No letup in the Palestinian
T HE UPRISING is no longer on
the front pages of the papers. What are the most significant
Since the beginning of June, a series of actions and strikes called through communiques from the United Leadership have drawn great support in the Gaza Strip, and a bit less on the West Bank. Contrary to what the authorities wanted people to believe at the beginning of the month, we have seen no return to relative calm. Quite the opposite. We get the feeling that the confrontations are tending to sharpen.
The strikes have been total in Gaza, and very largely respected on the West Bank. These are strikes concentrated in one to two days, called at dates set by the Unified Leadership. A new element in the uprising is starting fires [a form of sabotage]. An average of 18 fires a day were recorded in the second week of June. These probably started as individual initiatives; today they have become one of the dimensions of the resistance strategy. • The uprising is going into its seventh month. At this stage, what sort of a balance sheet can you make, among other things concerning the repression?
The human cost is becoming impressive. The number of dead are estimated at more than 250 — some even say more than 300 - with a growing proportion of people killed in unclear circumstances, that is, by the settlers. There have been about 40 cases of this sort. A very large number of people have been injured by plastic bullets, at least 60 in the past month. Some of them have lost eyes. There has also been an excessive use of tear gas. Amnesty International has made an appeal to the Israeli government about this. It talks about 40 Palestinians losing their lives, including 18 babies under six months of age.
Moreover, there are officially 2,500 people in administrative detention. The army recognizes that alongside this, there are 3,000-4,000 think that there are more than 2,500 administrative detainees and 7,000-8,000 normal prisoners. The difference comes from the fact that the army only counts those who are held for more than a week.
But one thing is evident to everyone. The Intifada [uprising] is not an ephemeral explosion. It is a prolonged popular struggle that is going uprising
SINCE DECEMBER 9, 1987, the Palestinians have tied down on the world's most powerful armies. They have done it by throwing stones, civil disobedience and strikes, despite fierce, murderous repression by the Israeli state. After six months of a fantastic mobilization, which the media are no longer talking very much about, what is the situation now?
We asked our correspondent in Jerusalem, Michel Warschawski. to go on for many months more, or even years. The uprising has to be seen as a long-lasting movement, as a new kind of relationship between the Palestinian population and the Israeli state. The whole strategy now is built around the perspective of a prolonged struggle. What will be the next stage? Probably total civil disobedience, that is, refusal to pay taxes, boycotting Israeli products, refusing to apply for the various permits necessary for daily life all the bridges with the
The first phase of the Intifada was one of confrontation with the occupation forces. We are now in an intermediate phase that involves preparation for total civil disobedience. On the one hand, this is based on broadening and reinforcing the People's
MIDDLE EAST Committees, which are nuclei of selfadministration at a local level and which are one of the most important factors in the present situation. On the other, it involves a certain economic self-sufficiency even if the whole of the population has to live under a curfew for a month or more. There is of course a debate about timing, about how prepared the population is already. • Do you see a growth of solidarity in Israeli society?
There is no broadening of the solidarity, but there is undoubtedly a deepening. A whole series of initiatives have been taken to express concrete solidarity with the movement and the victims. An example is the Beita Committee — named for a village wrecked by the settlers - that has brought together prominent personalities and is organizing collections of money and days of volunteer work to rebuild what was destroyed. Of course, this is still far from the dimensions attained by the protest movement at the time of the Lebanon war. That is because today the stakes are much higher and involve the very foundations of the Zi-
In this sense, you can speak of a deepening of solidarity. I see another indication in the unprecedented success of the "traditional" June 4 demonstration that commemorates the 1967 war. Usually, sympathizers of the [Israeli] Peace Now movement have not taken part. This year, on the other hand, we made big inroads in this layer, even though this demonstration was called by organizations known to be left and radical.
In the reserve units that are doing their service in the territories we see also that in almost every unit, one or two soldiers refuse to go. This is especially true in units called up to go to the territories for the second time, because the tours of active service have been increased from 30 to 62 days and have to be done two or three times. Moreover, reservists are being used increasingly in the territories. As they do their second or third tour in the territories, this sort of effect will be felt more Even at the level of the relationship of political forces, the most recent polls give a slight lead to Labour over Likud. In future elections, it is expected that we will see a renewal of the balance between the Labour Bloc and the Labour left on the one hand and Likud and the extreme right on the 7