SEETHING WITH RAGE  

The Palestinian Saga --- II  

N D Jayaprakash  

WHILE individual suicide bombings are described as terrorist attacks, the widespread atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli armed forces on the Palestinians, for some strange reason, are not categorised as such! It is very unfortunate that the world has largely remained a mute spectator to the systematic terror, humiliation and plunder of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Zionists.

Micro-level terror gets all the attention, while macro-level terror goes unnoticed! Mahatma Gandhi's observation in this regard is again very pertinent here. He said:

"I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted cannons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds" [The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, op cit].

MEANING OF OCCUPATION

It has always been difficult to fathom the meaning of occupation. But an eyewitness account by a keen observer of the goings on should be an eye-opener to anyone with an iota of conscience regarding the horrendous state of affairs in the occupied territories of Palestine. At the International Meeting on the Question of Palestine organised in July 2001 at Madrid, Spain, by the United Nations' Division on Palestinian Rights (DPR), the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory was again one of the issues in focus. One of those who spoke at the meeting was Jeff Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, Jerusalem. The report of the meeting, which was subsequently brought out, has summarised his speech as follows:

"Jeff Halper…said that Israel had succeeded in making the occupation invisible…. In order to maintain control for a long period of time and to avoid international opposition, the control had to be subtle, invisible and bureaucratic, through thousands of regulations and a so-called civil administration that was actually run by the military.

"Mr Halper described the Matrix of Control, the system imposed by Israel over the occupied Palestinian territory.… The Matrix was composed of three layers. One of them was military actions, both in response to the intifada and in "normal times." Those in normal times included the use of undercover units and collaborators who undermined the very fabric of Palestinian society. The second measure was creating facts on the ground: expropriation of land, construction of more than 200 settlements, carving the occupied territory into areas which confined Palestinians to some 190 islands. It also included a massive system of highways; severe control on Palestinian movement; construction of industrial parks; control over aquifers; and exploitation of holy places as a pretext for maintaining a security presence.

“The third and the subtlest mechanism was bureaucratic or legal in nature. It entangled Palestinians in a tight web of restrictions including temporary closures of the West Bank and Gaza, a discriminatory system of work, entrance and travel permits restricting freedom of movement, and active displacement through exile, deportation and induced immigration. Land expropriation, house demolitions, schemes of transfer, a freeze on the natural development of Palestinian town and villages, restrictions on the planting of crops and their sale came under such bureaucratic controls. The advantage of the Matrix of Control was its invisibility. Since it was a low-intensity control, it was not covered by the media even though it absolutely defined Palestinian life" [UN Document No. 01-63718, dated November 27, 2001, Para 44 and 45].

Is there any way of describing the combination of indiscriminate repression, selective assassinations, frequent incursions, massive destruction, systematic torture and harassment, imposition of collective punishment, etc, other than to term it as fascistic? Why is the world at large shying away from describing the Zionist terror as such? Refusing to recognise the truth would not obliterate it.

While Albert Einstein and others had recognised this fact as early as 1948 (see the first part of this article), renowned Israeli philosopher and scientist Yeshayahu Leibovitz made yet another pertinent observation soon after Israel had occupied more Palestinian and other Arab lands in 1967. He wrote: “A state governing a hostile population of 1.5 million to 2 million   foreigners [the number of Palestinians in the occupied territories in 1967] is bound to become a Shin Bet [Security Service] state, with all that this       implies for the spirit of education, freedom of speech and thought and democracy. Israel will be infected with corruption, characteristic of any colonial regime. The administration will have to deal with the suppression of an Arab protest movement on the one hand, and with the acquisition of Arab quisling s on the other…. The army, which has been so far a people’s army, will degenerate as well as by becoming an occupation army, and its officers, turned into military governors, will not differ from military governors elsewhere in the world” [Quoted in Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948, LeftWord Books, New Delhi, May 2003, p 8].

Yeshayahu Leibovitz’s prediction has indeed become prophetic!

