------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 10, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
PALESTINIANS RESIST DESPITE MASSACRES: GAZA BECOMES AN URBAN BATTLEGROUND
By John Catalinotto
For over two weeks in May the Israeli military carried out a massive assault in the densely populated and occupied Gaza Strip, especially the southern town of Rafah at the Egyptian border. They killed dozens of Palestinians and wounded hundreds with rockets, tank shells, machine gun rounds and sniper fire.
The ultra-right Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon ordered this assault even as he pro moted a plan that is ostensibly to remove Israeli settlements from Gaza. He is in a battle with other right-wing members of his Likud Party over what tactics to apply to make the Israeli occupation of Palestine succeed.
According to Palestinian medical caregivers, most of the dead and wounded in Gaza were civilians, many of them children. In addition, the Israeli military used bulldozers and explosives to destroy hundreds of homes and make thousands of Palestinians homeless.
Amnesty International has demanded an investigation into the deaths of Asma al-Mughayr, 16 years old, and her 13-year-old brother, Ahmad. The two children were shot dead on May 18 on the roof terrace of their home in Rafah. Each was killed by a single bullet to the head.
According to the Israeli anti-war movement Gush Shalom, evidence indicates that "the bullets which killed the two children were fired from the top floor of a nearby house, the highest building in the area, which had been taken over by Israeli soldiers shortly before the two children were shot."
The incident that sparked international condemnations took place on May 19 when Israeli tanks fired on civilian demonstrators in Rafah. According to an Associated Press report: "Israeli forces fired a missile and a barrage of tank shells to hold back a crowd of Palestinians protesting military operations in Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 10, including children and teens. Overwhelmed doctors treated some of the dozens of wounded on blood-drenched hospital floors."
The United Nations Security Council voted 14-0 on May 19 to condemn the Israeli attacks, but the U.S. ambassador abstained. Many individual governments, including Brazil, India and Pakistan, as well as the African Union, condemned the Israeli massacres.
Washington refused to join the condemnation. When it abstained instead of vetoing, that did put more public distance between U.S. and Israeli policies than is usual. Nevertheless, the Israeli military's helicopter pilots continued to use U.S.-supplied weapons to carry out bombing and rocket attacks on targets--that is, Palestinian people--in the occupied territories.
Although the Israeli military has been carrying out a wholesale slaughter of Pales tinians, perhaps the most telling battles of the month took place on May 10 and 11. On May 10, an Israeli tank carrying explosives to blow up homes hit a mine in the Zeitoun district of Gaza. It exploded, killing the six-member tank crew. The next day another five Israeli troops were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade hit their explosives-laden armored personnel carrier. This added up to the greatest loss of Israeli troops in years.
These casualties, though small in number compared to the slaughter of Pales tinian civilians, still represented a show of determination and courage by the Pales tinian fighters that had an impact on the Israeli population. On May 15 some 150,000 war-weary Israelis protested Sharon's aggressive policies in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square and demanded he withdraw from Gaza.
Later in the month, 46 reserve soldiers signed a statement refusing to defend the settlements in Gaza. As the attacks on Rafah continued, the mother of an Israeli colonel joined a protest of the massacres, carrying a sign that read, "Down with the occupation."
JUNE 5, 1967
Before June 1967, the Egyptian government administered Gaza. It was populated by Palestinian refugees who had been driven from their homes in the 1948 war that created Israel. On June 5, 1967, Israel, with the full support of the U.S. government under President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, launched a lightning war on Syria, Egypt and Jordan. It seized and has held until now Jordan's West Bank, Syria's Golan Heights, and Gaza.
The preponderant strategy endorsed by all groupings in the U.S. imperialist ruling class having major interests in this oil-rich region has been to develop the Israeli state as a strategic ally in repressing the movements for Middle East liberation. For over 50 years Washington has given close economic, military and diplomatic support to Israel, which in turn is completely dependent on U.S. imperialism for its existence as a settler state.
The Bush administration's so-called neo-cons, that is, the grouping most responsible for planning the war on Iraq, have also given the strongest support to the most aggressive Israeli factions in the Likud Party, including Sharon himself. These rightists agree on using force to destroy any regime in the region that expres ses independence and sovereignty. Throughout these same years, however, not only these rightists but liberal Demo crats have fully supported Israel against any real gains for Palestinian liberation.
In a word, the U.S. ruling class believes its interests in the region are best served by maintaining an alliance with the Israeli state. This virtual unity of ruling-class interests had always proved an obstacle to developing a popular movement of solidarity with Palestinian liberation. Even within the anti-war movement, this solidarity could not be taken for granted.
At the time of the 1967 war, the only action taken by the U.S. movement was a demonstration by Youth Against War and Fascism, the youth organization of Workers World Party. YAWF protested the U.S.-backed Israeli aggression in a demonstration at the United Nations in New York.
In the 37 years since that date, the Palestinians, through their heroic struggle, have established themselves as a central liberation movement among the peoples of the region, winning solidarity throughout the world. Even so, it was only after a determined effort by the ANSWER coalition that the new anti-war movement in the United States included solidarity with Palestine liberation in the demonstrations last March 20.
For the demonstrations this June 5, the ANSWER coalition will demand: "End colonial occupation from Iraq to Palestine--support the right of return!"
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