People's Democracy

THE virtual declaration of war on the Palestinian people by Israel in the last week of March threatens to drag the entire Middle East into a vortex of war and violence. The danger signals had become even more glaring after the war criminal Ariel Sharon became the prime minister of Israel after a landslide election victory earlier in the year. In fact the dramatic escalation of violence and the scuttling of the Oslo peace accords started with the visit of Sharon, then the leader of the Likud Party which was in opposition, to al-Haram al-Shariff in September last year. This is one of the holiest places for the Muslims and his visit came just a few days after the observation of the eighteenth anniversary of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in these camps during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon under the military leadership of Sharon.

From September onwards, the violence has escalated to unprecedented levels with the Palestinians, as usual, facing the brunt. More than four hundred Palestinians have been killed, a large number of them children. The month of March was exceptionally violent. There was a rash of suicide attacks by desperate Palestinians with nothing left to lose. The Israelis military has undertaken overwhelming bombardment of the West Bank towns and villages with helicopter gunships and tanks. Top officials of the Palestinian Authority are being targeted for assassination.

However, the new "Al Aqsa" intifada started by the Palestinians shows no signs of abating despite the extremely brutal methods being used by the Israeli occupation forces. The struggle of the Palestinians is being conducted in territories occupied by the Israelis which, under the terms of the Oslo accords, they should have vacated before the end of the last year. Instead, under the guise of the Oslo accords, Israel has stealthily encroached on more Palestinian land by building fortified settlements.

Despite the Oslo accords, Palestinians still control only 13.1 per cent of the West Bank and no part of Jerusalem. For the benefit of 5,000 Jewish settlers, Israel still controls one-third of the Gaza Strip. Because 400 Zionist settlers have chosen to settle in the West Bank town of Hebron, the 20,000 Palestinian residents have been made to suffer harsh military occupation.

The transfer of Israeli civilian population to the occupied territories is prohibited by international law and is at the same time violative of the Oslo accords. After Ehud Barak became prime minister in 1999, the rate of Israeli settlements on the West Bank increased by nearby 51 per cent. Today 200,000 Jewish settlers are living in 200 settlements that pock-mark the West Bank. An additional 1,30,000 Jews reside in East Jerusalem, the designated capital of the Palestinian state.

Since February this year, after Sharon took over as prime minister, the Israeli occupation has become even more unbearable for the Palestinians. The Israeli military has cut off highways and roads and dug trenches to further isolate Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. Dawn to dusk curfew has been the norm for the last few months, preventing Palestinian workers, students and farmers from reaching their destinations.

A Palestinian has to get special permission from the Israeli authorities to travel from one town to another in the occupied territories. In most cases, this permission is denied. Access to Jerusalem and other holy places is also denied to 90 per cent of the Palestinian population. The Palestinian economy is in the doldrums due to the Israeli blockade. Unemployment has reportedly reached a record high.

Millions of dollars, legally due to the Palestinian Authority, have been blocked by the Israeli government as part of its punitive measures. Government employees including doctors, engineers and teachers have not been paid for months. The Arab summit which ended in Amman at the end of March has once again promised the Palestinian Authority 40 million dollars a month for the next six months to cover the salaries, health and education costs. A similar promise was made during the Cairo summit of the Arab League late last year. The promised aid did not materialise that time.

Palestinian and Arab opinion on the streets has been inflamed by American position on the issue. At the Camp David summit in the middle of last year, the then American president, Bill Clinton, gave tacit support to the Israeli position of not refusing to countenance the right of return for the millions of Palestinian refugees who were forcibly uprooted from their homes when the state of Israel was created.

Israel too had once again reiterated at Camp David that it was unwilling to return to its 1967 borders as stipulated by the UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. At Camp David, Israel had announced that it intends to annex around 10 per cent of the West Bank. Such a move will effectively cut the West Bank into three parts, each completely surrounded by areas under Israeli control.

The London Observer, in an editorial in October last year, said: "If Palestinians were black, Israel would be now a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States. Its development and settlement in the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-administered "Bantustans," with "whites" monopolising the supply of water and electricity." No self-respecting Palestinian is going to accept such a situation passively.

Despite the escalating threats from Sharon and his war cabinet, Arafat declared after the recent Arab summit that the "intifada" will continue with renewed vigour. Arafat’s residence was targeted by Israeli gunships in the last week of March. Two of his personal bodyguards have been killed by Israeli security forces. Senior Israeli government officials are saying that Arafat is personally responsible for the rash of suicide bombings in recent times, despite the militant Islamic movement Hamas claiming credit for the terrorist acts.

Arafat has said that he has reliable information that the Israeli army has a plan to launch a 100 day military campaign so that Israel can regain the initiative in the occupied territories. Instead of strongly condemning the Israeli actions, the Bush administration asked Arafat to call on his people to give up violence and resume the security dialogue with Tel Aviv when their helicopter gunships and tanks were attacking civilian areas. In the last week of March, the US was the only permanent UN Security Council member which vetoed a resolution backing a United Nations observer force to help protect Palestinians from the brutal onslaught of the Israeli armed forces.