The Knot of violence
The continuation of the Oslo Process, which were supposed to lead to a solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, stability in the Middle East, and the consolidation of US hegemony in the framework of the "new order" - is now in jeopardy. The Islamic resistance movement in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and its military operations against Israeli civilians (of late, almost entirely in the form of suicide bombings) in the heart of Israel's major cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, put tacks in the wheels of the Oslo process. And reduce the chances of Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the Labor Party to win next month's prime ministerial and Knesset elections. By Tikva Honig-Parnass
Israeli citizens go to the polls in May this year. There is a possibility that the Labor-Meretz governing coalition will be replaced by a Likud government which will include representatives of the most fascistic trends in the Israeli Right, such as Generals Arik Sharon and Rafael Eitan (the latter being the head of the far right Tsomet party, which has entered into an electoral block with the Likud).
Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has in principle accepted the general outlines of the Oslo Accords, and has promised that he will not seek to nullify those agreements concerning the "intermediate stage" that have already been implemented. This means respecting the redeployment of the Israeli army from Area A: 60% of the Gaza Strip and five West Bank cities (representing 4% of West Bank territory), and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in these areas. The PA would also continue to exercise civil - but not police powers in an additional 26% of the West Bank, known as Area B, which includes 426 villages, Israel retains full authority over the remaining 70% of the West Bank, known as Area C.
Israel's two major parties, Labor and Likud, both support the "partial separation" conception expressed in the Oslo Accords, as opposed to full separation, which would imply the establishment of a Palestinian state, the dismantling of the settlements and the division of Jerusalem. The difference between Likud leader Netanyahu and the
Labor Party is the latter's somewhat greater willingness to make secondary, technical and largely symbolic concessions during the final status negotiations, scheduled to open shortly after the elections in Israel. The differences between the two major parties, concerning such matters as awarding the
PA symbols of sovereignty - mean that a
Likud victory would render impossible
Israel and Arafat's common attempt to fool the Palestinian people into believing that the "interim stage" of the Oslo Accords will lead to a state or "something like a state."
A Likud victory will only help the Palestinian to wake up to reality all the sooner: that the Labor-Meretz plan is exactly the same as Sharon's autonomy plan, which the Likud adopted in the 1980's. In other words, the transfer of civil and police powers in the major Palestinian cities to a collaborationist Palestinian body, armed with a strong police force, in order to ease the burden of the Israel army. The authority of the "self-rule" entity will be limited to internal and municipal affairs alone, without any meaningful authority over foreign links or the economy, and without control over land and water resources, which will of course remain in Israel's hands.
The "interim agreement" is in fact very close to the Israeli government's vision of the final settlement. This explains the ongoing land expropriations and the huge sums allocated to building-up the infrastructure which serves the Jewish settlements, including the so-called
Palestine * "bypass" roads linking these settlements to each other and to Israel, which are under the total control by the Israeli army, even when they run through Palestinian towns and villages. This is all in preparation for the future apartheid state. Three billion Shekels (approximately one billion US Dollars) was allocated for these purposes last year.
Last month a secret document authored by the senior Israeli and Palestinian ministers, Yossi Beilin and Abu Maazen (both architects of the Oslo Accords), was leaked to the press. It provides a detailed picture of the Palestinian entity that will be agreed-upon in the final status talks - which they call, with a large-measure of presumptuousness - a "state." According to Minister Beilin: "The Palestinians are prepared to accept a solution in which they give up most of the [1967 occupied] territories, without the dismantling of settlements ["communities" in the original], without a retur to the 67 borders, and with arrangements in Jerusalem that would leave them with less than full municipal powers." The author edits News from Within magazine
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The Israeli plan, which is backed-up by economic agreements, Palestinian people without hope of escaping continued oppression and exploitation by Israel - under Israeli control, on the one hand, and Arafat's authoritarian regime, on the other. Moreover, the Oslo Accords contain no provisions ensuring the most basic human rights to the Palestinian people - for Israel's need for "security" dictates the continuation of Israel's absolute control over the movement of Palestinian residents of the autonomy areas and their produce -"cantons," and between the autonomy areas and including Israel. The denial of this most fundamental human right has severe implications for the their daily lives, in such essential areas as the right to earn a living, and receive health and an education. The Israeli policies of closure, agricultural land expropriations and the uprooting of broad tracts of orchards - are intended to lower the living standards of the workers and farmers, and to proletarianize the latter, in order to generate a cheap and subordinate laborforce for industrial parks inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which will mainly benefit Israeli and foreign investors, and not Palestinians.
