[CTRL] No letup in Israeli iron fist on West Bank

[William Shannon]

http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/palest0110.php No letup in Israeli iron fist on West Bank By Richard Becker "PM's Office: Arafat Stays Put," read the headline in the Dec. 26, 2001, Jerusalem Post. Translation: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was continuing to prevent Palestinian Authority Chair Yasir Arafat from leaving the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he had been confined for the previous week. For the first time in years, Arafat was prevented from traveling to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem for the traditional Christmas Eve ceremony on Dec. 24. A Muslim, the PA leader has attended the midnight mass every year since 1995. His attendance is seen as an expression of the unity of the Palestinian people regardless of religion. About 10 percent of Palestinians are Christians. Israeli armor and infantry units surround Arafat's office in Ramallah. Many of the offices of the PA have been destroyed by U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter-bombers and attack helicopters in recent weeks. Israeli military forces occupy much of the miniscule 5 percent of historic Palestine--Zone A, as it is called--that is supposedly under the control of the PA. Today about 60 percent of the tiny and densely populated Gaza Strip is Zone A, along with most of the eight largest Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Israeli tanks and troops move freely in and out of Zone A, firing at will. At least 75 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the month of December alone. During the same period 37 Israelis were killed, most of them in two attacks by the Hamas-Islamic Resistance Movement. The drive from Ramallah to Bethlehem would normally take no more than 30 minutes. But the situation has not been normal for a long time. The Israeli army has sealed off all of the main Palestinian cities. For Palestinians to travel from one West Bank city to another, they must pass through Israeli checkpoints, where they are almost always turned back. Many of the roads have been dug up or blocked by concrete barriers brought in by Israeli army engineering units. The same is true of travel between different sections of Gaza. Nor is there any possibility of Palestinians traveling between the West Bank and Gaza, an hour-and-a-half drive, even for leading officials of the PA. The fracturing of the West Bank and Gaza has greatly intensified the suffering of the people. Unemployment has soared along with poverty and hunger, while commercial activity has plummeted. The average West Bank Palestinian has one-tenth the per-capita income of an Israeli. For Gazans, it's far worse. The Israeli soldiers have frequently used the checkpoints as a means of punishment and even torture, refusing to allow emergency medical cases to go through or slowing them down. Many deaths have resulted; many babies have been born in vehicles stopped on their way to hospitals. A favorite Israeli checkpoint tactic last summer was to force Palestinian drivers to stay in their vehicles for hours in the broiling sun with the windows tightly shut. Sharon provokes, demands no response As a condition for re-starting negotiations Sharon has demanded a week of "absolute quiet" from the Palestinian side. The Palestinians must stop the struggle against the illegal occupation while nothing at all is required of the Israeli occupying army, according to this formula. Then, and only then, will the Israeli government agree to talk to the Palestinians. Sharon, moreover, called the PA chair "irrelevant" and announced that the Israeli government would no longer talk to Arafat. The U.S. has completely sided with the criminal Sharon regime. In astonishingly arrogant language, President Bush stated, "It is time for Arafat to perform." Even as Arafat called for a cease-fire, the U.S. and Israel continued to step up their demands. When Hamas announced that it would halt armed actions inside the 1948 borders of Israel, while continuing the struggle in the West Bank and Gaza, U.S. officials responded by demanding that all resistance activities everywhere be halted. Under international law, a people living under military occupation has the right to resist by whatever means are at its disposal. The universally hailed French Resistance to Nazi occupation in World War II used guerrilla tactics: ambush, sabotage, bombings, assassination of German officials, etc. Virtually the entire world recognizes that the West Bank and Gaza, conquered by Israel in a 1967 war, are occupied territories. Even the U.S. government--which voted for United Nations resolutions 242 and 338 calling on Israel to withdraw--formally recognizes that the West Bank and Gaza are occupied lands. Sharon, U.S. seek Palestinian civil war Sharon's strategy of demanding Palestinian submission while Israel launches new provocations is designed to win support from U.S. public opinion. At the same time, Sharon, with the backing of the U.S., is seeking to split the Palestinian movement. What both the U.S. and Israel would really like to see is a civil war between Palestinian groups, one that they hope would lead to the destruction of the Palestinian resistance as a whole. The Bush administration has repeatedly demanded that the PA suppress nationalist, left and Islamic Palestinian organizations. Support for these groups has been growing dramatically as the struggle has intensified over the past 15 months. Sharon specifically linked the blocking of Arafat's Christmas visit to Bethlehem to a demand that the PA arrest the top leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the largest Palestinian Marxist organization, whose influence has risen sharply in the recent period. The PFLP carried out the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister, Rehavam Ze'evi, in October, in retaliation for the Israeli assassination-by-missile of PFLP General Secretary Abu Ali Mustafa in August. Ze'evi was a virulent anti-Arab racist, who commonly referred to Palestinians as "lice," and demanded that all Palestinians be expelled from Palestine. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld assailed the Palestinians for the death of Ze'evi, who Rumsfeld called "a cabinet member in a democratic government." But no U.S. officials have criticized the Israeli murder of Abu Ali Mustafa or any of the more than 70 other Palestinian leaders assassinated in the past year. World opinion against Israel The barring of PA Chair Arafat from Bethlehem was presented in the U.S. corporate media without a hint of criticism. There were no outraged denunciations about denial of religious freedom from either administration officials or their lapdog reporters. But virtually everywhere else--from the Vatican to the European Union presidency to the entire Arab and Islamic world--Arafat's exclusion was greeted with condemnation and outrage. The anger was only exacerbated by an Israeli official's statement, reported in the right-wing Jerusalem Post, that "Arafat is not a Christian and therefore did not need to attend the celebrations." The negative public relations generated by this incident even caused several members of Sharon's government to denounce the decision. A right-wing member of the Israeli parliament, Nahoum Langental, said: "It was stupid. We played into Arafat's hands, and proved that Israel does not allow freedom of movement." An unnamed Western diplomat was quoted in the Post as complaining that "Arafat got more attention during the Christmas celebrations than Jesus." Arafat himself responded with a televised statement: "Palestinians, I speak to you with a heart filled with grief because the unjust Israeli tanks, cement barriers and guns prevent me from participating with you in the annual celebrations. ... No one can humiliate the Palestinians or make them lose their determination."