KK_forum,
Op-Ed i Ha'aretz i dag.
http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/htmls/kat9_3.htm
Knut Rognes
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Wednesday, October 18, 2000
Israel has failed the test
By Amira Hass
The lynching of two IDF soldiers by a Palestinian mob and the precise
counting and effective publicizing of every Palestinian volley of shots
heard (they only rarely hit their targets) in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, are making the Israeli public relations machine's work very easy.
This also helps the Israeli public convince itself that they are
disgusting, that we are under attack, that everything has been coordinated
by Yasser Arafat, and that we are lucky that there is Palestinian
television: We can use it to prove that they are engaged in incitement
(after carefully editing out all the broadcasts which show the Palestinian
casualties, one-third of them children, and those with head wounds and the
various types of wounds). Us? We are only reporting and analyzing and
explaining, even when we broadcast the pictures of the lynching 50 times a
day.In the Oslo agreements, Israel and the West put the Palestinian
leadership to a test: In exchange for an Israeli promise to gradually
dismantle the mechanisms of the occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, the Palestinian leadership promised to stop every act of violence
and terror immediately. For that purpose, all the apparatus for security
coordination was created, more and more Palestinian jails were built, and
demonstrators were barred from approaching the settlements.
The two sides agreed on a period of five years for completion of the new
deployment and the negotiations on a final agreement. The Palestinian
leadership agreed again and again to extend its trial period, in the shadow
of Hamas terrorist attacks and the Israeli elections. The "peace strategy"
and the tactic of gradualism adopted by the leadership were at first
supported by most of the Palestinian public, which craves normalcy. The
Fatah (the main faction of the PLO) was the backbone of support for the
concept of gradual release from the yoke of military occupation. Its
members were the ones who kept track of the Palestinian opposition,
arrested suspects whose names were given to them by Israel, imprisoned
those who signed manifests claiming that Israel did not intend to rescind
its domination over the Palestinian nation. The personal advantage gained
by some of these Fatah members is not enough to explain their support of
the process: For a long time they really and truly believed that this was
the way to independence.
But they belong to a people, the Palestinian people. From their
perspective, Israel was also put to a test: Was Israel really giving up its
attitude of superiority and domination, built up in order to keep the
Palestinian people under its control?
More than seven years have gone by, and Israel has security and
administrative control of 61.2 percent of the West Bank, and about 20
percent of the Gaza Strip (Area C), and security control over another 26.8
percent of the West Bank (Area B).
This control is what has enabled Israel to double the number of settlers in
10 years, to enlarge the settlements, to continue its discriminatory policy
of cutting back water quotas for three million Palestinians, to prevent
Palestinian development in most of the area of the West Bank, and to seal
an entire nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in a network of bypass
roads meant for Jews only. During these days of strict internal restriction
of movement in the West Bank, one can see how carefully each road was
planned: So that 200,000 Jews have freedom of movement, about three million
Palestinians are locked into their Bantustans until they submit to Israeli
demands.
Israel has failed the test. Palestinian control of 12 percent of the West
Bank does not mean that Israel has given up its attitude of superiority and
domination. Israel has proven that it does not envisage a peace based on
the principles of equality of nations and of men. It has continued its
official policy of "tower and stockade" (the method of building Jewish
settlements overnight during the British Mandate period, to defy official
British policy against building and to extend the borders of the future
Jewish state), in order to extend the permanent borders and to ensure
maximum control over most of the Land of Israel, and has relied on the
Palestinian security apparatus and the Fatah to continue to keep things quiet.
The bloodbath that has been going on for three weeks is the natural outcome
of seven years of lying and deception, just as the first Intifada was the
natural outcome of direct Israeli occupation. Those who settled for being
photographed conducting friendly meetings with senior Fatah members (now
known by their threatening name "the Tanzim") and the heads of the
Palestinian security apparatus, and who were involved in promoting
Palestinian industrial areas where the salaries are lower than the Israeli
minimum wage - are still unable to heed the voice of the Palestinian
nation. Those who did not want to know, for the last seven years, that for
the majority of Palestinians this is not peace but a new, more
sophisticated type of occupation, are still not ready to understand that
this is a popular uprising.
Now the vast majority of victims have come from among the Palestinian
insurgents. Will the message of the uprising be understood in Israel only
when Palestinian groups obey the Hezbollah, and try methods which will
inflict heavy casualties on the Israelis as well.
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