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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters War in Gaza
By Graham UsherAs with the 1987 vintage, Gaza has provided the imagery and dynamic of the eight-week Intifada of Al-Aqsa. It delivered the enduring motif of the uprising, a cowering Mohamed Al-Dorra shot dead in his father's arms by the Israeli army at the Netzarim junction. Gaza is where Israel has executed with almost scientific precision the policy for quelling the revolt, a mixture (in the words of Israeli army chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, of economic and territorial "blockades," "initiated actions" (assassinations) and insulation from the outside world.
And Gaza is where the Palestinian resistance has most clearly moved from civilian protests to guerrilla warfare with some 700 or so armed actions on soldiers, settlements and settler by-pass roads in the last two months. Courtesy of the events of 20 November, Gaza, too, is where the veil was lifted on one future for the conflict. "And this is not an intifada," in the view of one Gazan. "It is war."
At 7.30am on Monday a busload of schoolchildren from the Kfar Darom Jewish settlement in the heart of Gaza set off on their daily army-escorted ride to a school in the Strip's Gush Qatif settlement bloc. Seven hundred metres into the journey a mortar shell tore through the side of the bus. It left two adult settlers dead and nine others injured, including five children, three with losses to their limbs.
The ambush came less than 48 hours after Yasser Arafat's public vow that he was "making every possible effort to prevent firing" from Palestinian-controlled areas. Oscillating wildly between disavowal and fear, he convened the Palestinian Authority's National Security Council to "investigate" the "incident" and dispatched his hapless spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeineh, to face the media.
Stressing his opposition to "all kinds of violence in principle," Abu Rdeineh reminded reporters (accurately) that the attack had occurred in an area "under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Israeli army" and that, therefore, "the Authority could not be held responsible."
Palestinians showing defiance while Israeli helicopters shelled Gaza Strip on Monday (photo: AP)
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak held the PA "directly" responsible, and called an emergency session of his inner security cabinet. The meeting lasted nearly four hours, during which the debate was not whether there was going to be a reprisal but of what severity and magnitude. Those in favour of a massive retaliation included Barak and newer hawks like acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. Those against -- or abstaining -- consisted of the dying breed of Oslo "doves": Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin and Amnon Lipkin-Shakak.
As dusk fell, Israeli navy gunboats encircled Gaza's coastline, tanks besieged its borders and helicopters flew over its cities. In a combined bombardment lasting over three hours -- and at a ratio of one missile per minute on Gaza City -- the army hit military and civilian centres from Rafah in the south of the Strip to Beit Lahyia in the north. In Gaza City, helicopters knocked out electricity supplies, razed the palatial headquarters of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service (PSS) to rubble and pitched rockets into the densely populated refugee camps of Jabalya and Shati.
At the end of the worst punishment even Gazans can remember, 14 PA "command centres" had been destroyed, 120 Palestinians had been injured (including 22 from Shati refugee camp alone) and one killed, a 21-year old Palestinian police officer guarding a PSS centre in Khan Younis. As additional punishments, Israeli caterpillar army bulldozers levelled Palestinian vast tracts of orange and olive groves around the settlement of Kfar Darom, closed all roads connecting the south of Gaza to the north and tightened even further the blockade so that no product save food and medicine could breach it.
Even before the strikes, the effect of like policies was described in figures released by UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees. Out of a Gaza population of roughly one million, it estimates that at least 40 per cent of the workforce are now out of a job, 127,000 families are in need of food assistance and thousands of others are living in temporary shelters due to the destruction of some 600 homes. "Israel has put us in a bottle," commented Gaza human rights activist Raji Sourani.
And Arafat and the Palestinian leadership generally are striving vainly to smash the glass. After the attack on the settler bus, PA spokesmen publicly pleaded with Israel to "exercise restraint." It was met with an Israeli fist of Lebanese proportions. Prior to the bombings, the Palestinians called on the US to intervene on their behalf. They were told the US would issue a "clear and unambiguous condemnation" of the attack on the settlers and demand the arrest of those behind it.
Following the bombings, Arafat met with European Union Special Envoy Miguel Moratinos. The Palestinian leader was urged to implement the understandings agreed at the Sharm Al-Sheikh summit last month and "return to negotiations." Finally -- with Gaza's cities smouldering and its people terrified -- the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat again called for international protection to end this "state terror" against "a people who -- unlike Israel -- do not have an army, a navy or tanks."
It was so much wind in the breeze. The UN secretary-general and US have made it clear that any international presence in the occupied territories is subject to Israeli "approval." And Israel has made it abundantly clear that approval is going to be conditional on the Palestinians signing an agreement on Israel's terms and according to Israel's delineation of borders. "Israel will pay a price for these strikes," Arafat told Moratinos, in a rare flash of genuine rage.
Israel will, and so, of course and disproportionately, will the Palestinians. Within hours of the last helicopter returning to base, the army shot dead four more Palestinians in Gaza. According to Israeli accounts, one was killed while planting an explosive at the Kissuffim crossing into Israel. Another was attempting the same thing at the Neveh Dakhalin settlement next to Khan Younis. The two others were killed in clashes with the army.
And there is the rub. For no matter how practised the Palestinians become in guerrilla warfare -- and no matter what sacrifices they are truly prepared to endure -- they know they can no more defeat the Israeli army in Gaza than could the PLO militias in Lebanon in 1982. For that victory to come -- and the bottle finally to be smashed -- the Palestinians will need the "world" to intervene against Israel via Arab mobilisation, European sanctions and a genuine split in Israeli opinion. On the evidence of the assault on Gaza, that "world" is simply not there.
Related stories:
The cost of vengeance
No holds barred
Poles apart 16 - 22 November 2000
The cost of weakness 16 - 22 November 2000
See Intifada in focus 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000
Intifada special 19 - 25 October 2000
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