FRFI 162 August / September 2001
Israel’s war preparations are nearly complete as we go to press. Although the Zionist state has issued frequent denials, it is almost certainly deciding that the only way to defeat the Palestinian Intifada is through a total military onslaught. The Zionist press talks of little else. All that the Israeli war machine awaits is the right opportunity. Its attempt to grind down Palestinian resistance over the last nine months has failed. The ceasefire that came into effect on 13 June was never more than a fiction and is now in tatters. Whilst the Zionists reserved the right to continue their shoot-to-kill policies, Arafat could not persuade the Palestinian people to surrender to the continued Israeli occupation. The fact that Arafat’s writ no longer holds in the refugee camps in Gaza or the enclaves of the West Bank means that the Zionists have little further use for him. Every Palestinian funeral is accompanied by demonstrations of thousands; Hamas and Islamic Jihad claims of dozens of potential volunteers as suicide-bombers are no vain boast.Complete reoccupation of Palestinian Authority (PA) territory is now threatened by the Zionists.
The 13 June ceasefire followed a continual escalation of the Zionist terror campaign. A month earlier, F16 fighter-bombers killed 12 Palestinian policemen. The recently-published report of the commission led by US Senator Mitchell had called for a freeze on all settlement building. But since coming to power the Sharon government has already authorised the establishment of 15 new settlement outposts on the West Bank, and on 30 May housing minister Natan Sharansky formally approved tenders for building 700 housing units. Part of Sharon’s reputation is based on the period 1977 to 1981 when, as minister for agriculture, he managed to double the number of settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. For him to turn against the settlers was unthinkable.
On 1 June a bomb outside a Tel Aviv nightclub killed the Palestinian who detonated it and 20 young Israelis, almost all of them emigrés from the former Soviet Union. The following day, Arafat offered an unconditional ceasefire. Desperate appeals from the imperialist powers caused the Zionists to stay their hand, allowing themselves once more to appear as innocent victims. A period of frenetic diplomacy followed. On 10 June, Israeli tank shells killed three Bedouin women in their tent near the Netzanim settlement in Gaza. Mourners at their funeral demanded an end to the talks and the continuation of the Intifada. Nevertheless, CIA Director George Trenet managed to broker a bilateral ceasefire on 13 June. Under its terms, Israel agreed to end its blockade of occupied territories, stop entering Palestinian Authority territory and restrain settler attacks, whilst the Palestinian Authority agreed to confiscate weapons and arrest any militant engaged in military activity. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad agreed to suspend armed activity.
Within two days, Zionist settlers had murdered a Palestinian near Hebron, while a Palestinian executed an Israeli intelligence lieutenant colonel. On Sunday 24 June, the Zionists resumed their assassination campaign, and a booby-trapped phone-box blew up, killing Osama Jawabri, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which had been involved in the campaign against Zionist settlers. By this time, 11 days into the ceasefire, eight Palestinians and six Israelis had been killed. A week later, on 1 July, helicopter rockets killed three Islamic Jihad militants near Jenin and two Hamas members were killed in a separate ambush. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad called an end to the ceasefire, and the next day the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) claimed two car-bomb attacks. Meanwhile Zionist soldiers shot dead a taxi driver as he unloaded groceries from his car, claiming that he was planting a bomb. On 4 July, the Israeli government publicly admitted its assassination policy, and approved its extension to those ‘wanted’ by Israel whom the PA had not arrested. That day Hebron Fatah activist Hassem Natshe was shot in the back and two days later another Hebron Fatah member wounded.
On 8 July 11-year-old Khalil Al Mugrabhi was shot dead as he played football on a sand dune on the Gaza-Egypt border. Israeli soldiers fired four shots, hitting three children, the other two aged 11 and 13. Nearby is the watchtower from which the shots were fired; local Palestinians call it Death Tower. Khalil was the fifth child to be shot dead from this vantage point since the Intifada started, and the seventeenth Palestinian to die since the start of the ceasefire less than a month before. The Israeli army investigated the incident and closed it to its own satisfaction within a week. Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin stated that ‘as long as there is occupation, the resistance will continue’. Arafat can do nothing about Hamas because of its strength in Gaza where it runs welfare programmes and is seen as clean compared to the corruption of the PA. Indeed, Palestinian crowds stoned police when they tried to arrest a local Hamas leader. Of the 121 Israeli deaths during the Intifada, two-thirds have been in Gaza, mainly around the Rafah and Khan Yunis camps where the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC) unites Hamas, Jihad and the PFLP. Arafat’s orders for the PRC to disband have been ignored. Although the PRC agreed not to initiate attacks on Israel itself whilst the ceasefire held, it continued to regard settlers as legitimate targets.
Meanwhile the Israeli army continued its illegal demolition programme. On 9 July, 15 army bulldozers demolished 17 homes in the Shufa’at refugee camp north of Jerusalem. Others are threatened to allow for the expansion of the adjacent Pisgat Zeiv settlement. The following day, tanks and bulldozers invaded Rafah and destroyed 18 houses and six shops. A total of 600 houses have been demolished since the start of the Intifada. Alongside the continued destruction of Palestinian farmland and olive groves on the West Bank, it is a policy which makes every Palestinian a potential target of Zionist repression.
The escalation in Zionist terror continued into July. On 13 July, Hamas leader Fawwaz Badran was assassinated in a booby-trapped car whilst in Hebron, Israelis shelled three Force 17 outposts. The same day the British intelligence journal Jane’s Foreign Report stated that the Israeli army would launch a huge offensive if there were another major suicide bomb attack. ‘Estimated Israeli casualties would be in their hundreds; Palestinian losses would be in their thousands’. Three days later, a member of Islamic Jihad killed himself and two Israeli soldiers at Binyamina railway station in the centre of Israel. The next day, a helicopter rocket attack on a farm south of Bethlehem killed Omar Saadeh, the local Hamas leader and three others. Thousands attended their funerals demanding an end to the ceasefire. 24 hours later, Israeli troops took up new positions on the West Bank in what was seen as a preparatory move for an all-out assault. New checkpoints were established around Palestinian towns and tank reinforcements sent in. On 20 July, the Zionists announced they were setting up overseas recruitment stations. On the same day, Israeli settlers killed three Palestinians in a drive-by attack, including a three-month-old child. Four days later, Israeli occupation troops stationed at a hilltop overlooking the town of Nablus fired 6-8 electronically-guided missiles at the car of Hamas activist Salah Darwaza, 36, killing him instantly.
Israeli and foreign media have been speculating on a number of scenarios ranging from an all-out assault by 30,000 troops to a more limited engagement retaking certain parts of PA territory. ‘They are talking about the next war as if it is a product that is just about to hit the shelves’ (Yediot Ahronoth, the largest circulation Hebrew daily in Israel). Sharon’s boast was that he would defeat the Intifada and restore ‘normality’ within 100 days of coming to power. He has failed. Arafat’s craven policies have also failed to contain the anger of the Palestinian people. All-out war is an imminent possibility. Communists and anti-imperialists must step up their activity in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Isolate the Zionist state!
Victory to the Palestinians!
Robert Clough