Tanya Reinhart, professor of linguistics and cultural studies at Tel Aviv University and the University of Utrecht, has given a vivid account of the situation currently prevailing in Palestine in her book that was first published last year. She has described the situation as follows:

“Surrounded by electronic fences and military posts, tightly sealed from     the outside world, Palestinian Gaza has turned into a massive prison ghetto. The standard of living in Gaza, which were already among the lowest in the world, have deteriorated sharply since Oslo [1993]…. Since Oslo they are not even allowed to visit their relatives in the West Bank, and only a lucky few carry exit permits for work in Israel.

“Possibly Israel intended to allow the Palestinians, in some future time, to call their prison “the Palestinian state,” but the overall dynamics of Israeli domination would remain the same. If the prisoners try to rebel, as is happening now, the internal roads are blocked and the area is divided into smaller prison units, each surrounded by Israeli tanks. The Palestinian prisoners can be bombarded from the air, with nowhere to escape to; their food supply, electricity, and fuel are all controlled by Israel and cut off at the will of the prison guards. Israel has given the Palestinians in Gaza one choice: Accept prison life or perish. Israel’s efforts have since focused on extending the Gaza arrangement to the West Bank” [Ibid, p 18].

While monitoring the situation on the ground on a daily basis, the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) has on several occasions voiced its grave concern at the severity of the Israeli military response to the outbreak of Palestinian protest. The latest report released by the committee on October 10, 2002, has not only reconfirmed every aspect of Jeff Halper's and Tanya Reinhart’s observations quoted above, but has further noted that, as a result of the highhanded actions of the occupying Israeli army and the Zionist settlers,

"Daily Palestinian income losses were estimated at some 7.6 million dollars. Since the start of the current intifada, overall income losses have been estimated at 3.3 billion dollars. The unemployment rate rose from 11 per cent in the third quarter of 2000 to 78 per cent in the second quarter of 2002. In the absence of alternative sources of income, the number of Palestinians living below the poverty line rose dramatically and reached 70 per cent in the Gaza Strip and 55 per cent in the West Bank. The productive sectors of the Palestinian economy, such as agriculture, industry, commerce and tourism, were practically obliterated” [Para 21, UN GA Official Records No. A/57/35, October 10, 2002].

SHOCKING APATHY

The CEIRPP has been submitting its report to the UN General Assembly every year for the last 25 years. But it seems to have made little difference. According to the committee: "The recommendations made by the committee in its first report to the General Assembly were endorsed by the assembly as a basis for the solution of the question of Palestine. In its subsequent reports, the committee has continued to stress that a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the question of Palestine, the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, must be based on the relevant United Nations resolutions and the following essential principles: the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and from the other occupied Arab territories; respect for the right of all states in the region to live in peace within secure and internationally recognised boundaries; and the recognition and exercise of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination. The committee's recommendations could not be implemented, and the assembly each year renewed the committee's mandate and requested it to intensify efforts in pursuit of its objectives" [Para 2, ibid].

The United States and its allies, who dominate the UN Security Council, have ensured that the CEIRPP recommendations remain unimplemented. The only inference that one could draw from this pathetic state of affairs is that as long as the United States is allowed to play such a domineering role, the UN can never fulfil the objectives for which it was founded. Without the unstinting support of the US, there is no way that the Zionists would dare to act with such abandon. If the Israeli government has to mend its fascistic policies pressure has to be exerted on the US administration and none else.

(The same United States was quick to react when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. UN Security Council sanction was no problem and the US lost no time in assembling a 36-nation international coalition to oust Iraq to ostensibly protect the human rights of the 1,700,000 Kuwaitis. However, the human rights of more than four times that many Palestinians, who are also in the same region and who are under occupation of the Israelis for the last 55 years, are of least concern to the United States! Can there be any better example of double standards?)

