In the most appalling scenes of wanton destruction, of dead and wounded Palestinian children, of refugees fleeing bulldozers and tanks with their pitifully few belongings, the world saw the real face of Zionism in Rafah: of unbridled racism, of naked fascism. One of the world’s richest nations, its third or fourth military power, had responded with utter brutality against one of the poorest people of the world because they had dared give the oppressor a bloody nose. Dozens died; hundreds were made homeless. And in a final gesture of contempt, the Zionist storm-troopers destroyed a zoo because it was one of the few entertainments available to the children of Gaza. ROBERT CLOUGH reports.
In two invasions between 13 and 15 May, and 17 and 21 May, 45 Palestinians were murdered in Rafah. 39 alone were killed in the second invasion, eight of them on a peaceful demonstration on 18 May, four of whom were children. The Zionists first claimed that there were armed militants in the demonstration, then that the deaths were accidental. The fact is that they deliberately targeted the demonstration since they regard Palestinians as little better than animals. In all, nine children were murdered during this period in Rafah, and in the second invasion over a hundred houses were bulldozed making nearly 1,500 people homeless on top of more than a thousand the previous week. Only seven of the dead were fighters – the rest of the victims were civilians. This was a brutal and completely illegal punishment, but one which earned the perpetrator no more than a ticking-off from the so-called civilised powers of the European Union and the US.
The Zionist terror campaign against the Palestinian people had continued throughout April. On 17 April, missiles fired from an Apache helicopter murdered Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz Al Rantisi, less than a month after another missile salvo had killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Once again, tens of thousands attended the funeral of a Palestinian leader. A 24-strong armed honour guard from Fatah’s Al Aqsa brigades presented condolences; one of its members said ‘We are united. We are brothers in the resistance to Israel. The revenge will be fast and quick. We respect him because he was one of our leaders, a big symbol. We do not distinguish between factions now. We are one nation’. One of the mourners declared ‘What else can we do? Bush says we are to have nothing except what Sharon gives us. The situation gets worse. We have more martyrs and less space to live in’. Another mourner singled out the US for giving the green light to the assassination: ‘America is the father of terror, they are the number one enemy of the people.’
On 20 April, the Zionists killed seven in two assassination attacks in Gaza. The next day, nine were killed, all aged 18 or under; five of them were children who were throwing stones at Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APC) when they came to uproot orchards and demolish homes in Abraj Al Nada. Three days later, two girls aged 4 and 7 and a 16-year-old boy were shot in Beit Hanoun. During the first ten days of May, 22 Palestinians were killed. Invasions of Gaza destroyed 131 Palestinian houses in Rafah and Khan Yunis, rendering 1,100 people homeless.
On the night of Monday 10 May, dozens of armoured vehicles, supported by tanks and helicopters, invaded Beit Zeitoun looking for ‘weapons factories’. Three Palestinians were killed and scores wounded, most of them civilians. Resistance was stiff and well co-ordinated. Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters purposely drew the army into areas freshly laid with roadside bombs. At around 6.15am on Tuesday 11 May one bomb weighing 50 kilos detonated under an APC, leaving six soldiers dead. Five more Palestinians were killed in the aftermath as the Zionists lashed out blindly. More forces were sent in, ostensibly to look for body parts, in reality to punish the resistance. The next day, Palestinian fighters scored another success, blowing up a second APC with five Zionist soldiers inside. Heavy fighting continued through to Friday 14 May as Zionists started to destroy dozens of buildings along the Philadelphi Road in Rafah; two more soldiers were shot dead. Altogether, however, at least 30 Palestinians died during these battles, mostly civilians and several children including three aged 11, 12 and 14. It was a prelude to the even bloodier invasion that started on 17 May.
Divisions amongst the Zionists
Despite the terror, the Zionists are seriously divided about the occupation, and in particular over Sharon’s disengagement plan. In mid-April, the bloody general’s position seemed unassailable. When he had stepped out with George Bush in front of the world’s press on 14 April to hear the US President describe his Gaza disengagement plan as ‘historic and courageous’, there seemed little to stop it from becoming fact. Bush completely endorsed it. In respect of the illegal settlements on the West Bank, the US president declared that ‘realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly’, so that ‘it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949’. The Zionists would therefore be able to annex parts of the West Bank in advance of a final settlement. Later, Israeli embassy officials said the US had backed a plan requiring Israel to withdraw from only four token settlements in the north-west sector of the West Bank with a total of 500 settlers. They said diplomats had prepared four versions of withdrawal proposals, only for Washington to accept the initial one, which was least generous to the Palestinians. Finally, Bush told the world that Palestinian refugees could not be allowed to return to Israel, but only to the fragmented entity which the Zionists and their US allies will call a Palestinian state: ‘It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there rather than Israel.’
