FRFI 160 April / May 2001
The election of General Ariel Sharon as the new prime minister of Israel has led, as predicted, to an intensification of the Zionist war against the Palestinian people. Plans are being laid to break up the Occupied Territories into small cantons separated by ditches and barricades, placing each under its own state of siege. Yet whilst more and more Palestinian people are drawn into the Intifada, a political force representing the interests of the most oppressed sections of the population has yet to emerge. Yasser Arafat remains unchallenged leader of the Palestinian Authority, despite widespread hatred for his corrupt and dictatorial regime. Meanwhile the poverty and suffering of the people continues and intensifies. ROBERT CLOUGH reports.
Election of Sharon
By the time Israel went to the polls on 6 February, it was evident that war criminal Sharon would win the election by a landslide. In the event he took 62% of the vote against outgoing premier Barak’s 38%. Despite this, Sharon has the lowest mandate of any prime minister in Israel’s history, since only 62% of the electorate voted compared to a norm of 80%. Amongst Israeli Palestinians, the turnout was less than 20%.
In 1999, they had voted overwhelmingly for Barak and his promise of peace: the murder of 13 Israeli Palestinians during protests in October 2000, for which Barak refused to apologise, led to a widely-supported Palestinian boycott of the election. Meanwhile Sharon got overwhelming support from the ultra-Orthodox believers and from immigrants from the former Soviet Union, more than a million of whom have settled over the past ten years.
Because Sharon’s Likud party held only 19 out of 120 seats in the Israeli parliament, he had to negotiate with a plethora of political parties to put together a coalition government. Amongst the 27 ministers he has appointed are Rechavem Ze’evi and Avigdor Lieberman. Ze’evi wants to expel the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank: ‘The Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza have to be transferred to their forefathers’ land’, and claims that they only arrived there in the last century. He would also ‘encourage’ emigration by banning Palestinians from working in Israel, and closing factories and universities in the West Bank. He considers Jordan to be part of Israel: ‘It’s ours historically. Three of the tribes of Israel – Gad, Reuven and Menashe – lived in what is now Jordan.’
Meanwhile, Lieberman, leader of a Russian immigrant party, has called for the bombing of the Aswan dam, the burning of Beirut and the bombing of Tehran. Shimon Peres, an old friend of Sharon, has also agreed to serve in the government. The Labour politician, who received a Nobel peace prize, has supported the Likud stand against picking up negotiations with the Palestinians where they ended just before the election, claiming Barak had made too many concessions.
Thus the Israeli government now consists of fascists led by an avowed racist and war criminal. But for imperialism it is business as usual. There is no talk of sanctions or boycotts despite the Zionists’ continued illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, despite their brutal repression of the Palestinian people.
Instead President Bush congratulates Sharon on his victory, saying that the US-Isreali relationship was ‘rock-solid’, whilst British Foreign Minister Cook talks of ‘building on common ground’ and ‘moving the peace process forward’. Sharon is more direct: ‘We have to use force as appropriate. This is an approach we will not drop.’
Israeli repression
With more than 350 Palestinian people killed, 1,500 with permanent disabilities, and thousands of others injured, the Israeli onslaught intensified throughout the post-election period even before Sharon formally assumed power. On 13 February, Massoud Ayad, Lieutenant Colonel in Arafat’s Force 17 body guard was assassinated as he drove through Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, his car hit by a volley of rockets from two Israeli helicopters. Barak, who sanctioned the attack, sent his ‘heartfelt congratulations’ to the Israeli Army: ‘It is a clear message to those who plan to attack Israelis that they will not get away with it. The long arm of the Israeli defence forces will call them to account.’
Children continue to die. On the same day as Ayad was assassinated, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy died after being shot in the heart in Gaza. On 2 March, a 9-year-old child, Obai Daraj, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in his home in Ramallah. Among many other victims are:
- Mohammad Halas, 13, shot in the head several times by Israeli soldiers at Al Mintar crossing east of Gaza, and who died on 27 February;
- Husam Al Disi, 15, shot four times on 26 February by a sniper with a silenced rifle near Ramallah and dead on arrival at hospital;
- Amjad Miizhir, 12, shot in the head during protests on 27 February in Deir Nitham near Ramallah; also 11-year-old Mohammed Yihya, shot in the back;
- Three children aged 8 to 10 injured by rubber-coated steel bullets during protests, again in Deir Nitham, on 2 March;
- Three children aged 13 to 15 shot during a demonstration in the Gaza strip with live rounds on 22 February.
