Imperialism is intent on punishing the Palestinian people for their audacity in democratically electing a Hamas government, even if it means starving them into submission. Bob Shepherd reports.
The Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia is leading the imperialist campaign of economic sanctions. On 9 May, the World Bank reported to the Quartet that its estimates that withholding aid would raise poverty levels amongst the Palestinian people to 67% and unemployment to 40% were now too low. It said that ‘if the Palestinian Authority (PA) remains unpaid or minimally paid for several months…the ensuing institutional damage may be irreversible and could lead to a situation in which the West Bank and Gaza become ungovernable’. The Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi Foreign Ministers, who were at the meeting, said that the political outcome of such a collapse would not be fresh elections with a defeat for Hamas but a ‘civil war’.
The Quartet responded by agreeing to channel funds via the office of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in an effort to restore his political position and to alleviate some of the worst effects of its policies. It is intent on keeping up the pressure on Hamas in an effort to get the Palestinian government to capitulate to the Zionists. Abbas is a willing partner in this game, joining the imperialists in demanding that Hamas recognise Israel and stand by the previous agreements made between Fatah and the Zionists. Abbas is also being encouraged to develop the role of the 2,000-strong Presidential Guard as a military counterweight to the security forces under the control of the Hamas Interior Ministry. It is now reported that he has bypassed the PA and deployed 150 of the Guard to supervise the Rafah border crossing.
A employees had still not received their March or April wages by mid-May, even though Hamas had raised enough money and had announced that it had guarantees to cover subsequent months with funds deposited in the Arab League Bank. However, the US had stopped the transfer of funds to the PA and had also prevented the bank from paying wages directly into the accounts of individual PA employees.
The Zionists have also imposed their own economic sanctions. As soon as the newly-elected Palestinian Legislative Council held its first post-election meeting, Israel stopped the payment of the customs duties it collects on behalf of the PA and which are used primarily to pay the wages of the 165,000 PA employees.* Then, on 29 March, when the new Hamas cabinet officially took over the running of the PA, both the US and Canada announced they were cutting off aid. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar condemned the US’s hypocrisy in continuing to give the Zionists ‘$3 billion annually to expand settlements and to confiscate our rights and our land’. The next day the Quartet demanded that the Hamas government ‘commit to the principles of non-violence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations’ stating that ‘future assistance to any new government would be reviewed by donors against that government’s commitment to [these] principles’. On 10 April EU Foreign Ministers also formally agreed to cease financial aid.
On 5 May John Ging, director of operations for UNRWA in Gaza, spelled out the consequences: ‘two weeks ago we were counting down to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, today that crisis is on our doorstep…there are now shortages of medical supplies in the public hospitals in the Gaza Strip and UNRWA has seen a large increase in the number of refugees coming to its centres seeking food aid and cash assistance’.
Medical shortages now mean that kidney patients on dialysis have had their sessions cut from three times to twice a day; this has caused the death of at least four patients, while cancer patients are now no longer able to receive chemotherapy treatment.
Around 55,000 refugee families in Gaza rely on a PA salary as their sole income. Unpaid for two months, families are turning in ever-larger numbers to over-stretched UNRWA relief centres for assistance. Ging also reported that UNRWA is having to pay $78,000 a month in surcharges for empty food containers unable to leave Gaza because Israel has closed the Karni border crossing, the major route for food supplies into Gaza and for Palestinian exports of fruit produce.
Imperialism’s ruthless and unrestrained assault on the Palestinian people is virtually unreported. It is a war led by the rich on the poor, on a people denied every basic right. We must mobilise in defence of the courageous stand taken by the Palestinian people and to expose the support the British government has given to the Zionists.
Israeli terror
Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza has been accompanied by a daily artillery bombardment of its northern part. On 14 May the Israeli army announced that it had fired 5,100 shells into this area since 31 March. The Zionists justify the continued barrage as a response to the firing of rockets by the Palestinian Resistance from Gaza into Israel and claim they do not target civilians. In reality the firing of the shells is indiscriminate, their aim is to terrify and intimidate the civilian population and to undermine support for the resistance:
• On 10 April a nine-year-old girl was killed and 13 of her family were injured when a tank shell slammed into their home.
• A week later, a 16-year-old boy was killed when a tank shell landed in a playground; four of his friends were also injured.
• On 2 May two PA security officers were killed when a tank shell landed on the building they were posted to.
• On 6 May a shell landed near the home of a farmer, killing him and injuring three others.
• The next day, another farmer in the same area was killed by the continuing shelling.
