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The Other Israel _ August 2002, Issue No. 103/104
Inside the Maelstrom, an Editorial Overview
War without a battlefield
Two sieges
Behind the rumors
Hell in Jenin
Sundered perceptions
A time of isolation
Growing intolerance
The wobbling Bush
The new occupation
The hopeful interlude
Diplomatic games
Manoeuvres
Explosions and fences
Re-occupation completed
Largest prison on earth
Jefferson in Ramallah
Another smashed hope
Back into the maelstrom
Lutta continua
Action Diary: March 30-August 10
[Details on big rallies in the streets of Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem; humanitarian convoys which sometimes encounter
extreme police brutality: and actions of the few, penetrating into the cities under curfew.]
Convoy to Salfit
Campaign to Rebuild Demolished Palestinian Homes
Israeli Committee Agaist House demolitions
Refusal Update
Israeli soldiers refusing to serve in the West Bank & Gaza
The International Solidarity Movement
Indict the Murderers of Oslo!!, by Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom Targeted: the war crimes scandal
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[THE OTHER ISRAEL is the newsletter of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, P.O.Box 2542, 58125 Holon,
Israel.
Phone/Fax: (03) 5565804; E-mail: otherisr@actcom.co.il
Editor: Adam Keller
Coeditor: Beate Zilversmidt
--------------
NO COPYRIGHT
Our articles may be reprinted, provided they include the address The Other Israel POB 2542, Holon 58125, Israel.
In early March, US mediator Zinni had failed for the umpteenth time to achieve a cease-fire.
The Palestinians were ready on condition that the Israeli army would stop blocking the entrances to
their towns and cities, a condition which Sharon could afford not to meet.
The weeks of intensive diplomatic activity followed the end of what seemed then a major operation
but in retrospect looks like a dress rehearsal -- Israeli forces entering for several days all West Bank cities
one after the other, including house to house searches and arrests.
The failed US mediation also scuttled the idea of Yasser Arafat being invited to meet with US Vice
President Cheney, on the latter's visit to the region -- which, as it turned out, was Arafat's last chance to gain
acceptance from the present US administration. (Cheney, a leading administration hard-liner, had raised the possibility
of such a meeting as a sop to the Arab leaders whose support was deemed necessary for a US attack on Iraq.)
In an obvious effort to spoil yet another mediation effort, Sharon denied Arafat permission to attend
the Arab Summit in Beirut -- or rather, the PM would have been overjoyed to see Arafat going there, provided that
he would not come back.
On the morning of March 27, banner headlines carried a warning from the Defence Minister, who had
been outvoted in the cabinet -- 'Ben Eliezer: Forbidding Arafat travel a mistake, will lead to escalation.' But
-- as was to repeat itself again and again -- Ben Eliezer was to forget his own predictions and warnings the moment
they came true.
March 27 was the time set by the Arab Heads of State for their summit in Beirut, the venue chosen
by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for presenting a peace plan which offered to Israel full peace with the entire Arab
World in return for full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories.
On the evening of that day-it was the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover -- prime time evening
news on all channels focused on the Beirut summit, to the virtual exclusion of all other news. Commentators analysed
the power struggles evident among the Arab leaders, and screened Crown Prince Abdullah's carefully-phrased address
to the Israeli people, calling upon them to take the Arab hand offered in peace and forego the path of brute force.
There were some speculations on how Sharon would react, and predictions of a possible fierce debate polarizing
the Israeli society and possibly bringing down the Sharon government; in several opinion polls, a persistent half
of the public showed itself in favor of the Saudi proposal.
An hour later, the broadcasts were interrupted for emergency bulletins: a Hamas suicide bomber had
just blown himself up at the resort of Netanyah, in a hall where mostly elderly Israelis had gathered to celebrate
Passover. The detonation of a large amount of explosives inside a constricted space led to 29 people being killed
-- the largest number of fatalities in any single suicide bombing. As far as the Israeli media was concerned, the
Beirut Summit ceased to exist at that moment, replaced by photos of horror from the scene in Netanyah, and the
rising tide of calls for revenge by politicians from nearly the entire spectrum.
During that terrible night, hasty consultations among activists of Gush Shalom, resulted in a statement
being drawn up in an effort to make some sense of the calamity. Throughout the night it was sent out, in Hebrew
and English, by fax and e-mail, to journalists, activists, anybody who might possibly be expected to listen: 'On
one and the same evening Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia offered Israel a full peace with the entire Arab
World in exchange for ending the occupation and withdrawing to the 1967 borders. One hour later, the suicide bomber
who arrived in Netanyah made on behalf of Hamas a counteroffer -- an offer of eternal war and indiscriminate mutual
killing. By all indications, it seems that the Sharon Government is about to reject the first and accept the latter
(...).'
There arrived some positive responses from abroad and from fellow peace activists. But it did not
reach the Israeli society. Not a single Israeli paper published the press release. In fact, we had not even expected
it.
A genuine popular anger was being massively manipulated, and channeled in a specific direction by
the political system and the state-controlled media. There was little one could do other than
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watch helplessly, as a trapped traveler in the mountains at the gathering of an avalanche.
War without a battlefield
By many standards, the entire 54-year history of Israel can be considered a single unbroken war. Still,
Israelis in general perceive specific parts of their history as "wars" -- 1948, 1956, 1967 and so on
-- while the periods in between were, if not actually "peace", at least a time of "relative calm."
The distinction is not entirely watertight. A "War" is a time when reserves are called up to supplement
the regular army, large military forces are visibly moving about, and generals expect to achieve "a strategic
change in the status quo." .
A "war" also has a clear political dimension -- it is a time when politicians call for "national
unity" and manifestations of dissent, tolerated in ordinary times, are frowned upon as "unpatriotic."
A considerable effort was made to give "Operation Defensive Shield", proclaimed at the end
of an all-night cabinet meeting on March 29, 2002, seem a bona fide "war."
Still, an objective observer might have noted that it was a very one-sided affair, in which swarms
of Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships, together with whole divisions of infantry, ruthlessly smashed their way
into city after city, opposed by nothing more than lightly-armed, badly organized militias.
In fact, the 40,000-strong Palestinian Police, a body whose "threat" was for years magnified
in scare propaganda of the Israeli extreme right, were reportedly forbidden by Arafat to attempt a hopeless resistance
which would have magnified the scale of the bloodshed and destruction. The main obstacles on the invading forces'
way were political rather than military -- but even so, there were bloodshed and destruction in plenty.
Two sieges
Sharon would have liked nothing better than to instruct the army to "expel Arafat" -- which
would have likely ended with Arafat's death, since the Palestinian leader carried his pistol always, and had no
intention of being captured alive. But on this point the Americans had been quite specific; the phone call from
Secretary Powell to Sharon, during the crucial cabinet meeting, gave Sharon the go-ahead to do anything but physically
harm Arafat.
