FRFI 164 December 2001 / January 2002
After weeks of delay and speculation, Colin Powell finally announced US imperialism’s proposals for a settlement of the Palestinian question. There was nothing new; indeed, they scarcely amounted to a rehash of the Mitchell Plan set down earlier this year. Yet there will now be a real determination to impose them on the Palestinian people and to finally subdue the Intifada, for alongside the proposals has come a declaration of war against those leading the Palestinian liberation struggle. ROBERT CLOUGH reports.
Powell condemns Palestinian resistance
Powell’s priorities were quite clear. ‘To begin with’, he said, ‘Palestinians must accept that, if there is to be real peace, Israelis must be able to live their lives free from terror as well as war.’ He continued:
‘The Palestinian leadership must make a 100% effort to end violence and terror. There must be real results, not just words and declarations. Terrorists must be stopped before they act. The Palestinian leadership must arrest, prosecute and punish the perpetrators of terrorist acts.’
He went on to dismiss the Intifada as ‘mired in a quicksand of self-defeating violence and terror against Israel… Terror and violence must stop and stop now.’ Incredibly, he then said ‘Palestinians must realise that the violence has had a terrible impact on Israel’ – as if the Palestinians had been the possessors of jet bombers, tanks, helicopter gunships and heavy machine guns. Only after this did he allude to the impact of the occupation – and then only briefly, and without reference to its illegal character:
‘Too often (Palestinians) have seen their schools shuttered and their parents humiliated. Too many innocent Palestinians, including children, have been killed and wounded. This too must stop.’
Denunciation, then, of Palestinian violence, but only a mild rebuke for the Zionist terror.
Two weeks before Powell’s speech, the USA had put Hamas, Jihad, Hizbullah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on a list of proscribed terrorist organisations. The first three are already proscribed under the British Terrorism Act. This gives the green light for the imperialists to take action against any country which offers these organisations any support, such as Lebanon, Syria and Iran. It also allows Israel to step up its assassination campaign, particularly if and when these organisations reject the Powell plan. As a State Department official said before Powell’s speech, the plan ‘is a kind of good cop, bad cop thing. We intend to broker a peace that finally establishes the Palestinian state, while doing everything we can do to pursue the terrorists to the corners of the earth.’ Lebanon has already rejected demands that it ban Hizbullah and seize its financial assets. Hizbullah has no connections with Bin Laden or al-Qaida. However, it did lead an 18-year-long war against the illegal Zionist occupation of the south of Lebanon, and played a crucial role in driving the Zionist army out last year. Within Lebanon, it is a legal organisation with eight MPs, a TV station and a daily newspaper.
In a statement on 3 November, the PFLP condemned the US ban on all four organisations, and declared they were all a legitimate part of the national liberation movement: ‘they resist occupation and are therefore not terrorist organisations. They are organisations, indeed, that resist a military, colonial and racist occupation.’
The strategy of the imperialists is clear. Both the US and Britain have been putting constant pressure on Arafat to crush the Intifada by arresting known ‘terrorists’, resuming security co-operation with Israel and policing ceasefires agreed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) over the heads of the people. Prime Minister Sharon has always made it clear that he would not negotiate with Arafat until there had been a complete cessation of Palestinian resistance. US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has supported this stance, saying ‘These are responsibilities we have asked Chairman Arafat to take and to take seriously…We still don’t think there has been enough effort to lower the level of Palestinian violence in that regard.’ Blair had the same message when Arafat visited London on 15 October. Both US and British imperialism are of a like mind: Palestinian violence is always terrorism and ending it is a precondition for progress. Israeli violence is ‘understandable’. There is not even the slightest pretence of even-handedness.
Syria replies
Blair however did receive an appropriate response when his shuttle diplomacy at the end of October took him to Syria. At the press conference that followed their meeting, President Basher al-Assad not only denounced the attack on Afghanistan, but then attacked Blair for his position on terrorism by reference to the Palestinian struggle: ‘Resistance is a social right, a religious right, a legal right that is safeguarded through the United Nations …combating terrorism should start by defining terrorism. We have to define our enemy first.’ He went on to say that ‘Israel is proving every day it is against peace…Israel is practising state terrorism every day.’ Blair’s efforts to prop up the coalition against Afghanistan took a hard knock, made worse by the fact that in his official communique, he made no reference to the continued Israeli occupation of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights.
The toll of Zionist terror
All these diplomatic moves took place against a backdrop of an intense Israeli onslaught against the Palestinian people. Attempts to force a ceasefire in Palestine after the World Trade Centre attack failed within days. Sharon likened Arafat to Bin Laden, and complained that the US was selling out Israel in the same way that Czechoslovakia had been handed to Nazi Germany in 1938. By 17 October, when a PFLP unit executed Israeli Tourist Minister Rehavem Ze’evi, Zionist forces had murdered more than 80 Palestinians. Ze’evi was a complete fascist, a racist who regarded Palestinians as ‘lice’ and ‘cancer’, advocated their expulsion from the West Bank and Gaza and called for the extension of Greater Israel to include Jordan. Yet the White House described the assassination as a ‘despicable act’, and Blair condemned it out of hand: ‘The murder this morning is absolutely appalling’. For the mass of Palestinian people, it was no such thing.