In April, in the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli occupation forces killed at least 37 Palestinians, including six children. 19 were killed in the week 4-10 April alone. In stark contrast to the imperialist media outcry over the Palestinian suicide bombing on 17 April which killed nine Israelis there was hardly any reporting, let alone condemnation, of the continuing Israeli terror.
On 4 May the new Israeli government took up office. The main parties in the coalition are Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima and Defence Minister Amir Peretz’s Labour Party. One of Peretz’s first acts was to approve an air attack on a centre of the Popular Resistance Committees in the south of Gaza which killed five militants. On 14 May Israeli forces raided areas around Jenin killing six Palestinians and wounding 16, including seven children. The Israeli Defence Minister’s office said ‘Peretz personally approved the operation…and closely followed its execution’. Meanwhile Olmert reiterated his policy of redrawing Israel’s borders by 2010, declaring in his opening speech to the Knesset that:
‘The continuation of the scattered settlements throughout the West Bank creates an inseparable mix of populations that will threaten the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state …The Jewish settlement movement and its main blocks will be forever an inseparable part of the state of Israel’.
To meet his timetable he will need to complete the illegal Apartheid Wall and accelerate the seizure of Palestinian lands in the Jordan valley. The Israeli military was reported as saying that 42% of the Wall has now been built and their aim is to construct the rest within one year. There will be some withdrawal of settler outposts but only from those areas which will form part of the cantons or bantustans which will be left for the Palestinians. These, like Gaza, will remain at the mercy of the Zionists. m
*STOP PRESS: As we go to press, Israel has grudgingly released a small proportion of this stolen money – £6 million.
Jack Straw: a good friend of Israel
FRFI sheds no tears at Jack Straw’s dismissal from the Foreign Office. At every point he took the side of Zionists, condemning Palestinian resistance as ‘terror’ and ignoring the illegal character of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Until his departure he was in the forefront of the campaign to isolate the new Hamas government. It was Straw who alerted the Israelis to the fact that Britain was withdrawing its monitors from Jericho prison, giving them the green light to attack the prison and seize PFLP leader Ahmed Sa’adat and his comrades. Straw not only helped intensify repression against the Palestinians but also helped cover up the Israeli murder of three British citizens in Palestine:
• Ian Hook, who worked for the UN and was in charge of a house reconstruction programme in Jenin, was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers as he sat in his office in 2002. In December 2005 an inquest jury ruled he had been unlawfully killed, the victim of a ‘deliberate killing’.
• Tom Hurndall, a 22-year-old student, who was shot in the head in April 2003 by an Israeli soldier in Rafah while trying to lead Palestinian children to safety, and who died a year later. In April an inquest jury found that he had been unlawfully killed and deliberately shot by the Israeli soldier ‘with the intention of killing him.’
• Film maker James Miller who was shot and killed in Rafah in May 2003. In April 2006 an inquest jury found that he had been unlawfully killed. The coroner who heard the cases of both James Miller and Tom Hurndall announced that he would write to the Attorney General asking him to examine possible war crimes prosecutions of Israeli military commanders.
Straw and the Labour government have taken every step possible to prevent justice for the three families involved. James Miller’s father, speaking of the British government, said: ‘They’ve been totally supine and ineffective. At one stage they were as obstructive as the Israelis’.
Cuban and Venezuelan support for the Palestinian people
High level government delegations from Cuba and Venezuela attended the Third International Conference on Al Quds and Support for the Rights of the Palestinian People between 14 and 16 April in Tehran. Hugo Chavez invited Hamas to visit Venezuela. The Cuban delegation was led by the President of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Ricardo Alarcon, and included Kenia Serrano Puig who came to Britain in 2002 on a Rock around the Blockade national speaking tour.
Interviewed by the Iranian National News Agency, Kenia called for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees to their homeland. She said Palestinians should be supported in the defence of their rights not only by Muslims but by the international community as well. ‘We have to be mobilised to help the Palestinians and tell the truth regarding their plight’, she said.
Cuba has a long and consistent record of support for the Palestinian people; it severed all diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973 and established diplomatic relations with the PLO in 1974. In April 2002, in the middle of Israel’s offensive against the West Bank, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the following statement: ‘Cuba reiterates its full support for the heroic struggle of the Arab peoples, especially the Palestinians, against Israeli occupation and aggression and its solidarity with their resistance and rebellion.’ That is a position which Cuba consistently expresses in all world bodies it has access to.
FRFI 191 June / July 2006
