This is an expanded version of an article in Yediot Aharonot, June 30, 2002.
The Gaza strip is a perfect realization of the Israeli vision of
“separation”. Surrounded with electric fences and army posts,
completely sealed off the outside world, Gaza has become a huge
prison. About one third of its land was confiscated for the 7,000
Israeli settlers living there (and their defense array), while over a
million Palestinians are crowded in the remaining areas of the
prison. With no work or sources of income, about 80% of its residents
depend, for their living, on UNRWA, or contributions from Arab states
and charity organizations. Now Israel is considering the
imprisonment there of families of suicide bombers from the West Bank
(1). As a senior Israeli analyst stated, Gaza can now serve as “the
penal colony” of Israel its “devils island, Alcatraz”. (Nahum
Barnea, Yediot Aharonot June 21, 2002).
This is the future that Sharon and the Israeli army designate for
the West Bank as well. While the external fence is presently being
built, Israel’s current military operation is set to be the final
step in the implementation the IDF plans for reestablishing full
military rule (which was abolished in large parts of the West Bank
during the Oslo process). Though Israel describes everything it does
as a spontaneous reaction to terror, the plan was fully spelled out
in the Israeli media already back in March 2001, soon after Sharon
entered office. Alex Fishman, military and strategic analyst of
Yediot Aharonot, explained at the time that since Oslo, “the IDF
regarded the occupied territories as if they were one territorial
cell”, and this placed some constraints on the IDF and enabled a
certain amount of freedom for the PA and the Palestinian population.
The new plan is a return to the concept of the military
administration during the preOslo years: the occupied territories
will be divided into tens of isolated “territorial cells”, each of
which will be assigned a special military force, “and the local
commander will have freedom to use his discretion” as to when and who
to shoot. (Yediot Ahronot weekend supplement, March 9.2001).
The first stage of this plan the destruction of the institutions of
the Palestinian Authority was completed in the previous ’Operation
Defensive Shield’ in April of this year. In practice, from that time
on, the towns and villages of the West Bank have been completely
sealed. Even exit by foot, which was possible up to that point,
became blocked, and movement between the “territorial cells” now
requires formal permits from the Israeli military authorities.
Soldiers and snipers prevent any “unauthorized” walking to
agricultural fields, to places of work and study, or for medical
treatment.
However, unlike the preOslo period of Israeli military rule, the army
makes it clear that there is no intention to construct any civil
administration that will take care of the basic daily needs of the
two million Palestinians, such as food supplies, health services,
garbage and sewage. For these tasks, some form of a Palestinian
Authority will be maintained, though in practice it will not be
allowed to function.
As a ‘military source’ told Ha’aretz, “Internal conclusions of the
security echelons, following operation ‘Defensive Shield’, assessed
that the functioning of the civil branches of the Palestinian
Authority had reached an unprecedented nadir, mainly due to the
destruction the IDF operation left behind in Ramallah (including the
systematic destruction of computers and databases)… Combined with
the severe restrictions on movement, the Palestinian population is
becoming, as the military source defined it, ’poor, dependent,
unemployed, rather hungry, and extreme’… The financial reserves of
the Palestinian authority are reaching the bottom… In a future not
far off, the majority of Palestinians will only be able to maintain a
reasonable life through the help of international aid.” (Ha’aretz
Hebrew edition, June 23, 2002, Amos Har’el). Thus, the West Bank is
being driven to the level of poverty of the Gaza strip.
Nevertheless, at the same time that Israel deprives the Palestinians
of their means of income, it also makes a substantial effort to
diminish or block international aid, under the pretext that the aid
is used to support terrorists or their families. At the outset of its
new ‘operation’, Israel “decided to stop the flow of foodaid and
medicine from Iran and Iraq to Palestinians in the territories”
(Ha’aretz, June 24, 2002, Amos Har’el). Iranian and Iraqi aid is an
easy target for Israel, as these countries belong to the “Axis of
Evil”. However, Israel started launching a more ambitious campaign:
The EU the largest PA donor is under constant pressure from Israel
to cut its aid, which is used, inter alia to pay the salaries of
teachers and health workers. The tactics are always the same: Israel
provides some documents presumably linking the PA to terror. Any aid
to the PA is, therefore, aid to terror (2).
UNRWA’s aid is the next target. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for
Palestinians in the Near East (UNRWA) has become a major source of
food for Palestinians in the besieged territories. Its food supplies
are now delivered not only to the refugee camps, but also in towns
and villages. The amount of food UNRWA supplies has increased
fourfold in two years (3). Recently, “Israel has begun a campaign in
the United States and the United Nations to urge a reconsideration of
the way the UN Relief and Works Agency, which runs the Palestinian
refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, operates. Israel charges
that UNRWA workers simply ignored the fact that Palestinian
organizations were turning the camps into terrorist bases and it is
demanding the agency start reporting all military or terrorist
actions within the camps to the UN…. Meanwhile, Jewish and
proIsraeli lobbyists in the U.S. are waging a parallel campaign …
American Jewish lobbyists are basing their efforts on the fact that
the U.S. currently contributes some 30 percent of UNRWA’s $400
million a year budget, and is therefore in a position to influence
the agency: A congressional refusal to approve UNRWA’s funding could
seriously disrupt its operations. (Ha’aretz June 29, 2002, Nathan
Guttman). The campaign is not yet demanding cutting UNRWA’s aid and
presence altogether, but raising the impossible demand that UNRWA
should serve as an active force in “the war against terror”
(“reporting military or terrorist actions”) is the first step towards
such a demand.(4)
Since September 11, Sharon has been constructing an analogy between
the occupied territories and Afghanistan (with the PA as Al Qaeda).