The first intifada that had begun on December 9, 1987, ended in 1993 through some notable diplomatic initiatives. It began with a peace conference of concerned parties (minus the PLO) at Madrid on October 31, 1991. The major breakthrough was achieved when on September 10, 1993, the PLO and the government of Israel exchanged letters of mutual recognition. This was brought about through the intervention of the late Norwegian foreign minister John Holst. The developments at Oslo (Norway) have been an important milestone in the journey towards the realisation of a just and lasting peace in the region. Several follow-up agreements have been signed since then, the fifth one being on October 23, 1998 at Washington. The sacred date that Palestinians anxiously waited for to exercise their inalienable rights as an independent people was May 4, 1999.

But the saddest part is that even four years later, the Israeli government remains non-committed to the articles of the five agreements signed since the commencement of the peace process. Instead, the Israeli leadership in its latest phase has chosen to unleash terror with a view to derailing all that was achieved so far. There was therefore a big question mark over the fate of the Oslo process. Doubts were also expressed as to whether the entire exercise was merely intended to raise false hopes and to hoodwink the Palestinians. Thanks to the United States, the Oslo process has now been given a quite burial.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Central Council (PCC), at its meeting held in the presence of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) president, Yasser Arafat, in Gaza on July 2 and 3, 2000, has reiterated its stand vis-à-vis the key issues of the conflict. The PCC reaffirmed that:

1) It stands by its commitment regarding the right of the Palestinian refugees to return or to seek adequate compensation in accordance with UN resolution 194 and that it would reject all attempts aimed at accommodating Palestinian refugees abroad which would deprive them of the right of return.

2) It would continue to seek complete Israeli withdrawal from all the Palestinian land occupied in June 1967, including Jerusalem, in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and based on the principle of "Land for Peace" as enunciated at the Madrid Peace Conference.

3) It would continue to seek the removal and dismantling of all Jewish settlements built in the occupied territories.

4) East Jerusalem occupied by Israel in June 1967 would be the capital of the independent Palestinian state and that peace will never prevail without the liberation of East Jerusalem from Israeli occupation [see: http://www.minfo.gov.ps/key/e_centr.htm].

CURRENT CRISIS

It was the highly provocative visit of the then opposition leader (and the current prime minister) Ariel Sharon to the Al-Haram al-Sharif compound (the third holiest site in Islam) in the Old City of Jerusalem on September 28, 2000, that set off the second intifada. Another event that escalated the crisis further was the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa, head of the leftist PFLP --- one of the key constituents of the PLO. In a targeted killing the Israelis eliminated him by firing two missiles into his office in Ramallah on August 27, 2001. Shortly afterwards, on October 17, 2001, Rehavam Zeevi --- the most right-wing minister of the Israeli cabinet --- was assassinated for which the Israelis have held the PFLP responsible.

Zeevi's assassination could not have been the reason for Israel to step up its current offensive. Nearly two weeks earlier on October 5, 2001, in the aftermath of the September 11 events, Israel had already sent in tanks and troops into areas that had been handed over to the PNA as per the Oslo accord of 1993. From then on, Israeli forces have been wrecking havoc in West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is clear that, in the garb of fighting "Palestinian terrorism,” Israel was merely looking for excuses for not complying with its obligations under the Oslo accord especially concerning the rights of the Palestinian refugees and regarding withdrawal of Israeli settlements from the occupied territories. The spate of mindless suicide bombing attacks did help the Israeli cause a great deal.

According to historian Aijaz Ahmed, a visiting professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi), the renewed Israeli aggression seems to have three other objectives:

1) To beat the populace into abject submission through military assault, political repression, encirclement and starvation;

2) The permanent destruction of infrastructure as well as the Palestinian Authority as such, so that living conditions become so insufferable that sizeable numbers of people would be forced to flee the occupied territories;

3) The toppling of Arafat and negotiating with local leaders so that the leaders become the equivalent of the "chiefs" in colonial Africa and are then made to manage the remaining population on the models of the Bantustans in apartheid South Africa.

He then went on to add:

"US collusion in all this is palpable. It has bestowed upon Israel 92 billion dollars in aid, more than any country has ever gifted another country. It allows Israel to use the whole range of US-supplied weaponry --- from F-16 jets to Apache helicopters --- to kill and terrorise a population that does not even have ordinary armour to defend itself” [Aijaz Ahmed, Israel's Colonial War, Frontline, Chennai, March 1, 2002, pp 58-59].

