Israel stepped up repression of Palestinians during Gulf War

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Michel Warshawsky, a leader of the Israeli section of the Fourth International (the world revolutionary organization founded by Leon Trotsky) spoke in Paris on March 19, 1991, along with a Palestinian intellectual, Elias Sanbar, on the situation of the Palestinian struggle after the Gulf War. The following are extensive excerpts from Rouge, the paper of the French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Socialist Action.

People say that Israel did not take any part in the Gulf War. The Israeli government is even thanked for its restraint in the face of the Scud [missile] attacks.

This is false. Israel was a participant in the war, [involved] in a very precise division of labor. Bush assigned the Israeli state and army a very well defined front-the Palestinian front. The latter, moreover, was divided into three zones—[the Palestinians] in southern Lebanon, the Palestinians in Israel, and above all the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In southern Lebanon, the war created a smokescreen that enabled Israel to resume its criminal bombings of the the refugee camps. With regard to the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel in Galilee, the Triangle, and the Negev, this was a chance for an offensive unparalleled since 1976. It involved land confiscations, a plan for building new Jewish colonies in Arab-majority areas, and unprecedented repression on the pretext of dealing with espionage.

"Spies" were uncovered everywhere. People were afraid of using the telephone, of being arrested for spying. People were afraid of saying where they were, of confirming rumors about missiles landing in Israel for fear of being charged with spying.

The mass terror was such that for three weeks it kept 50,000 Palestinian "citizens" of Israel, who were not under curfew, from going to work and in fear of pogroms.

The result was that for the first time since 1976 there was no Day of the Land. For the first time since 1976, the national leadership of the Palestinians in Israel, the coordinating committee of mayors, the Day of the Land Committee, decided not to call a general strike and to change the name of the event to the Day of Peace. This was after they were threatened by the ministers and the general commissioner of police that they would see blood flow. The Palestinians had to under12 SOCIALIST ACTION stand that everything had changed, including for them.

The third area of this [Israeli] front is the occupied territories. Since the beginning of the occupation there has never been such a long and strict curfew for a million-and-ahalf people. For the first time since 1968, the Palestinians in Gaza, and to a lesser extent on the West Bank, were threatened with hunger. People did not have anything to eat. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were thrown into unemployment.

Border sealed

The war first of all made it possible to hermetically seal the border with the occupied territories, that is, to cut off the means Michel Warschawski of existence for 150,000 Palestinians and their families. One of the most optimistic projections today is that 50 percent of them will never get their jobs back. There is talk about "refugees" from the Gaza strip, who don't have any little plot of land that they could use to compensate a bit for their lost wages. This is a tragic situation.

However, this is not simply a problem of human rights, of the livelihood of the Palestinians; it is a very effective attempt to destroy the entire infrastructure of the Palestinian economy. Agriculture won't recover. And the small industry that existed and was beginning to grow in the framework of the Intifada is in dire straits.

JUNE 1991 In order to wage this battle, this war, the Israeli government had to wage another struggle, one that began before the fighting started on Jan. 17, 1991—the battle for a national consensus. It had to put an end to what had deeply divided Israeli society, first during the Lebanon war, and then, with the appearance and spectacular growth of the uprising in the occupied territories, [the Intifida].

Israeli peace movement betrays It had to win the battle for national unity. And unfortunately, it did so. There was national unity against the Arabs, and we could hear Israeli "progressives"—intellectuals such as the writer Yehoshua—calling for using atomic weapons (tactical of course) against Baghdad, because "when you're fighting a Hitler, anything goes."

The well-known "progressive" writer, Dan Merion, accused Shamir of tying the Israeli army's hands and called on him to "save our honor and end the restraint policy." Yossi Sarid, the most brilliant and best known spokesperson of the Israeli left, announced in September [to his Palestinian interlocutors]: "If you're interested, you can call me, but for the moment I really have nothing more to say to you." A month later, he said: "There is no point on calling me, I really have nothing more to say to you.

This was a proclamation of divorce by the great majority of the peace movement, of the Israeli left, from the partners that they themselves called "the moderate Palestinians," with whom they had been engaging in dialogue (often not a very honest dialogue). I will come back to this.

I can cite the example of a very courageous [Israeli) woman who over the last years has several times met with PLO delegations inside and outside the country and who, despite the fact that she was a member of the Central Committee of the [Israeli] Labour Party, headed the women's movement against the occupation. She provoked a split of part of the movement when she refused to publish an ad denouncing the fact that Palestinian children had no gas masks. She said: "This is war, and gas masks for Palestinian children is not my problem."

Yael Dayan had a protest letter published in all the press because another Dayan (this name is a very common one) signed a petition that said "No to hunger in the occupied territories." Yael Dayan responded, "I never signed such a petition and never would."

Facing this new national unity, the Israel waged in the occupied territories has not been won. Far from it. Among other reasons, it has to be said, this is because of the Scuds that landed in Israel.

The descriptions of Palestinians dancing on the roofs are not Israeli or Western propaganda. The Iraqi attack on Israel represented a hope. In the tragic conditions they faced, the Palestinians drew encouragement from it. When there was nothing to eat, they dreamed of Scuds, they dreamed of blows dealt to Israel.

Unfortunately, this hope was accompanied by a mass of illusions about the capabilities of the Iraqi regime, about the capacities of the Arab front that formed, for countering the Western offensive and using this fightback to begin to bring about a solution of the Palestinian question.

After the end of these illusions, today we see anger and frustration—but not demoralization. We have to be very clear about this. In Gaza, in the refugee camps, on the West Bank, in Jerusalem, what you feel is very great anger. Anger first of all against the West, especially against France. France betrayed. The Americans did not betray; they played their role.

There is anger against Israelis of course, especially against the Israeli left. There is also a beginning of, if not anger, questioning of, a more critical attitude toward the local leadership.

We saw this last week, when a delegation of Palestinian leaders, with the agreement of the PLO, met Baker. There was indignation in the whole society along the lines of, "This is no time to be shaking the hand of someone responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of Arabs."

Nonetheless, Baker is seeking dialogue with Palestinians, in the hope of finding an alternative to the PLO. Let let no one make a mistake. I don't have a shadow of a doubt that Faisal Husseini, Elias Frej, and Janan Ashrawi (who met Baker last week) told him unambiguously that there is no one worth talking to outside the PLO, that at best, they might offer an intermediary, but that there is no chance of finding an alternative leadership.

Two weeks ago, I did a tour of the occupied territories. And nowhere was there any questioning of the PLO's role as the sole representative of the Palestinians.

Peace movement still exists Wars, and especially this war, have an atrocious aspect. But there is always something positive, even in a tragic political development such as the Gulf War. What the Gulf War has made possible in Israeli society and Palestinian society is to put an end, or at least to push into the background, certain illusions, certain misunderstandings.

There was, and there still is, a peace (continued on next page)