Palestinian casualties mount as mass uprising escalates

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16 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 1988 By RALPH SCHOENMAN The Palestinian uprising has escalated to new heights. Despite efforts by both the Israelis and the United States to black out news of the both Palestinian resistance and Israeli repression, the scale of struggle has intensified to the point where the media have been forced to acknowledge it.

Dan Fisher, for example, reported in the The Los Angeles Times (July 22, 1988):

"An upsurge in the uprising, or Intifada, has returned the pace of fatalities to the peak levels of last April. Thursday's three victims brought to 17 the number of Arabs killed in the last two weeks. Eighteen have died so far this month, up from 14 in June."

Official figures now average a death a day. Palestinian mobilizations are continuous as the repression encompasses the very young. A nine-year-old was shot dead one day, a 15-year-old the next. General strikes have become the norm.

A general strike paralyzed the West Bank and Gaza as workers stayed home throughout the post-1967 occupied territories. Israelis responded by shutting down six West Bank schools for the rest of the school year and threatening to close the remainder.

Spreading the struggle

The savagery of Israeli repression has not merely deepened Palestinian anger but spread the struggle. In Nablus, huge crowds filled the streets as troops opened fire at point-blank range. A 17-year-old was shot dead.

Palestinian youths throughout the West Bank erected barricades. In Anapta, troops opened fire on students who had massed after classes, killing a 16-year-old, who was shot three times in the chest from a few feet distance.

One-hundred-fourteen major clashes with soldiers and large actions in 62 towns, refugee camps, and villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza were documented between July 4 and July 9 by Facts-the English-language underground Palestinian newsletter published weekly.

By July 24, The Los Angeles Times reported that "Jerusalem is now focus of uprising. Israeli officials expressed growing concern that Jerusalem is becoming the center of the seven-and-a-half-month-old Palestinian rebellion."

Ephraim Sneh, former head of Israel's military administration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, told Israeli radio, 'The center of the conflict is now in Jerusalem."

Soldiers in the Christian quarter of the walled Old City fired tear gas throughout the area, sparing neither residents nor shoppers as hundreds of frightened shoppers panicked and fled along the narrow, cobblestone alleyways. Some 17,000 Palestinians had been expected for the Muslim holidays but were turned back at Israeli roadblocks. Curfews enforced by orders to shoot on sight were imposed on 270,000 Palestinians in their homes.

Gas and torture

Yitzhak Shamir announced through Minister of Construction and Housing David Levy plans for "two thousand new homes for Israelis in the West Bank settlements of Avner Hafetz, Betar, and Netah. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin issued a directive authorizing civilians "to shoot on sight any Palestinian holding a firebomb," while Amnesty International "urged Israel" to investigate the deaths from gas of "at least 40 men, women and children."

Such measures have included torture. Sada al Watan reported (July 2-8):

"Israeli occupation forces have been "By its very nature, the deterrent effect m the terrorist, particularly those members using hypodermic intravenous injections during interrogation of Palestinian youths. Palestinian doctors and witnesses reported puncture marks and openly discussed the danger that the injections may have longterm effects, such as sterilization or the contraction of AIDS.

The Jerusalem Post reported that soldiers carrying a black case in Al-Am'ari refugee camp refused to disclose its contents. Eighteen-year-old As'ad Rawhi Sayeed Shafeh was beaten unconscious by soldiers and given an injection before his sister, Aisha, an eyewitness.

After his family's house was blown up, Time magazine reported on July 18, Nizar Dakdouk, age 18, agreed to discuss the incident with a film crew claiming to be from ABC News. The crew turned out to be from Shin Bet, the secret police who imprisoned the youth. Israeli police seek to prevent Palestinian youths from speaking to the press.

Writing in The Los Angeles Times (July impinge on those surrounding his family living with him." Israeli High Court of -Justice 24, 1988), Richard B. Straus, editor of Middle East Policy Survey, disclosed a concerted effort to remove "the world spotlight" from the generalized uprising of the Palestinian people:

"The international spotlight is off. The hundreds of special foreign correspondents have gone home. Even U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz has folded his peacemaking tent. ... Israelis were relieved to find their problems with the Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, no longer on page one, and especially off evening newscasts.

Straus also describes Israeli "officials" working with the U.S. government to remove awareness of the uprising from public consciousness.

Extension inside Green Line What also emerges from Straus's candid account is the depth of the radicalization and its extension to the Palestinian population inside the "Green Line" (pre-1967 Israel).

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir indicated for the first time that the Israeli regime was considering martial law in all of Israel.

No longer pretending that the uprisings could be crushed, Shamir declared: "The so-called Intifada will have to be dealt with in the same manner as the threats to our security over the past 40 years."

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his Labor Alignment echo this assessment: "The more moderate Labor Alignment leaders, such as Foreign Minister Peres, take every opportunity to emphasize their commitment to law and order-supporting deportation and destruction of houses." (Los Angeles Times, July 24)

Each day a drumbeat of promised repression has been sounded anew. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin was cited by the Associated Press as promising that "the solution is to meet violence with crushing violence." He warned "that the uprising was not aimed at ending Israel's 21-year occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but at endangering Israel's future, its security." (AP, July 17, 1988)

Mahdi Abdul-Haj, who directs a Palestinian research institute in East Jerusalem, told Richard B. Straus that the Palestinians have "undergone a radical transformation," adding: "The element of fear is dead in the Palestinian community and we are transferring that fear to Israeli society."

Abdul-Haj continued, "Even more ominous is the spread of fear inside pre-1967 borders on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Recent events have stunned Israelis."

Straus describes the consternation of official Israeli "analysts" who admitted to him that a revolutionary sensibility has become generalized among "Israeli-Arabs" who look upon the Israeli state itself as the object of their struggle.

"What is happening here," Straus cites his high Israeli contacts as saying, "is the 'untold story'-these Arabs are in our belly."

Engulfing "Israel proper"

The Los Angeles Times disclosed on July 16 that the Intifada had indeed engulfed "Israeli proper." The article stated:

"Releasing new figures on incidents of unrest inside Israel proper, police commissioner David Krauss said Arab nationalists were responsible for 114 out of 210 forest and pasture fires. Krauss said more than 1000 protests have broken out inside Israel in the last three months."

There were 730 demonstrations in Jerusalem alone and 51 firebomb attacks. Nine hundred arrests of "Israeli-Arabs" occurred with 55 charges of arson.

Dan Fisher's account in The Los Angeles Times (July 19) describes how the revolution has now spread inside the Green Line. He also documents the effect on life in the West Bank and Gaza. His story heading reads, "Leaflets dictate pulse of life in occupied territories: Arab uprising is now the routine."

Diplomats from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem told Fisher they were having trouble pinning down their schedules. "We realized that the reason that we could not plan our week was because we did not have the latest leaflet issued by the Unified National Leadership for the Uprising in the occupied territories.' Matti Steinberg, a Palestinian "expert" at Hebrew University, said, "The Intifada has been transformed into routine. It is now the way of life."

"The clearest example of how protest has been institutionalized is the shortened threehour workday of most businesses in towns throughout the occupied areas," Fisher writes.

The authorities have tried threats, (continued 12) on