Changing rules of engagement mean Israeli soldiers are now officially allowed to fire warning shots at pedestrians at check points, something that had anyway been a regular ‘unofficial’ occurrence throughout the Intifada. A spokesman for the Zionist army said it had decided ‘to hit before being hit’. The use of tanks to bombard civilian areas has also become ‘official’ policy. By 28 February, 28 Palestinians had been killed by tank shells. Incidents include a four-hour bombardment of Al Bireh residential areas which killed a 54-year-old man. This was a week after Israeli tanks fired on Beit Jala, destroying 10 houses and killing Mohammed Al Korbi in his home. The army made the usual claim that they had seen gunmen plotting an attack: ‘We did not wait until they shot us: we shot them. You can call it a preventative attack.’ The Israeli army spokesman Colonel Rafowicz said ‘If he (Al Korbi) is an innocent man I want to express my deep sorrow, But if the Palestinians want to continue the violence, then there will be a price to pay.’ This had followed a two-month long unofficial local ceasefire which Beit Jala notables had imposed on local Fatah militias.
The Zionist blockade of the Occupied Territories has continued unabated throughout the period, and is now being stepped up by the Sharon government. Since the start of the Intifada, access to and from both Gaza and the West Bank has been made almost impossible by a multitude of checkpoints and barricades erected by the Israeli army. 10 people have died en route to hospital in emergency ambulances that have been delayed because they have had to cross so many checkpoints during their journey. Meanwhile the blockade has caused terrible suffering. One million of the three million Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories are having to survive on less than $2 per day, up by half since the Intifada. The number of families dependent on donated food has grown seven-fold. Fishermen are unable to put to sea since they will be turned back by the Israeli navy. Between 110,000 and 125,000 Palestinians who rely on employment in Israel have been unable to get to work. At times the north of Gaza is cut off from the south; raw materials, food and medical supplies are denied entry; the result is an unemployment rate up from 12% to 40%. The cost to the Palestinian economy has been about $1 billion.
The blockade, however, is intensifying as the Sharon government adopts a policy of physically cantonising the Occupied Territories with a series of impassable trenches to protect the illegal settlers. The first one, 18 kilometres long and two metres wide and deep, has been dug around the town of Jericho. Since it is forbidden to leave over the mountains to the north and west, it means that the town of 33,000 inhabitants has only one legal entry point. The result is that it suffers its own blockade: businesses have closed down, factories lie idle, its economy is devastated.
Other trenches have put 25 villages in the West Bank under siege: as the Zionist army has dug them it has cut off water, telephones and electricity supplies. The army has stopped delivery of all supplies to the villages. The same series of trenches has cut off Bir Zeit university where term was due to start on 17 March. Demonstrators who included academics and professionals tried to repair the road the army had torn up to complete the blockade; they were tear-gassed for their efforts. Later on, as the demonstrators were joined by youths, the army used live rounds, shooting dead a Palestinian security official. The town Nablus is also cut off with the sole exception of a dirt road. Israeli newspapers are reporting that Sharon plans to construct a series of trenches and barricades that splits the West Bank into 60 physically separate cantons. Movement between the cantons will be all but impossible: the Palestinian people will be in a complete state of siege.
The political response
Despite the massive corruption within the Palestinian Authority, and the treacherous role that Arafat has played, there is still no serious challenge to his position. Even though he faced widespread opposition, he was able to continue the ‘peace’ negotiations with Barak in January. He has already announced his willingness to meet with Sharon. His security forces continue to detain, torture and murder activists. Every policy he has adopted has turned into disaster for the Palestinian people. Yet there is no organised campaign to get rid of him and his corrupt coterie. Within the movement there is an impasse. The leadership of the Intifada lies with Fatah, which recognises Israel and accepts the concessions on land that Arafat made at Oslo. Fatah’s strategy is to force Israel into recognising a Palestinian state based on the West Bank and Gaza – a mere 22% of historical Palestine. Fatah does not dispute Israel’s right to the remaining 78%. In such circumstances it is not clear what would happen to the four million Palestinian refugees dispersed throughout the Middle East.
At issue are not just the goals of the struggle, but also the means. Whilst the mass of the Palestinian people support the continuation of armed resistance there are forces which do not. The professionals opposing the blockade of Bir Zeit university are amongst them, as they tried to keep the youth away from their protest: ‘Many people are beginning to understand the usefulness of popular, non-violent movements and demonstrations. I hope this really will continue.’ said Abdul Jawad Saleh a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who was at the demonstration. Edward Said, a determined opponent of Arafat’s leadership and his treachery at Oslo, argues the need ‘to chart a course forward that links together opposition to occupation, to exile and to racial discrimination’, which is undoubtedly right. But he also says that ‘old slogans like “a Palestinian state” or “Jerusalem our capital” have brought us to this impasse’ (in Al Ahram December 2000), a statement which completely ignores the class dimension of Arafat’s leadership. Said also counterposes mass mobilisation to the armed struggle. He seeks a particular role for the enlightened middle class – those ‘professionals, intellectuals, teachers, doctors and so on – who have the power of expression and the means to do so who have still not put enough pressure on the leadership to make it responsive to the situation’. What must soon develop is a political force which can represent a different standpoint – that of the working class and the oppressed.
