|
_______________________________________________________________________
NPK-info 27-10-2001 - Nederlands Palestina Komitee
/ www.palestina-komitee.nl
_______________________________________________________________________
Weekendreading - Iets voor dit weekend, NPK/WL
27-10-2001
Indymedia, Israel
October 25, 2001
STOP ISRAEL!
Tanya Reinhart
For a whole week now, The Israeli army has been
terrorizing cities
and villages in the West Bank. As in the darkest days
at the beginning
of the present Intifada, desperate voices and reports
pour through
the internet, telling of massive shelling, including
schools,
hospitals, the university and a maternity house in
Bethlehem, of
curfew, houses being seized or destroyed, water tanks
ruined in refugee
camps. In Beit Reema, the site of Israel's latest
show of horror,
Ambulances were not allowed in. local residents
witnessed that the
wounded were left lying for 5 hours before they were
allowed medical
care (Ha'aretz Oct 25). Dr Majed Nassar of the
Beit Sahour Medical
Center reports on Wednesday evening, Oct 24 that
"Today we stopped
counting the dead and wounded, since the number rises
hourly."
The snipers are back, aiming carefully to kill or
maim for life.
They are not targeting only those that Israel
selected to define as
"wanted". Of the 26 killed until Oct
23, 16 were civilians, including
4 women, a little girl, and two youths under 16 (Hass,
Ha'aretz Oct
24). In the town of Sanour south of Jenin City, 18
year-old Ghada
was picking olives with family members, when Israeli
snipers opened
fire towards them. She was shot in the neck and died
instantly. "She
was a very kind and loving girl," her
mother said. "She was very
helpful at home and in the farm. Her
sisters and brothers looked
up to her. She had a whole life
ahead of her and they murdered
her in cold blood." (Palestine Media Center, Oct
22).
The Israeli tanks will be forced, eventually, to pull
out back to
the outskirts of the cities, but this won't bring
Ghada back to life.
Nor would their departure arise great expectations
for Hussam Jabar's
family from Beit Jala. "The army had seized
their house on Thursday,
using a ping pong table to barricade the seven
members of the family
into the kitchen, and setting up machine-gun posts in
the children's
bedrooms." When the army started pulling out
from Beit Jala, leaving
his house "peppered with bullet holes from
Palestinian gunmen, and
strewn with the debris of some two dozen Israeli
soldiers", he told
Suzanne Goldenberg from The Guardian that "the
Israeli army would
soon be back. 'Do you think it makes a difference if
they left? They
are going back and forth. What makes you think that
they have really
left?' he said. 'We have an inner feeling that we are
an expendable
people." (The Guardian, Oct 24).
Indeed this has been the pattern for a long while now.
The army enters
the cities, sows destruction, and then 'under
pressure' pulls out
a few hundred meters, till the next time. Each time
the scale is
bigger.
This time, Israel describes it as an act against
terror, retaliating
for the assassination of Zeevi. "We are doing
precisely what the US
is doing in Afghanistan" - explained Raanan
Gissin, a spokesman of
Sharon, to CNN on Wednesday, Oct 24. Sharon's
Czechoslovakia analogy
of October 4 (-the world sacrifices
Czechoslovakia-Israel, to please
Arafat-Hitler) did not find much sympathy even in
Israel. The current
analogy Sharon has been developing is that Arafat
equals Bin Laden,
or to give this some more credibility, Arafat and the
PA equal the
Taliban who host Bin Laden. "Sharon, apparently
deliberately echoing
President George W. Bush's remarks after the
terrorist attacks in
New York and Washington last month, told an emergency
meeting of senior
ministers that after the killing of cabinet minister
Rehavam Ze'evi,
'the situation is different today, and will not again
be like it was
yesterday'." (Ha'aretz, October 18).
The consequences of this analogy are obvious: "Israel's
Security
Cabinet is understood to have sent a blunt message to
Mr Arafat that
unless Israel's conditions for the extradition
etradiction of the
killers and the outlawing of all Palestinian terror
organizations
were adhered to within one week he 'would be treated
in the way in
which the US treats the Taliban'." (The Times (London),
Oct 19). "We
will wage all-out war on the terrorists, those who
collaborate with
them and those who send them" -Sharon promised
in his speech to the
special Knesset session in memory of the assassinated
minister. "As
far as I am concerned, the era of Arafat is
over." (there).
Possibly, Sharon and his cabinet count on the Western
world to swallow
this analogy. If the standards are that the whole
Afghan people can
be bombarded and starved to death as a
collective punishment for
an act of terror, why shouldn't Israel follow the
same standards?
Indeed, for almost a week, Israel has been allowed to
carry its work
of destruction undisturbed. Until Monday, Oct 23, the
US and others
expressed some dissatisfaction, but nothing else.
This contrasts
sharply with the endless international pressure on
Arafat. "US Consul
General in Jerusalem Ronald Schlicher met with
Arafat, and demanded
that he take swift action against those responsible
for the
assassination. European Union nations were also
pressing the
Palestinians to make arrests...U.N. Middle East envoy
Terje Larsen
met three times with Arafat, telling the Palestinian
leader that he
must order the arrests of the murderers" (Ha'aretz,
Oct 18), and that's
how it went on the whole week.
Why didn't anybody exert the same pressure on Israel,
right at the
start, not to 'retaliate'? In the prevailing frame of
mind it is
unthinkable to even ask why nobody puts pressure on
Sharon to arrest
the Israeli army terrorists who assassinated
Palestinian political
leaders. But at least he could be pressed to wait the
week that Arafat
was formally given in the cabinet's decision.
This may look mysterious to the many who just a long
week ago attached
hopes to the new 'Peace initiative' which the US has
launched since
the beginning of October. "The idea of a
Palestinian state has always
been part of a vision", Bush declared solemnly
on the 2nd of October.