Thus started the siege of Arafat's headquarters, which was to capture the world media's full attention
for the next month. The Palestinian leader, his bodyguards and some of his advisers were squeezed into part of
a single building, with elite Israeli commandos establishing their headquarters "just across the wall from
Arafat's bedroom" as a boasting article in Yediot Aharonot put it.
According to the cabinet's resolution, Arafat was to be completely isolated and all access to him
denied by the surrounding Israeli forces. That proved difficult, however: the tight siege enhanced Arafat's popularity
among Palestinians and in the entire Arab World; the footage showing him being interviewed by candlelight, talking
on a small mobile phone, flashed on TV screens around the globe.
To add to the army's embarrassment, dozens of international peace activists -- Americans, French,
Danish and also Israeli -- managed to elude the supposedly hermetic military closure of Arafat's headquarters,
get in and stay in as "human shields" for the full duration of the siege.
------------------
The following is excerpted from e-mail messages sent out by the TOI staff.
April 1. (...) This evening we got a call from our fellow-activist Neta Golan, who yesterday succeeded in entering
Yasser Arafat's besieged headquarters among the international group. It was only a short conversation, since the
call broke off and could not be resumed.
Neta told that the mood in the compound is good though the supply of food and water is running low
and in spite of the army's loudspeakers making constant threats. Also, from time to time the soldiers lob 'shock
grenades' which cause loud explosions but little physical harm. (...)
April 22. (...) What we heard from Neta: 'The sanitary conditions are intolerable. There is not enough water to
drink, let alone bathe. We all stink and everyone loses weight. There is not enough food allowed in. But there
is love and generosity, everybody offers to share whatever food they have (...).
May 2 (...) Golan left the compound early Thursday after Israeli forces withdrew. She helped carry a wounded Palestinian
to a waiting ambulance after caring for him during her stay inside the building. Then she took a shower and went
to sleep in a Ramallah apartment.
------------------
Soon there was added another problematic siege -- at the site of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,
into which more than two hundred Palestinians fled
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for refuge when the Israeli tanks rolled into the city. Some of them were leading militants wanted by the Israeli
security services and expecting to be shot on sight or be taken off for painful interrogation followed by decades-long
imprisonment. Others were ordinary civilians, including dozens of boys, obeying the natural instinct to seek a
place of safety when faced by a hostile invading army. All of them were to endure a prolonged ordeal.
Two years almost to the day after it was ceremoniously visited by the pope, a bit more than three
years after the festive visit of Bill and Hilary Clinton, the Church of the Nativity and Bethlehem's Manger Square
around it have become a war zone.
Tourist guides describe The Church of The Nativity -- erected in Byzantine times -- as "fortress-like":
thick walls, narrow windows, a single, very narrow, front door. Not by chance: in its many centuries of existence,
the Church of the Nativity had seen many turbulent periods when its people sought to find refuge from unruly invaders
behind its walls.
Against medieval weapons, the church is almost impregnable. Modern heavy arms could have breached
its walls without too much trouble, but it was unthinkable to do anything of the kind on the site which Christian
tradition considers the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
In fact, even with the idea of breaking into the church by force ruled out, the Bethlehem siege earned
Sharon widespread condemnation throughout the Christian world, including from such unlikely quarters as Ulster
Unionists and even the Christian Phalange of Lebanon -- the very allies of Sharon in 1982.
Rather than break in, the army settled in the medieval surroundings for a medieval form of warfare,
namely trying to starve out the besieged. The amount of food allowed into the church was only sufficient for a
few dozen priests and monks trapped inside; for the extra two hundred hungry mouths not a scrap of food was provided.
And the grim siege went on...
Behind the rumors
The two sieges drew the world's attention, partly because in the first days most other places in the
Palestinian cities were not accessible to the Israeli or international press. As overwhelming forces entered city
after city, enforcing a total curfew by shooting at anybody found in the streets and taking over private houses
to make them into military positions, an almost complete media blackout fell over cities located just a few kilometers
from the heart of Jerusalem.
The hostility towards the media was the army's lesson from earlier invasions, when unflattering images
filled the world's TV screens and occasionally there were heard dissident views even from soldiers in the invading
force itself.
This time, also Israeli journalists with a long record of loyally reporting verbatim the army's version
were excluded from accompanying the forces, and the army made considerable efforts to locate and expel the journalists
already on the scene. In a widely-publicized scene, tear gas grenades were lobbed at a CNN camera crew; several
less lucky journalists actually were shot to death while covering the invasion.
As a result, for more than a week there was no reliable information coming out of the conquered cities.
Usually, the first thing which peace and human rights activists heard upon telephoning to Palestinian contacts
were panicking reports of wild shooting in the streets and soldiers' savagery. Palestinian residents could often
tell facts only of what happened in their own street, otherwise depending on rumors which were magnified in the
telling.
What was reported from all cities, and soon substantiated beyond all doubt, was the widespread habit
of tanks to deliberately roll over and crush civilian cars. Soldiers' vandalism tolerated by commanding officers
or a deliberate policy to further cow and demoralize the population? Reports of widespread looting and wanton destruction
of Palestinian property also turned out, when the area became more accessible, to be all too true. Some blatant
cases were later admitted by the military authorities and the culprits prosecuted.
In the first days, there were also darker rumors, of extra-judicial killings of Palestinian police
officers by Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. At least one case seemed confirmed through examinations of several bodies
found shot in the lobby of an office building, showing they did not die "in battle" as the Israeli authorities
claimed. But other reported cases turned out, also according to Palestinian sources, to be baseless rumors.
Still, though the first impression of widespread executions turned out to be fortunately wrong, what
did occur in Ramallah -- and repeated in the other cities, one by one -- was grim enough: a systematic sweep for
weapons, explosives and "wanted terrorists", with the army declaring its intention to search "every
single house." In practice, more than half of the houses in such big cities as Ramallah and Nablus have gotten
a "visit."
There seems to have been considerable individual differences in the behavior of soldiers, even in
the same street or house: Palestinians reported one squad behaving with wanton destructiveness while the squad
searching the neighboring house was acting polite and respectful to the tenants.
Still, the total number of cases of looting and destruction of property during such searches seems
to have been enormous. Never before, in all the 35 years of Israeli rule, had so many Palestinians experienced
the occupation in such a threatening and rude way, leaving behind a new legacy of anger and hatred whose effects
might be felt for years to come.
In areas considered by the Israeli security services to be "sensitive", in particular at
refugee camps, the systematic house-to-house searches were often accompanied by mass arrests of the entire male
population. These detainees were held for several days at improvised detention centers, often under very difficult
conditions -- with most of the random
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prisoners set free after a few days, to get home by foot in the dangerous conditions of a city under curfew. Some
were taken off to prolonged terms of "administrative detention" at the reopened Detention Center in the
Negev -- Ketziot (Ansar-3), notorious during the first intifada, the closing of which had been one of the hopeful
signs in the early days of Oslo...
------------------
NO COPYRIGHT
Our articles may be reprinted, provided they include the address The Other Israel POB 2542, Holon 58125, Israel.