He keeps declaring that the solution to Palestinian terror, and the
required ‘reforms’, should be along the lines set in Afghanistan.
The analogy is frighteningly revealing: As it established the
‘reforms’ in Afghanistan, the US forced starvation upon millions of
people. This is how Noam Chomsky described it: “On Sept. 16, the New
York Times reported that ’Washington has also demanded [from
Pakistan] a cutoff of fuel supplies…and the elimination of truck
convoys that provide much of the food and other supplies to
Afghanistan’s civilian population.’ Astonishingly, that report
elicited no detectable reaction in the West, a grim reminder of the
nature of the Western civilization that leaders and elite
commentators claim to uphold. In the following days, those demands
were implemented… ‘The country was on a lifeline,’ one evacuated
aid worker reports, ‘and we just cut the line’ (NY times Magazine,
September 30). According to the world’s leading newspaper, then,
Washington demanded that Pakistan ensures the death of enormous
numbers of Afghans, millions of them already on the brink of
starvation, by cutting off the limited sustenance that was keeping
them alive.” (Interview with Michael Albert, reprinted in Noam
Chomsky, 911, Seven Stories, 2002). Arundhati Roy, summarized this
at the time: “Witness the infinite justice of the new century.
Civilians starving to death while they’re waiting to be killed”
(Guardian, Sept. 29).
The new stage of Israel’s ‘separation’ can no longer be compared to
the Apartheid of South Africa. As Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s
Minister of Water Affairs, said in an Interview with Al Ahram Weekly,
“the South African apartheid regime never engaged in the sort of
repression Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians” (Issue of March
28 April 3, 2002). We are witnessing the daily invisible killing of
the sick and wounded being deprived of medical care, the weak who
cannot survive in the new poverty conditions, and those who are bound
to reach starvation.
Nevertheless, the public debate in Israel revolves around questions
of efficiency: Is it possible to stop terror in such methods. Let us
suppose even that it is. Is it allowed? Is this what we (Israelis)
want to be?
One people stole the ‘Lamb of its poor neighbor’(5): Gaza and the
West Bank are 22% of the land of Israel- Palestine, where the
Palestinians lived in the past. On this small piece of land, three
million people live, with hopes, needs and dreams, just like ours.
Since Oslo, they have been lured with promises that we are about to
evacuate the settlements and give them back their land, at the very
same time that we have been imprisoning them in Gaza, stealing more
of their land in the West Bank, and leaving them no hope whatsoever.
The Palestinian people are fighting for their freedom. The crimes of
Palestinian terror do not remove our culpability for our own crimes.
Before Oslo, as well, there was a wave of horrible terror attacks.
But at that time, after each such attack, the call was heard get out
of the territories! Then it was still understood that when you leave
people no hope, there is no way to stop the madness of suicide
bombing. It is not too late to get out of the territories.
========
- In its meeting on Friday, June 21, 2002, the Israeli cabinet
“decided in principle in favor both of the expulsion of families of
suicide strikers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip… The
implementation of this expulsion policy depends upon the outcome of a
legal review.” (‘IDF set to expel bombers’ families’ By Aluf Benn,
Amos Harel and Gideon Alon, Ha’aretz June 23, 2002).
- Here is one example of the pressure on the EU:
“The documents seized from PA offices in recent months, some
of which were included in the document compiled by minister without
portfolio Dan Naveh following Operation Defensive Shield, were
presented last week to the EC delegation in Israel and
representatives of the International Monetary Fund at a meeting with
IDF intelligence officers. Naveh claims the documents prove European
financial aid has been used to finance terrorism and incitement, and
has also found its way into the pockets of senior PA officials.
The head of the EC’s delegation to Israel, Giancarlo
Chevallard, told Ha’aretz that at the meeting, the delegation saw
evidence that Arafat is financing terrorism, but added Israel had not
provided evidence that European financial aid which is designated to
pay the salaries of PA employees is being used to finance terrorist
attacks. Another senior delegation official said he was extremely
skeptical Israel had evidence to prove European aid is being used by
the PA to finance terrorism…
Meanwhile, in the shadow of the Israeli accusations, the
European Parliament’s budgetary committee last week delayed the
transfer of 18.7 million euros in financial aid to the PA until the
EC reports how the money is to be distributed…” (Ha’aretz, June 6,
2002, Yair Ettinger)
This specific frozen amount was released in the meanwhile, however
Israel’s pressure continues.
- Amos Har’el, ’The IDF neutralizes the Palestinian Authority, and
humanitarian organizations try to replace it’, Ha’aretz Hebrew
edition, June 23, 2002. (Quoted before).
(4). The campaign against UNRWA started earlier: “In letters written
to Annan in May, Republican U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and Democratic
U.S. Representative Tom Lantos accused the U.N. agency of allowing
and promoting terrorist activity in the camps. Specter said UNRWA
schools promoted antiIsraeli and anti Semitic sentiments and Lantos
said the agency allowed terrorists to organize in the camps.”(Inter
Press Service, June 24, 2002)
- Bible, Samuel II, 12:11: “12:1The LORD sent Natan to David. He
came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in one city; the
one rich, and the other poor. 12:2The rich man had very many flocks
and herds, 12:3but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe
lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up together with him,
and with his children. It ate of his own food, drank of his own cup,
and lay in his bosom, and was to him like a daughter. 12:4A traveler
came to the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of
his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man who had come to him, but
took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man who had come to
