Israel Uses Terror to Derail Peace Efforts and Establish Permanent Occupation

By Rachelle Marshall

The State of Israel has arisen, but our country is not yet liberated. The battle continues: it is Hebrew arms which decide the boundaries of the Hebrew State. So it is now...so it will be in the future. —Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in a speech to Irgun fighters, May 15, 1948.

The inhabitants of Kakrak and three nearby villages in Afghanistan were celebrating a wedding on the night of July 1 when U.S. warplanes suddenly roared out of the sky firing on the crowds below. When the bombing and strafing ended, 54 of the villagers were dead and more than a hundred wounded. Most of the victims were women and children. Although similar “mistakes” have taken the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Afghan civilians, the United States intends to pay no compensation. The reason, a congressional staff member explained to Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle, is that, “They don’t want to set a precedent that could come back to haunt them for the next war [against Iraq] when tens of thousands of civilians could die.”

The aide’s remark exposed the hypocrisy and Orwellian distortion of language that permeate the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism,” a campaign that has little to do with stopping violence directed against civilians but is primarily aimed, as Columbia University scholar Edward Said recently observed, at the elimination of Israel’s enemies. There is no more plausible explanation for George Bush’s vowing to combat terrorism while he supplies a terrorist Israeli government with billions of dollars worth of weapons every year, and plans a war that is certain to kill thousands of Iraqi civilians.

It was not until the Israelis used an American-made F-16 jet to drop a one-ton bomb on a densely crowded civilian neighborhood in Gaza on July 23 that Bush expressed anything short of full support for the government of Ariel Sharon. The attack that leveled most of a city block and killed not only its intended victim, Hamas leader Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, but 14 others as well, and injured 140 people, was “heavy-handed,” Bush said. The rebuke, however mild, was a departure from his usual reaction of justifying Israeli actions as “self-defense.” Two days later, however, at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, U.S. ambassador John Negroponte blunted even this criticism by opposing a resolution condemning Israel. He said the United States would only consider Middle East resolutions that also condemn Palestinian terrorism, and he stressed that the U.S. would not support any call for Israel’s withdrawal from the reoccupied areas until “Israel’s security needs are addressed.”

When escalating violence and international pressure finally forced the Bush administration to intervene in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict last spring, Bush came up with a vague peace proposal that called for an independent Palestinian state but stipulated that the Palestinians must get rid of Yasser Arafat, institute reforms, and elect someone “not compromised by terror” before negotiations could go forward. The only possible interpretation was that until Palestinians managed to form a government acceptable to Israel and the U.S., Israel was free to continue the occupation.

It took a Russian diplomat to give Washington a lesson in democracy. At a meeting on July 16 with Secretary of State Colin Powell, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and European Union representative Javier Solano, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov expressed the views of the other three when he reminded Powell that “It is only for the Palestinians to decide who they want as their leaders.” Since Arafat is the Palestinians’ legitimately elected leader, he said, “we will continue to maintain our relations with him.”

The Bush administration is also alone in demanding that the Palestinians introduce democratic reforms while they continue to be surrounded by Israeli tanks, unable to move from one village to the next, and cut off from schools, jobs, and even medical services. Mohammed Shaker Abdallah, political editor of Al Quds, has pointed out that no other people—not the French during World War II, not the Kosovars, not the people of East Timor—have been ordered to undertake reforms while under occupation by foreign troops.

In making the “war on terrorism” the focus of his foreign policy, and placing the blame for Middle East violence solely on the Palestinians, Bush has persistently ignored the terrorism that Palestinians have endured for 35 years as they watched their land seized; their homes and crops destroyed; and their relatives jailed, tortured, and too often killed. Palestinian children learn to know terror early on when Israeli tanks roll down their street firing their guns, or bulldozers arrive in the middle of the night to demolish their house. Such terrors have sharply increased in the past two years, along with the curfews and closures that make life close to unbearable.