The rest of the world could only look on in astonishment. In the space of a few moments Bush had ripped up decades of UN diplomacy and trampled over basic international law. There was no longer to be any pretence of negotiating with the Palestinian people. Arab state leaders wrung their hands – and did no more, as their survival is dependent on the good favours of US imperialism. The EU stated its opposition, but like the UN, it had been sidelined. The most bizarre opinion was Tony Blair’s: he welcomed Bush’s declaration as a step along the US Roadmap – when for the rest of the world, including the US and the Zionists, it spelled the end of that ill-fated document.
Yet within two weeks Sharon’s victory had begun to look very hollow. By a large majority (59.5% against 39.7%), a referendum of his Likud Party on 2 May rejected withdrawal from Gaza. As one settler put it, ‘we have told the world that we are here to stay’. Throughout the referendum campaign, the settler racists had made the running. Cabinet Minister Tsibi Livni publicly saluted the fanatic settlers of Kfar Dorom in South Gaza, saying that they embodied ‘the enduring vigour’ of Zionism and suggested that Sharon was betraying them. Another Likud activist, journalist Ohad Kamin, thought that ‘Sharon is not only an enemy, he is the most dangerous enemy of Israel’. Children from the Gaza settlements were posted at ballot boxes to bring extra moral pressure to the voters. The outcome was chaos, with Sharon unable to continue with his plan, yet equally unwilling to resign. It was left to a US State Department official to complain in The Washington Post that ‘the real objective in giving Sharon the blank cheque he left with was to shore up his political support at home. We paid a very high price and got nothing in return.’
In spite of the scale of the Palestinian casualties, the successes of the resistance were another major defeat for Sharon. There is turmoil within the Zionist ruling class. An Israeli army general, quoted in Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper on 11 May, but speaking before the invasion of Beit Zeitoun, summarised their problems: ‘After the failure of the [Likud] referendum [on the disengagement plan], we don’t have the slightest idea of what we are doing [in Gaza], what is happening or what is on the agenda. Is there going to be a pull out? Is there disengagement? Over what are we fighting? What are we supposed to be doing?’ A demonstration of 150,000 Israelis on 15 May organised by the peace camp accompanied polls that showed that the removal of the Gaza settlers had the support of 70% of all Israelis. The protestors demanded that the butcher of Beirut implement his own policies. Among those who back the pullout is a well-known Israeli actor, Shlomo Vishinsky, whose 20-year-old son was one of the soldiers killed in Gaza: ‘It’s clear that no one wants to be in Gaza except the members of the Likud,’ he wrote in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot.
Sharon has promised to present a revised version of his plan to the Israeli cabinet. Yet the fundamentalist wing of his coalition is adamantly opposed to any withdrawal whatsoever, whilst the secular Shinui party is threatening to withdraw from the cabinet if Sharon backs down. The bloody general is now caught between the fundamentalist settlers who demand a Greater Israel cleansed of all Palestinians, and the large majority of the Zionist population who now want rid of Gaza as soon as possible. In such circumstances he could not allow the successes of the resistance to pass without immediate and murderous retribution. In so doing, he exposed to the world the fascist nature of the Zionist state.
Intifada facts
From 1 January to 22 May, 350 Palestinians died as result of Zionist action; of these, 110 were murdered between 1 and 22 May alone.
Children murdered during this period include:
1 May: Hussein Abu Aker (8) shot and killed in Khan Yunis.
Four more children shot and wounded in this incident.
3 May: Ahmed Al Khawalda (16) died of injuries sustained on 20 April in Gaza
4 May: Jamil Abu Mustafa (17) killed by a missile in Khan Yunis
11 May: Rami Mohammed Ja’ar (16) killed by a live bullet in the head
Ahmed Salem Al Swairkim (16) killed by a live bullet in the head
Unknown (11) killed by a live bullet in the head
Yousef Kamal Hijazi (13) killed by missile shrapnel
13 May: Hamed Abu Hamra (15) killed by a missile
18 May: Asma Al Mughayar (14) killed by a live bullet in the head in Rafah
Ahmed Al Mughayar (10) Asma’s brother, also killed by a live bullet in the head
Mohammed Al Shaer (17) and Ibrahim Al Balawi (17) killed by a missile going to prayers in Gaza
19 May: Walid Abu Qamar (10), Mubarak Al Hashash (11) and Mahmoud Mansour (13) killed on a demonstration in Rafah
Saber Abu Lebda (13) killed by a live bullet in the head
22 May: A girl (3) shot dead in Gaza
FRFI 179 June / July 2004