The Zionists were intent on destroying the PLO as an organisation and to discredit its leadership, if not eliminate them physically. The infrastructural network of the PNA was also systematically targeted. Since the beginning of the second intifada over two years ago, violent confrontations have left more than 3000 dead and over 26,000 thousand wounded --- many of them permanently disabled, including hundreds of children. Predictably, most of the casualties are Palestinians. The Jewish population in Israel has already risen to about 5,000,000 and the free flow of Jewish immigrants meant occupation of more and more Palestinian lands!

Jewish settlers are occupying West Bank and Gaza Strip (ie, whatever is left of the land ostensibly allocated to the Palestinians under the UN partition plan of 1947) at an alarming rate. This is precisely the issue that is adding fuel to the fire.

By 1998, 62 per cent of the land in West Bank and 35 per cent in Gaza were confiscated to serve only 155,000 Israeli settlers, while nearly 3,000,000 Palestinians were cramped into rest of the area [Khalid El-Sheikh, The Palestinian Catastrophe, Embassy of the State of Palestine, New Delhi, 1998, p 65].  Thus, nearly 90 per cent of the original Palestine homeland has been taken over by the Zionists.

The Palestinian population has also gone up to over 8,000,000 today. While nearly 2,000,000 live in West Bank, over one million in Gaza Strip and about one million in Israel, over 4 million of them live in Diaspora in the four corners of the world. Their living conditions are such that during 2000-2001, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) had to provide "some 3.8 million Palestine refugees with social services, schooling and health care" [Para 29, UN GA Official Records No. A/56/35, October 31, 2001]. Not only has that figure gone up by another 100,000 during 2001-2002, but also the humanitarian crisis in Palestine has now reached a critical stage. According to the commissioner-general of the UNRWA, Peter Hansen: "…today in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, an insidious hunger has the Palestinian people in its grip…. No drought has hit Gaza and the West Bank, no crops have failed and the shops are often full of food. But the failure of the peace process and the destruction of the economy by Israel's closure policy have had the effect of a terrible natural disaster…. There are as yet no skeletal faces in Gaza for the television cameras to record, no blotted bellies to shock the world to action. Instead, the Palestinians face hidden hunger and the quite horror of a generation that will be physically and mentally stunted for the rest of their lives" [Peter Hansen, Hunger In Palestine, The Hindu, Delhi, December 10, 2002, p 15].

THE SOLUTION

Under the circumstances, the only possible solution to the ongoing conflict is the convening of an authoritative international conference for peace in the region as proposed by the UN General Assembly resolution 38/58C adopted on December 13, 1983. The PLO has strongly supported such a conference. The EEC (presently the European Union) too on February 28, 1987, had endorsed the said UN resolution. The proposal was reaffirmed by the UN General Assembly through resolution 43/176 adopted on December 15, 1988 by 138 votes to 2, with just the United States and Israel opposing it.

However, the US has exploited the September 11, 2001 events to gain the upper hand. The UN secretary-general was quietly pressurized by it “to form a new coordinating mechanism for international peace efforts known as the Quartet” in November 2001 [Para 14, UN SC, A/57/621, S/2002/1268, November 29, 2002]. The Quartet supposedly consists of the United Nations (nominally represented by the secretary-general), the United States, the Russian Federation and the European Union. It is apparently a mechanism by which the US could run the show by effectively keeping the third world countries and supporters of the Palestinian cause out of the decision making process. As is evident the so-called “Roadmap,” which was released by the Quartet on April 30, 2003, is nothing but a ring-road map for driving the Palestinians around in circles! The desperate attempts by the US administration to hijack the proposed international conference, with a view to shielding the Israeli leadership and whitewashing the inhuman crimes it has been committing against the Palestinian people, ought to be sternly resisted.

In the light of the colossal indifference towards their just cause and the almost total inability on the part of the international community to ensure that justice is done, is it at all surprising that the beleaguered Palestinians are seething with rage?

(Concluded)