FRFI 167 June / July 2002
On 2 May, the Israeli army ended its siege of Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah compound where he had been held prisoner since December 2001. The price of his freedom for the Palestinian people was heavy indeed: the abandonment of the proposed UN investigation into the events of Jenin; the exiling of 39 partisans following the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the imprisonment of six Palestinians in Jericho under joint US-British custody.
The fate of the proposed UN investigation into the massacre at Jenin had hung in the balance after the Israeli government had refused it entry. Initially, the Zionists insisted the investigation team had to include military experts. Then they said that the Israeli government had to agree whom the team could interview; that the evidence it gathered could not be used in any war crimes prosecution; finally, it had also to examine the activities of ‘terrorists’ based in the camp over the preceding period. On 30 April, UN General Secretary Kofi Anan called off the inquiry. Later, on 7 May, Sharon publicly thanked the US for scuppering the investigation, saying ‘I would like to thank the American administration and its leadership that helped us, understood us, and supported us to get out of this trap’.
Arafat was also required to accept the British and US proposals for ending the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. For six weeks, 120 Palestinians had been surrounded by tanks and snipers and had been forced to survive in appalling conditions. Despite the privations, neither the fighters nor the civilians were prepared to surrender, nor indeed members of the International Solidarity Movement who courageously joined them. The final terms – the complete exile of 13 fighters and the deportation of 26 more to Gaza – were humiliating for those involved who had no say in the outcome. All had to be surrendered into Israeli custody; the 26 who were sent to Gaza were beaten en route by their Israeli guards. The Bethlehem settlement itself constitutes a war crime in that it involves the ‘unlawful transfer of protected persons’ under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Furthermore, the Convention rules that ‘protected persons may in no circumstances renounce in part or in entirety the rights secured to them by the present Convention’ – in other words, the fact that all agreed to the deportation does not make any difference to the fact that it was a war crime.
However the immediate trigger for Arafat’s release was his agreement to hand over six Palestinians into joint British/US custody. They included four members of the military wing of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) convicted in a Palestinian Authority kangaroo court of the assassination of Israeli Tourist Minister Ze’evi in October 2001. Hamdi Quran, accused of the actual shooting, was sentenced to 18 years, whilst his ‘lookout’, Basel Al Asmar, got 12 years. The getaway driver, Majdi Rimawi, received eight years, and Ahed Gholmy one year. Ze’evi was a rabid Zionist who advocated the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from the West Bank and Gaza. The trial had taken place as the Israeli army besieged Ramallah with the aim of sidelining Arafat or removing him altogether. Stung by the assassination of Ze’evi, Israel had long demanded the arrest of the PFLP volunteers involved. To the list of those they wanted from Arafat they added Ahmad Sadat, head of the political wing of the PFLP and Fuad Shubaki, Arafat’s financial aide, who was allegedly involved in arms smuggling. There was no question of a trial for these two; both were just bundled into the ‘negotiations’ in which British and US imperialism were now engaged. On 2 May, the six were taken away to a gaol in Nablus where they are being held by British and US officials. This has now made the British Labour government a direct partner of Sharon in the illegal occupation of the West Bank.
Arafat has suffered an immense loss of popularity as a result of these negotiations. ‘Outraged by Israel’s atrocities and the destruction of the civilian infrastructure in most Palestinian towns, Palestinians are turning against Arafat and protesting his inability to shield them from the incursions.’ (Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly, 16 May). According to Amayreh, Arafat refused to answer a woman in Bethlehem on why he agreed that the 13 resistance fighters should have been deported. Most political movements including Arafat’s Fatah have condemned the deal, with some people terming it a betrayal. There is also much indignation because such a move will play into the hands of those advocating a second Nakbah.
