 |
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508 
| ||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508
| ||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Poles apart
By Graham UsherFresh from a meeting with President Clinton on Sunday night where he insisted there could be no return to negotiations unless "Arafat stopped the violence" in the occupied territories, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak addressed a meeting of North American Jews in Chicago. He said Israel needed the support of American Jewry "more than ever" and vowed any agreement he made with the Palestinians would include Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, the annexation of 80 percent of West Bank settlements to Israel proper and no right of return for a single Palestinian refugee. He received a standing ovation.
A few hours earlier, Yasser Arafat addressed the Conference of the Islamic States in Qatar. He vowed that the "uprising of truth and justice would continue" until his people and their lands gained "independence from the claws of the brutal Israeli occupation". On Wednesday, his Fatah movement commemorated the 12th anniversary of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence by calling on Palestinians to demonstrate "sovereignty" throughout the territories occupied in the 1967 war.
The radicalisation in rhetoric mirrors precisely the radicalism in action currently evolving in the occupied territories, as Israel clenches an ever bigger fist to bring the uprising to heel and the Palestinians resort to resistance.
Following the killing of two soldiers and two settlers by Palestinian fighters in Gaza and the West Bank, on Tuesday Israel slapped a military siege on every Palestinian city in the West Bank in addition to its general ban on Palestinians entering Israel. There is thus now a prohibition on the movement of Palestinian goods, services and people not only between Gaza and the West Bank, but between the main Palestinian areas within them. It also unleashed more routine kinds of retaliation, killing three Palestinians teenagers (aged 13,15 and 19) in separate clashes in Gaza and the West Bank on Tuesday and wounding scores, many from live ammunition. Later that night Palestinian guerrillas responded with armed attacks on Israeli settlements near Nablus, and in Hebron and Gaza.
A similar radicalism is occurring within Palestinian opinion in the face of an Israeli onslaught that has so far cost the lives of over 200 of their people, 125,000 of their jobs in Israel and now the siege on their cities in the West Bank and Gaza.
On Monday Birzeit University in the West Bank published a poll on Palestinian attitudes a month into the uprising. It makes grim reading for those in Israel and anywhere else who believe economic deprivation and military might will eventually bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table on Israel's terms. It also reveals the depth of change the Intifada has wrought on mainstream Palestinian opinion.
Of the 1,234 Palestinians polled in the West Bank and Gaza, 75 per cent said they supported the Intifada and 55 per cent believed Palestinian society was ready for a "long and intensifying conflict" with Israel. Eighty per cent supported military attacks on Israeli targets and 73 per cent backed attacks on US targets in the region. As for the negotiations, a colossal 92 per cent insisted there could be no peace with Israel without Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the right of return for the Palestinian refugees. Three per cent believed the US could be a honest mediator in the diplomatic process. As for Ehud Barak, 85 per cent of Palestinians believed he was no longer an Israeli leader with whom the Palestinians could negotiate.
Taken together these views amount to a blistering critique of any attempt by Clinton and Barak to bring things back to where they stood before the Intifada erupted. Whether Arafat shares the overwhelming opinion of his people, though, is far from clear.
For much of the last week the Palestinian leader has assumed his usual posture of signalling all things to all people. According to Israeli media reports, at his meeting in Washington last week he told Clinton he would resume negotiations based on the discussions at Camp David in July and was ready for another summit with Barak before the expiry of the presidential term in January 2001. In Doha, however, the message was to "continue [the Palestinians] holy struggle in the al-Aqsa Intifada with the help of our brothers and friends".
"Arafat is deciding not to decide," commented one Palestinian analyst in Gaza. "He is waiting for others to take the initiative". This appears to be the motive behind his constant demand -- made in both Washington and Doha -- that some form of peacekeeping force must be dispatched to the occupied territories to defend his people and widen international participation in the peace process. The constancy is probably explained not only by the carnage in the West Bank and Gaza but also by the fact that the call is at last finding a resonance beyond the forums of the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic states.
Last weekend, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson, visited the occupied territories. In Gaza she saw children in hospitals whose eyes had been blown out by live Israeli ammunition and homes along the border with Egypt whose walls and roofs had been perforated with tank shells. In Hebron she witnessed first hand the reality in which 40,000 Palestinians have been held under curfew for six weeks so that 235 Jewish settlers, armed to the teeth, can go about their business in the Israeli controlled part of the city. One of them may have even fired on her convoy of cars. Whatever the source, the entire experience had an impact. At a closed meeting of Palestinian human rights organisations in Gaza on Saturday she said rarely had she seen a people in such obvious need of international protection.
Related stories:
The cost of weakness
Crushing the Intifada -- phase two
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
