Israel Pursues All-Out War While the United States Remains “Neutral”

By Rachelle Marshall

I cannot control people who bury their dead every day. —Yasser Arafat, quoted in the Jerusalem Times, May 4.

The struggle is reborn. We will not accomplish anything under Ariel Sharon, but time will pass, and he will pass, and while he can demolish our homes he cannot demolish our spirit. —Mahmoud Wadi, 60-year-old teacher, May 15.

As the Palestinians observed Al-Nakba, the 53rd anniversary of the catastrophe that befell them when Israel became a state, they were in the midst of a new catastrophe. Palestinian towns and refugee camps have become free-fire zones as Israel defends its illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza with ground-to-ground missiles, armor-piercing bullets, and tank shells that spew razor-sharp fragments in all directions. By the end of May no Palestinian was safe. In a deadly game of tit-for-tat Israel responds to every bullet fired and every home-made mortar tossed by a Palestinian—most of which miss their mark—with indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian neighborhoods and refugee camps, flattening buildings and homes, bulldozing agricultural land, and ripping up fruit trees.

On May 19 a deadly suicide bombing in Netanya by a 21-year-old member of Hamas brought on Israel’s most devastating display of force since the 1967 war. Although Yasser Arafat immediately condemned the killing of Israeli civilians and the Palestinian Authority disavowed responsibility, the Israelis unleashed American-made F-16 war planes to bomb Palestinian cities. In Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin and Tulkaram, offices of the Palestinian Authority were turned to rubble. Within two days at least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.

The ferocity of Israel’s attack aroused international condemnation. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called it “excessive and misdirected,” and Arab and European leaders urged more American involvement. But reaction in Washington remained tempered. Vice President Richard Cheney asked Israel to stop using F-16s to bomb civilians, but called on both sides to stop the violence.

One of the buildings Israel destroyed was the headquarters of the Palestinian security force that was attempting to reign in Hamas. Another was the home of Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Security Agency and a man Washington regards as a moderate. Rajoub’s 10-year-old son and several others were wounded in the attack. Obviously Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes he can cope with Islamic militants more easily than with moderate Palestinian leaders who can plead the Palestinians’ case before the world. This explains why Israel systematically bombards office buildings and other institutions of the Palestinian Authority, and has assassinated more than a dozen Fatah officials.

It is a policy that leaves a trail of innocent victims. Israeli commandos sent to kill Hassan Qadi, a Fatah activist, blew up an entire apartment house in Ramallah, killing two small children who lived upstairs and wounding their mother and five-year-old sister. Two weeks later Israeli helicopters launched rockets at a car containing Abdel Karim Awais, a Palestinian militant. They missed Awais but killed two bystanders, and wounded 17 others.

By mid-May the IsraeIi army was killing without provocation—a policy Israeli television referred to as “preemptive retaliation.” Late on the night of May 14 five young Palestinian policemen were preparing dinner at their command post when Israeli troops arrived and shot all of them in cold blood. The army later claimed the action was “a mistake,” but the killing only fueled Palestinian anger. The next day, tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered to observe the Day of Catastrophe with three minutes of silence, as Israeli soldiers stood by. When boys began throwing stones the soldiers fired on the crowd, killing four and wounding at least 200 others. According to the Los Angeles Times, reporters saw Israeli snipers deliberately picking off individuals. Among the wounded was a French reporter who was shot point-blank in the chest and survived only because he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

After the suicide bombing in Netanya, Arafat’s adviser Tayeb Abdel Rahim pleaded for an end to the violence, saying “Stopping this deterioration requires wisdom, not more shellings and killings.” But Sharon was not listening. He rejected a request by Secretary of State Colin Powell to stop settlement expansion, rejected a cease-fire plan put forward by Egypt and Jordan, and dismissed as “unacceptable” the recommendations of an international commission headed by former Sen. George Mitchell.

Egypt and Jordan asked both sides to observe an immediate cease-fire and called on Israel to lift the blockade of the West Bank and Gaza, withdraw the army to its positions on Sept. 28, stop settlement building, and turn over the revenue it owes to the Palestinian Authority. The Mitchell report, officially published on May 21 and signed by former Sen. Warren Rudman, Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorbjoern Jagland, and Javier Solano of the European Union, made similar recommendations and stressed the need for an immediate settlement freeze in order to end the violence. The Palestinians accepted both sets of proposals.

