From: "Joe Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:52:25 +0000
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Peoples War]
Palestine liberation struggle bound to be victorious
As we go into print, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which broke out on September 28
last year, following the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon, the notorious
war criminal, to the historic Muslim sanctuary of Haram al-Sharif
accompanied by the 2000-strong Israeli police force, is seven months old.
During these seven months, 500 people, of whom 400 were Palestinians, have
died, and 20,000 have been injured. Far from subsiding, the Palestinian
resistance to Zionist settler occupation and oppression has grown in
strength. Defying nazi-style collective punishment, economic strangulation,
forced closures, regular bombardment of the centres of Palestinian
population, state terrorism and state-sponsored assassination of prominent
Palestinians by Israeli death squads, the bulldozing of hundreds of
Palestinian houses, the uprooting of nearly 25,000 Palestinian-owned olive
trees (all of which actions amount to an attempt at ethnic cleansing by
another name), lobbing of stun grenades by the Israeli army at a peaceful
women�s demonstration and a children�s nursery (as happened in mid-March),
firing from tanks and helicopter gunships, the killing of the very old and
the very young by the rampaging Israeli army using live ammunition as well
as rubber bullets � braving all these atrocities hurled at them, the
Palestinian people continue to put up heroic resistance, which has justly
earned them the admiration and support of progressive humankind throughout
the world. The daily confrontations and shoot-outs between the Palestinian
resistance, on the one hand, and the Israeli army and Zionist settlers, on
the other, continue unabated with accelerating tempo. The Israeli electorate
voted Sharon into power in the belief that the new administration would
bring peace and security to Israel. Instead, as anyone with the least
foresight and understanding of the laws of history could have foretold, it
has brought increased suppression and misery for the Palestinians and fast
dwindling security for the Israelis. Hardly a day goes by without attacks by
the Palestinian resistance and fascistic reprisals by the Israeli army. Here
are just a few examples.
Sickening Israeli atrocities and Palestinian response
On 27th March two bombs exploded in Jerusalem. The first of these bombs,
planted in a car, exploded during the morning rush hour in the Talpoit
industrial district, injuring the driver of a passing bus and two others. In
the second explosion, at lunchtime, a suicide bomber blew himself up and
wounded 22 others. On 28th March the Israeli army launched helicopter
missile strikes against Yassir Arafat�s elite Force-17 inside Palestinian
territory in the West Bank town of Ramallah and the Gaza Strip, on the
pretext that the unit bore responsibility for bombings inside Israel. In the
week following this attack, Israel ambushed and kidnapped five members of
Force-17, again within Palestinian controlled territory, close to Ramallah.
Trouble broke out in Bethlehem, where an Israeli soldier was shot dead by a
Palestinian sniper on 2 April, following assassination of a member of the
Islamic Jihad movement in an Israeli helicopter missile attack on his car in
the Gaza Strip. According to eyewitnesses three missiles hit the car in
which Mohammed Abdelal was travelling. His was the first such assassination
since the election of Sharon a month earlier, although more than 20
assassinations of Palestinian National Liberation fighters were carried out
during the premiership of Ehud Barak.
In the first week of April, the Israeli army demolished 19 Palestinian
houses, one of these being the Shawarmeh house. Destroyed in 1998 and 1999,
and rebuilt each time, the Israeli army bulldozed it again, giving the
Shawarmeh family 10 minutes to clear out. On 5 April, shedding all sense of
honour and decency, Israeli soldiers fired on a convoy carrying three
Palestinian security officials back to Gaza from talks in Israel aimed at
renewing security co-operation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority
(PA). Not without reason, Amin al-Hindi, Palestinian intelligence chief,
stated that the shooting was an attempt to assassinate him and his
colleagues. The incident left two bodyguards injured. In Jenin � a West Bank
town � Palestinian security officers reported that a member of Islamic Jihad
had been killed when a bomb exploded in a booby-trapped telephone box. Even
a body like the UN Commission on Human Rights, in a draft report, published
towards the end of March, has accused Israel of using excessive and
disproportionate force from the start of the Intifada, adding that targeted
shooting of individuals was a breach of humanitarian law which would attract
international criminal responsibility. This can only mean that the Israeli
army was guilty of war crimes.
The 2nd week in April witnessed renewed clashes in the Gaza, where Israeli
helicopters fired missiles on Force-17 installations on the night of 10
April, with the exchange of mortar fire near the Zionist settlement of
Netzarim. In an attack on Palestine naval police headquarters in Gaza a
Palestinian officer was killed and seven others injured, while a missile
damaged a police headquarters at a Gaza refugee camp, in which 10 people
were injured.