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Out of the Ofer Camp outside Ramallah, where many of these random detainees were held and "sorted
out" by Israeli interrogators, rumors filtered of systematic torture of prisoners to make them confess and
implicate others.
Human rights organizations tried to appeal to the Supreme Court about the Ofer Camp tortures. The
Supreme Court had forbidden the use of torture at Shabak interrogations, but that was at a different time with
a different public atmosphere.
Nowadays, the judges just refused to acknowledge that their earlier verdict was being systematically
flouted, saying they could not refer to the matter without an affidavit of a witness to the torture.
Such an affidavit could not be produced. The human rights organizations had gotten the tip from a
soldier, who had taken the risk of leaking classified information but asked to stay anonymous. The detainees subjected
to torture could have signed an affidavit if they had been able to meet their lawyers -- but such meetings were
forbidden by the army, and the Supreme Court upheld that prohibition "in view of the exceptional circumstances."
The torture at Ofer continued, undisturbed by the law.
Hell in Jenin
There was one place where the army predicted strong military resistance from the Palestinians: the
Casbah (Old City) of Nablus, with its narrow winding alleys where Israeli soldiers had been chasing Palestinian
stone-throwers already before the first intifada.
The army earmarked several of its best infantry brigades for the long-prepared Battle of the Casbah.
The bulldozers were also prepared in advance, making way for the tanks by destroying many of the beautiful old
structures, and leaving civilians buried under the ruins. The consideration shown to the Church of the Nativity
was not extended to a thousand-year old mosque which UNESCO had been about to declare part of the cultural heritage
of humanity; the mosque happened to be in the tanks' and bulldozers' way, and that was that.
Altogether, the army conquered the Casbah in a short one-sided battle, with the death toll standing
at more than a hundred dead Palestinians to one Israeli. (As is often the experience in this kind of warfare, the
army high command was to find a few months later that the Nablus Casbah needed to be conquered all over again...).
Where the generals obviously miscalculated was with regard to Jenin -- a name which the entire world
would soon get to know, but which any expert should have recognized as a center of defiant Palestinian nationalism
dating all the way back to the Palestinian uprising against the British in the 1930's.
Sharon's own propaganda machine had long before emphasized the disproportionate number of Palestinian
suicide bombers originating in the Jenin Refugee Camp -- which should have given somebody in the army the idea
that the inhabitants might be very persistent in the defence of their own homes.
Back in February, the IDF already made two incursions into the Jenin Refugee Camp, during which local
militants had a chance to closely observe the army's tactics, in particular the soldiers' way of breaking down
the walls of closely-packed refugee huts and moving from one house into the next. The army then withdrew, leaving
the militants some two months in which to prepare for its return. The time was well used.
When the soldiers did come back, in the first week of April, they found large portions of the camp
booby-trapped, and had to struggle for every inch.
Altogether, twenty-three Israeli soldiers were killed in the conquest of Jenin, thirteen of them in
a single explosion of a set of interlinked bombs which left little chance of survival for the soldiers who entered
a particular innocent-seeming courtyard between refugee huts.
With amazing persistence, no more than about eighty lightly armed militiamen -- though they did have
the sympathy of, and some logistical support from, their 15,000 fellow refugees -- were able to hold off for nine
days several Israeli brigades with their accompanying tanks and helicopter gunships. 'It is the Palestinian Massada'
a soldier told Ma'ariv, referring to the stronghold where Jewish rebels held out against Roman rule in 70 A.D.
-- a story known to anyone who went through the Israeli school system. Another soldier remarked simply: 'Jenin
was hell.'
It was hell indeed, for the soldiers, for the militants and for the hapless inhabitants of the refugee
camp.
Loudspeakers called upon the inhabitants to leave their homes and clear the way for the army -- but
many of the refugees failed to heed, having literally nowhere to go and with a deep memory of homes lost in 1948.
The bulldozers came then, on a wider scale than in Nablus, clearing the way for the tanks by indiscriminately destroying
everything in their way.
Some weeks later, one of the bulldozer drivers -- an unemployed football fan from Jerusalem -- embarrassed
the government propagandists by giving Yediot Aharonot a full, unrepentant account of his doings: "I sat day
and night in the driver's seat, drinking whiskey, destroying and destroying. I didn't care if there were people
in these buildings. I would have liked to destroy the whole camp" (full translation at www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html).
Some inhabitants were able to scramble out of their collapsing homes at the last moment, but others
-- especially the aged and handicapped -- were left trapped under the ruins. Some lay dying for days, with the
Palestinian red Crescent and international volunteers not allowed to come near. Nor did the
Page 5
army bring in its own famed rescue teams, which the government is in the habit of dispatching (with TV cameras
in attendance) to the scene of earthquakes around the world.
At the time, rumors coming out of the camp apparently exaggerated the death toll, putting it in many
hundreds. The number finally established was 52, about half of them civilians -- which makes the number of civilians
killed in Jenin alone equivalent to that of the Israelis killed in the Netanyah suicide bombing, which had officially
been declared "a massacre" and which had triggered the launching of the entire invasion.
For a time, the whole world seemed to be watching Jenin, and the demand for an international investigation
seemed unstoppable, to the point that even Sharon initially tended to give his assent to the UN Secretary-General
sending a "fact-finding mission." But Sharon's generals, apprehensive that soldiers or officers find
themselves prosecuted for war crimes, put up enormous pressure.
The government first tried to define the composition of the UN team and its terms of reference. Then
followed a stormy cabinet session -- with ministers complaining that Chief of Staff Mofaz seemed to dictate terms
to the government rather than putting himself under its orders -- ending with the government flatly refusing the
UN team entry into Israeli (or Israeli occupied) territory.
Another country might have paid a high price for brazenly defying the UN Security Council -- but with
the United States exerting its full influence, Sharon did not have to worry.
Sundered perceptions
In April, most of the Israeli public opinion passed over in silence -- or with active approval --
the action of army bulldozers destroying refugee dwellings with the inhabitants still inside. A sad irony, considering
the enormous public outcry just a three months earlier, when refugee dwellings in Rafah had been demolished with
the inhabitants at least given a chance to escape alive.
The difference can be attributed to the unprecedented number of suicide bombings in the intervening
period, to the very genuine fear and loathing which they aroused in the general Israeli population and to the successful
manipulation of that fear and loathing by Sharon -- altogether leading to much of the Israeli public becoming insensitive
to Palestinian suffering.
At least one of the Israeli reservists killed in Jenin is known to have been a firm supporter of withdrawal
from the occupied territories and dismantling of the settlements. And still -- as his father told, who shares the
same views and who spoke with him on the phone two hours before his death -- he fought at Jenin with the full belief
that this war was just, that invading the Jenin Refugee Camp and destroying large parts of it was an act necessary
in order to stop suicide bombings emanating from that camp.
Most likely, he was not the only one among the 29 soldiers killed in "Operation Defensive Shield."
