6 - 12 September 2001
Issue No.550
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 September 2001 Issue No.550 |
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Standing proud
Strong Palestinian resistance, combined with world pressure, forced Israel to pull its troops out of the Palestinian West Bank town of Beit Jala. Michael Jansen reports from Jersualem
Israel's 50 hour re-occupation of the West Bank town of Beit Jala last week was a pointless political and military exercise. The Israelis moved in early on the morning of 28 August for an "indefinite stay" but pulled out early on the 30th after strong Palestinian resistance and pressure from the US and Europe.
An Israeli soldier rests on his tank near the Jewish settlement Gilo after leaving Beit Jala
(photo: Reuters)
Israel's prompt capitulation demonstrated all too clearly that Israel can be brought to heel if and when Washington and Europe are prepared to intervene seriously. This is a lesson the powers-that-be should heed, as well as the Israeli and the Arab governments.
Alongside its political defeat, militarily, Israel achieved nothing either. Its occupation of parts of Beit Jala did not force Palestinian gunmen to stop firing at the Israeli settlement of Gilo across the valley, the declared object of the invasion. It did not expel militia from the unoccupied sector of the village, who shot at troops installed in Beit Jala, and later resumed firing at Gilo, which was originally part of the Palestinian town. And it did not stop the Palestinians inflicting casualties on the Israeli army. Although Israel has not admitted it, Palestinian householders say that some soldiers must have been injured because blood was found in occupied homes.
Adding to the Palestinian sense of victory, Israel's re-occupation of the town, and the heavy shelling, did not intimidate Beit Jala's 12,350 inhabitants into exerting pressure on the snipers to depart. Nor did it undermine the position of the Palestine Authority there. In earlier incidents of shooting at Gilo from Beit Jala, some residents appealed to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to stop the fighters so as not to attract damage to their houses or suffer civilian deaths. This time they did not.
When Al-Ahram Weekly visited Beit Jala on 2 September, an armed Palestinian member of Fatah Tanzim sat on a bench at the corner of Virgin Mary and Iraq streets, where Israel's tanks had previously parked. The Authority's forces were again patrolling the streets.
Explaining events, A Beit Jala resident said, "there had been no shooting at Gilo for 25 days. It only resumed after the Israelis assassinated Abu Ali Mustafa," the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP], who was killed on 27 August.
"The Israelis provoked the Palestinian fighters to break the cease-fire," he added. "Abu Ali [the nom de guerre of Mustafa Zibri] was popular here. He visited the village twice after he returned to live in Palestine last year. He wasn't a fighter or a bomber, but a political leader."
The PFLP remains the leading party in Beit Jala; portraits of George Habash, its founder and first head, adorn walls and shop fronts. Although the Israelis defaced or tore those posters down in the portion of Beit Jala they occupied, pictures of Habash are back on every corner, smiling at his admirers.
Instead of cowing the villagers, Israel has angered them by taking over houses, imprisoning whole families in small store-rooms, and denying them food and freedom for two days and nights. These villagers became hostages in their own homes and "human shields" against a riposte to the invaders. Members of a European non-governmental organisation, the International Solidarity Movement, rushed to Beit Jala shortly after Israel's invasion, providing the only source of food to Palestinians kept prisoner in their own homes.
Three generations dwell at the home of Father George Shawan, an
Orthodox priest in Beit Jala. The Israelis imprisoned 22 family members, 10 of them small children, for 12 hours in a tiny windowless room. "There was no milk for the babies. They never stopped crying. We had to ask to go to the toilet. We couldn't breathe," Heidi Shawan said. The Israelis established firing positions on the upper floors of the house, smashed windows, cupboards, created havoc. The Shawans were allowed to move into the sitting room only after journalists rounded on soldiers.
This was the pattern in all re-occupied Beit Jala. Forty-five children
were locked in a room at the Lutheran orphanage. Twenty children were held at the blind school. At the Tahan residence, Antti, a bright 12 year old boy, bravely admitted he was terrified when the Israelis came into the house, established themselves on the unfinished topmost stories and opened fire on Palestinian fighters in the lower village. "I saw the soldiers carrying something long, like rockets, up to the roof," Antti said. "My father told us it was a telescope. But there were so many." Antti's mother said the tubes were rocket launchers, but her husband had not wanted to alarm the family. After speaking, Antti displayed his collection of spent shells and bullet casings on the kitchen table.
His prize piece was a spent flare. "We always turn over live ammunition to the [Palestine] Authority," his aunt remarked. Two boys came to the door with shells from a heavy machine gun they wanted to exchange for some of Antti's materiel. "As soon as the Israelis pulled out on Thursday morning, children came to the door and asked to go upstairs to collect bullets," observed the aunt. The boys of Beit Jala trade in casings, grenade pins and sharp bits of shrapnel as nonchalantly as children elsewhere exchange photos of football players or marbles.
The Israelis did not confine themselves to housebreaking and
hostage-taking. Soldiers entered the Orthodox Club at the heart of the village, stole antique swords and rifles decorating the walls of the restaurant, carried away the liquor, and vandalised the premises. The troops smashed sporting trophies and lifted prizes and gifts, including football uniforms presented by a team in the United Arab Emirates. "The behaviour of the Israeli army has deteriorated since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967," said a man who showed us around the club.
Cars parked by the roadside were crushed by the tanks when the
Israelis pulled out, although the owners asked for permission to move their vehicles. Homes from where there had been no firing by Palestinian snipers were rocketed by helicopters as the Israelis left, in revenge it seems for Beit Jala's steadfastness rather than to serve any military purpose.
A police officer was shot dead in the street, and 20 civilians were injured. But Israel lost the battle of Beit Jala on every front. On Sunday, the majority of villagers, 70 per cent Greek Orthodox and 20 per cent Catholic, celebrated their second liberation with prayer and song. Church bells rang joyfully and the people of Beit Jala braced themselves for the struggle to come.
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