Zionism goes berserk
In the face of the determined Palestinian resistance, and unable to quell
this resistance, the Zionist rulers have gone berserk. Losing all sense of
proportion, they are attacking in all directions, which can only bring their
downfall nearer. In a dangerous escalation of the conflict, on 11 April, the
Israeli army entered the city of Khan Yunis and demolished 25 Palestinian
houses. During the Easter weekend, Israel sent tanks and bulldozers for the
second time in a week into the Palestinian controlled territory in the Gaza
strip � this time it was Rafa�s turn, which sparked a fierce gun battle. By
the time the Israeli forces left Rafa, several houses had been destroyed and
35 Palestinians injured. One boy had one of his legs blown off by a tank
shell. This was the first time the Israelis launched a ground attack on
territory which, under the agreements signed between Israel and the
Palestinians, is under the complete and exclusive control of President
Arafat�s government. By taking the war into the Palestinian-controlled
areas, the Zionist rulers have blatantly pronounced a death sentence on the
Oslo Accords and at the same time invited the Palestinian resistance to
extend its campaign to Israeli cities � an invitation which the resistance
seems to have accepted willingly. On Saturday April 14, two bombs exploded
in the Central City of Kfar Saba. On Monday 16th April, the resistance
launched five mortar shells against Sederot, Ariel Sharon�s hometown. The
shells landed on a suburb of Sederot, close to a junction used every night
by Sharon to reach his farm. Israel retaliated by fierce air, land and sea
strikes against Palestinian security installations in the Gaza strip.
US imperialism backs Zionist settler repression
With the onset of the new Bush administration, US imperialism has shed even
the pretence of being a neutral interlocutor in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict; it is now openly encouraging Israeli acts of brigandage and
flouting by Israel of the Oslo Accords, of which the US is the guarantor.
While refusing to meet Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, the US
President Bush hosted war criminal Sharon on 20th March at a White House
lunch. After lunch, Sharon said that he had had a "very constructive and
frank discussion" with Mr Bush. The latter in turn said that he had told
Sharon that the US would not try "to force peace" but will stay engaged and
act as a facilitator. For all the violence and oppression perpetrated by
Zionism against the Palestinian people, Bush blamed the Palestinians for the
continued conflict and asked them to cease their resistance to occupation.
The Bush-Sharon meeting took place at the same time as fighting arose in
Palestine, where Israeli forces had just sanctioned 3,000 new houses to be
built at a Jewish settlement on occupied territory. Yet, the State
Department officials reported, the question of settlements was not raised
during Sharon�s meeting with the Secretary of State, Colin Powell. One week
after his meeting with Sharon, during his second formal press conference
since assuming office, President Bush, with the logic of an imperialist
gangster said: "the signal I am sending to the Palestinians is to stop the
violence. I can�t make it any more clear. And I hope that Chairman Arafat
hears it loud and clear�"
While hitting Palestinians hard, the Zionist jokers and their senile
imperialist masters expect the Palestinians to turn the other cheek. No
gentlemen, this will never happen. The Palestinians, taking their cue from
their oppressors, will hit back and hit very hard and teach Zionism and
imperialism alike a lesson they will never forget. Having been given the
green light by Bush, Sharon has intensified military attacks on the
Palestinians, including in areas under the exclusive control of the PA.
During the Easter weekend, in a further extension of the conflict, Israeli
warplanes attacked targets in Lebanon following the killing of an Israeli
soldier by the Hizbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement, in the Shebaa
farms, Lebanese territory which Israel continues to occupy illegally. In a
further attack on a Syrian radar position deep in Lebanon, the Israelis
killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded another five.
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, so goes an old saying.
All the Israeli attacks against the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and the
Syrian forces in Lebanon, while intended by the Zionists to bring security
and peace to Israel, will only serve to disturb its peace, imperil its
security and, finally, bring about the downfall of the Israeli state and
irreparably damage the interests of its imperialist patrons, in particular
those of US imperialism, whose crimes against the Palestinian and other
peoples (not to speak of its crimes against people in other parts of the
world) are increasingly being revealed in all their lurid grotesqueness, and
whose duplicity, double standards and hypocritical talk about
humanitarianism, liberty, democracy, national self determination and the
rule of law are being exposed for the humbug they are and always have been.
Just struggle of the Palestinian people
It is often claimed by the Zionist rulers and their liberal supporters that
their violence and oppression is merely a response to Palestinian attacks.
Following Bush, the Sunday Observer, a despicable �liberal� imperialist
organ, blaming Yassir Arafat for the suffering of the Palestinian people,
for no other reason than that he refused to be bludgeoned by Bill Clinton,
the previous US President, into accepting an unacceptable deal offered to
him, calls on him to "take the biggest gamble of his long career � and
regaining the moral high ground � by calling an end to the violence on the
Palestinian side" ('It's Arafat�s Call', Observer 15 April).