And there is no doubt that a considerable number of Israeli citizens who in principle believe that Israel should
quit the Palestinian territories, nevertheless supported the invasion as "a temporary emergency measure",
whose duration was left to the discretion of Sharon and his generals.
The Netanyah bombing (or "The Passover Massacre" as official propaganda called it, though
the term never really caught on in daily conversations), coming in the wake of a whole month of constant Palestinian
assaults all over the country, unified the great majority of Jewish Israelis, including many which would in other
circumstances have opposed Sharon.
For most of the world, the images of destruction broadcast from Jenin, when the TV cameras were finally
allowed in, were evidence of a terrible juggernaut crushing down a helpless civilian population. Not so among mainstream
Israelis.
Indeed, quite a few Israelis argued that the army had been "too humane" (sic!) and that
the Jenin Refugee Camp should have been subjected to carpet bombing by F-16's in order to avoid Israeli casualties.
Moreover, the undeniable fact that the number of suicide bombings sharply decreased once the army
took over all the West Bank cities seemed to prove Sharon's main point: "Force does work, if you use enough
of it."
Sharon, whose rating in the polls had started to plummet in early March, regained a strong position
in the Israeli public opinion, leaving all rivals far behind. Even though some clear-eyed commentators and a few
of the army's own generals warned that the respite was only temporary, the warning did not sink into the public
consciousness until it came true.
For all the gung-ho triumphalism pumped on the airwaves by the hour, however, there was a very low
attendance at the Independence day celebrations held in the flag-bedecked main streets. The presence of the army,
holding down the Palestinian cities by main force, was not enough to convince ordinary Israelis that the threat
of suicide bombers was over -- as indeed it was not. Ordinary people still preferred to play safe and avoid public
gatherings, and shops in the city centers continued to wither.
A time of isolation
For peace activists a time of isolation had arrived.
A time of turning in disgust from daily newspapers which became little more than war propaganda rags
and seeking a moment of relative sanity by watching the BBC and CNN news or diving into the internet; a time of
feeling terribly alienated from our country, walking in streets where a profusion of national flags fluttered from
balconies and the bonnets of cars and where patriotic signs and bumper stickers sprouted on all sides: "United
we march forward"; "Raise our flag, Blue and White"; "I am a Patriot, I love Israel";
"From the depth of the heart, thanks to the IDF"; "Give donations for the victims of terrorism."
(Many of the blue and white signs bore the logos of big corporations, which apparently decided that a show of patriotism
was good for business.)
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--------------
On April 17, a Gush Shalom activist traveling on a major highway in the Tel-Aviv area noticed an enormous
billboard bearing the Microsoft logo under the text 'From the depth of our heart -- thanks to The Israeli Defence
Forces' on the background of the Israeli national flag. On the following day, an e-mail was sent calling upon supporters
inside and outside the country to send messages to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, suggesting that 'A major worldwide
and world-famous corporation, whose activities overstep national boundaries and whose web site declares it to be
"committed to global community and cultural interaction" could be expected to make better use of its
resources than at disseminating crude nationalistic and militaristic propaganda.' It turned out that independently
but simultaneously Sam Bahour, a Palestinian from Ramallah had also called upon international activists to protest.
Hundreds of people wrote to Gates as well as to various Microsoft regional offices. None of them got
any direct answer, but a few days later it wasn't possible any more to photograph the thing: the Tel-Aviv billboard
had disappeared. A report from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia told of a Microsoft representative coming under sharp criticism
when appearing at a trade fair there, while Microsoft Israel claimed that 'from the start the billboard had been
scheduled to stay for one week only.'
--------- - - -
- -------
Yet in the midst of all this, dissenters still managed to hold sizable protest actions. Some two thousand
Israelis came to the A-Ram Checkpoint north of Jerusalem, attempting to accompany the supply convoy which tried
to make its way to occupied Ramallah, and were dispersed by the police's tear gas canisters; also thousands came
to accompany the Jenin convoy, which did get through; there were the two marches and rallies in Tel-Aviv, drawing
between 5,000 and 10,000 participants, and quite a few smaller protest and vigils.
Some Israelis even managed to slip into Ramallah and hold protest vigils in its curfew-bound streets,
and there were those who joined the band of dedicated international peaceniks active in the occupied cities, who
used their privileged status as holders of Western passports to avoid the curfew and help maintain at least the
rudiments of essential medical service for the besieged Palestinian population.
Growing intolerance
In the first days, when the media created the image of a total, glorious "victory over terrorism",
the protests and dissenting voices were mostly ignored by the media, not reported at all or reported tersely with
a sneering comment. Even an emergency recess session of the Knesset, called by 25 Members, including Speaker Burg
himself -- and in which the wisdom of the West Bank invasion was repeatedly questioned -- went nearly unreported.
Meanwhile, the country was confronted with sharp international criticism, especially in Europe; with
the de-facto embargo on military supplies to Israel by countries such as Britain and Germany; and with the intense
pressure for international investigation of what happened in Jenin.
The widespread response was to blame it all on anti-semitism and evoke the memory of the Holocaust.
Incidents of a synagogue attacked or a Jewish cemetery vandalized helped pave the way for such an interpretation.
It was all lumped together with reports of mass pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the European capitals, and presented
as being one and the same. The role of Jewish dissidents in more than one of these protests got hardly any mention.
One of the first to be personally targeted was Terje Larsen, Norwegian representative of the UN in
the Middle East -- a man devoted to the achievement of peace between the two peoples. After visiting the ruins
of Jenin Refugee Camp and expressing his shock at what he saw there, Larsen was castigated as "an antisemite"
in fiery editorials and commentaries, with the "recanted leftist" demagogue Saul Tzadka going as far
as reading out Larsen's private phone number on prime time TV and calling upon the public to harass him.
This was followed by a McCarthyist campaign whose like none of us can remember in the past decades,
aimed at delegitimizing all dissent. In the state-controlled radio and TV, journalists were told in no uncertain
terms to avoid any "unpatriotic" questioning of the army's aims and its announced successes, and some
directives specified for news readers the list of patriotic terms to be used and that of non-patriotic ones to
be avoided.
In the privately-owned Ma'ariv newspaper, the newly-appointed editor Amnon Dankner -- another "reborn
former leftist" -- shifted the paper's editorial policy sharply to the right, starting a campaign of purges
and intimidation against reporters and commentators who did not recant. Ma'ariv also launched a crude campaign
against its liberal rival Ha'aretz, castigating it as "unpatriotic" for being the one paper which does
give its readers a (limited) amount of news on the situation in the Palestinian territories from the occupied population's
point of view.
