Despite the appalling slaughter of over 120 Palestinians during the first week of March, the Zionists remain unable to destroy the resistance of the people of Gaza. Rockets continue to be fired into Israel; ominously from the standpoint of imperialism, demonstrations in support of the beleaguered people took place in the West Bank and in Israel itself. The Zionists are no nearer to destroying the democratically-elected Hamas government, and nor are Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah allies able to extend their writ beyond the West Bank. Instead there is now talk of a possible cease-fire. Bob Shepherd reports.
Last November’s Annapolis peace conference was supposedly the start of a process to end the ‘Palestinian– Israeli conflict’ and establish a viable Palestinian state by the end of 2008. They said all the Palestinians had to do to make this vision a reality was to reject Hamas and its resistance to the Israeli occupation. The imperialists would help by delivering some real economic benefits to the Palestinian people on the West Bank and so bolster the position of Abbas and his illegitimate, unelected government. The ‘benefits’ of Abbas’s collaboration with imperialism and Israel could then be contrasted to the supposed ‘failures’ of Hamas’s resistance strategy in Gaza.
Hamas’s ‘failures’ would be guaranteed through the economic blockade of Gaza which has continued to intensify alongside a widening Israeli military onslaught. What could not be guaranteed was the ‘success’ of Abbas since the Israeli government has refused to make any significant concession to him, for instance by stopping settlement expansion. Thus in February the mayor of Jerusalem broadcast plans to build 10,000 new housing units for Zionists in various districts of East Jerusalem. Days later, on 9 March, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced plans to build 750 housing units in Givat Ze’ev, a Jewish settlement 8km from Jerusalem, and to incorporate it into a Greater Jerusalem.
Meanwhile resistance in Gaza continued with rocket attacks on Israel targeting the town of Sderot and later reaching the city of Ashkelon. This was despite Zionist attacks which killed 76 people in Gaza in January. On 27 February a rocket killed a Sderot resident, the first Israeli death caused by rocket fire since May 2007. Within 24 hours Israeli forces had killed 11 Palestinians including three children. The next day Israeli deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai declared, ‘The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.’ Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust and rarely used by Zionists outside that context. It was clearly a declaration of intent as on 1 March, Israel launched attacks on Gaza that killed 63 Palestinians. Included in this figure were 17 children, one just two years old, and a family of six whose house in Gaza City was blown up by missiles fired from an F-16 fighter bomber. In the period from 27 February to 5 March the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights documented 130 deaths in the Gaza Strip, including 51 civilians and 31 children.
The savagery of the Israeli assault brought thousands of Palestinians out onto the streets throughout the West Bank, East Jerusalem and inside Israel itself to protest against the slaughter. In East Jerusalem Palestinian school students left their classrooms on 3 March to demonstrate on the main Salah Ad-Din street, burning rubbish, throwing stones and attacking Israeli cars. Abbas was forced to declare that negotiations with Israel could not continue, a position he had to maintain even after a pre-arranged meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 4 March. By the afternoon of the next day, however, Abbas had done a u-turn and agreed to resume talks without a ceasefire. Meanwhile Rice had met with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni after which she declared: ‘There are enemies of peace that will always try to hold hostage the Palestinian cause and the future of the Palestinian people for their own state. And Hamas, which in effect holds the people of Gaza hostage in their hands, is now trying to make the path to a Palestinian state hostage to them. And we cannot permit that to happen.’
In response, on 6 March, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem shot and killed eight students at an Orthodox Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that is a centre for the Zionist settler movement in the West Bank. An unofficial ‘understanding’ brokered by Egypt temporarily halted any Israeli response and resistance rocket attacks. However on 12 March Israeli forces assassinated Mohamed Shehada, a leader of Islamic Jihad’s military wing along with four of his comrades as he visited his destroyed family home in Bethlehem in the West Bank. Thousands of West Bank Palestinians came out for their funerals calling on Abbas to stop negotiations with Israel and to resume talks with Hamas. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s military wing, issued a statement that the continued Israeli aggression leaves only one option open, to work ‘faithfully to regain the unity of the Palestinian people since that is the most important source of strength it has’. It also called on Abbas to dismiss Salam Fayyad, his Prime Minister. The pressure has forced Abbas to backtrack once more: a meeting in Yemen between Hamas and Fatah at the end of March agreed to direct talks in April, a position Abbas has since endorsed. Meanwhile Egypt is brokering discussions between the Zionists on the one hand and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the other over another ceasefire. The resistance continues.
End the blockade of Gaza!
Defend the Palestinian people!
FRFI 202 April 2008 / May 2008
