The Palestinian war of independence
HAVING allowed their national leadership to negotiate with the occupier for several years on the terms of an overall agreement which would put an end to a century of colonial oppression, the
Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have reached the conclusion that the state of Israel is not yet ready for a compromise promise of a confrontation which, this time, would have a religious and no longer simply national dimension. History will remember Ehud Barak as somebody who which would be acceptable for their people, and that freedom and independence are to be won through the pursuit of the struggle.
The negotiating table, with its US broker, has proved to be a fraud where the dice are loaded.
MICHEL WARSCHAWSKI opened, at Camp David, a religious crusade in the Middle East, if not throughout the world. History will remember Ehud Barak as a criminally irresponsible leader who provoked the holy war for the liberation of Jerusalem. Compared to Barak, Ariel Sharon is a fourth rate provocateur.
The murderous rage of the Israeli armed forces was not an 'exaggerated
O we have to spell it out? The complete withdrawal from the territories
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intentionally provocative visit by Ariel Sharon, the leader of the Israeli right, to the compound of Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque was only the spark that set fire to the gunpowder. This powder had accumulated for months and months, and since the Camp David summit it was obvious that the explosion was imminent. This summit, orchestrated by a US President anxious to obtain an agreement before the end of his term, has been perceived by the Palestinians as the end of the Oslo process. Contrary to what the media claim, it was not the intransigence of Yasser Arafat, but that of Ehud Barak which put an end to the negotiations.
At Camp David, the latter believed, or affected to believe, that the Palestinian delegation would show the same moderation over the final agreement as they had over the various interim accords. In fact, although the Palestinian leaders have displayed a serious moderation for more than six years, agreeing to scale their demands down to the minimum in the agreements already signed and to close their eyes to the pursuit of colonization in the occupied territories, it was precisely because these amounted to interim, and thus provisional accords. Ever since the secret negotiations in Oslo, none of the Palestinian leaders had concealed their vision of what would be the parameters of the definitive status: 2 International Viewpoint #325 November 2000 occupied in June 1967, the dismantling of all the settlements, the right of return for the refugees, the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in the whole of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including east Jerusalem.
The Israeli leaders believed, or affected to believe, that all this was negotiable, and that for the negotiations on final status, they could impose their conception on the head of the Palestinian Authority, as they had succeeded in doing in the various preceding accords. As for Palestinian public opinion, Arafat and his police would have the job of holding it in line, since the Arab masses, as everyone knows, possess no minds of their own and follow the decisions of their dictators.
### Improbable
It is highly improbable that the Palestinian delegation had agreed to revise substantially downwards the general framework of their demands. In any case, Barak shattered the negotiations by raising the most taboo subject of all, something even Benjamin Netanyahu had not brought up: Israeli sovereignty over the Haram-alsharif, built on the ruins of Solomon's temple.
Irresponsible and criminal stupidity or intentional provocation? It doesn't matter, it was the end of the negotiations. And the reaction' to the Palestinian demonstrations, or because they were taken by surprise by the use of firearms by some demonstrators and members of the Palestinian police service. The massive use of force, including tanks and helicopter gunships, was planned for a long time, and everything that happened on the ground was based on the army's operational plans.
### Blood should flow
For more than a year the military had received the order to prepare plans for a riposte in case the PLO unilaterally declared the independence of the state of Palestine. If well informed Israeli journalists are to be believed, these various plans aimed to make the Palestinians pay dearly for their initiative. "Blood should flow" one of these plans states explicitly, and indeed blood has flowed. The massive use of elite snipers left no doubt: the army had received the order to shoot to kill. At more than 100 deaths and thousands of wounded, the price paid by the Palestinians is extremely heavy, and yet their determination has, until now, not weakened.
On the contrary: in their thousands, the militants are preparing for a combat which is going to last, whether under the form of mass confrontations or guerilla operations against Israeli objectives in the occupied territories. And undoubtedly also attacks in
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* Palestine has begun
* Palestine / Globalization of the last two decades to 'Judaise the Galilee' were veritably besieged by thousands of Palestinian demonstrators, dozens of roads were closed off because of the danger of ambushes by young Palestinians armed with stones and Molotov cocktails, and everyday confrontations opposed the Palestinian population to the forces of order in dozens of Arab towns and villages in Galilee and Wadi 'Ara, 50 kilometers from Tel Aviv. For more than a week, these Israeli citizens expressed simultaneously their fury at the massacre in the occupied territories and 50 years of frustration linked to the flagrant inequality and humiliations imposed on them by the Jewish state.
The murderous reaction of the police force of Commissaire General Alik Ron, commandant of the northern region and a notorious racist whose dismissal has been demanded by Arabs, combined with threats by some political leaders of a return to the "years of lead" of the military government (which was imposed on Palestinian citizens of Israel until the mid1960s) served as the green light for the eruption of veritable anti-Arab pogroms throughout the country.
Some hundreds of youths armed with sticks and firearms sacked several Arab localities, wounding hundreds of people, setting fire to half a dozen mosques, and burning apartments where Arabs lived in the Jewish towns. The police, far from attacking the pogromists, joined in to fire on Arabs who defended themselves. In Nazareth after the pogrom of Yom Kippur there were two dead and more than 80 wounded, all Arabs. The Nazareth pogrom finally led the Prime Minister to understand the gravity of the situation and denounce the pogromists. It amounted to a real "Bosniaisation" of the conflict: an intercommunal confrontation where one of the communities is protected by the police and supported by the government.
### Wound
But this murderous and hysterical reaction reopened a wound which will not close so easily, and which will oblige the Jewish state to make structural choices between its will to be a Jewish state and its democratic pretensions.
There is no doubt that the Palestinians of Israel are not ready to return to the status-quo which preceded the Jewish New Year, and the demand for a real citizenship 4 International Viewpoint #325 November 2000 is affirmed with such vigour that even the budgets and jobs hastily allocated by the Barak team 'to reduce the gap' will not smother it.
So long as the situation seemed confined to Israeli-Palestinian relations, the US administration could leave Barak to do as he wished. However, the images of the massacred young Palestinian demonstrators led to a very broad movement of solidarity in the Arab countries, as well as inside Muslim communities throughout the world. Since October 1 the stability of the new US order is in question. Hezbollah's operations in Lebanon, where they have twice succeeded in kidnapping Israelis, could also lead to a spilling over and the likelihood of an escalation which lead to a generalized war can no longer be ruled out.
Israeli-Palestinian peace underpins the stability of the "New Middle East". The mass demonstrations from Beirut to Rabat and the mobilization of the Muslim peoples in the imperialist centers are warning shots, not only to the Egyptian President Mubarak or King Abdallah of Jordan, but to the real masters of the new world order.
### Urgent
For US imperialism it was then urgent to stop the confrontations and create the impression of a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Mission accomplished by Clinton in Sharm el Sheikh, with the help of the Egyptian president and the young Hashemite monarch: the two parties committed themselves to call for a ceasefire, creating a false symmetry between aggressor and victim; a secret document defining concrete objectives for the return to order, with the CIA controlling the process, neutrally of course. In place of the commission of international inquiry demanded by the Palestinians, supported by President Chirac, the US will make a study, neutrally of course, of the situation and a concession made to the Arabs) this will be shown to the UN Secretary General.
But nothing indicates that Yasser Arafat can end the current revolt. Contrary to the racist fantasies of the Israeli government, the Palestinian people are not a flock of sheep to be driven out into the street and called back in again by their shepherd. But even if Arafat was capable of that, this would not bring things back to how they were before the Jewish New Year. A page has been irrevocably turned.*