8 - 14 November 2001
Issue No.559
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559 |
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Old wine, new bottles
The Israeli government is preparing its own "peace plan" to counter a rumoured American "vision" for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Khaled Amayreh reports from Jerusalem
Following reports that the United States was developing its own "peace plan" to resume talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel's cabinet led by Ariel Sharon held a meeting on Tuesday to prepare counter proposals.
The Israeli draft plan foresees the establishment of a vaguely-defined Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and "parts" of the West Bank while leaving unresolved such vital issues as the borders, sovereignty, Jerusalem, and settlements, pending future negotiations, Israeli sources said.
The draft plan, acknowledged by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres last week, was rejected by a Palestinian official as "Sharon's wine in Peres's bottle."
Clearly bearing Sharon's fingerprints, the Israeli draft proposes continued Israeli control of the Jordan valley, border crossings, strategic hilltops, and, of course, greater Jerusalem. As for the refugees' right of return, the plan rejects it outright.
It is not clear if Peres is really serious about presenting such a plan to the Palestinian leadership, knowing in advance that it would have no chance of being accepted by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat.
For PA officials and analysts, the Israeli plan was just another ploy aimed at diluting whatever momentum was generated by statements made by US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the need for a Palestinian state.
The Israeli plan may also be directed at forestalling any American and international pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians once the ongoing American campaign against Afghanistan is over. Nonetheless, it is more than clear that Sharon is not really concerned about American pressure.
On 6 November, while on a visit to a Jerusalem high school, Sharon declared that "Israel doesn't submit to American pressure when it comes to her security and national interests."
True to form, the Israeli premier demonstrated his recalcitrance through bloodshed. This week the Israeli army continued its extra-judicial executions of Palestinians suspected of taking part in the resistance against the Israeli occupation alongside other forms of repression of the Palestinian people.
For the Palestinians, this proves that Sharon is not really interested in restoring calm, but rather in provoking them to react to the killings, and thus maintain the vicious cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation.
On 4 November, an Islamic Jihad guerrilla wielding an M-16 rifle opened fire on an Israeli bus carrying Jewish settlers in northern Jerusalem. Two Jewish settlers, one an American immigrant, were killed and two dozen settlers injured in the shooting. The guerrilla, identified as 24-year-old Hatem Shweiki of Hebron, was eventually killed in the subsequent exchange of fire with Israeli soldiers.
The Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility, saying in a statement that "the attack was in retaliation for the murders of our people."
The incident demonstrated the failure of Sharon's policy towards the Palestinian uprising, which has succeeded in embittering and emboldening the Palestinians further as well as eroding Arafat's ability to control his people. Sharon's failure to "root out" Palestinian "terror" coupled with international (and especially American) pressure eventually led to the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops from the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya on 5 November.
Leaving behind a decimated city and a tormented populace, Israeli tanks pulled out of Qalqilya on 4 November, ending 17 days of direct reoccupation during which scores of civilians were murdered and injured, and countless residential homes and apartments were damaged.
The belated Israeli "withdrawal" was in no way a manifestation of good will on the part of Sharon or his equally bellicose Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz.
Indeed, occupation forces retreated only a few hundred metres, repositioning themselves at the entrances of the city. The action effectively reimposed a military siege that was described by townspeople as a worse than the one imposed before the withdrawal.
The day Israeli forces left Qalqilya, they tightened the siege on the city of Tulkarm to the north, making fresh incursions into the town of 80,000 people.
Again, the Israeli army shelled residential neighbourhoods, while imposing an open-ended curfew on several villages in the region, including Baqa Al-Sharqiya.
In Jenin, further north, a Jewish settler shot and seriously injured 15-year-old Youssef Khanfar while on his way to school at the village of Silat Al-Thaher.
And in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army shelled two metal workshops in the Jabalya refugee camp on 5 November, claiming the two cities were producing mortar shells and small rockets. The workshops were totally destroyed, but no casualties were reported.
A few hours earlier, Israeli tanks barraged with heavy machinegun fire civilian neighbourhoods in Dir Al-Balah and Rafah in Gaza, killing a middle-aged Palestinian man and injuring several other people, including two brothers from the same family.
In the meantime, the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, has reacted blithely to the Bush administration's decision on 3 November to freeze the assets and bank accounts of some 23 groups, including Hamas, which the US deems "terrorist groups."
"To begin with, Hamas is a liberation movement fighting Israeli military occupation of our homeland. Therefore, classifying Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah as terrorist organisations is a wanton representation of the actual situation. We are not going to surrender to Sharon, the war criminal, in order to receive a certificate of good conduct from the Americans. We don't need such a certificate," said a statement released by the Islamic Palestinian movement on 4 November.
Hamas's statement continued asking, "What does the US government expect us to do when our country is occupied, our cities are besieged, our land confiscated, our homes demolished, our orchards bulldozed, our children and women murdered, our mosques and churches bombarded, and when Israeli state terror makes us taste death a hundred times a day?"
The statement also assured the American administration that Hamas has no bank accounts in the US or in the Western world.
The PA denounced the US's classification of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and PFLP as terrorist organisations, calling the measure "politically motivated."
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