Peres reportedly endorsed the bombing of Palestinian cities.

The Mitchell report called on the Palestinians to end their attacks on Israelis, but also pointed to “the humiliation and frustration that Palestinians must endure every day as a result of living with the effects of occupation…and the determination of the Palestinians to achieve independence and genuine self-determination.” The commission left no doubt that Sharon’s Sept. 28 visit to the al-Aksa Mosque and Israel’s subsequent use of deadly force against unarmed protesters were the chief causes of the violence that followed.

Finally, the report concluded that “agreed commitments must be implemented, international law respected, and human rights protected,” if there was to be peace. Sharon is prepared to do none of these things. He has repeatedly declared that as a matter of principle he will not stop settlement construction. Just after the Mitchell commission’s recommendations were made public in early May, he increased subsidies for settlement expansion and announced that 496 homes would be added to the huge settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. A total of 7,000 settlement units are already under construction on the West Bank, despite 3,000 existing vacancies.

Israeli newspapers have criticized Sharon for using tactics that provoke greater hostility. “Only a revenge-seeking fool,” the editor of Yediot Aharanot wrote, “could believe that eliminations and missile fire, the demolition of neighborhoods, the killing of soldiers and civilians and the destruction of homes could restore personal security.”

With the exception of Arab legislators and members of the small Meretz Party, however, there has been little opposition in the Knesset to Sharon’s policies. According to an article in the May 17 issue of the New York Review of Books by Hebrew University Professor Avishai Margalit, the Labor and Likud parties that make up Sharon’s ruling coalition “have become virtually indistinguishable.”

The collapse of mainstream Labor opposition is nowhere more evident than in the willingness of the party’s former leader, Shimon Peres, to become an apologist for Sharon as his foreign minister. Just after Peres promised U.S. officials in Washington that no new settlements would be built on the West Bank, Sharon declared in Jerusalem that Israel would never stop expanding the settlements. Peres then announced there would be no more settlement building under the unity government except to provide for “natural growth.” In practice this means settlers plant trailers on Palestinian farmland a mile or two from an existing settlement, the government replaces the trailers with permanent housing, and the result is “natural growth.” At least 15 such settlements have been established since Sharon took office in February.

Peres, who said in Washington, “We cannot solve anything with force,” remained silent when Sharon announced that the army was prepared to act “without restriction…beyond imagination,” and he reportedly endorsed the bombing of Palestinian cities. With no strong political opposition in Israel, and a Bush administration reluctant to exert pressure, Sharon will continue to act without restraint.

New Signs of Hope

Nevertheless, there are new signs of hope. Oslo produced a false peace during which Israel increased the settler population by 72 percent, stifled the Palestinian economy with border closings and curfews, and refused to carry out its agreements. The failure of Oslo and Israel’s brutal response to the intifada have had two positive results: The Palestinians are now determined to accept nothing less than Israel’s total withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, and more and more peace activists in Israel and America are eager to help achieve that goal.

In Israel, groups long opposed to the occupation such as Gush Shalom (Movement for Peace) and the Coalition Against House Demolitions have joined with former Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and other leftist members of the Labor Party in a newly formed Coalition for a Just Peace. Its members cross into the West Bank to help protect homes slated for demolition, rebuild houses that have been destroyed, and replace trees uprooted by the army. The Coalition and Ta’ayesh (Arab-Jewish Partnership) send convoys carrying food and other supplies to besieged Palestinian villages. Teams of Israeli women stand at army checkpoints in order to discourage soldiers from abusing Palestinians with beatings, unnecessary delays, and other forms of humiliation—abuses that have become routine.

