Issue No. 606
Opinion
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3 - 9 October 2002 Issue No. 606 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Mixed record of Intifada
Two years on, the record of the second Al-Aqsa Intifada is a mixed one, with Israel continuing its policy of war crimes against a defenceless Palestinian population, writes Abdel-Jawwad Saleh*
I am inclined to be critical when we celebrate anniversaries of apparently great significance, and this critical spirit has not left me during the recent celebrations of the anniversary of the second Al-Aqsa Intifada. The notion of Intifada, or uprising, describes a state of collective rebellion, entered into by an entire people in a search for salvation from occupation. For the second time, the Palestinian people have adopted this tool spontaneously as a way of pursuing their freedom. However, the circumstances of the second Intifada are not what they might appear at first sight, and the reasons for this have much to do with prior Israeli actions.
Part of these negative circumstances has to do with the spread of arms in the occupied territories before Israel's redeployment. Arms sales by the Israeli mafia, connected either to the Israeli army or directly to Israeli intelligence services through collaborators, were phenomenal in scale at this time, being a trap for leading the Palestinian factions into civil war. The spread of arms in the occupied territories acted as bait to encourage the Palestinians to become militarised, with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the 200 Palestinian worshippers and other civilians being killed by the Israeli army at the beginning of the Intifada, being a turning point in its militarisation.
The feeling that arms were available for sale and that armed, though untrained, Palestinian security personnel could not just stand idly by, their hands tied behind their backs, while young people were being killed by the Israeli army led to an escalation in the violence. The police were forced to be involved in response to people's demands for protection, even if, unfortunately, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was not prepared for military confrontation. In fact, the Authority's culture of corruption distracted from the task of resistance, but the huge pressure of the Israeli occupation -- the psychological and material ramifications of colonisation, systematic humiliation, physical torture, limitations on housing, demolition of homes, desertification by uprooting fruit trees and vegetation, spread of illiteracy by school and university closures, prohibiting the life of a whole nation by siege -- were all factors in triggering the Intifada.
From the start, the Intifada was plagued by split leadership, with the absence of strategy often leading to contradictory goals. Arafat used it as a tool for improving the conditions under which negotiations with the Israelis could take place, though he failed to harness it towards this goal, leading to the imposition of intermittent lulls in the negotiations. Israel succeeded in carrying out security deployments that served its goals. In the field, the leaders of the Intifada called for a strategy of independence, but they were not in a position to make political decisions, and as a result the national and Islamic leadership of the Intifada accepted that its powers be limited to carrying out daily activities. Under the slogan of national unity, a centralised decision-making process was imposed on activists.
The local leadership of the second Intifada therefore missed the participatory approach that the leadership had followed during the first Intifada in the late 1980s. And in these different circumstances the leadership lost its vision of the proper tactics to be used in confronting the Israeli army, which now surrounds Palestinian cities.
Then, unexpected events negatively impacted the Intifada -- those of 11 September 2001. This tragedy, when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, was a present for Sharon, who used it to cover the war crimes Israel was committing in its occupation of the Palestinian territories, disguising these under the banner of the "war against terrorism". The Israeli government of national unity, which includes members of the Likud Party as well as Peres from Labour, has since worked to present the Israeli victimisers as victims, calling the occupied territories "administered" or "disputed" territories and presenting the Israeli colonies on Palestinian land as part of Israel proper. Israel's distortion of the truth is equal to the physical destruction carried out by its army, propagating the lie that the war crimes it is carrying out against the Palestinians are acts of self-defence.
Beit Sahur, for example, a twin city of Bethlehem and a Christian community, has, like other Palestinian communities across the Palestinian occupied territories, adopted a policy of non- violence, civil disobedience and refusal to pay taxes without representation in the face of Israeli aggression. In response to these peaceful means of protest, the Israeli army has laid siege to Beit Sahur, destroyed its factories and workshops and confiscated its goods. Israeli soldiers have ransacked homes and personal items, cash and cars. All in all, Israel's action against Beit Sahur has cost an estimated $8 million in damages.
An unpublished report, "Status of Palestinian Children during the Uprising in the Occupied Territories", sponsored by Radda Barnen, the Swedish Save the Children Organizsation, and financed by the Ford Foundation, also reports Israeli crimes against Palestinian children during the first Intifada.
"Researchers," the report says, "were able to investigate 66 of the 106 child gunshot deaths. Case analysis shows that most children were not participating in a stone-throwing demonstration when shot dead. Nearly a third of the children killed by gunfire were not in the vicinity of a protest activity when shot dead, another two fifths of the children were shot dead when they were helping injured demonstrators, or fleeing from soldiers ...Nearly a fifth of the children were shot dead while at home... Most of the children killed by gunfire had been shot in the head or neck...Twelve per cent were shot from behind."
All this leads us inexorably to the conclusion that the Zionist project in Israel is determined to expand and continue the occupation of the Palestinian territories first occupied in 1967 as a step towards the establishment of a Greater Israel. Israel considered during the first Intifada that stone-throwing children, aged from three to 15 years, constituted a threat; now, during the second Intifada, it supposes that Palestinian "terrorism" constitutes a threat to the most highly armed and only nuclear power in the Middle East.
Will the Israelis now listen to the protests of an old man -- though young in spirit -- who has given 20 years of his life in calling for peace? If you want peace, leave the Palestinian occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. Repatriate the colonisers. Admit your guilt for the expulsion of the Palestinian population from Palestine in 1948. If you do these things, then I can assure you that you will enjoy it.
* The writer is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
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