Roadmap to despair
A week of assassinations, military incursions and home demolitions paves the way to despair and frustration, reports Khaled Amayreh from the West Bank
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Shortly before his release, a Palestinian prisoner looks through the window of a military bus as it arrives at the Tarqumiye checkpoint, west of Hebron
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After initially agreeing to redeploy its troops from four West Bank towns, Israel this week stalled the promised "withdrawal" and demanded instead that the government of Mahmoud Abbas crack down on violence and dismantle the infrastructure of Palestinian "terrorism".
On Friday, Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and Palestinian Authority Minister for Security Affairs Mohamed Dahlan agreed that Israel would redeploy its forces from Jericho, Qalqilya, Tulkarm and Ramallah within two weeks. But during subsequent security talks between the two sides, it became clear that Israel had no intention of removing the military roadblocks now erected at the entrance of each of these towns.
This, the Palestinians argued, would render any redeployment meaningless and without substance. "We agreed on a real withdrawal, not converting the four towns into prisons and detention camps," Dahlan said. The security chief warned that the Palestinians would not repeat the "Bethlehem experience" when Israeli troops redeployed from the town nearly two months ago, only to seal all the roads leading to it with military roadblocks, effectively imprisoning its more than 100,000 inhabitants and crippling its tourism- dependent economy.
Indeed, despite general Palestinian compliance with the hudna, the Israeli army continued to maintain as many as 160 roadblocks throughout the West Bank. These roadblocks, normally manned by young, undisciplined and often trigger-happy soldiers, are a constant source of harassment, humiliation and suffering for ordinary Palestinians. The daily nightmare is made even worse by the erratic behaviour of the soldiers who often abruptly bar movement through the roadblocks, leaving thousands of Palestinian motorists stranded for hours in sweltering temperature, awaiting the commanding officer's mercy.
At this stage, Israel's decision to redeploy its troops from the four Palestinian towns seems to be deceptive. Jericho, after all, has been free of Israeli troops who recently invaded the town to arrest Palestinian activists. The northwestern West Bank of Qalqilya, on the other hand, has been completely sealed off from the rest of the West Bank by the construction of the apartheid wall. An Israeli military roadblock at the town's sole entrance effectively gives troops a free hand to act as prison gatekeepers. As a result, it would make little difference to Qalqilya residents whether or not there is a troop redeployment. The prison-like status of the small town would effectively remain unchanged.
So far, it is uncertain if the Israeli government would agree to allow the Palestinians to travel freely between West Bank towns and villages. What does seem certain is that the Sharon government expects the Palestinian Authority to pay a "price" for each and every "gesture" and "easing-up" of restrictions.
Yet the problem is that the entire Palestinian population, as well as the PA, are effectively Israel's hostages. Besides enduring the increasingly occupation measures and appealing to the United States and the international community to pressure the Israeli government into fully implementing the roadmap, there is little that the Palestinians can do. Equally frustrating to the Palestinians are the continued assassinations and arrests of Palestinian activists, the daily or semi-daily military incursions into Palestinian population centres, the stepped-up home demolitions and expropriation of land, as well as the continued building of the apartheid wall.
As recently as Thursday, undercover Israeli units assassinated Islamic Jihad activist Mohamed Sidr in Hebron. The assassination brings to 23 the number of Palestinians killed since 29 June, when Palestinian resistance groups agreed to the hudna with Israel. Sidr, who had been the target of at least two previous assassination attempts, was holed up in a store in upper Hebron and killed by an anti- tank missile, which destroyed the building. The assassination, which was preceded with the killing of at least four other Palestinians in Nablus last week, threatened to end the hudna after Islamic Jihad leaders vowed a retaliation.
Another provocation occurred on Sunday when Israeli troops backed by tanks and armoured personnel carriers, invaded Qalqilya, terrorising its inhabitants and arresting two Palestinian activists.
Scores of Palestinians had been arrested in the past few weeks, prompting Palestinian officials to accuse Israel of detaining three Palestinians for each one released. Most of those arrested placed under administrative detention (incarceration without charge or trial), where they are kept as "bargaining chips" for the purpose of extracting a political price from the PA.
This week, Israel released some 150 prisoners, the bulk of whom were Palestinian labourers who had been imprisoned for entering Israel without a work permit. In July, as many as 300 political prisoners were released from Israeli prisons in a step that the Israeli government portrayed as a gesture of good will towards the Palestinians. However, it was clear from the beginning that the jail terms of most of the released prisoners either already expired or were about to expire.
More to the point, Israel's refusal to release significant numbers of the estimated 7000 Palestinian political prisoners is coupled with a marked deterioration in Israeli prison conditions. On Sunday, the Israeli Society Against Torture reported that during the past three years, the "use of torture" against Palestinian prisoners had become the "norm" rather than the "exception".
Moreover the Israeli army, which administers most of the detention camps, has been increasingly placing prisoners in solitary confinement and decreasing the food rations of many others. These measures have prompted prisoners in at least three jails to declare an open-ended hunger strike.
Adding fuel to an already highly explosive situation, Israel has recently stepped up its policy of home demolitions. In the past two weeks, the Israeli authorities destroyed more than 20 homes throughout the West Bank, East Jerusalem and in the Negev Desert. The Jerusalem Municipal Council, now headed by an ultra-orthodox mayor, ordered the demolition of two homes in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina on Monday under the pretext that they were built without permits.
According to the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, the demolition proves that the municipality's claim that it does not demolish homes unless the buildings are constructed on land zoned for schools, roads or other public infrastructure, is utterly false.
So far, it seems that Israel's refusal to seriously ease its occupation measures and Washington's unwillingness to apply badly needed pressure on Jerusalem to fully implement the roadmap, is likely to increase the rising frustration in the occupied territories. Indeed, the Palestinians are becoming more convinced that they have nothing to lose, and this feeling, coupled with a growing hopelessness in the roadmap should be construed as a prelude to the resumption of violence and bloodshed. And that, unfortunately, may not be very far ahead.