Israelis are also joining with Palestinians in acts of nonviolent resistance. On April 14 hundreds of Palestinians, Europeans, and Israelis from West Jerusalem met at the Tantour checkpoint just north of Bethlehem to protest Israel’s violation of international law and its continued occupation. Cooperating Israeli groups included the Peace Coalition, Women for Peace, Women in Black, and the Arab-Israeli Dialogue Committee. Soldiers tried to break up the march before it reached the checkpoint but failed to stop the crowd from surging past. The army used rougher tactics on May 11, when more than 50 Israelis carried signs saying “No Peace with Settlements” to the West Bank village of Deir Istya, where they joined with residents to protest a new settlement going up on confiscated Palestinian land bordering the village. This time soldiers used tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets to break up the demonstration, even though the marchers pleaded with the soldiers in Hebrew and English that they were unarmed.

Even religious leaders are protesting Israeli actions. Rabbis for Human Rights has more than 90 members who help rebuild houses damaged by Israeli explosives, and replace uprooted trees. The group’s executive director, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, has been arrested twice for dismantling army roadblocks, but he told a reporter for the Northern California Jewish Bulletin that when his two-year-old daughter grows up he wanted to be able to say that “I did something in the face of this kind of evil that is so contrary to every Jewish value that I hold dear.”

So far the number of dedicated Israeli peace activists is still small, but they believe they can be effective in demonstrating to the Israeli public that they have choices other than blind allegiance to the government. Jews in America are creating new organizations to send the same message. Coalitions for a Just Peace have sprung up in cities across the country since last October. On May 4 to 6 a gathering in Chicago entitled Jewish Unity for a Just Peace brought together nearly 200 delegates from the United States, Canada and abroad to begin planning coordinated actions under the umbrella of an International Campaign to End the Occupation and Attain a Just Peace. The various campaigns will include calls for an immediate suspension of U.S. aid to Israel; international protection for the Palestinians under siege; Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders; and the dismantling of Israeli settlements. (For more information, visit Jewish Unity’s website at <www.junity.org>.)

On June 8 vigils will be held in Jerusalem and in dozens of cities in Europe and America as part of an event sponsored by the Israeli Coalition for a Just Peace and Bat Shalom (Women for Peace). The sponsors list as their principles: a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, Jerusalem as the capital of two states, justice for Palestinian refugees, equal rights for women and all citizens of Israel, social and economic justice, and an end to militarism. Vigils will also take place in The Hague, Toronto, Mexico City, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Abilene, Texas. (For information contact <batshalo@netvision.net.il>.)

The June 8 demonstrations will also be aimed at Washington, where Bush’s budget plan calls for more military aid to Israel and Congress is considering several bills to punish the Palestinians. Nevertheless, when the Mitchell comission made its report public on May 21 Secretary Powell reiterated the administration’s claim to neutrality. He gave the commission’s recommendations his full endorsement, but refused to demand that Israel halt settlement expansion. Instead he urged the Israelis and Palestinians to reach “an understanding on settlements” and repeated his call for an unconditional ceasefire. Powell also said he would send the current U.S. ambassador to Jordan, William J. Burns, to the Middle East to plan “confidence-building measures” and pave the way for a resumption of peace talks.

Powell was essentially announcing the do-nothing U.S. Middle East policy that the Sharon government has been seeking. But it will not advance peace. Arafat cannot ask the Palestinians to end their resistance without at least a guaranteed settlement freeze. Too often, they have entered peace talks only to have Israel swallow up more and more Palestinian land for new “facts on the ground.” What the Palestinians also need is U.S. pressure on Sharon to pull back Israeli troops and end the lockdown in the occupied territories. Above all, they need protection from Israel’s escalating assaults. Even as Powell called for a cease-fire, Israeli helicopter gunships were pounding the Jabaliya refugee camp and tanks were shelling Palestinian towns.

Bush is “not interested in a public spat with the Israelis,” a State Department official said, and he obviously is reluctant to offend the pro-Israel zealots in Congress. Without pressure on Israel from the United States, however, the conflict could go on indefinitely. There is no way the Palestinians and Israelis can reach a just peace agreement without U.S. involvement. Their goals are too far apart and the power imbalance too great.

Former President Bill Clinton was accused of intervening too actively in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. His mistake, however, was not in intervening but in trying to force a peace agreement on the Palestinians that did not answer their needs or fulfill the requirements of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, and then blaming Arafat when the talks failed. Bush would do far better simply to insist that Israel withdraw to its 1967 borders or face a cutoff of U.S. aid. What the peace process needs most is an American president with the courage to stand up to Israel.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.