It was not only the Bethlehem deal which caused the anger: Arafat also refused to visit the Jenin camp to speak to the 3,000 residents who had assembled to hear him. They in turn expressed their fury, some accusing the leader of ‘sacrificing’ his people for his own good. ‘I’m very angry and very disappointed because Arafat didn’t visit the camp. He didn’t talk to normal people and he did not want to meet the people who lost their sons. If he is not interested in us, then we are also not interested in him’ said one. Again according to Amayreh, ‘others were even more scathing suggesting his fear for his physical security were well-founded’. Most recently, Leila Khaled, a long-standing member of the PFLP, has denounced Arafat’s detention of the leader of her organisation. Speaking at a meeting in London on 22 May, she said ‘When Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island, he was a president. In gaol, he was a prisoner, he came out a president. Arafat went to Oslo as a president, and came out a prisoner…what president of a country has to ask another country if he can fly in his helicopter over his own country?’ Denying that the assassination of Ze’evi was a crime, she added ‘He (Arafat) listened for the Zionists, he reported to the Zionists, his police arrested for the Zionists’.
Zionism and its imperialist allies are now stepping up the pressure on Arafat, demanding that he clean up the Palestinian Authority and hold elections. This is a breathtaking piece of hypocrisy: they did not care about autocracy or corruption whilst Arafat was gaoling, torturing and murdering those who opposed the Oslo ‘peace agreement’. But now Sharon wants ‘sweeping reforms of the Palestinian Authority’ a new condition of any return to negotiations. The US wants him to draft a new constitution and bring his 12 security forces under a unified command. As the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) says, the US and Israel are ‘using the slogans of democracy to cover their real aim – that is to have a leadership and an Authority that is more ready to follow their diktats’. The Palestinian people certainly want reforms and democracy – but to deepen and strengthen the Intifada, not to destroy it.
The sudden imperialist and Zionist interest in the internal affairs of the Palestinian Authority represents therefore a new attack on the Intifada, an attempt to sow divisions. It is the unity of the nationalist and Islamic forces that have been the strength of the Intifada. Each and every attempt to split them has failed. The root of the democracy of the Intifada lies in the Popular Resistance Committees. Any attempt to undermine this democracy, the democracy of the oppressed, with a pseudo-democracy imposed by imperialism will be resisted.
Andrew Orphanoudakis and Robert Clough
The myth of Barak’s ‘offer’
Over the past few months Zionists have been claiming that the Intifada started because Arafat rejected an offer of unprecedented ‘generosity’ that the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made to him at Camp David in July 2000. A recent interview with Barak himself in the New York Review of Books is part of this propaganda offensive. ‘We know from hard intelligence’, he says ‘that Arafat [after Camp David] intended to unleash a violent confrontation, terrorism’. His self-serving comments reveal nothing other than the racism inherent in Zionism, describing as he does Palestinians as ‘products of a culture in which to tell a lie…creates no dissonance. They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exist in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category.’
However, ‘truth’ is not something with which Zionists are familiar. The truth of the Oslo ‘peace agreement’ is that Arafat gave away 78% of Palestine over the heads of his people. Yet Barak and the Zionists were not content with this. They wanted more: they wanted total surrender. They refused to dismantle all settlements. Instead, those that they kept they would annex – an area amounting to 8% of the West Bank. They would offer some unspecified area in return – later identified as some desert by Gaza. Israel would receive sovereignty over the illegal settlements in East Jerusalem. It would retain control of all borders, of security, and of water resources plundered from the West Bank. It would be able to maintain military bases in parts of the West Bank for up to ten years. There would be no right of return for any Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian ‘state’ would not be able to maintain an airforce or a navy or to have heavy weaponry.
Barak refused to put any of these ‘generous offers’ in writing, and relied on President Clinton to bully Arafat into submission. Barak’s government had shown its true Zionist colours by continuing the illegal settlement programme, with more than 13,000 housing starts in 2000, the highest since 1993. It had also failed to implement agreed withdrawals, and continued the policy of closures and land seizures. It was clear the Zionists would seek more and more. Arafat had no choice but to walk away: his people would not have tolerated a further capitulation.
