the radicals that the long-standing hopes vested in the Arabs' friendship with the US were only a mirage, but would also serve its own long-term interests by preventing the disintegration of the moderate Arab middle ground in the region. With Israel's growing economic dependence on the US, it was thought that the President, free from re-election pressures and, by extension, from the pressures of the Israeli lobby in Washington, could be persuaded to exert powerful leverage on Israel for the concessions necessary to establish peace. Even better, from the Arab point of view, was the landslide success President Reagan achieved without the help of the Jewish vote. He thus owed the Jewish lobby nothing in return.

These same Arab leaders were desperate to avoid stagnation setting in in the Middle East peace process.

In a nation-wide address on 31 July 1988, King Hussain of Jordan announced that he was severing all Jordan's administrative and legal ties with the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the River Jordan.

Thus, King Hussain initiated a new turning point in the strategy of the Middle East peace process with a new banner and a new slogan – the Arab–Israeli conflict became the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and the so-called Jordanian option became the Palestinian option to be steered by the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or his appointees face to face with an increasingly intransigent Israel on a highly charged diplomatic field. Having branded the PLO as a terrorist organization, and having imprisoned and deported thousands of local Palestinian activists, Israel has justified the promotion of its own idea that it has no one of any political weight in or outside the occupied territories to talk to. And, by denying all freedom of political expression among the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza, it has made sure that the PLO has the monopoly in expressing the political will of the Palestinians.

On the face of it, relinquishing administrative and legal responsibility for the West Bank was a grand gesture to the Palestinians.

Iqtisaduna, an exposé

Iqtisaduna consists of three parts: the two first parts are critiques of the capitalist and socialist systems and operate negatively by presenting, essentially, counterarguments to classical socialist and capitalist theories (‘With Socialism’, I 17–212; ‘With Capitalism’, I 213–54). The most interesting part is the third one which deals with the conception of the Islamic economy in Sadr's mind, and is the object of our presentation (I 255–700).

The exposition of ‘Islamic economics’ is constituted, in Sadr's outline, by several sections which appear loosely connected. After an introduction which includes various methodological remarks (‘Our economic system in its general features’, I 255–356), Sadr divides the bulk of the investigation into a ‘theory of distribution before production’ (I 385–469) and a ‘theory of distribution after production’ (I 515–80). This is followed by a fourth section on the ‘theory of production’ (I 582–628), a section on ‘the responsibility of the state in the Islamic economic system’ (I 628–58) and various appendices on points of detail on some legal-economic aspects discussed in the book (I 659–700).

As appears in the outline, there is no underlying concept which emerges in the book, although the central unifying element seems to be a general notion of the distribution process, which is introduced by an analysis of the ‘preproduction phase’ and is followed by further remarks on the role of the state in the system.

Iqtisaduna is re-arranged in this presentation under three headings: Principles and method; Distribution and the factors of production; and Distribution and justice.

Every new American administration feels it has a mandate for a new foreign policy. But the new men soon discover that the problems they face are more intractable than they had expected, and the virtues of continuity come to be applauded more than the merits of innovation.

President Carter was no exception. Initially stirred by the moral dimension of the Palestinian problem, he undertook a complete break from Kissinger's approach by propagating the idea of a homeland for the Palestinians and embarking on the Geneva process, which he thought would gradually resolve the Palestinian dimension of the Arab – Israeli conflict within a comprehensive solution of the Middle Eastern problem. When confronted with formidable obstacles, however, he drifted into another process, hoping to achieve at Camp David what he failed to do in Geneva. But the whole exercise proved to be a long shot for which he was not prepared. Faced by what was in effect an Israeli version of a fundamentalist Ayatollah, determined to implement his own autonomy plan for the Palestinians in the occupied territories, he initially protested, ‘No self-respecting Arab world would accept your plan. This looks like subterfuge’ and at one stage even went so far as to call Begin a psychopath. But he was not willing to stand up to him. Even the issue of linkage between an Egyptian – Israeli settlement and the West Bank/Gaza negotiations, which he had pledged at the outset of Camp David as the single most important question, was not sustained.