As Israelis Bicker Among Themsleves, Palestinians Grapple With Serious Internal Problems

by Rachelle Marshall

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's wrecking job on the Oslo peace agreement was not a total loss for the Palestinians. They no longer will be expected to support negotiations that were going nowhere, and the debate over whether Palestinians should accept half a loaf rather than press for their full rights has been settled. After three and a half years of peace talks it is clear that neither the Labor Party nor Likud ever intended to yield them more than a few crumbs. Finally, the Palestinians and the world have learned that the third signatory to Oslo, the U.S., will back Israel even when Israel violates its own signed agreements.

But Netanyahu's bulldozer tactics, following the less blatant but often equally damaging actions of his predecessors, have also weakened the fabric of Palestinian society. During its 15 months in office Netanyahu's government has not only deepened the gulf between Israel and the Palestinians, it also has caused the deepening of divisions among Palestinians, with possibly serious effects on their effort to achieve independence.

Palestinian identity is rooted in the land, and that land is so scarce it is measured by the quarter-acre the dunum. By swallowing up a thousand dunums here, 300 dunums there, at a relentless pace during the past four years, Israel has choked off West Bank Palestinians' access to East Jerusalem, stifled the natural growth of Palestinian communities, and deprived the Palestinian economy of land it desperately needs to grow food crops. In the past year alone Israel has seized an estimated 28,000 dunums. Not content with taking Palestinians' land, Netanyahu's government has speeded up the demolition of Palestinian homes it claims were built without a permit. The planned destruction of another 500 homes near Hebron was announced in May.

The Palestinians' despair at seeing their peace hopes crumble and their land disappear, combined with worsening deprivation caused by border closings and curfews, have intensified resentment of those who take advantage of the present situation to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Two seemingly unrelated events were symptomatic of the problems now facing the Palestinian community: the arrest by Palestinian police of Daoud Kuttab on May 22, and the murders of three Palestinian land dealers in May and early June.

Kuttab, a distinguished journalist, was jailed for a week, presumably on orders from President Yasser Arafat, for broadcasting over Al-Quds Educational Television the proceedings of the Palestinian Legislative Council, which has sharply criticized Arafat and the Palestinian Authority for corruption and mismanagement. Because Kuttab has long been an eloquent spokesman for Palestinian independence, his arrest aroused strong protest from prominent Palestinians, including many within the leadership. His brother Jonathan, a human rights attorney, said after Daoud's release, "There isn't any Palestinian official who supported his arrest."

The murders of Farid Bashiti, Harbi Abu Sara, and Ali Jumhour, who were thought to have sold land to Israelis, attracted wide attention because they took place shortly after Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu Middein said a law was being drafted that would impose the death penalty on any Palestinian who sells land to an Israeli. Netanyahu claimed, without evidence, that the killings were carried out "at the behest of the Palestinian Authority," as other Israeli officials and their American supporters accused the Palestinians of racism and bringing back the Nuremburg laws. Under pressure by Rep. Benjamin Gilman and Sen. Jesse Helms, the State Department struck a blow for righteousness by withholding payment of $1.25 million intended for the training of Palestinian finance officials.

As usual, the double standard was in operation. The proposed Palestinian law is no different from Israel's legal prohibition against selling or leasing land to Arabs on 91 percent of Israeli territory. Although the Palestinian law's imposition of the death penalty is deplorable, it is a reaction to Israel's policy of expanding its borders by land purchase as well as expropriation. For some Palestinians, the temptation to sell can be overwhelming when there is no hope of obtaining an Israeli permit to build, taxes are exorbitant, and the alternative to selling is being unable to feed their children. But when land is turned over to an Israeli, Israeli government regards it as a part of Israel, which means that with each dunum sold, the hope of independence diminishes.

Professor Brad R. Roth of Wayne State University explained in a letter to The New York Times on May 9 why the Palestinians consider selling land to Israelis to be treasonous: "Israel insists on extending its sovereignty unilaterally, forcibly, and in violation of international law to all land owned by Israelis in the occupied territories. In this context, for a Palestinian to sell land to an Israeli is to collaborate in the ceding of national territory."

The Israelis from the beginning have equated possession of land with sovereignty, which is why they obliterated hundreds of Arab villages and drove nearly a million Palestinians from their homes in the course of establishing the present state. Since 1967, Israel has annexed 18,000 acres of Palestinian land adjoining Jerusalem, and taken an additional 84,000 acres on the West Bank for roads and settlements that neither Israeli party favors turning back to the Palestinians. Israel's settlement activity is not based on a need for housing, but is "ideologically driven," according to Edward Abington, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem. His remark was based on a U.S. government study released in May that found vacancy rates of 26 percent in West Bank settlements and 56 percent in Gaza figures that would drive most landlords out of business.

Netanyahu's response to the report was to promise more settlement construction. When Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met with U.S. envoy Dennis Ross and Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordecai, Mordecai refused to accept a document from the Palestinians detailing their complaints about the seizure of Palestinian land for settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes. According to Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, "Mordechai told us very coldly they would continue building in Judea and Samaria." Ross remained silent after Mordecai's statement, Erekat said. More eloquent by far was Washington's earlier assurance to Mordecai that U.S.-lsraeli military cooperation would continue at its present high level regardless of Israel's settlement activity.