There were some ugly incidents in the universities as well. In the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
right-wing students held a demonstration calling for the expulsion of 56 lecturers who declared their support for
soldiers' refusal to serve in the occupied territories; their call was endorsed by Education Minister Limor Livnat,
who asked the Attorney-General to prosecute the 56 lecturers (he did not); the Minister also started to compile
"dossiers" on lecturers in different universities who make "unpatriotic" remarks during their
lectures; In the Be'er She'eba University, it was nationalist lecturers who tried to prevent a lecture by the prominent
Labor dove Yossi Beilin, arguing that "Beilin's responsibility for the crime (sic) of Oslo" made him
illegitimate.
The epitome of the campaign was the concentrated abuse poured upon the 76-year old singer Yaffa Yarkoni
-- whose whole career had been built around her going to the front during all the wars, and singing to the soldiers.
Asked by the Army Radio whether she would sing for the soldiers in Jenin she burst out: 'I can't bear
to see the soldiers driving the handcuffed and blindfolded
Page 7
Palestinians before them and writing numbers on their arms. We are a people that lived through the Holocaust. How
can we do such things? The refusers are right. We should go out of these territories. Let the Palestinians have
their state.'
After a career of more than 50 years at the warm center of the national consensus, Yaffa Yarkoni found
herself banished to the margins -- thousands of hate mails, hostility from passersby in the street, and performances
cancelled. A long-planned granting of a lifetime award by the Israeli Artists' Association was cancelled as well,
a gala performance at which fellow-artists were scheduled to perform in her honor -- many of whom were quick to
dissociate once she became controversial.
Most of these affairs ended well. Yossi Beilin did after all have his lecture at Be'er Sheba University,
in spite of the right-wingers; none of the 56 pro-refusenik professors was prosecuted or harmed in tenure, and
in fact some 200 additional professors from other universities joined their outspoken position; and in the end
even Yaffa Yarkoni found many fans and fellow artists still loyal, had a smashing success at an alternative gala
evening, and two months later her new production "All the doves" was well-received in the hits parade,
despite a boycott call from the nationalists.
A far more vulnerable target are Israel's Arab citizens and their political leadership, a group which
has been under constant attack since the intifada outbreak in October 2000.
A piece of legislation, introduced by the right wing and passing by a considerable majority and without
the appropriate public outcry makes it possible to deny participation in future Knesset elections to "a candidate
or list of candidates (...) who support armed struggle against Israel."
Since virtually all Arab Knesset Members and conspicuous Arab public figures support the Palestinian
struggle for independence -- though not necessarily all acts undertaken as part of that struggle -- this new law
could be in principle utilized to forbid all Arab parties and candidates and effectively disenfranchise the Arab
citizens -- which would definitely establish Israel as an apartheid state with an "ethnically cleansed"
parliament which will be dominated by a built-in right-wing majority.
In a related move, Interior Minister Yishai made use of a never-implemented law and started procedures
to strip Israeli citizenship from two Arabs charged (not yet tried!) with having been accessories to a terrorist
act.
The wobbling Bush
When Sharon launched his invasion, it was obvious that he had the full backing of President Bush for
taking whatever "measures of self defence" he chose (with the single, above-mentioned proviso that Arafat
not be physically harmed).
Three days later, there was an impression of a shift in the American position, when the US joined
with all other members of the UN Security Council in calling upon Israel to withdraw its forces from "Palestinian
cities including Ramallah." The impression was misleading. The Americans took care that the resolution did
not include a specification of time for the Israeli withdrawal, which was interpreted as giving Sharon "a
few more days."
In fact, Israel's PM used these days to invade Jenin, followed by Nablus, starting the most bloody
and destructive days of the whole campaign.
For their part, the generals announced that they would need "four to eight weeks" in order
to "finish the task of uprooting the terrorist infrastructure" (a timeline whose public announcement
caused slight embarrassment in Washington).
Then the council convened again, and adopted a new text which still omitted putting "immediate"
before "withdrawal" and thus still permitted the US some complicated interpretation, though the acrobatics
needed of US officials became more and more arduous.
After a week, the protest from America's European allies became shrill; the SOS calls increased from
the pro-American Arab regimes, faced with growing ferment among their own population at the footage broadcast day
and night over the popular Al-Jazeera TV; the cross-border shooting by Hizbullah over the Israeli-Lebanese border
became bolder by the day; altogether, Bush was faced with a daily more concrete specter of a regional war, of the
collapse of regimes, of the rise of oil prices, and last but not least: the disruption of chances to topple Saddam
Hussein.
So the US finally joined with the rest of the world in passing a resolution containing the "I"
word. Moreover, President Bush emphasized it be repeated TV appearances, wagging his finger and declaring 'When
I say immediate, I do mean immediate!'
It should have been clear enough, but somehow it wasn't. Bush's envoy, Secretary of State Powell,
did not carry a real authorization to enforce what looked at face value like an ultimatum from the world's sole
remaining superpower.
Powell dawdled on his way, with Sharon pointedly ignoring that demand for withdrawal. Meanwhile, in
Washington the ultraconservatives in the Republican Party made a concerted show of force, berating the president
for having strayed from the straight and narrow course of the "war on terror."
To top it all, Powell's arrival in Jerusalem was accompanied by a suicide bombing in the city. So,
the government propagandists had something to show to the many journalists who came in Powell's train...
In a brief visit to Syria Powell did achieve a calming down of the Israeli-Lebanese border, for the
time being pushing away the danger of a second front opening the gates of regional war -- which may have been the
Americans' paramount concern. He also reportedly nipped in the bud a full-scale invasion of Gaza for which the
operational plans were already complete.
The army did at last leave Jenin, whose isolation from the outside world encouraged rumours exaggerating
an all-too-terrible reality; international relief crews arrived, days too late for most of the
Page 8
wounded who could have been saved. And Nablus was evacuated, where many more got killed than in Jenin though it
got much less attention.
For the rest, Sharon was allowed to maintain his forces indefinitely in Ramallah and Bethlehem (and
keep its population under curfew) for several weeks more, pending "a nonviolent solution" to the respective
sieges. Many smaller towns and villages, whose names are not known to most Israelis and certainly not to the Americans
and their president, remained under occupation and curfew for weeks upon weeks, their invasion and continued occupation
going unnoticed by the world. The city of Hebron to the south, ignored in the first stages of the reoccupation,
was actually reinvaded after Powell left the region.
The US had tacitly accepted Israel's "right" to reenter any evacuated town, in accordance
with "security needs" -- a strategic change whose full implications became clear in the following months.
Was the President of the United States of America defeated in a direct showdown with the Prime Minister
of a small country totally dependent on the US, but possessing a disproportionate influence on internal American
affairs? Or was the confrontation a sham to begin with? In either case, the result is the same: Sharon achieved
nullification of the main plank of Oslo, the creation of Palestinian semi-sovereign areas from which the Israeli
army is excluded.
The new occupation
The Ramallah and Bethlehem sieges dragged on for weeks and weeks, with the conditions inside the two
besieged structures getting worse, and tens of thousands of inhabitants in both cities kept under continuing curfew,
virtual hostages. To finally end the siege of his own headquarters, Arafat had to agree to the detention -- in
a Palestinian prison at Jericho, but under close supervision of British prison guards -- of six people whom he
had been sheltering, and who were implicated in the assassination last year of the Israeli minister Rehava'am Ze'evi.