During the 1970s and 1980s, when Israel occupied all of the West Bank and Gaza, successive governments attempted to erase all evidence of Palestinian national identity. It was illegal for Palestinians even to wear a red, black, and green T-shirt. In reoccupying the West Bank Sharon has revived this mission by attempting to undermine the structure of Palestinian society itself and to create in its place a destitute population permanently under Israel’s control. The primary mission of the army’s offensive last spring was to destroy Palestinian civic institutions, including police headquarters, public offices, schools and libraries, vital records, and even health clinics. Since the invasion even more serious damage has been done to children and young people. In addition to the hundreds killed and thousands injured, an entire generation is being forced to go without schooling. High school students who are unable to take required exams have seen their hopes for the future vanish.

Israel’s use of war planes armed with missiles to assassinate suspected militants also adds to the terror, since any Palestinians who are nearby become victims as well. The devastating attack on Salah Shehadeh was unusual only in the large number of civilian casualties that resulted. A week earlier, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported Israeli forces had carried out 87 assassinations in the previous year and a half, killing 39 bystanders.

The Bush administration’s “war on terrorism,” is primarily aimed at the elimination of Israel’s enemies.

The timing and magnitude of Israel’s attack on Sheikh Shehadeh (which Sharon called “one of our major successes”) convinced many Israelis as well as Palestinians that it was intended to block an impending cease-fire. It took place just as discussions led by the European Union and Jordanian and Saudi diplomats had produced an agreement by almost all armed Palestinian groups to refrain from attacking Israeli civilians. Even Hamas agreed to cooperate if Israel stopped its assassinations.

Only a few hours later, the agreement lay buried under the bombing rubble, and thousands of Palestinians were marching through the streets of Gaza shouting for revenge. The pattern was tragically familiar. During a lull in Palestinian violence the Israelis kill a popular leader. Militants exact revenge, the government retaliates with massive force, and the deadly cycle continues.

Israel’s actions seem deliberately aimed at continuing the violence, even at the cost of Israeli lives. During what the press referred to as “a quiet period” in June and July, in which there were no Palestinian attacks, Israeli forces killed at least 40 Palestinians. Most of them were unarmed civilians, according to B’Tselem, and nine were children. Several children were badly wounded in Qalqilya when, on two separate days, soldiers fired into the crowded market place during breaks in the curfew. Ronda Hindi and her 2-year-old daughter Noor were killed in Gaza in early July because soldiers saw what the army described as “suspicious silhouettes.” After an Israeli soldier was killed by Palestinian gunmen in late July, Jewish settlers in Hebron attacked a Palestinian neighborhood and shot to death 14-year-old Nivin Jamjoum as she stood on the balcony of her home, stabbed a 7-year-old boy, and injured 15 others. Abu Zahra, a journalist, died of his wounds in Jenin on July 13 after he was shot by soldiers, who then fired on anyone who tried to rescue him. “They opened fire for no reason,” said Ali Samudim, a photographer for Reuters who was on the scene.

As the Israeli killings continued, and there was no easing of the curfew, it was almost inevitable that Palestinian attacks would resume. On July 16 gunmen blew up an Israeli bus, killing 10 Israeli settlers, and the next day a suicide bomber killed 3 people in Tel Aviv. Israel retaliated against the extended families of the suspected assailants by destroying several homes and arresting 21 of their male relatives, but the local mayor said the arrests and home demolitions would only provoke further violence. “There is no water, we can’t buy food,” he said.“It’s harassment, and the people will fight for revenge. This will not stop the intifada; this will escalate the intifada.”

The fact that two bombing attacks could be carried out despite 24-hour curfews and 30-foot-high walls was again proof that Israel could not achieve security by oppressing the Palestinians, and that there would be no end to the conflict as long as Israel continued to occupy Palestinian land. It is a reality that the Bush administration persistently refuses to face. At meetings intended to placate Arab foreign ministers on July 17 and 18, Powell assured them that Bush was dedicated to “achieving an independent Palestinian state within three years.” In the meantime, however, he expected Palestinians to curb violence and implement reforms.

