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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 January 2000 Issue No. 464 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 January 2000 Issue No. 464
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Special Books Profile Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Letting the cat out of the cage
By Ray Bush *Dear Mr Barak, I wanted to wish you a happy New Year, but that is very difficult. You see, I have just visited the territories controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, and have seen with my own eyes what Israel has been doing and what it continues to do to the Palestinian people. Let's get one thing clear at the outset. In Palestine I met, stayed with and was hosted by a fabulously strong and confident, robust and vibrant people -- the Palestinians give real meaning to the phrase "hope springs eternal from the human heart". But if there were an international court for crimes relating to the underdevelopment of a people and its territory, Israel would receive a life sentence. It is an absolute crime against humanity that Israel occupied the Gaza Strip from 1967 until the formation of the PNA with no positive legacy in terms of infrastructure development, roads, housing, or educational facilities. It reminded me of Namibia at the time of the independence elections in 1989, when it was evident that the South African apartheid regime had used the "colony" as a labour reserve and to occupy its best agricultural and mineral land. With no minerals, the Gaza Strip has been controlled by Israel to access its labour and control what are perceived to be strategically important areas -- and also to take the best agricultural land and sources of fresh water.
Despite (or is it because of?) the Oslo Agreement, Israel remains a strong and imposing force inside Gaza. The anomaly of seeing the Zionist settlements, like a skin disease on the landscape, with soldiers peeping out from behind reinforced concrete and sandbags, and control of lateral roads linking Israel with settlements where settlers enjoy themselves only under the armed guard of Israeli conscripts, indicates the nature of Israel's tenure in occupied Palestine. It is a tenuous and provocative presence. In its arrogance, the occupation is summarised by a soldier at one checkpoint, where our Palestinian host was showing his ID, who enquired patronisingly whether "they" were "treating [me] well". It is clear that Israel's presence in Gaza and the West Bank is intended to frustrate the PNA's autonomy; it is also clear that, like apartheid in South Africa, it will not last.
Mr Barak, I would be very grateful if you could spell out why settlements continue to be expanded. From Oslo to the present, more than 10 per cent of West Bank land has been confiscated from its lawful owners and more than 3,000 houses demolished. I had thought naively that one of the key principles of the Oslo Accords was acceptance of UN Resolution 242, requiring the withdrawal of occupation forces from Palestinian land occupied in 1967. As an honest incumbent of your political position, you should be able to explain why the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain and, to give another example from the West Bank, why Bethlehem is now almost entirely surrounded by occupation forces, including an Israeli mock tourist village. This latter is presumably intended to capture tourists and prevent them from residing in the enchanting town of the Nativity. We were told of many cases of Israeli tour guides instructing tourists not to buy anything in the PNA areas because the Palestinians "would only cheat [them]". Bethlehem also suffers the bizarre presence of Israeli soldiers who control Rachel's Tomb. Has Israel become the self-appointed guardian of religious monuments -- including those that are sacred to more than simply Judaism? How does the expansion of settlements square with your rhetoric of a just peace?
Of course, like your predecessors, you are keen to placate the scurrilous antics of Israel's religious fanatics. They continue to imagine that Israel should expand, and perhaps you are still too new and anxious about your own political security to seek peace with Palestine. Hopefully, with political maturity and statesmanship, you will soon understand the need to satisfy concerns that Palestinians have about their security. In case you need reminding, this will include the need to stop continued violation of their human rights: they have the right of access to their land, and of free movement without interrogation and humiliation by your young troopers, who do not seem to have received any training in politeness or respect for people's dignity. Is it not shameful that the whim of Israeli occupiers determines the routes that honest Palestinians take to work, to keep appointments on time, to visit friends and loved ones?
If you are serious about the need for peace, then Israel will have to soon move away from the mindset that Palestinians are only good for their labour power. That is the labour, incidentally, that has built Israel, and was therefore not free to develop Palestine in the way that generations of Palestinians have sought to develop it -- freed from the shackles of occupation. The humiliation to which Palestinian workers are subjected at Erez checkpoint, linking the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, the delays they endure and the frustration that your regime imposes undermine any initiative you say you have for peace -- besides adding enormous transaction costs to economic development in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But of course, you know that. Your fear now is no doubt the possibility of a vibrant Palestinian economy, no longer dependent upon Israeli trade -- as already evidenced by the PNA's refusal of food imports past their expiry date, which Israel recently dumped in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It is time that your regime turns away from the procrastination of your predecessors. Can you not show the courage that you were supposed to bring when you were elected as prime minister, and move forward with peace in Palestine?
Your country is still a blot on the international copybook at the start of the new millennium. Experience of the South African Bantustans, pre-independence Zimbabwean communal areas and Pretoria's destabilisation of the southern African region in the 1980s was preparation for visiting the PNA territories; yet the horror, the sheer scale and omnipresence of Israeli military occupation is proof not only of Israeli obduracy but also of the international community's collusion in this crime.
The US remains the crucial link in any peace negotiation. This is not because it knows the Middle East at all well, but because of the fear that any justice in the region may be construed as being anti-Jewish. When justice is done, US political party managers worry that their coffers will suffer -- more important than Palestinian human rights. But would it be too much to imagine that President Clinton, in his last lame year as president, might deliver a peace settlement in Palestine that returns land to its owners instead of rewarding the guilty and the dishonest -- the illegal occupiers? At some stage, Mr Barak, you have to address the issue of your regime's needless violence, your abuse of Palestinian human rights, the seizure and occupation of Palestinian land. While you do not grasp the real crux of peace -- the role of settlements, the right of Palestinians to return to their land and the obvious sovereignty issues surrounding the Palestinian state -- your delaying tactics can only be understood as seeking to provoke further tension, and therefore as an Israeli justification for policy based upon security concerns.
But be careful. As a senior official in one of the oldest refugee camps told me, "when you cage a cat, it soon becomes a lion". You have experienced the lions of the Intifada already, and it may not be too long before you experience them again on urban terrain that all occupiers have historically feared and failed in. You have the added difficulty that visitors to Palestine can see with their own eyes the atrocities of the Israeli occupation, and the underdevelopment and impoverishment of the Gaza Strip (still without even an independent power supply or waste water treatment plant -- although of course Israel has offered to treat the water, for its own irrigation purposes). It is difficult for even Israeli propaganda to sustain the innocence of Tel Aviv's political rhetoric.
There is good news, though. The economic and development achievements of the PNA are palpable. New housing, schools, four universities for a population of about a million in the Gaza Strip: these will help to improve further the human capital resources of what is already probably the most educated and skilled population in the South. There are also the hundreds of thousands in the diaspora, the encouraging investment regime promoted by the PNA and the belief, expressed by a senior minister, that joint venture opportunities exist for Palestinian and Israeli investors. This indicates that at least the PNA recognises the importance of economic rationality shaping future ideological battles.
Yet even this optimism is tempered. Last year, Palestinian farmers demonstrated at Erez crossing, throwing carnations to the ground in symbolic protest of Israeli delays and control of Palestinian export markets. Ending this control and dominance of the Palestinian economy is part of the process of ending human rights violations. Mr Barak, will you deliver this, for the security of Palestinians as well as Israelis?
P.S. When we left Gaza, we were charged an exit tax of 480 shekels. I was told that this money went to the government of Israel, but there was no evidence that it had been invested in ensuring the speedy and safe passage of travellers. No doubt we will have to wait for the Palestinian control of their borders before efficiency and politeness to visitors are delivered.
* The writer is at the Institute for Politics and International Studies, Leeds University.
