On 23 January, Hamas militants blasted a huge hole in the border fence between Gaza and Egypt, allowing tens of thousands of Palestinians to break the intensified Zionist blockade and stock up with essential provisions. As Palestinians celebrated the victory, however, the US insisted that Egypt move immediately to seal the border once more. The Mubarak government meekly submitted to this flagrant US interference and started to erect a barbed wire barrier on 25 January. They failed. Thousands of Palestinians confronted Egyptian riot police, who could not contain them as Hamas fighters used a bulldozer to make further holes in the border fence. BOB SHEPHERD reports.
Israeli forces have been unable to stem Qassam rocket attacks on border towns such as S’derot, averaging more than 40 a day in mid-January. Although they have not killed anybody in 2008, and only two in 2007, these attacks represent the defiance of the Palestinian people, and as such are intolerable to the Zionists. Their response has been a campaign of terror in which they killed over 70 Palestinians during the first three weeks of January, and then, on 17 January, Israel sealed all border crossings with Gaza, cutting off the import of food, medicine and fuel supplies.
Annapolis conference
The Annapolis conference in November 2007 aimed to project Palestinian President Abbas as a statesman-like figure on the world stage. But in Palestine itself his Palestinian Authority (PA) government banned all demonstrations against the conference. This did not stop widespread protests across the West Bank, all of which were attacked by PA security forces using batons and teargas; hundreds were arrested. In Hebron PA forces killed a demonstrator. In Gaza a massive demonstration of over 100,000 people, supported by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP, heard Hamas leader Mahmoud Al Zahar declare, ‘We are here to assert that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians, that Jerusalem is a red line and that the right to return to Haifa and Jaffa is a fixed and inalienable right that nobody under the sun is authorised to give up.’
The conference’s final agreement was an empty non-binding document that did not mention Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem or the dismantling of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Its only commitment was for Abbas and Olmert to hold fortnightly meetings and to ‘make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008’. Israeli prime minister Olmert commented that ‘the declaration reached almost did not include any Israeli concessions’.
To prove the point, on 4 December Israel’s Housing Ministry announced the building of 307 new housing units in Har Homa, a Jewish settlement in occupied East Jerusalem. This project is part of the Zionist plan to separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank making it impossible for East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future Palestinian state. Responding to accusations that Israel was breaching the conditions of the US Roadmap, Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev declared: ‘Israel will abide by all its obligations under the Roadmap. Its obligations apply to the West Bank, Jerusalem is different, Jerusalem is our capital. It is Israeli sovereign territory.’ However, Israel’s 1967 annexation of Jerusalem is completely illegal, and has never been recognised by any international body.
A further conference on 17 December co-chaired by Tony Blair discussed aid to the PA. Over $7 billion was pledged to bolster PA institutions and the security forces. A commitment to build a new sewage system in Gaza was expressly designed to bypass the Hamas government. A Hamas spokesperson called the conference a ‘declaration of war’.
Bush’s visit
Bush’s mid-January visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah was a further step in the process of nullifying Palestinian resistance to imperialist plans in the region. In his joint press conference with Abbas on 10 January, Bush highlighted the role the US is playing in developing the PA security forces into a reliable force able to confront the Palestinian resistance: ‘General Dayton [US adviser to the PA] is spending a lot of time trying to help the President and the Prime Minister develop security forces that are effective.’
Bush also made clear that UN resolutions on Palestine were now irrelevant, saying that ‘the UN deal didn’t work in the past and so now we’re going to have an opportunity to redefine the future by having a state negotiated between an elected leader of the Palestinian people, as well as the Prime Minister of Israel’.
Onslaught on Gaza
The visit also gave the green light to Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. After meeting Bush in Jerusalem, Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu said: ‘I came out of that meeting…comfortable with his pledge to provide a cover for any military activity in Gaza. If matters were left to this president he would not allow any Palestinian terrorist to remain alive.’
Throughout January Israel launched continuous attacks on Gaza using tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16 fighter planes and missiles, killing over 80 Palestinians including a large number of civilians and children. On 3 January five members of one family were killed when Israeli troops opened fire on their home in Khan Younis. On 16 January three civilians, including a five-year-old child, were killed when an Israeli missile blew up their car. On the morning of 15 January 12 Hamas fighters and five civilians were killed by an Israeli incursion force in the east of Gaza City, and on 17-18 January 13 Islamic Jihad militants were killed in air strikes.
On 17 January Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the complete closure of all Gaza border crossings, stopping all fuel and humanitarian supplies, and three days later, Gaza’s only power plant shut down plunging homes into darkness and drastically affecting hospitals and water pumping stations. Health Ministry official Moaiya Hassanain said: ‘We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery patients or stop operating rooms.’ With at least 80% of Gazans dependent on food aid to survive, disaster threatened. Although the Hamas action has provided a temporary reprieve, the utter barbarity of the Zionists has been exposed once again.
FRFI 201 February 2008 / March 2008