Judith Kipper of the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that the Palestinians could not be expected to make meaningful reforms or hold elections while their cities are being occupied. “What’s the plan of action?” she asked. Obviously, there is none. What has been conspicuously lacking in recent discussions is any sense of urgency. No one can even be sure what Bush means by an “independent state.” His definition might well be consistent with Sharon’s proposal to grant Palestinians a group of separate enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and military areas, and call it “a state.”

Meanwhile, in the absence of any pressure on Sharon from the United States, the Israeli army is digging in for a long-term reoccupation. Thousands of reservists are being called up so that troops can be rotated, and the government continues to expand settlements, actively recruiting Jews from abroad with offers of free rent for six months. Israel’s shutdown of the West Bank and Gaza has left 2 million Palestinians without adequate food or health care, according to the United Nations. A preliminary report for the U.S. Agency for International Development found that, in addition to other problems, 30 percent of Palestinian children under 6 are suffering from chronic malnutrition. Even water is scarce. In some villages it must be carried in by mules, since the Israelis won’t allow tank trucks to get through. These problems are compounded by Israel’s refusal to provide vital services such as garbage collection and food distribution in the cities and towns they have taken over. The Israelis also refuse to return most of the $600 million in tax revenue owed to the Palestinian Authority.

Callous Displays

With an equal display of callousness, pro-Israel zealots in Congress are now threatening to cut the Palestinians’ remaining lifeline by ending U.S. funding for UNRWA, the chief provider of education, health care, and other humanitarian services in the refugee camps. The action is being led by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) in response to accusations by pro-Israel organizations that UNRWA allows terrorists to operate in the camps. Since the U.N. agency does not administer the camps and has no police force, the charge is patently false, and undoubtedly stems from the fact that UNRWA administrator Peter Hanson sharply condemned Israel for its devastation of the Jenin refugee camp last spring. (For a full account see Ian Williams, “In Advance of Jenin Report, Lantos, AIPAC Wage Campaign Against UNRWA,” August 2002 Washington Report, p. 43).

While U.S. officials and foreign diplomats engage in endless discussions of peripheral issues, Palestinians are understandably left with a feeling of isolation and despair. “No country, not even an Arab or Muslim country, is demanding anymore that Israel should pull out from the occupied Palestinian areas or even make life for more than three million Palestinians easier,” the editor of the Jerusalem Times wrote in the July 12 issue. “The people feel betrayed by everyone, even by their own leaders…What they want is a way out of this hell.”

There are many on both sides who have not given up. Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University, whose office the Israelis raided and shut down for two weeks in July, was in Greece meeting with Israelis to discuss a joint peace proposal on the day the police invaded his office. Another Palestinian peace activist, Bassam Abu Sharif, recently announced that he is forming a new secular political party, the Palestinian Democratic Party, as a counter-weight to Islamic militants. Abu Sharif, who was badly maimed in an Israeli assassination attempt in the 1970s, was one of the first prominent PLO members to support peace with Israel based on two separate and independent states, and he continues to be a voice for peace.

In the United States, more than a thousand Jewish Americans signed a full-page ad in the July 17 issue of New York Times calling on the Bush administration to make future aid conditional on Israel’s acceptance of an “internationally agreed two-state settlement.” A week later, in a break with the Christian right, 59 prominent evangelical Christians wrote to Bush urging him to adopt a more even-handed Middle East policy and to “move boldly forward so that the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people may be realized.”

There is strong support for a just Middle East peace in all parts of the world, but the key to achieving it lies in Washington, and the most immediate need is for a change in U.S. policy. ”The American administration is still determined to see the situation in a skewed fashion,” political scientist Ziad Abu Amir said recently. “The focus should not be on Arafat, but on the continued occupation, which makes every other effort impossible.”

Israeli analyst Akiva Elder, was equally direct: “Only the president of the United States can get Israel out of the territories and enlist the forces that will take its place,” he wrote in Ha’aretz. “Everything else is hot air.”

The danger is that with George Bush determined to go to war in Iraq, and Sharon bent on maintaining an illegal occupation by force, the hot air could too easily turn into a conflagration.

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.