Israel hammers Palestinians while offering some token concessions

By Gerry Foley

Despite the defeat of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon’s proposal within his own Likud party for evacuating the Zionist colonies from the Gaza Strip, he has continued to push the scheme. In so doing, he has accepted the risk of a split both in his party and in his coalition government, since it includes Jewish fundamentalist parties that believe that it is the law of God that Jews should occupy every inch of Palestine.

Ironically, the aggressive Zionist Sharon faces an even greater threat. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported June 30: "Rabbi Avigdor Neventzal, a rabbi in Jerusalem’s Old City, said yesterday that anyone who gives away parts of the land of Israel to gentiles is open to a din rodef, a religious license to kill a fellow Jew." In view of the assassination of Yitzak Rabin, who presided over the Oslo agreements as the then premier of Israel, such a threat has to be taken seriously.

The reason for Sharon’s unusual concession to the Palestinians is simply that from a practical political point of view, even a hard-line Zionist one, it cannot be avoided. Sharon had to bite the bullet and even risk taking one. It is too costly to continue to deploy the Israeli army to defend 7000 Zionist colonists living among a million and a half enraged Palestinians.

Gaza is essentially an open-air prison. It has no material or symbolic value for the Zionist state.

Moreover, a Zionist retreat from the worthless Gaza strip can be used to cover the expansion and consolidation of the Zionist colonies on the West Bank, which do have a material and symbolic value for Israel, not the least because they are obstacles to the emergence of a Palestinian state with any real autonomy. That in fact is what is happening.

Aljazeera.net, the English-language web site of the independent Arab TV, reported June 15: "Israel is considering building thousands more homes in West Bank settlements, in line with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to keep large chunks of the territory but give up Gaza.

"The Israeli daily Maariv on Tuesday reported that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had asked the military to draw up plans within three months for building thousands of homes in three of the settlement blocs—Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim, and Ariel."

Moreover, Israel intends to maintain most of the Zionist colonies scattered throughout the West Bank beyond the "security fence" that is intended to mark the new border between the Zionist state and the areas under nominal Palestinian control. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported June 30 that the government had allotted 150 million NIS (about US$33.5 million) to create "security zones" around the Zionist enclaves.

Another significant concession to the Palestinians was the decision of the Israeli Supreme Court June 30 to demand that the military modify the route of the "security wall" to reduce the hardship to Palestinian farmers.

To be sure, the Sharon government is not showing any dovish tendencies. The Israeli military’s pressure on the Palestinian communities has been unrelenting. The latest examples are a new siege of Nablus and a reoccupation of sections of the Gaza strip after Palestinian armed organizations managed to fire rockets, for the first time with deadly effect, against the Israeli border town of Sderot.

In its June 30 issue, the Los Angeles Times published a feature article recounting the hardships of the Palestinians trapped by the siege of Nablus:

"For days, whenever they spotted a rare visitor in the narrow street below, people would lean from high balconies or press their faces against iron window bars to chant a litany of deprivation and need."

"I don't have any diapers for the baby," a young Palestinian mother called out. "My tooth is killing me, and I don't have any painkillers," said a rumpled man with one hand clamped tight against his jaw. "We've run out of bread," a solemn-looking 10-year-old boy murmured from a dark doorway."

The economic squeeze on the Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, continues to tighten. Aljazeera.net reported June 29: "By some estimates, unemployment in general is in excess of 60 percent in the Gaza Strip, while around 80 percent of the population is living under the poverty line, with an income of under $2 a day.

"In addition, the median monthly income for those who are employed has decreased from $550 before the second intifada to $267 during the first quarter of 2004, a drop of nearly 52 percent, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics found."

In these conditions, international agencies are finding serious problems of malnutrition among Palestinian children.

Moreover, as Israel prepares to evacuate the Zionist settlements in the Gaza Strip, it is making a deal with the reactionary neocolonialist regime in Egypt for it to take over "security" in the area. "Security" means the job of repressing the Palestinian resistance organizations.

This arrangement implies that after Israeli withdrawal the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will live under Egyptian overlordship and gain little if any freedom of action or expression.

The Palestinian resistance organizations are protesting bitterly. But the Egyptians are dealing with the Arafat Palestinian Authority, which seems to be putting its own security forces under their supervision.

It appears that despite some concessions from the Zionist authorities, the Palestinians have gained little.

If the Zionist rulers think that it is necessary to give some tokens of reasonableness, it is probably because of increased pressure from the U.S., which is now worried about the future of its intervention in Iraq and therefore of its position in the region.

The article above first appeared in the July 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.