It is these prospects, along with the present experience of unemployment, malnutrition and Israeli-imposed blockade that induce the Islamic resistance operations - carried out mainly by Hamas, a movement supported by at least 15% of the population - and to lesser degree, by Islamic Jihad, which is not supported by more than 3% of the population. Because of the almost total
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marginalization of the Palestinian Left - the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in both its military and political wings, the Islamic opposition remains the only alternative force able to carry out acts of resistance to the Israeli occupation. Indeed, it is the struggle against the occupation, and not just fundamentalism," which is the main motive underlying the selfsacrifice of the youths who volunteer to carry out suicide attacks. By the same token, the main strategic parameters which at present guide the Hamas movement are impeding the Oslo process, on the one hand, and realizing the national rights of the Palestinian people, on the other - not the establishment of an
Up to two years ago, the armed activity of the Islamic resistance in Palestine was directed exclusively against soldiers and other Israeli military targets. But since the massacre perpetrated by the settler Baruch Goldstein at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the winter of 1994 (which led to additional Palestinian deaths, at the hands of the Israeli army, outside the mosque) - the Islamic resistance began to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians, within the borders of the State of Israel. Suicide operations more and more became the main technique used. The scope of the slaughter caused by this mode of operation was immeasurably greater than the damage a single fighter - or even a small unit, using conventional means, could inflict. Thus, although the number of Palestinian military operations of all types fell from 4000 in 1992 to 600 in 1995 - the number of slain resulting from them rose from 33 to 80.
But the weapons of closure, unemployment and hunger which Israel always employed in response to these operations, and the risk of losing the support of the tired and hungry people which still pinned its hopes on the Oslo process -rendered most of the political leadership of Hamas in Palestine ready to abandon the armed rebuffed the proposals transmitted by
Hamas in the course of its negotiations with the PA, for a cessation of its military operations in return for a cessation of the persecution of its activists and the release of about a thousand Palestinian prisoners identified with the Islamic resistance that are being held by Israel. These overtures did not cease even after Israel assassinated Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shakaki in Malta late last year and Hamas activist Yihiya
Ayyash (known as "the engineer") in the
Gaza Strip in the first month of 1996- after six months of undeclared cease-fire kept by
Hamas, and just as the PA was about to reach an agreement with Hamas for the movement's cooptation into the self-rule apparatus. Israel deliberately sabotaged the policy of the PA, and also effectively prevented Hamas' participation in the PA council elections by imposing conditions that were not enforced on other candidates, i.e. to declare support of the Oslo accords. This Hamas could not accept.
Israel is not interested in the rise of a militant Palestinian political opposition -either Islamic or secular - which would seek to safeguard Palestinian national interests in the final stage negotiations with Israel. Nor does Israel believe in Arafat's ability to coopt these militants into a loyal opposition. Rather, it wants the PA to crush Hamas in an all-out confrontation, even at the risk of a bloody Palestinian civil war.
Embarking on this course would deprive Arafat of all legitimacy in the eyes of his people, and would lead either to his replacement by another leader, or to a situation in which his power would be totally dependent on Israeli bayonets.
This is why Arafat has resisted Israeli pressure, and refrained from wholesale arrests of the military leadership of Hamas (although he has not refrained from belligerent action directed against Islamic Jihad, a smaller and weaker organization). Nor has Arafat initiated a real war against Hamas' civil infrastructure, with whose political leadership he has continued to negotiate. As the head of Israeli military intelligence told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Security Committee: "Arafat thinks that torrents of blood in the
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4 International Viewpoint April 1996 struggle against the occupation, and to strive to integrate Hamas into the framework of the Palestinian Authority (PA), albeit as a political opposition. However, Israel rejected Hamas' overtures, proffered for over a year, to be integrated into the "peace process." Israel also
Palestinian community would endanger him more than does the continuation of the Hamas' terrorism. Today he prefers to reach an understanding with Hamas rather than to go to war against it. Arafat still thinks he has room to manoeuver in front of Israel and the US, and still hasn't shown any determination in this war."
Israel's consistent rejections of Hamas' proposals and its continuous persecution of the movement's activists, along with the responsiveness of a part of the Palestinian
security services to Israeli pressure, pushed Hamas to the wall and strengthened the voices within it calling for a continuation of the armed struggle. This led to the latest round of suicide operations.