The Palestinian efforts to secure their rights in the face of Israeli intransigence and U.S. inertia require unity above all if they are to be successful, but unity is hard to achieve in the midst of overwhelming misery when individuals have to struggle to insure their own survival. Since Arafat has not been able to obtain even minimal concessions from Netanyahu, many Palestinians blame him for their worsening condition. Leaders who see their support eroding often react by clamping down on their critics, as Arafat did when he ordered Daoud Kuttab's arrest. Kuttab was not the only critic of Palestinian authorities to be arrested, only the most prominent.

Another threat to unity, the conflict between Hamas hard-liners and pro-Oslo Palestinians, was considerably eased when Hamas tacitly agreed to refrain from violence against Israel and to take part in Palestinian elections. There were no terrorist attacks in Israel for a full year, until Israel began construction at Jabal Abu Ghneim and effectively shredded the Oslo agreement. The Fatah party's General Secretary Marwan Barghouti, whose party insists that terrorism is damaging to the peace process, has commented, "The irony is that Hamas had reached this conclusion too in recent months, but Netanyahu's policies have strengthened the extremist wing inside Hamas."

Although collapse of the peace process may sharpen disagreements over tactics among Palestinians, more dangerous splits have arisen out of their financial plight. Since 1992 their per capita income has fallen by 36 percent because of border closings and Israel's stranglehold on the Palestinian economy.

A major internal conflict erupted last January when 19,000 teachers employed by the Palestinian Authority went on strike for an increase in pay, which now ranges from $300 to $500 a month. The strike was suspended when Palestinian security forces arrested 25 strike leaders and forced them to call the teachers back to work.

The PA reportedly feared that if the teachers received a raise there would be a flood of similar demands from other underpaid workers. Nevertheless, there was widespread protest against the PA's tactics in suspending the strike and strong criticism from members of the Legislative Council. An editorial in Al-Quds asked, "[If] people on strike can be jailed how can we then raise slogans of democracy and human rights?"

Unjustified Treatment

The teachers' treatment seemed all the more unjustified in light of revelations that high-level Palestinians were reaping fortunes through corruption. The Palestine Center for the Protection of Human Rights released a report in May saying that "Political officials and police officers have used their positions to establish monopolies that....control markets and prices and kill competition."

Since Israel controls the import of goods into Palestinian areas, Palestinian profiteers have arranged with Israeli businessmen to restrict the sale of key commodities such as gasoline, cement, steel, and meat to single suppliers. According to the May-June issue of Challenge magazine, monopolies control 27 percent of goods entering Palestine. Consequently, Palestinians are forced to buy supplies from Israel rather than from cheaper sources elsewhere, and Israeli producers pay off their Palestinian partners from the huge profits resulting from monopolistic pricing.

Even more hated than the profiteers are the Palestinians who inform on their neighbors to the Israelis and act as go-betweens with Israeli authorities to obtain desperately needed work and travel permits for those who seek them "in exchange for cash," as one such collaborator explained to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency interviewer.

A Palestinian journalist, Muhammed Shakr, referring to such "self-interested thieves," warned in Palestine Report that "We are all...children of one Palestinian land, and parts of one body. If one organ is infected the rest of the body has fever."

Problems within the Palestinian community have been a source of glee to some pro-lsrael zealots. When Israel is condemned for torturing thousands of Palestinian prisoners a year, or scandals involving government officials become too embarrassing, they point to similar charges against Palestinian leaders. But in fact the "infection" Muhammed Shakr referred to was made more virulent by 30 years of Israeli occupation. The domination of one people by another is a relationship that breeds collaborators and opportunists among the weak, and exploiters and sadists among the powerful. The fears that result when close neighbors are enemies give rise to extremists.

Extremism is causing Israeli Jews to become increasingly fragmented, as animosity increases between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews. The Knesset was expected to approve a bill on June 30 that would withdraw official recognition of non-Orthodox conversions, in effect telling many Jews that they are not Jewish.

Reform and Conservative Jews in the U.S., who seldom criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, protested loudly against the bill. But the Orthodox parties that gave the Likud coalition a majority threatened to resign from the government if it didn't pass. The Israeli philosopher David Hartman has warned that conflict between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis amounts to "a new partition of Israel."

Israelis are also split along ethnic lines, between the Ashkenazim from Europe and Sephardic Jews of Arab or African origin. After the leader of the predominantly Sephardic Shas party, Aryeh Deri, was indicted on charges of extortion and obstruction of justice in connection with the rigged appointment of an attorney general, 20,000 of his followers gathered at an angry rally in Jerusalem to protest that he was a victim of anti-Sephardic bias on the part of the "Ashkenazi establishment." The crowd's anger also reflected the growing disparity in income between various groups of Israelis. A New Israel Fund newsletter reported this spring that while Israel's GNP is growing rapidly, so is the number of poor. Between 600,000 and a million Israelis are now living below the poverty line in a country of only 5 million people. Most of the poor are Israeli Arabs and Sephardic Jews.

Future historians of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are likely to conclude that the animosities that existed within each side were major obstacles to peace. Israel's internal conflicts, fueled and exploited by religious extremists and nationalists, could make it difficult if not impossible for a moderate Israeli leader to agree to the compromises necessary for lasting peace. Disunity among Palestinians, brought on by economic hardship and oppression, could weaken their efforts to gain back the land taken from them by force 50 years ago. Yet never before have they so much needed to rely on their own cohesiveness and resolve if they are to build, in journalist Muhammed Shakr's words, "a free land, a nation that enjoys justice."