Sharon had been demanding the extradition of the six to Israel.
The deal aroused quite a bit of criticism among Palestinians, especially since among the six detainees
was Ahmed Sa'adat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- a senior political
leader. (Ze'evi had been assassinated in retaliation for the assassination by Israel of Sa'adat's predecessor,
Abu Ali Mustapha).
As it turned out, however, a Palestinian prison with British guards was the only location where the
six were more or less safe from capture or assassination by the Israeli forces.
There was still left the grim siege of Bethlehem's Church of Nativity. Careful not to damage the venerable
stones of Jesus Christ's birthplace, the besieging forces contented themselves with slowly starving the 200 Palestinians
trapped inside (a practice ruled legal by Israel's Supreme Court), and IDF snipers stationed on the high buildings
around Manger Square were instructed to shoot at the besieged Palestinians, whenever it could be done without damaging
the building itself.
Fully twenty-one of the Palestinians who sought to gain refuge at the Church of the Nativity found
there their eternal rest -- several of them in the unheroic attempt to get to the toilet across an open courtyard.
Conditions for ending the siege were stiff: twenty-six of the besieged militants had to leave their
native city and move to Gaza for an indefinite time; thirteen others had to leave altogether the soil of Palestine
and go into exile in different European countries (there was prolonged wrangling among the EU members about which
country should receive how many of them). With the trauma of 1948, an expulsion -- even if of only thirteen --
condoned by the national leadership was a bitter pill to swallow for the Palestinians.
The Palestinian leadership's agreement to such terms was partly motivated by concern for the inhabitants
of Bethlehem, kept under curfew as long as the siege continued. But as events were soon to show, their relief at
the departure of Israeli troops was to be very short-lived.
At all events, the way in which the two sieges ended considerably eroded the popularity which Arafat
accumulated in the earlier parts of the affair. True, the emergence of Arafat from yet another siege, alive and
more or less well, could be counted a victory; Sharon would certainly have wished it otherwise, and the Israeli
soldiers who raised the siege also reluctantly admitted Arafat to be the victor ("At least in this round"
one of them said on TV).
Yet there were no celebrations on the Palestinian side, and no reason for such. Arafat's tour of the
evacuated Nablus, Jenin and Bethlehem did not generate much enthusiasm. The cities were all war-scarred, and the
Palestinian Authority heavily crippled.
During its weeks of occupation, the Israeli army had gone through the Palestinian ministries, systematically
confiscating or destroying the computers and archives on which any governmental structure depends: records of teachers'
salaries and matriculation examinations at the Ministry of Education, accounts of vaccinations at the Ministry
of Health, the details or car registration at the Ministry of Transportation were all gone. So were the computers
of private corporations, NGO's and human rights associations and private radio stations -- all taken away to the
Israeli Security Service headquarters.
"The terrorist infrastructure" for whose destruction Israel supposedly went to war turned
out to have a wide meaning indeed. Civil organizations, working openly from public offices and premises, suffered
the most. So did the Palestinian Police whose barracks and camps were never concealed; it was from its armories
-- established formally and officially under the Oslo Agreement -- that the army obtained most of the "captured
terrorist guns" which were later displayed to credulous visiting US Senators.
Also, most of the thousands of militiamen, taken off to incarceration under harsh conditions in the
Negev Desert, were members of Arafat's own Tanzim
Page 9
militia. Of all parts of Palestinian spectrum it was Hamas, already much more adapted to working clandestinely,
which was the least damaged by Sharon's "antiterrorist sweep"; quite a few of its militants managed to
avoid capture, and upon the army's departure set to work to renew the suicide bombing campaign.
Meanwhile, in Ramallah and Nablus Palestinians set out feverishly and defiantly to repair the damage,
all the while making cynical jokes of the coming new invasion.
Just beyond the edge of the cities, the tanks were waiting.
The hopeful interlude
At the concluding stages of "Operation Defensive Shield", Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer remarked
that "our achievements are strictly temporary" and that "in the absence of a serious diplomatic
initiative, terrorism will go back to its former high levels" -- yet another of the correct predictions which
he made and from which he was to take no practical conclusion.
Many of those who fought in the West Bank invasion conceived of their role as "winning time for
the political echelon to make a diplomatic deal." So did many ordinary Israelis who had supported the invasion.
Quite a few of them took part in the Peace Now rally of May 11, with a participation variously estimated at between
60,000 and 100,000, which was certainly the biggest the peace action since the intifada outbreak in 2000.
The organizers, indeed, made an effort to appeal to those who had supported the just-ended invasion
as well as to those who had opposed it. The ads placed in the papers included the phrase :"Military action,
by itself, cannot bring a solution" and the stickes and huge signs with the slogan "Get out of the the
Territories -- for the sake of Israel!" were colored in patriotic Blue and White, rather than in Peace Now's
customary red and black.
For a few weeks, there was a different kind of public atmosphere, with the paranoid kind of patriotism
receding a bit to the background. Following the May 7 suicide bombing at Rishon Lezion, an attempt was made to
whip up public enthusiasm for a new assault, this time upon the Gaza Strip. The reserves were duly mobilized, but
noticeably lacked the enthusiasm of a month before; the generals, too, were divided; and there was the aforementioned
rally, with the Meretz leader denouncing from the podium the Gaza invasion plans and getting an enormous cheer.
Finally General Mofaz, the outgoing army chief, had to shelve the Order of the Day which he had already drafted
and accept that he would retire without having the conquest of Gaza to his credit.
Could something positive have come of these weeks, and the bloodshed and suffering and escalation
of the past three months avoided? The potential was there, there would have been a lot of support for a serious
peace initiative if somebody in authority started it. But there was nobody to start it, with Sharon holding power
in Israel, Bush in America and the world, and the Israeli Labor Party slavishly following both; and a single rally
was not enough to create a popular movement strong enough to force from below a peace initiative upon a reluctant
establishment.
True, shortly after the grand rally, the Labor Party duly convened its council and adopted the most
dovish program it ever had, calling for a Palestinian State, the dismantling of many settlements, even the partition
of Jerusalem. It was intended as a gesture to what has shown itself as a still-vibrant peace constituency -- but
few people in Israel, including in Labor itself, expect this party to take power at any time soon and be in a position
to implement its program.
Moreover, the Labor leaders have come to share Sharon's dictum that "Arafat is no partner"
which effectively delays any implementation of the plan to a hazy future when "a new Palestinian leadership"
will be able and willing to reach an agreement. In the meantime, Labor leaders Ben-Eliezer and Peres go on fulfilling
their jobs in Defence and Foreign Affairs of this anti-peace government.