It was leaked that the US had already prepared a
detailed plan for
a peace settlement, that was only frozen because of
the September
11 events. We heard that a draft of a speech by
Powell was prepared
for the event, which he will soon find the right
occasion to deliver.
Only few in the Western media expressed the kind of
skepticism that
this was met with in the Arab media. As Michael
Jansen noted in the
Jordanian Time of October 5, "the timing of the
Bush remark and the
leak are important. They came on the eve of visits by
US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Oman. Washington
is eager to convince these governments to permit the
use of their
territory for the coming offensive against
Afghanistan... Once again,
Arab governments are supposed to sign on to a US
program of action
without any concrete quid pro quo... Thus, a vague
Bush statement
and a leak by an anonymous official of the existence
of a plan which
is not revealed are supposed to convince the Arabs
that the
administration has good intentions."
The 'peace initiatives' intensified around the
gathering of the
emergency meeting (Oct 9) of the Organization of
Islamic Conference
(OIC), which includes 56 countries whose silence or
cooperation were
important, at the moment to the US. At this
stage, more details were
flared up in the air to make it all look concrete,
and Bush's
spokesman, Tony Blair, has entered the picture. Blair,
who returned
to London from a two-day visit to the United Arab
Emirates, Oman and
Egypt, was quite open in explaining the urgency:
"One thing becoming
increasingly clear to me is the need to upgrade our
media and public
opinion operations in the Arab and Muslim world".
(The Guardian, Oct
12). This PR phase culminated in a joint
press-conference of Blair
and Arafat in October 15.
It didn't require much creativity to generate this
show. The script
was ready from the days of the Gulf war. To reward
the Arab world
for its cooperation, the US organized the Madrid
conference which
marked the era of an eternal 'peace process', thus
allowing Israel
to continue the occupation undisturbed. This round,
however, the US
feels much stronger, as the sole ruler of the world,
and it is not
obvious at all that they intend to go on with even
that much.
Aluf Ben reports in Ha'aretz Oct 18 that, "according
to a US report",
Colin Powell is leaning towards a decision to cancel
his plans to
deliver a speech on United States policy in the
Middle East. "According
to the report, policy makers in the American
administration feel that
there is no longer a need for a Powell speech because
President George
Bush has already presented his vision for the Middle
East in statements
over the past few weeks. With the cancellation of
Powell's speech,
most of the steps planned by the administration for
increased
involvement in the Middle East will have been removed
from the
agenda... American diplomats sent a message to Sharon
this week saying
that the administration has no plans to launch a
Middle East diplomatic
initiative in the near future, and that any steps
will be coordinated
with Israel in advance." (Though this appeared
in Ha'aretz web site
at the day of Zeevi's assassination, it is obvious
that the US report
was prepared earlier.)
Whether they do produce another fake peace show or
not, the US has
backed Israel in all of its atrocities, always. None
of these would
be possible without US military aid and political
backing. Had the
US wanted to stop Israel now, this could be easily
done at any moment -
Just freeze immediately all military aid, for
starts. Instead, on
Wednesday October 24, the day the headlines announced
that Bush and
powell's patience with Israel is expiring, the US
senate approved
again $2.76 billion in assistance for Israel, more
than any other
country in the world. Out of this sum, $2.04 billion
is a special
military aid (Ha'aretz web-site, Oct 25). The US may
slow Sharon down
when he is becoming inconvenient, but they will not
save the
Palestinians and will not end the occupation. No
appeal to Powell
can change this.
* *
It is possible to understand the hopes that many good
souls attached
to the new US peace promises. Despair can lead people
to cling to
any straw. Still, if you go in the morning to
demonstrate against
the US slaughter of the Afghan people, it does not
make much sense
to hope in the evening that the butcher will spare
the Palestinians.
Hope can be found only in struggle. The times have
indeed changed
since the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada.
There is enormous
opposition to the US acts throughout the world,
including the Western
world. And despite the constant bias of the Western
media towards
Israel, the opposition to Israel is growing as well.
There is lots of room for struggle. Make 'Stop
Israel!' a part of
any 'Stop the war' demonstration or leaflet. Apply
all pressure you
can on your local media to send correspondents to
Israel and bring
real coverage. Some European papers already do that,
but the media
in the US is far behind. The presence of the press is
not just a means
to find out the truth, it can also help restrain the
brutality of
the Israeli army.
Israel still views itself as a democracy, so
resistance is still
possible. There is a small, but courageous,
opposition - including
people who stand daily in road blocks to monitor the
brutality of
soldiers, smuggle aid to the villages under siege, or
even stay in
the attacked areas to serve as human shields. There
are many ways
to help their struggle - from donations to actual
presence and
participation. (Contacts can be found through
Indymedia, Israel -
The most important is, of course, to form contacts
and aid the
Palestinian organizations. An exciting development in
the last few
months has been the international solidarity movement.
Individuals
from all over the world come to stay at the
Palestinian areas, serve
as human shields and join political struggle. It is
still possible
to do this, though it is getting more difficult and
dangerous.
(Contact: http://www.palsolidarity.org).
Finally, there is one simple thing that anybody can
do: Boycott Israel
- join, for starts, the consumers boycott which has
been going on
for a while in various places in Europe. It is easy
to do - just don't
buy 'made in Israel' products. But it is also a
useful means of
political activity and education. In the days of the
South-Africa
boycott, people used to sneak in to supermarkets and
paste 'South
Africa' stickers on the relevant products.
Leafletting outside
supermarkets, explaining why we boycott Israel is a
good way to get
the information through.
Israel is not the US. It is a small country with
hardly any economy,
and with a self-image completely detached from
reality. It can be
stopped.
_______________________________________________________________________
|
|
|