Obviously, if the Palestinians meekly accepted the lot allotted to them by
Zionism and imperialism, peace would doubtless prevail � a peace of the
graveyard. This imperialist �liberal� chatter ignores the fact that the real
cause of violence is the forcible colonisation by Zionism of Palestine and
the subjugation of the Palestinian people. As long as that occupation
persists, so will the resistance to it. Everyone knows that Palestine was
conquered by fire and sword, that the Palestinian people have been treated
in a barbarous fashion, subjected to medieval torture, killed in their tens
of thousands, with the aid of the latest killing machines, exploited in a
thousand ways and often deprived of the means of earning a livelihood at
all. Their oppressors will not see reason. Palestinians have tried all their
persuasive and reasoning powers to no avail. There is only one way open to
them if they want to achieve their liberation, that is, protracted armed
struggle to defeat their occupiers, torturers, exploiters. If Zionism
conquered Palestine by fire and sword, only with fire and sword can the
Palestinian people liberate from the clutches of Zionism and it imperialist
paymasters. The Palestinian people have learned that lesson and are busy
putting it into practice. Theirs is just struggle. Their victory is as
inevitable as is the downfall of Zionism. No force on earth can stop it. The
latest witness in proof of our statement comes in the form of widespread
draft dodging by young Israeli reservists.
Palestinian resistance to the regime of occupation is undermining the morale
of the Israeli army and of the Israeli population at large. The Sunday
Telegraph of 1 April reported that Israel had jailed 600 reservists in a
desperate attempt to put an end to a growing rebellion against military
service in the occupied territories, where the intifada has claimed the
lives of several reservists and "shows signs of spiralling out of control".
According to the Sunday Telegraph, while 2,500 reservists have gone absent
without leave, thousands of others have become "grey conscientious
objectors", which is to say that they have fabricated medical or personal
reasons so as to avoid being called up for duty. Every male Israeli is
legally required to do three years of national service between the ages of
18 and 21, followed by an obligation to do reserve duty - normally about 30
days- until the age of between 40 and 50. Such reservists form the
400,000-strong army which supplements the regular force of 200,000
conscripts and professional soldiers.
The majority of the reservists, says the Sunday Telegraph, have little, if
any, sympathy with the settlers, who justify the occupation on religious and
obscurantist grounds, to which the reservists have moral and political
objections. As a result they are refusing to serve, and the number of those
so refusing has increased sharply with the intensification of the intifada.
Quite a few reservists have been killed and the settlements are increasingly
coming under regular mortar attack for the first time. Clashes in Hebron and
a number of bomb blasts have only served to emphasise the risks faced by the
reservists.
A reservist tank commander and a leader of Yesh Gvuel (which means 'there is
a limit'), Mr Ishai Menuchem, is reported as saying:
"The reservists do not care about the territories. Many are in their
thirties and forties, they have families and care more about their
businesses or studies. So they are not willing to pay the price and risk
their lives for something they don't believe in. This is a big problem for
the army because it will affect their operations. The army needs to
understand that fewer and fewer people are willing to do their dirty work in
the territories" (Sunday Telegraph, 1 April 2001).
The issue is divisive and tearing Israeli society apart. The problem has
become acute as reservists are being brought in with increasing frequency to
replace regular soldiers who are due for a rest following a four-month tour
of duty. Far from solving the crisis, the jailing of the reservists may
serve to exacerbate it by uniting opposition to draft and provoking
ever-greater numbers to avoid service. One Israeli battalion commander says:
"This may lead to terrible crisis. More draft dodgers means fewer soldiers
for missions. The workload will increase, not to mention the level of
danger. I do not want my men to feel like suckers" (ibid.).
The Israeli army is inundated with thousands of petitions from parents who
do not want their sons to be sent into the occupied territories to do their
national service. Ruth Hillier, whose teenage son is a conscientious
objector, has petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court in an endeavour to
prevent her son being drafted:
"We are shaking their tree and the army is worried because it knows this
case could open the floodgates. The youth in Israel is saying no but the
political establishment is not listening. It is time that we started looking
at a very different type of army - a professional army that can operate in a
professional way" (ibid.).
The whole point is that, whatever the composition of the army, be it
professional or reservist, in view of the dirty work of oppressing and
terrorising another people that it is engaged in, work which is devoid of
all soldiering honour, it is bound, as time goes on, to lead to
disintegration through demoralisation in the face of determined resistance
by a people who have been pushed into a corner, and who are fighting for
their very existence. US imperialists discovered it in Korea and Vietnam.
Israeli Zionism, refusing to learn from history, is being taught this bitter
lesson by daily practice in the occupied territories. In the end, Mistress
Reality will have a sobering effect. Zionism will have to beat a humiliating
retreat from the occupied territories, just as it was forced to do from
south Lebanon. Of that there can be no doubt.
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