Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 158, December/January 2001
Two months after the Al Aqsa Intifada started on 27/28 September, the Zionist onslaught on the Palestinian people continues. Helicopter gunships firing heavy machine guns and guided missiles have attacked Palestinian towns and villages which are also encircled by Israeli tanks. Snipers using softened bullets have shot hundreds of youths armed with nothing more than stones. Paramilitary settlers supported the Israeli army, torturing captured Palestinians and firing on defenceless villagers. 250 people have been killed, thousands injured, many with gunshot wounds to the head and upper bodies. Amongst the dead are some 40 children, including Mohammed Al Durreh, shot in cold blood as he hid terrified behind his father in Gaza on the second day of the Intifada. Yet despite the terror the Palestinian people continue to resist. Each funeral is accompanied by mass demonstrations: incredible courage is shown by youth with their slings and stones facing up to one of the most powerful armies in the world. More recently as the Fatah alliance has started to fragment, armed groups, the tamsin, are adopting guerrilla tactics which have started .to take their toll of Israeli soldiers and the settler paramilitaries.
Whilst General Sharon’s visit to the Haram Al Sharief, which houses the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem has been seen to be the starting point of the Intifada, it was the events of the following day which really sparked it. A massive Israeli police and army presence confronted worshippers when they arrived for prayers at the Al Aqsa mosque, and when Palestinian youths responded to the provocation with stones, the Zionists hit back, killing seven demonstrators and injuring 200 more. The next day the uprising spread throughout the Occupied Territories and into Israel itself, as Israeli Arabs took to the streets. By This time the Israelis were already using rubber-coated steel bullets and exploding dum-dums. Of 550 Palestinians injured that day, 175 were under the age of 18. By October, sections of the Palestinian police force were joining the demonstrators, and the first two Israeli soldiers had been killed in gun battles. A week later the death toll was 78, including at least 12 children. Israelis in Nazareth attacked Israeli Arabs, killing one, whilst police killed another two.
With neither the Palestinian Authority nor the Zionists capable of controlling the anger of the people alarm bells rang for western imperialism. On 14 October, US President Clinton convened a summit at Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt. The mass of the Palestinian people urged Arafat not to attend, knowing that US imperialism would support the Zionists all the way. Arafat ignored the calls for a boycott, hoping he might get some crumbs from the imperialist table. But the people were right: when the summit concluded, new security agreements had been reached, the details of which were to remain secret, but which gave a field role to CIA agents. There was to be no Zionist withdrawal or ceasefire. Meanwhile the slaughter continued: by this time 112 were dead and 3,300 injured. On 2 November, the Israeli Defence Force said that only two deaths were being investigated by the Israelis including that of Mohammed Al Durreh. On 9 November, a helicopter gunship attack on Bethlehem killed the local Fatah leader Hussein Abayat and two women relatives; the Israelis claimed he was responsible for the death three soldiers. A week later, on 16 November Harald Fischer, a German citizen living in Bethlehem was blown to pieces by an Israeli missile. Five other Palestinians were killed on the same day.
In this vastly unequal war, the allies of the Zionists in the imperialist world are legion. There is of course the US government. Within days of the start of the Intifada, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke of stone-throwing Palestinians ‘laying siege to Israel’. When the UN Security Council condemned the Zionists’ excessive use of force, the US abstained … as did Britain. Already by 6 October, Arab governments were reported as incensed by the Labour government’s attitude; Blair had made no public comment and both Robin Cooke and his deputy Peter Hain had pointedly refused to offer any criticism of Israel or indeed of General Sharon’s provocation. Liberal commentators in newspapers such as The Guardian and The Observer speak of ‘extremists’ on both sides, implicitly equating Palestinians fighting for freedom with the neo-fascist settlers. Peter Beaumont in The Observer of 19 November claimed that the uprising was being planned by the PA as far back as a year ago. This is no more than Zionist disinformation and serves only.to confuse people as to the real nature the Palestinian struggle.
With the. Al Aqsa Intifada set to continue all democrats and socialists must dismiss the mealy-mouthed liberalism which in the end excuses the settler, colonial character of the Zionist regime. There can be no peace in the Middle East until there is justice for the Palestinians: there can be no justice for the Palestinians until the Zionist state has been destroyed. All socialists and democrats must support the Palestinian people.
Isolate the racist Zionist state! Victory to the Palestinian people!
Robert Clough
For daily reports on the uprising, FRFI readers should go to www.addameer.org/september2000 [URL EXPIRED]
Children – the death toll
Whilst many people will remember the terrible images of Mohammed Al Durreh captured by a Palestinian film crew in the last moments of his short life, he was the first of dozens of children who have been murdered by the Zionist war machine. 11-year-old Mohammed Abu-Assishot was shot in the head whilst throwing stones on 4 October. By 21 October, 34 children had been killed. On 4 November, 13-year-old Ghazala Jaradet was shot in the head with a rubber bullet whilst she was walking home from school near Hebron. The Israeli army claimed that Ghazala was injured in a car crash and that her family and doctors fabricated the story. Settlers, too have murdered children. On 18 October, they shot 2-year-old Sara Al Haq as her father drove her home following a vain attempt to get hospital treatment for her temperature. The Israelis claimed that she was shot when her father was cleaning his gun; later, that he opened fire on the settlers first. A few days later, he was seized and detained on ‘the grounds that he was an organiser of the Intifada.