Such sentiments were a green light for the Zionists, whose forces occupied six Palestinian cities on the West Bank over the next 48 hours: Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem. During the next two weeks, they murdered a further 50 Palestinians, 26 of them during a ten-day occupation of Bethlehem and nearby Beit Jala. Of these, 16 were civilians including three children. In addition 150 people were injured. During their occupation of Bethlehem, the Israeli army fired 52 tank shells, hundreds of tank grenade missiles and thousands of machine gun rounds. Meanwhile Zionist death squads have taken a terrible toll, killing 15 in three weeks after the Ze’evi assassination.
The bloodletting reached a peak on 24 October. In the early hours, the Israeli army swept into Beit Rima with 17 tanks, 900 troops and helicopter gunship support. Five Palestinian Authority policemen were murdered as they slept. The village was sealed off for the whole day; ambulances were prevented from entering to take away the wounded. Ten Palestinians were detained; none of them had anything to do with the Ze’evi assassination despite Zionist claims to the contrary. The same day, three Palestinians were ambushed and killed in Tulkarm, and another one shot dead in Jerusalem throwing a firebomb. Finally, settlers shot six Palestinians in Beni Naim, east of Hebron.
On 6 November, a clash between guerrillas and the Israeli army near Nablus left four dead, including an Israeli soldier. Three guerrillas who were wounded and captured were left to die; the Israeli army refused to allow doctors from the Palestinian Red Crescent to treat them. The dead Palestinians were from Fatah, Hamas and the Palestine People’s Party (the former Communist Party), a demonstration of the close co-operation that is taking place between the various sections of the liberation movement.
Children continue to die. In Khan Yunis refugee camp, a 12-year-old boy who had been shot in the head three days earlier died on 12 November. He had been walking along a street when he was shot; afterwards, the Israeli army claimed he had looked 16, and had been tampering with a security fence. Even more appalling was the death on 22 November of five young schoolboys aged 6 to 14, blown up by an Israeli booby trap in Khan Yunis, Gaza. The next day, Zionist soldiers shot dead a 15-year-old mourner at their funeral. Also on 23 November, Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, was murdered with two others by a helicopter gunship attack near Nablus. Illegal kidnappings continue. On 12 November, Israeli soldiers entered Tal near Nablus, assassinated Hamas activist Mohamed Rihan and abducted 40 others. Three days later, tanks entered a village near Bethlehem and seized eight Palestinians. At the time of writing, the Israeli army remains in occupation of both Jenin and Tulkarm. Although it has withdrawn from the other four cities, it remains on their outskirts and they are effectively under siege.
Illegal settlements multiply
Although imperialism talks about the Palestinian right to a state, it has never done anything about the illegal Zionist settlement of the Occupied Territories. Since the 1993 Oslo agreements, the number of housing units in these settlements has grown from 32,750 to over 53,000; the number of housing starts in 2000 at 4,499 was the highest since 1992. There are now 400,000 settlers; 7,000 in Gaza occupy 35% of the land and control the water supplies. At the end of October, the Zionists confirmed plans to build fences around settlements in the north of Gaza, effectively annexing them to Israel proper. Powell’s call for an end to settlement building will be ignored as similar appeals have been in the past. Indeed, the day after he spoke, Israel’s defence ministry announced it was replacing 12 mobile homes in the Tel Rumeida settlement near Hebron with permanent structures. The settlement is occupied by ultra-right wing Zionists. The Palestinian people already have the true measure of imperialist intentions from the decision of the US Senate on 24 October to grant loans of $2.76bn to the Zionists, $2.07bn in military aid. Against this backdrop, US and British criticism of Israeli military actions are mere slaps on the wrist.
Palestine Authority: enemy of the people
Imperialism has never been even-handed in its dealings with the Zionists and the Palestinians. The Oslo Accord was imposed on the Palestinian people through Arafat and the PLO once the imperialists had got rid of the genuine representatives of the people who started the negotiations in 1991. Arafat sold the Palestinian people for a deal which gave the Palestinians control of 17% of the Occupied Territories and left the settlers to continue their uncontrolled expansion. He has never placed himself at the head of the Intifada, never participated in any of the many demonstrations that have taken place over the last 14 months. He has presided over an Authority which is corrupt through and through. Whilst the imperialists demand he takes action against liberation struggle, he is less and less able to do so. The day he met Blair in London, PA policemen shot three demonstrators in Gaza. Huge demonstrations at their funerals underline how tenuous his hold on power is becoming. Although he arrested PFLP members after the Ze’evi assassination, they were the office administrators, not the political activists. A Jihad political detainee in Nablus has gone on hunger strike, and has now been joined by Hamas and PFLP detainees in Ramallah and Gaza. Arafat’s social base amongst the Palestinian middle class is disappearing: now the only ones who support him are those who have enriched themselves through Palestinian Authority patronage and corruption. They want to see a deal cut with Zionists – but they no longer have the means to enforce it on the Palestinian people. Already splits are opening up within the PA security apparatus, with sections refusing to take action against the guerrillas. In these circumstances, the PA will be swept aside if it openly tries to do imperialism’s dirty work. Hence Arafat can only play for time. The reckoning, however, may not be far away.
Victory to the Palestinian people!
Isolate the Zionist state!
