22 - 28 March 2001
Issue No.526
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 22 - 28 March 2001 Issue No.526 |
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Relaxation, Sharon style
Khaled Amayreh, in the West Bank, reports on what a "relaxed" siege of the occupied Palestinian territories looks like
The stark discordance between Ariel Sharon's repeated claim of having relaxed Israel's suffocating siege on Palestinian towns and the reality on the ground is evident throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Indeed, the nearly hermetic blockade of Palestinian towns, villages and even small hamlets is still firmly in place. Though a slight mitigation in the siege's severity is occasionally observed, its basic structure remains intact and its onerous effects are felt by the entire population. The Israeli army continues to bisect the West Bank into small cantons, ghettos, and closed areas, cut off from each other and isolated from the outside world.
Palestinian women, including Ashrawi, during Monday's demonstrations
(photos: AP, Reuters)
To make the blockade more effective, there are as many as 100 stationary roadblocks and checkpoints manned by soldiers with itchy trigger-fingers.
Consequently, many Palestinians are forced to use hastily-opened and extremely hazardous mountainous roads to get from one village to another. Some Palestinians sarcastically call the dirt paths "our bypass roads," a self-deprecating comparison to the paved settlers' roads that circumvent Palestinian areas. Others refer to them as "the highways of the Intifada."
Nonetheless, the inhospitable paths, symbolic of the entire Palestinian situation, function as a breathing point for the increasingly claustrophobic Palestinian inhabitants.
On Monday, 19 March, the Israeli army further tightened its blockade on Bethlehem following the killing of an Israeli settler near the settlement of Navi Danial, a few miles south of the Arab town. Israel accused the Palestinian Authority of giving safe haven to the perpetrators, vowing to retaliate harshly. Some Palestinians interpreted the ambush as retaliation for the increasingly vicious attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinian civilians.
On 16 March, the Jerusalem family of 10-year-old Mohamed Nassar, whose bludgeoned body was found near the Jewish settlement of Navi Yaccoub in occupied Arab East Jerusalem, accused Jewish settlers of murdering him in cold blood. The family said the boy went to play soccer at a playground near the settlement and failed to return home. "I don't have the slightest doubt that they [the settlers] did it. Who else would commit such a gruesome crime?" asked Amin Nassar, the boy's uncle.
The family vehemently denied Israeli insinuations that the boy might have been the victim of a vendetta killing by other Arabs. "They just want to divert attention from the settlers by all means. Our family has no feuds or problems with anyone. I found their insinuations to that effect disgusting," said Nassar.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, the Israeli army has made things even more difficult for the estimated 1.5 million Palestinian residents, most of whom languish in abject poverty. In addition to closing roads and continuing to reduce the area within which Palestinians are free to move without being targeted by Israeli bullets, the Israeli occupation army has effectively barred fuel imports to the Gaza Strip, pushing the zone's already ravaged survival economy to the brink of paralysis.
To make matters worse, and despite Israeli public statements that Palestinian fishermen would be permitted to fish off the coast of Gaza, Israeli navy boats have repeatedly chased and fired at Gazan fishermen. A number of fishermen have been arrested and their boats either seized or vandalised, purportedly for entering "a closed military zone."
Such draconian measures demonstrate that recent Israeli claims of relaxing the siege on Palestinians were only an exercise in public relations.
To counter this fiction, this week Palestinian intellectuals and artists marched through Ramallah, demanding the lifting of the siege which they described as "the ugly face of Israeli racism." The march was a novel and rather successful Palestinian experiment in non-violent resistance. When the marchers, including people of all ideological orientations, passed the onerous Israeli roadblocks, rather than hurling stones at the well-entrenched soldiers, they sang and chanted national anthems, glorifying freedom and denouncing apartheid and oppression.
On Monday, the Palestinian women's union held another non-violent march, which was harshly repressed by Israeli soldiers. The occupation army fired rubber-coated bullets, tear gas shells, and stun-grenades at the women activists as they sought to enter Jerusalem at the Al-Ram roadblock, which the Israelis consider the border point between Jerusalem (i.e. Israeli-controlled territory) and the self-rule areas. As many as 20 protesters were injured and hospitalised, including Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi. Two journalists, an Egyptian and an Italian, were also injured.
The harsh repression of the women activists' march was evidence that Israeli repression of Palestinians will continue, however peaceful Palestinian protests against the Israeli occupation become. And Israel's shoot-to-kill policy continues to be its standard response to Palestinian protests, resulting in the killing of, on average, one Palestinian per day.
Furthermore, Jewish settlers have been emboldened by Sharon's rise to power. In addition to the murder of the child Nassar on Friday, Jewish settlers near Nablus attacked on 17 March two Arab cars, injuring six Palestinians, including a woman who sustained serious wounds as her car plunged down a ravine after settlers threw a large rock at its windscreen.
These and similar attacks -- including acts of murder -- by settlers on Palestinian civilians are routinely ignored by Israeli police.
Settlers have been directly or indirectly responsible for the killing of as many as 40 Palestinian civilians since the outbreak of the uprising on 28 September. None of them has been prosecuted or imprisoned for the crimes committed.
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