Re-birth of the Palestinian Struggle
By John Austin MP
The current spate of violence in the Middle East clearly results from the deliberately provocative visit of Ariel Sharon, the Likud leader and alleged war criminal, escorted by hundreds of Israeli soldiers, to the Haram al-Sharif on 28 September and the wholly disproportionate response of the Israeli authorities to the Palestinian protests. There can be no excuse for the use of tanks, missiles, helicopter gunships and the use of live ammunition against a civilian population, many of them children.
The actions of Israeli Jewish settlers in the violence are also disturbing. Many were given further weapons and ammunition by the Israeli army and settlers do not have any "rules of engagement" which normally apply to soldiers. Settlers have also been immune from legal proceedings for violence against Palestinians.
The visit of Ariel Sharon may, however, have had a profound and beneficial effect in the long-term for the Palestinian people. It has led to an uprising in the Occupied Territories and by Arab Israelis within Israel but it has also seen an awakening of Arab public opinion and a new sense of unity in the Arab world.
What, since Oslo, has been seen as a Palestine/Israeli conflict is clearly once again an Arab/Israeli conflict.
Israeli military superiority, which has humiliated the Arab world in successive conflicts and brutally oppressed the Palestinian people is no longer seen as the threat that it was. Israel's indiscriminate use of sophisticated weapons against a largely unarmed civilian population has resulted in a heavy death toll, but far from putting down an uprising has stiffened Palestinian resolve.
The balance of power may be changing. No longer can Israel and its US backers count on forcing more and more concessions out of a weak and divided Palestinian leadership and a disunited Arab world. There can be no return to the status quo of the post Oslo period.
The spin doctors in Washington and Tel-Aviv have succeeded in exploiting western Islamaphobia, by painting a picture of opponents of the US imposed so-called "peace process" as Islamic terrorists led by Hamas, Hizaballah and the mullahs in Teheran. The western press has largely ignored the impoverisation of the Palestinian population, particularly in Gaza, the continued confiscation of Palestinian land and the creation of thousands of new settler homes, despite Rabin's verbal pledge to maintain a freeze on new settlements. Palestinian homes have been bulldozed by the Israeli authorities and farmers have been denied access to the water they need to cultivate their land. In this situation it was obvious what the reaction would be to the provocative visit by Ariel Sharon and hundreds of Israeli troops to Haram al-Sharif.
In 1994 Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler and Major in the Israeli Army marched into the al-Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, shooting dead 29 Palestinians at prayer. In the subsequent demonstrations, the Israeli Army shot dead a further 33 Palestinians and the Israeli government sealed off the West Bank and Gaza plunging the Palestinian economy into crisis. In Hebron the 120,000 Palestinian population was contained under curfew, to ensure the safety of its 450 Jewish settlers. At the time, Faisal Husseini called for a reformulation of the Oslo Agreement for immediate discussion of the settlements, arguing that "Israel has a choice. It can have peace in the territories or it can have settlements in the territories. But it can no longer have both".
The US ignored Husseini's plea and the settlements have grown. Since the Oslo Agreement, Israel has effectively redrawn the boundaries eastwards by creation of new and expanded settlements linked by a network of several hundred kilometres of settler roads in West Bank and Gaza, which are off-limits to Palestinians. Following Ehud Barak's election the creation of new settlements has increased with 13,600 more settlers in the last year alone.
Palestinians now find themselves surrounded by vast illegal Jewish settlements connected by settler-only roads by-passing Palestinian towns and villages and cutting them off from each other, and trapping them within a system of graded identity cards reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa's pass laws.
The Israeli's have continued to use "closures" as a collective punishment of Palestinians, supposedly in the interests of security. The general closure is to all intents and purposes permanent. The vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are routinely denied entry into Israel and Jerusalem. This closure policy has been imposed consistently ever since March 1993, strangling the Palestinian economy, increasing poverty and unemployment. The closures stop nurses and teachers and those wishing to worship at the holy places in Jerusalem. Palestinian workers with permits are forced to queue in inhumane conditions for hours. Treating people as animals does not lead to security.
Another flaw in the Oslo Agreement is the issue of refugees and confinement of negotiations to those displaced in 1967, whilst ignoring those expelled in 1948. The issue of refugees should be one of International Law not of negotiation. Neither the US/Israeli coalition nor Arafat can sign away the right of return or compensation of the 1.8 million refugees who reside outside the Occupied Territories.
Nor can the fate of Jerusalem be left in the hands of the US. Clinton, with his southern Baptist upbringing, rooted in the Old Testament, may be unable to see the significance of Jerusalem to the Arab world, but the rest of the West should not be so blind. Arafat stood out at Camp David for the principles behind UN Resolutions 242 and 338 on which the Declaration of Principles (Oslo Agreement) were based. The international community must put flesh on the bones of those resolutions. The negotiations cannot be left under US patronage between a US-backed Israel and Palestine. Acceptance of Resolution 242 means recognition that Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are occupied territories Europe played a key role in the creation of both Israel and the conflict. It is in a unique position to play a role in forging a just peace but to do so must disengage from US foreign policy.
John Austin MP
29 October 2000
The above article appeared in Campaign Group News, November 2000 - www.poptel.org.uk/scgn.