The repercussions developments on Israeli public opinion threaten Peres' chances in the upcoming elections, and the continuation of the Oslo process. A bout of hysterical anxiety which overcame the media, the commentators, and the political and academic establishment. This was accompanied by a discourse emphasizing the "threat to national survival" allegedly posed by the Hamas operations. In support of these claims, recollections from the national collective storehouse of memory were evoked: the fears of generations of Jews of persecution by anti-semites. Not only was the fact that Israel is a nuclear power excluded from the public discussion; there were also almost no attempts to place the Hamas operations in the context of the continuing Israeli occupation. "Jew-hatred," motivated by Islamic religious beliefs, is perceive as the sole motivation for the suicide bombers. Such a claim is inevitable in a Jewish-Zionist society, whose government signed a "peace" agreement in which the word 'occupation' is never once mentioned. Such a claim is also inevitable in a society where the political discourse concerning the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has not really changed after Oslo: even within left-wing Zionism, which still refrains from calling the Zionist project "colonialist."
Ignoring the occupation and the sources of the conflict leaves only one kind of response to Hamas' or any other military opposition: the complete de-humanization of the perceived enemy. Thus, Israeli writer S. Yizhar, an ideological leader of the Zionist labor movement, and known as its "humanist and moral conscience," wrote, after the recent suicide operations, that the Palestinian people are "cannibals," who should be excluded from the category of human beings. Thus he liberated Israel from the obligation to observe any moral limits in the war it has declared against Hamas.
The nature of this war was made clear by Israel's President, Ezer Weitzmann when he declared on March 6: "When you are looking for a needle in a haystack and you cannot find the needle - burn the haystack." Prime Minister Peres added: "In the war against terrorists, Israel obeys only one law: the law of self-defense." In other words, neither international humanitarian or human rights law, nor even the Oslo
Accords, will constrain Israel.
Collective punishment has been imposed on the residents of the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank, in the form of a hermetic closure preventing the movement of people and goods to Jerusalem, including the import of food
Pd medicines for which Israel is the sole supplier, on the one hand, and the export agricultural produce to Israel, countries on the preventing passage between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. A devastating internal closure (unprecedented in "peacetime') was imposed on communities of the West Bank. on each of its 465 towns, villages and cities - effectively placing 1.2 million persons under a sort of house arrest.
This is "the most extensive instance of collective punishment in our times," in the words of the British cable network, Sky News. Even at the peak of the Intifada, Israel never dared impose anything like this. The aim seems to be to pressure Arafat to engage in a frontal confrontation with the Islamic opposition, even at the price of "rivers of blood," and to induce the Palestinian population to "support" such a war. Peres has repeatedly declared that unless Arafat arrests six of "the most important wanted people" on a list of thirteen handed to him by the chief-of-staff of the Israeli army, and fulfills certain "other conditions," the closure will not be lifted. The mass detentions of around 800 Hamas (and some Popular Front) activists by Israel, the summary legal proceedings leading to the destruction of houses belonging to the "extended families" of members of the military wing of Hamas activists, and the deportation of their families (a measure which the Supreme
Court of Israel has already ruled is permissible) - are additional means aimed at liquidating the Islamic opposition.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Conference held on Egyptian soil "against terrorism"
(according to the US-Israel version), and "for the peace process" (in the version of the participating Arab states) - was hastily convened by the US to save Peres' political skin, prevent the collapse of the Oslo process and strengthen the imperiled stability of the Middle East. The 30 states which were invited via a personal telephone call from US President Clinton included, in addition to the Western states, 13 Arab states, including Algeria, Morocco, Saudi
Palestine * Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, as well as Egypt and Jordan. Syria refused to attend, as too, of course, did those states such as Libya and Iraq which are outside the Madrid-Oslo process, and which the conference was intended to target and scapegoat as "terrorist states."
The conference expressed unambiguous support for Peres and unconditional "solidarity' with Israel. In the conference's official final declaration, Israel was the only state mentioned by name as a victim of terrorism. In contrast to past international get-togethers of this nature, this conference did not even bother to try to appear "evenhanded." It refrained from issuing a condemnation of the closure and the other repressive measures undertaken by Israel alongside its censure of terrorism. In this way, Arafat was also provided with legitimation for full cooperation with Israel in the "total war" it has declared against the Islamic opposition.
The Sharm el-Sheikh conference was also intended to bolster US hegemony in the region and to force those European states, especially France, Germany, and of late, Russia, which conduct a somewhat independent foreign policy involving a certain degree of support for those Middle Eastern states which are not participants in the Madrid-Oslo process, such as Iraq, Libya, and most importantly, Iran. The intensive US-Israeli effort to demonize Iran and portray it as responsible for all "Islamic terrorism" in the world was not particularly effective. The European countries refused to join the US anti-Iran campaign. Nor were the participating Arab regimes willing to explicitly or openly link their struggle against Islamic fundamentalism to the defense of US regional interests. In the end,
Clinton was forced to forego any mention of Islamic fundamentalism or Hamas in the conference's final declaration.
