21 - 27 February 2002
Issue No.574
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 February 2002 Issue No.574 |
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Steeled by despair
As violent Israeli-Palestinian exchanges continue unabated in the occupied territories, even hard-liners in the Israeli government are being forced to rethink Sharon's strategy of repression, writes Khaled Amayreh from the occupied West Bank
After nearly 17 months since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Israel's determination to crush the Palestinian struggle for independence at any price seems to be snapping. Several Israeli and Palestinian analysts now believe that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may be coming to the realisation that the Palestinian uprising cannot be quashed by military means alone.
Wearing the Palestinian flag, a boy throws stones in defiance of the Israeli soldiers who surround him (left). In the above photo, the son and daughter of Nael Lotfi Saqr cry next to his body. Saqr died of bullet wounds during clashes with the Israeli army (photos:AFP)
The increasing success of Palestinian resistance groups in inflicting painful casualties on the Israeli army has prompted many Israelis, including the media and Sharon's own cabinet ministers, to question what is increasingly being seen as a futile strategy.
The Israeli army this week effectively suffered its heaviest losses yet since the outbreak of the in late September 2000, losing eight soldiers, including a high-ranking officer known among Palestinians as the commander of covert missions to assassinate Palestinian activists in the West Bank.
Israeli losses culminated on Monday, 18 February, when a Palestinian fighter with Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, attacked a group of Israeli soldiers at the entrance of the settlement of Gush Katif, in southern Gaza, killing two soldiers and a settler. Earlier on the same day, a Palestinian driver with explosives strapped to his body blew himself up at an Israeli border police checkpoint, near the settlement of Ma'ali Adumim, killing himself and a solider.
Israel responded with characteristic brutality, swiftly bombing two Palestinian cities. Israeli bombardment of Khan Younis on 18 February killed at least three civilians, including a 40- year-old woman and her 14-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, in the Balata refugee camp, two more Palestinian civilians, including a housewife, were killed, reportedly by Israeli soldiers disguised as Palestinians.
The "tragic week" -- to use the words of the Israeli army spokesman -- began around midnight last Thursday, when Palestinian fighters scored an unexpectedly successful coup by bringing down a Merkava-3 tank, Israel's main battle tank and the pride of its armoured corps. The tank, which was on its way to a combat mission, exploded when it passed over an explosive device buried beneath the sand by a road in central Gaza. Three of the tank's crewmen were killed and a fourth was injured. The trap was reportedly set with nothing more than a home-made device, constructed from explosives extracted from landmines left by the Israeli army.
The Israeli army was stunned by the successful attack. An inquiry into the incident concluded that there were no structural faults with the tank itself, confirming that the army's most invincible tank had been destroyed through essentially primitive means. The army has yet to publish a picture or film footage of the ravaged tank.
The daring operation was a significant morale-booster for militant Palestinian groups, who suffered a devastating Israeli incursion in northern Gaza on the same day. Four Palestinians were killed in the attack, including three policemen taking dinner inside their tent.
Within hours of the operation that exploded the Merkava, the fallout was being felt in Nablus, Ramallah and Gaza. Israeli planes, including US-made F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopter gunships, targeted Palestinian public buildings and police facilities in all three cities. Israeli "death squads" also resumed their extra-judicial assassinations of Palestinian activists with the killing of Hamas activist Nazih Abu Siba'a on Saturday, 16 February, in Jenin. The 30-year-old teacher was killed instantly when he started his booby-trapped car before heading home from work. Siba'a joins a list of nearly 100 Palestinian political and resistance activists assassinated by Israel since the outbreak of the Intifada.
A day before, the Israeli army had suffered a significant loss when a wall apparently collapsed on Israeli commander Eyal Weiss, who led Israeli death squads in the West Bank. Weiss, who was on an assassination mission with his men in the village of Saida, near Tulkarm, was killed instantly. A few hours later, two Palestinians approached an Israeli army blockade at the Surda intersection, north-west of Ramallah. One of the men shot an Israeli soldier manning the roadblock, killing the soldier and disarming another before fleeing the site.
And in another daring operation on Saturday evening, a young Palestinian man succeeded in penetrating the tight security around the settlement of Karni Shamron, built on occupied land near Tulkarm. The 22-year-old, blew himself up, killing two settlers, along with himself. The Israeli army reacted to the bombing -- this time carried out by the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) -- with more of the same: F-16 and Apache raids on public buildings and police facilities.
The series of Palestinian attacks are beginning to convince more and more Israelis that Sharon's single-minded policy -- solely embedded in military doctrine -- has failed. Nahum Barnea, a leading Israeli commentator and columnist in the Hebrew paper Yedeot Ahranot, echoed the growing despair among Israelis vis-à-vis Sharon's inability to bring neither peace nor security. "After 17 months of the Intifada, we must admit that the Palestinians haven't been broken," Barnea wrote this week. "Despair has only steeled them. Economic and human distress has only pushed them to acts of madness."
Even extreme right-wing Israeli leaders like Yitzhak Levy, leader of the ultra-extremist National Religious Party (NRP), are coming to acknowledge that the use of unmitigated force has its limits. On 18 February, the Israeli state-run radio quoted Levy as demanding that Sharon tell the truth. "We have to admit that we have failed," Levy said. "This government offers no hope, it has no strategy, we don't know where we are going."
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also questioned the effectiveness of Sharon's approach. Speaking during Knesset discussions this week, Peres conceded that pushing the Palestinians to the brink of despair has only emboldened extremists. Once again, he indicated that the only strategy the Israeli right has towards the Palestinians is mass deportation. "We can't just expel 3.5 million people from their homes," Peres said. "We simply can't do it." But Michael Kleiner, of the ultra-right wing Herut Party, heckled Peres, saying "Yes we can, yes we can."
Sadly, there are more Israelis who subscribe to Kleiner's view than to Peres's. On 15 February, the Israeli paper Ma'ariv published the results of an opinion poll that shows 35 per cent of Israelis support mass deportation of the Palestinian people. Kleiner, however, would not even wait to see what Israelis think of such a "transfer." On 17 February, he tabled a motion in the Knesset whereby Israel's Arab citizens would be offered financial and other incentives to emigrate to Arab countries. Virtually no Israeli leader from the right or the left uttered a word against the suggestion.
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