8 - 14 March 2001
Issue No.524
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 8 - 14 March 2001 Issue No.524 |
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Diversionary tactics
So bent is Israel upon quelling Palestinian resistance that it has forced the entire population of the West Bank and Gaza into surviving in the most inhuman conditions. As it tightened its closure of the occupied territories, it sustained its bombardment of civilian targets, cut off access to vital resources and inhibited the influx of foreign aid. In short, it has set into motion a ruthless campaign of economic strangulation.
According to available statistics, the Israeli chokehold has placed 82 per cent of Palestinian people below the poverty line. During the first three months of the Intifada the agrarian sector lost $150 million, the contracting and construction sector $99 million, damage to housing and educational facilities totalled $26 million, labour revenues plummeted by $68 million, and the metallurgical industries sustained $6.5 million in losses. By the end of four months material and economic losses climbed to just short of $3 billion, or three times the amount of aid that the recent Arab summit had earmarked to support the Palestinian people, of which only $270 million has reached its destination. The economic deterioration has had a dire impact on public health, with hospitals and medical centres now facing dangerous shortages in essential medicines and equipment.
In addition to preventing the influx of foreign aid, Israel, in violation of the agreements it has signed with the PA, has refused to hand over tax revenues destined for the PA. Unable to pay salaries and sustain operating costs, the PA is struggling to keep chaos at bay as it stands on the brink of collapse.
In its determination to bring the Palestinians to their knees, moreover, Israel has violated virtually every internationally sanctioned human rights instrument. The annual US State Department report on human rights, for example, cites Israel as responsible for the death of hundreds and injury of thousands of Palestinian civilians over the past year, and for countless acts of arbitrary detention and torture, illegally destroyed land and property and the prohibition of the free movement of civilians. Other reports from international human rights organisations are even more forthcoming on the abuses Israel has perpetrated in contravention, above all, of the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War. These reports were compiled in spite of every obstacle Israel attempted to throw in their path, and it is very much in keeping with its disdain for their work that Tel Aviv has impeded the Mitchell Fact Finding Committee from resuming its work. Israel has no intention of allowing the world a closer look at the full horror of its actions.
During his recent tour of the region, US Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared to have his eyes opened for the first time to the fact that Arab priorities for the region do not entirely overlap with those of the US. Contrary to the opinion of the US administration, the Arabs do not believe that the key to regional stability resides in Iraq, but rather in an end to the ongoing, daily violations of the human and national rights of a people subjected to brutal Israeli occupation. The violence in Palestine is not, as US officials construe it, the product of some arbitrary outpouring of frustration and discontent. Palestine today is the victim of a savage, full-scale offensive. Those were not Palestinian Apaches bombarding Israeli government, security and media installations, or Palestinian tanks and armored vehicles besieging Israeli cities. Nor was it Palestinian artillery firing at Israeli residential areas or Palestinian patrols preventing the movement of civilians between one Israeli city or neighbourhood and another. But Israeli instruments of war, unleashed against Palestinian civilian targets, against a backdrop of daily harassment and degradation, and a panoply of economic thumbscrews, hardly warrant a brief in the Western media.
If the new Bush administration hopes to convince Arab leaders that the route to regional stability passes first through Iraq, it could not have blindfolded itself more to half a century of efforts dedicated to achieving a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian cause. This was undoubtedly the message Arab leaders attempted to convey to Powell during his recent tour -- Egypt, perhaps, more strenuously than all. US reports assessing Powell's visit suggested that Egypt had given him the coolest reception of all the countries he visited. If that is indeed the case, then that is because Egypt, in view of its special relation with the US, feels duty bound to be more candid on such critical matters.
Egypt's position on Iraq has always been clear and unequivocal. Egypt lent its fullest support to the operations to liberate Kuwait, committing towards this end a force second only in size to that of the US. Further, Egypt has remained dedicated to preserving the independence and territorial integrity of Kuwait and has been outspoken in its condemnation of all Baghdad's recent statements and acts of provocation. Simultaneously, however, Egypt does not countenance the ongoing destruction of Iraq and the Iraqi people and, above all, it refuses to lend itself to a strategy intended to use Iraq to distract us from the most concentrated assault against a civilian populace in the world today.
At this moment, when the sufferings of the Palestinian people are at their most extreme, all indications from Israel and the US bode ill. The current Israeli government wants to turn the negotiating clock back to zero, and the Bush administration has agreed to turn its back on the progress in the peace process that the US, itself, engineered. This concession to Israel may well have jettisoned an historic opportunity to bring the Middle East securely through the transition from war to peace, from poverty to development and from radicalism to moderation. In addition, the Bush administration may have forfeited a unique chance for Washington, itself, to make the leap from a government that condones aggression to a government that truly champions human rights and justice.
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