Not to be outdone, the PM had his own demonstration of mock dovishness. The occasion arose when the
Likud council, convened at the initiative of Sharon's rival Binyamin Netanyahu in alliance with extreme-right elements
who have been steadily infiltrating the party in the past year, voted overwhelmingly for a resolution ruling out
any possibility of a Palestinian state being established. Sharon had tried to prevent the resolution from being
adopted.
When he was defeated, the PM left the hall in a huff, declaring "Let this body decide what it
will, I will act as I feel the country's needs dictate!" and got himself showered with praise by the liberal
commentators who hailed him as "a decisive leader" and defined him as "a centrist" in contrast
with "the extremist Netanyahu."
In fact, Sharon's offer to the Palestinian remains confined to some 42% of the West Bank, which they
would get at some distant time, as a "reward for good behavior" and which they may as well call "a
state."
Diplomatic games
On May 7, another suicide bomber -- this time at the town of Rishon Lezion, taking 15 random Israelis
with him. This, the first major assault after the West Bank invasion, was apparently timed to coincide with the
meeting held that evening between Sharon and Bush in the White House. The bombing and its aftermath -- the projected
invasion of Gaza, plus a concrete threat to Arafat -- drew attention away from the meeting itself. Still, that
meeting had a lasting importance.
It was at the press conference after the meeting that Bush and Sharon were, for the first time, heard
discussing an issue which since then became the new staple of Middle East diplomacy: democratic reforms in the
Palestinian Authority.
At one stroke Sharon established a new principle: the composition and functioning of Palestinian political
and economic institutions -- hitherto an internal matter, to be discussed primarily among
Page 10
Palestinians -- has suddenly become a proper subject for discussion between the Prime Minister of Israel and the
President of the United States, who felt no need to invite any Palestinian to share their deliberations on the
subject.
Even more important from Sharon's point of view -- he had a perfect new pretext for delaying any negotiations
on the substantive issues of the occupation: first, the Palestinians must complete their democratic reforms.
True, at that time "reform" had not yet become the end-all and be-all of US diplomacy in
the region. Other ideas competed with it, such as the project of holding a "regional peace conference"
(an idea, in fact, which Sharon himself floated in April, but which he was quick to abandon once it developed a
life of its own...).
Also, the Saudis were still waiting to get a hearing for their peace initiative, which had now gotten
the approval of the entire Arab World but which got no serious attention from either Israel or the US. Also, at
that time Bush did not yet declare outright -- as Sharon wished -- that "reform" is shorthand for "Arafat
must go."
The Bush Administration was feeling a dim need to do "something" about the Middle East situation.
But determining what the "something" should be was a bit difficult, considering the widely conflicting
views among its officials. The State Department was in favor of giving the Palestinians something concrete to make
them quiet, while the Pentagon frankly advocated leaving them to Sharon's tender mercies. Other parts of the administration
were wavering, but more inclined in the anti-Palestinian direction, especially with the approach of the November
mid-term elections in which Sharon's American supporters -- Jewish and fundamentalist Christian -- would wield
considerable power.
Finally, Bush decided upon a prolonged process of "consultations with Middle East leaders."
The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan all came and went at the White House. Sharon came back several times,
eager to keep hold of the president's ear. Some lower-level Palestinian delegates were also invited; not, of course,
Arafat -- at this stage not yet officially boycotted but already held in great disfavor. And the internal struggle
inside the administration continued, with no less than 28 drafts of the president's projected policy speech being
prepared and discarded.
Altogether, the Bush Administration took about two months to make up its mind -- two months in which,
as Ben-Eliezer had predicted, the absence of a serious diplomatic initiative would lead to a full-scale resumption
of the suicide bombings...
Manoeuvres
During much of May, Israeli headlines were occupied by a sudden crisis in Sharon's governing coalition.
In a crucial economic vote in the Knesset, the four ministers of the Shas Party voted against the new economic
austerity plan, and were promptly fired by Sharon -- which he had the legal right to do, but previous PM's seldom
used that right.
The Shas leaders claimed that their action was motivated by protest at the burden of Israel's growing
economic crisis being placed mainly on the poor -- which was quite true in itself. However, Shas failed to get
credibility in its role as defender of the downtrodden; rather, large parts of the Israeli public conceive of it
-- and with reason -- as a special interests group, concerned mainly with obtaining huge government budgets for
its particular institutions and especially for its educational system.
Shas is especially resented for its habit of promoting ultra-nationalist policies against the Palestinians
while at the same time jealously preserving the exemption from military services for the students in its Yeshivas
(religious seminaries). The Shas rabbis' claim that "The students' holy studies and prayers are vital for
the army's success in the field" doesn't make impression on the non-religious public -- from which the peace
movement draws its main support...
-----------------
The following was reported by Neta Golan, participating among the international activists in a solidarity
action during a "minor" invasion of the Balata Refugee Camp (Nablus) - June 1.
The soldiers were systematically breaking down the walls between one house and another, throughout
a very long row of refugee houses. 'Why are you breaking the walls? The door is open.' I asked. 'Go away, you are
disturbing our work' one of them said. His mate was a bit more friendly: 'We have to do this. We need a passage
safe from snipers.' Actually, there were no snipers at all, and in order to stop us he went without hesitation
into the open street.
We went into the next house, and asked the soldiers to give the two women there time to move away
their meagre possessions, which might have been smashed. In the end the soldiers agreed, grumbling a bit. The mother
offered us tea, then suddenly offered it to the soldiers as well. They rejected the tea, shooing her away, obviously
embarrassed. When they got to the opposite side of this house and started breaking the wall to its neighbor, the
officer glanced at us and then made them carefully move aside the glass vases ranged along the wall. 'These people
are making us into softies' I heard one soldier whisper.
------------------
For weeks, liberal commentators engaged in Shas-bashing and cheered the PM on his efforts to bring
the prodigal party to heel. And many in the social milieu from which Peace Now draws its support felt a triumphal
glee when the Shas leaders were finally forced to unconditionally surrender -- supporting the welfare cuts they
originally opposed, in order to regain their ministries and the lucrative budgets for their institutes. Sharon
emerged from the affair with his popularity ratings at a new peak, with any momentum created by the May 11 rally
lost and the signs of a gathering new storm ignored.
It was also in these weeks that Sharon made a delightful discovery -- the world had lost interest
in events on the West Bank. Once the Ramallah and Bethlehem sieges were over, the world's media spotlight moved
to other trouble spots around the
Page 11
globe. CNN and other international networks no longer considered it a significant news item that pretty soon the
Israeli army began moving back into the evacuated cities -- one city at a time being re-re-occupied, placed under
curfew for a few days, having inhabitants rounded up, sometimes shot, and then seeing the troops move on to the
the next town.
Nor did these piecemeal reoccupations evoke diplomatic protests from the Europeans or even the Arab
states. American backing could, of course, be taken for granted.
To demonstrate the extent of that support, Sharon timed a reoccupation of Ramallah on the very eve
of a new visit to the White House, with the correct assumption that he would encounter no disapproving word in
Washington. The new Palestinian cabinet -- appointed in conformity with the demands for "reform" and
containing a new Interior Minister to take charge of the Palestinian security forces and a new Finance Minister
to create a "transparent" financial system -- was unable to convene for its first meeting.
