------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 14, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
'Road map' nears collapse
ISRAELI PARLIAMENT PASSES RACIST MARRIAGE ACT
By Richard Becker
Events of late July and early August brought the U.S.-sponsored "Road Map for Peace" in the Middle East close to collapse. The Israeli government headed by Ariel Sharon, with the backing of key forces in the United States, reneged on its extremely modest commitments under the plan while stepping up repression against the Palestinian people.
And for all those who have doubted the Israeli regime's apartheid character, the Knesset (parliament) wrapped up the week by overwhelmingly passing an anti-Palestinian marriage law. In another sign of the government's openly racist trajectory, the Knesset passed by a margin of 53-25 the new "Nationality and Entry into Israel" law.
The law forbids Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from obtaining Israeli citizenship or residence permits to live with their spouses and children.
This law only applies to Palestinians. Persons from any other country who marry Israelis are entitled to become Israeli citizens.
The overwhelming majority of Palestinian-Israeli marriages are between Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, and Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship.
B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, said of the new law: "The bill makes a cynical use of flimsy security arguments to disguise blatant discrimination. The bill is racist."
Jafar Savah, from Mossawa, an advocacy center for Palestinians living in Israel, said, "We see this law as the implementation of the 'transfer' policy by the state of Israel."
A DISINTEGRATING 'ROAD MAP'
The "road map" is a U.S. plan to create what one historian, Dr. Ghada Hashem Talhami, recently called a "Palestinian mini-mini-mini state"--in other words, a Bantustan, independent in name, but a colony in reality--while putting an end to the Palestinian national liberation struggle.
The Palestinian movement is seen in Washington as a major obstacle to U.S. ruling-class plans to restructure the Middle East in the aftermath of the conquest of Iraq.
On July 30, when Sharon visited Washing ton for the ninth time in the Bush presidency--far more visits than any other foreign leader has made--the issue of Israel's "separation wall" was on the agenda.
Israel is building a 370-mile-long barrier, made up of electric fences, trenches, tank tracks, coils of razor wire and concrete walls more than 25 feet high, inside the West Bank. When the wall is completed, scheduled for the end of 2003, it will cut out more than 50 percent of the territory of the West Bank. Already, it has separated thousands of Palestinian farmers from their land.
While meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas a few days before the Sharon visit, President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell had mildly criticized the wall. Powell said, "The fence is producing a fait accompli with regard to what a Palestinian state might look like."
But after their White House meeting, Sharon, with Bush standing next to him, told reporters that Israel has every intention of continuing to build the wall.
How could an Israeli leader, whose country is so dependent on U.S. aid and support, so blatantly defy the will of the U.S. president? Only if he was confident that Bush wasn't really serious, Israel had strong support from elsewhere in the U.S. power structure, or a combination of the two.
The day before the latest Bush-Sharon meeting, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, an ardent "Christian Zionist," addressed the Knesset. DeLay called himself "an Israeli at heart." He condemned the Palestinians and the idea of a Palestinian state.
"Christian Zionists" see the "restoration of Israel" as a necessary precondition for the "second coming" of Jesus Christ. Upon his return, they believe, Jesus will pack off to "hell" all "unbelievers"--including the Jewish people. Nonetheless, the Israeli ruling class actively seeks the support of Christian fundamentalists in the United States.
No sooner did Sharon arrive back in Israel than his cabinet announced plans to expand a major Israeli settlement in Gaza, in direct violation of the conditions of the "road map." In Gaza, 1.2 million Palestinians live on 60 percent of a tiny piece of land, while 5,000 Israeli settlers control 30 percent of the territory.
In additional violations of the agreement, the Israeli government refused to withdraw from any Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Further, Israel failed to release any of the more than 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. On the contrary, the Israeli military carried out new roundups of Palestinian activists and imposed harsh new conditions inside the already hellish prisons.
At one prison, the jailers built a plastic wall so that there could be no physical contact between prisoners and their families.
On July 31, in response, hundreds of prisoners rebelled. Thousands rallied to their support the next day by launching a hunger strike demanding the release of all political prisoners.
PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE PREPARING FOR NEXT PHASE
August 1 also saw major protests in the West Bank and Gaza by the main nationalist and Islamic organizations. They have been observing a hudna, or ceasefire, for nearly two months.
In Nablus, more than 10,000 people participated in a rally sponsored by Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. In Gaza, the Islamic Jihad held an armed demonstration.
On the same day, the Popular Resistance Committees--in which Fateh, the Palestine National Liberation Movement, plays a leading role--organized a major activity in Gaza's Bureij refugee camp.
In the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Pales tinians and international supporters protested the completion of the first 90-mile section of the "apartheid wall." They painted slogans demanding it be dismantled. Israeli soldiers wounded several demonstrators and arrested a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
And in the Galilee, inside the Green Line that marks the 1948 borders of Israel, a Palestinian youth camp was shut down and all the youths and organizers taken into custody. The Israeli authorities call the 1.2 million Palestinians who live inside the Green Line "Israeli Arabs" as part of a concerted effort to separate them from the Palestinian nationalist movement. Palestinians living inside these borders have suffered heavy discrimination since the Israeli state was established 53 years ago.
Israeli TV reportedly showed the young people in the camp marching and chanting, "We don't want flour, we don't want sardines, we want weapons," and, "We don't want Washing ton mediators, we don't want Israeli [identification] papers." The demonstration highlighted the growing radicalization among Palestinians, especially young people, who make up 20 percent of Israel's population.
Four of the camp's adult organizers, two Pales tinians and two Jewish Israelis, from the Abna al-Balad (People of the Homeland) organization, were jailed after the youths were released.
All these recent developments point toward a further intensification of the struggle.
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