On the other hand, the European and
Arab states consented to the US-initiative to
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* Palestine enter into a deeper information-sharing and "security" partnership, under the guidance of the US intelligence agency, the CIA -and to establish a kind of regional Interpol to "fight terrorism." This conference was the first time that Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia agreed to openly cooperate with Israel on such matters. In this respect, the conference represented a giant step forward towards the realization of one of the principle aims of the Oslo Accords: the recognition and acceptance 1 of the Zionist state as a legitimate part of the new Middle East before the realization of the national rights of the Palestinian people. Moreover, Israel is to be included in an alliance of repressive Arab regimes directed against a common enemy: those Arab countries and political movements who oppose the US imperialist hegemony in the Middle East.
Israel remains an important strategic asset for the US, since it is the only Middle Eastern state whose loyalty to the US is absolutely reliable. The Oslo process has not diminished the US need for a faithful watch-dog, for it has not yet led to the hoped-for regional stability, which is jeopardized both by those states, such as Iran and Libya, that oppose Oslo, and by the fundamentalist movements which threaten those regimes which collaborate with imperialism. The European refusal to fully surrender to US dictates, such as France's announcement that it will continue economic and technical cooperation with Iran (including in the field of nuclear technology) is also a source of worry for Washington. The refusal of the Arab states which attended the Sharm el-Sheikh to condemn Iran and "Islamic" terrorism is further proof that US imperialism still needs Israel to function as regional "cop on the
The US is prepared to pay a hefty price to assure Israel's usefulness: US economic aid to Israel reached SUS 4 billion last year, including a direct military-aid grant of SUS 1.8 b., a SUS 1.2 b. civilian-aid grant, and an SUS 80 million grant to aid in the absorption of Jewish immigrants into Israeli society.
The recent round of attacks by the Islamic resistance movement inside Israel, with the attendant risk of the disintegration of Oslo and a subsequent Middle Eastern conflagration, have led to what Peres called "a quantum-leap in the level of relations between Israel and the American administration." In a special meeting with the Israeli cabinet sub-committee on security, US President Clinton announced a 100 Million Dollar special aid package to fight terrorism, including special high-tech military and "civilian" equipment that has been developed in the US. A memorandum of understanding concerning US-Israel cooperation "in the fight against terrorism in the region," was signed by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher, CIA Director John Deutsch, Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak.
Since the latest slew of bombings, Arafat's forces have arrested around 700 people in the self-rule areas of the (West Bank) Northern and Gaza Districts, mostly members of the Islamic movements, but also some PFLP activists. At first, the PA sweeps were mainly aimed at the Iz-a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, including some of its most prominent leaders, such as Abdul Fatah Sutari, believed to be the right-hand man of Qassam beacon Mahmoud Deif (Israel has conditioned any lightening of the closure on Deif's arrest by Arafat. In response to increasing US-Israeli pressure, the PA police also arrested much of the Hamas political leadership in the Gaza district, including those leaders who had conducted the negotiations with the PA arrests and raids on homes and institutions continue throughout the West Bank and Gaza District. Obviously, in carrying out his war on the Islamic opposition, Arafat has not spurned cooperation with the Israeli secret service Shabak and the US CIA. He met with the director of the latter three days before the convening of the Sharm elSheikh conference.
However, although his back is to the wall, Arafat is still straining to avoid stepping over the line which would lead to the "rivers of blood" expected of him by Israel. For example, he still refuses to arrest a number of "notable" wanted persons from the list presented to him by the Israeli chiefof-staff, including Mahmoud Deif, who is thought to be hiding in PA controlled territory.
Thus, Israeli Prime Minister Peres insists on defining the PA's efforts as "insufficient." He has declared that the "testing-period" for Arafat has still not ended, and that Israel will not lift its recently-imposed ban on talks with him, nor evacuate the center of Hebron, due at the end of March, 1996, according to the Taba Interim Agreement - until "certain conditions" are met.
In the end, Peres may be hoist upon his own petard: the all-out war he has declared against Hamas could turn against him. The civil and political arms of Hamas and not just its military wing, have sunk deep roots in Palestinian society, and it will take a long time to eradicate the movement. In the meantime - in order to save himself and the Oslo process - Peres is employing collective punishment - especially the heavy closure, which is raining destruction on Palestinians throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The growing despair and rage will only strengthen the Islamic resistance, which could put the Oslo process in peril and reveal the great deception which underlies it, thus dashing US hopes of the emergence of beat."
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