24 - 30 May 2001
Issue No.535
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 24 - 30 May 2001 Issue No.535 |
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The Samson option
The significance of Israel's recent assaults on the Palestinian Authority is not just in their unprecedented scale but also in their target. Graham Usher reports from Ramallah
As an icon it lacks the pugnacity of Ariel Sharon's armed entry into Jerusalem's Haram Al-Sharif compound on 28 September or the pathos of Mohammed Al-Durra's murder in the arms of his father in Gaza two days later.
But the bloodstained and bullet-ridden police cabin in Beitunia near Ramallah may in time become one of the defining images of the Palestinian uprising -- the moment when Israel's policy of bludgeoning the Palestinian Authority (PA) into submission passed, inexorably, into a process aimed at its destruction.
It was at this roadblock marking the border of "Palestinian-controlled" Ramallah that on 14 May Israeli soldiers massacred five Palestinian policemen.
According to the sole survivor, 19-year old Ahmad Najjar, two officers were killed in their chairs by Israeli snipers firing from a Palestinian apartment the army had commandeered in April. Three more were shot dead by machine gun fire from a nearby army base as they stepped outside the cabin.
Najjar survived by throwing himself headlong into a ditch. The day after the slaughter, his blood still streaked the mud. A plastic bag full of bread lay on a table inside the cabin brought for three of the men's breakfast.
The Palestinian police commander at the post, Abu Awad Shamalleh, not only denied any firing from his position that night but at any time during the eight-month Intifada, a view endorsed by Palestinians living in the area.
This was not the army's story or, rather, stories. Initially, a spokesman said soldiers at Ofer had opened up on "armed Palestinians" making "suspicious movements" near the post. Then Israeli government spokesman Ranaan Gissan admitted that the killings were a case of "mistaken identity. Our soldiers were looking for terrorists from [the PA's intelligence] Force 17, wanted for attacking Israeli targets from the post."
By 16 May, even these masks started to slip. "We wanted to make sure everyone knows we mean business," said a "senior officer" in Israel's Haaretz newspaper.
Nor was the Beitunia hit a portent of things to come should the Palestinians not give up their armed resistance to the "war" Israel has declared against them. It was simply another step on an escalator. The first rung was scaled on 10 May when the army pitched five surface-to-surface missiles on to the PA's main police headquarters in Gaza City. Then came Beitunia.
Next came 18 May when, in reprisal for a Hamas suicide operation inside Israel that left five Israeli civilians dead, US-made F16 fighter planes unloaded bombs on to a Force 17 barracks in Ramallah and PA prison complex in Nablus. The 500 and 1,000 kilogramme explosives brought tons of brick and iron crashing down on the 12 Palestinian police officers stationed within. It gave an entirely new twist to the Samson Option, as Israel's standing policy of "disproportionate response" is sometimes known.
In the present conflict, the term may have another significance. For in all these assaults, the targets were not just the usual suspects of Force 17 and Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. It was also the 30,000-strong National Security Forces, the essential instrument of Arafat's rule in the Palestinian areas and one that, by his own admission, has not been mobilised in the Intifada "till now."
This remains the case. "Our standing orders are very clear," says police commander Shamalleh. "We are not to open fire, even when our positions come under (Israeli) fire. We are to retreat for cover. We can only fire if the Israelis approach our post with the intent to forcibly overtake it."
Last month there have been about 30 incursions into PA-controlled areas, say Palestinian security sources, including several where the aim was to "forcibly overtake" and destroy Palestinian police positions. In most cases, the police have "retreated for cover", but, increasingly, they have fired back, especially in southern Gaza where their positions adjoin Palestinian refugee camps.
And the suspicion among many Palestinians is that Israel -- meaning Ariel Sharon and the army -- has now decided to "collapse" the PA not only by destroying its military infrastructure but also by deliberately pushing the police into the ranks of the resistance.
It is a wholly consistent policy, especially if the intended outcome is destruction, says Palestinian political analyst Khalil Shikaki. "The more Israel targets the nerve centres of Arafat's rule, and especially the police, the more difficult will be his ability to reconstruct his regime if and when the fighting stops."
That regime is going to be indispensable if, as the pay-off for the Mitchell Report's recommendations for an Israeli settlement freeze and return to political negotiations, Arafat has to impose a cease-fire on his people, including "immediate steps to apprehend and incarcerate those engaged in terrorism."
Sharon's hunch and perhaps desire may be that Arafat no longer has the authority or the means to impose the "immediate, unconditional cease-fire" required of him. Through that failure, Sharon will earn diplomatic currency for the view that the PA is a "partner" whose time has come and gone. The army's ongoing attacks on the Palestinian police can be seen as making the hunch a reality.
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