For several days the Palestinian ministers, like the rest of Ramallah's inhabitants, were confined
to their homes by the soldiers patrolling the streets and shooting at anyone who emerged.
The situation could not have been made more graphically clear: Palestinian sovereignty on the West
Bank was no more. The Israeli army could go anywhere, arrest anybody at any time including high officials of the
PA, and seize any building including the PA premises.
The battered Palestinian Authority could make no plans for the following week, let alone for a longer
range. Its Education Ministry was driven to such expedients as instructing school principals in towns which the
army just "visited" to hurry up the examination dates in order to have them finished before the soldiers
return; examination papers were transported on the backs of donkeys to bypass Israeli roadblocks on the highways.
Similar expedients were needed for the Health Ministry to keep the medical system barely running.
Meanwhile, clandestine militias were reconstructing the "Terrorist Infrastructure" of whose
destruction the Israeli general boasted. The militants killed or captured were replaced by new ones, motivated
to prove that the invasion had failed to destroy or subdue their organization. New suicide bombers were easy to
recruit from among unemployed youths, suspended between boredom and deprivation, no hope in sight and with what
their families went through, often having personal scores to settle.
Explosions and fences
On the morning of June 5 -- anniversary of the 1967 occupation -- a 17-year old from the battered
Jenin Refugee Camp made his way into Israel, driving a car into which many kilograms of explosives were packed.
At Megiddo, known in the Christian tradition as Armageddon, and known also as the location of a detention center
where many Palestinians are held, the youngster exploded his car and thereby destroyed an Israeli bus traveling
just ahead on the road.
Though there had been several suicide bombings in May, it was this case -- given an especially wide
and grim coverage on the media -- which drove home to the Israeli public the fact that the celebrated "Operation
Defensive Shield" had failed in its declared purpose of putting an end to terrorism. It was at this time that
Defence Minister Ben Eliezer made his one serious attempt at influencing government policy and the public agenda,
by pushing the idea of erecting a border fence between Israel and the West Bank.
The idea itself is not new. The clamor for such a border fence has been heard whenever Israel had
been the target of serious Palestinian assaults, and cabinet resolutions to build a fence were adopted several
times since the Rabin period -- but never implemented. This was mainly due to the settlers.
A West Bank border fence, the settlers felt, would be the first step towards a border between two
sovereign states -- a border which would leave them stranded on the Palestinian side.
Even the example of the Gaza Strip, which had been surrounded by a fence long ago and inside which
settlement enclaves still prosper under tight military protection, failed to calm down the West Bank settlers.
Whenever the subject came up, the settlers used their political clout -- which is enormous -- to prevent the practical
steps, from the drawing up of concrete plans up to budgets being allocated.
Thus, paradoxically, the activity of the settler lobby benefited Palestinian workers seeking to work
illegally in Israel, but also the suicide bombers making their way to Israel's main population centers -- which
does not add to the settlers' popularity in the general public.
The idea of a border fence appeals especially to the so-called "pragmatic doves" -- the
hardheaded ones who do not believe in coexistence and who regard withdrawal from the Occupied Territories as "divorce
rather than marriage" -- an attitude which became especially widespread in the past two years, with the intifada
increasing distrust of Palestinians among Israelis at large.
Haim Ramon, Ben-Eliezer's main rival for the Labor Party leadership, has long made the creation of
a border fence -- as a first step towards "unilateral separation from the Palestinians" -- the main plank
of his political program. In the past, Ben-Eliezer was not particularly enthusiastic -- but at this juncture, stealing
his opponent's thunder seemed an ideal way of scuttling the Ramon campaign in the internal Labor Party elections
and appealing both to the doves who threaten to bolt the party and to large sections of the general public feeling
threatened by the bombings.
On the morning of June 16, the Defence Minister presided at a heavily-televised inauguration ceremony,
where the cornerstone of the new fence was laid northeast of Jenin, and the bulldozers started working immediately
(or at least, so it was announced).
Among the settlers there was a furious scrambling, with some declaring all-out opposition and even
Page 12
threatening to bring down the Sharon Government over the issue, while others -- those whose settlements are located
close to the border -- were exerting their strength to obtain "minor modifications" by which they will
stay on the Israeli side of the fence.
For his part, Prime Minister Sharon was not too eager to have a fence, but avoided open opposition
to what seemed at the moment a particularly popular idea. The PM was actually more keen on listening to the signals
from Washington that President Bush's long-awaited policy speech was about to be delivered -- while it wasn't clear
yet which of several divergent drafts the president was about to use.
And then, the suicide bombers struck again.
Re-occupation completed
On June 18, a suicide bomber exploded himself inside a bus in south Jerusalem, killing 16 Israelis
-- many of them teenagers. Prime Minister Sharon hurried to the spot, making an emotional speech: "I am an
old soldier, but never in my life did I see such carnage. Things can't go on like this, something must be done."
On the following day, there was another attack in Jerusalem, claiming seven more lives.
President Bush gave Sharon the usual authorization to take "self defensive measures" and
put off delivering his speech, which had been scheduled for the day of the second attack. The president's aides
set about reviewing and revising it yet again -- much to the Palestinians' detriment, as soon turned out.
Meanwhile, in Israel the public atmosphere quickly shifted. Interest in the border fence waned, as
people realized that it would take months or years to build. The cabinet meeting, with only a perfunctory resistance
from the Labor ministers, adopted a resolution authorizing the army to occupy all the Palestinian cities and hold
them for an indefinite period.
Avi Dichter, head of the Shabak Security Service, recommended that the cities remain occupied "until
the fence is finished", which would mean for a year at least -- or maybe for indefinite time. There was to
be quite a media stir a month and a half later, when it turned out that virtually nothing had been built after
that spectacular inauguration ceremony.
And so it came about, "not with a bang but with a whimper." The reoccupation of the entire
West Bank did not evoke an international outcry, was the subject of no urgent debate in the UN Security Council,
and did not figure prominently on the international news.
Inside israel, there was much less of the gung-ho patriotism prevalent two months earlier, and pronouncements
that the new "Operation Determined Path" will at last provide the long-awaited solution to terrorism
were met with understandable skepticism. Still, there was unquestionably a solid though not enthusiastic public
support for the measure, and the peace movement was unable to mount any significant protest.
Partly, the disinterest of the international news organizations was due to the fact that the new operation
seemed not just a replay of the April events, but a particularly drab and colorless one. No spectacular battles
or sieges this time, indeed very little armed Palestinian resistance.
In Bethlehem Israeli special forces sealed in advance the Church of the Nativity, to prevent anybody
taking refuge there; Arafat's compound was surrounded again, but it was a far more careless and negligent siege
than two months earlier -- more just a matter of occupying the rest of Ramallah and leaving this small enclave
unoccupied.
Only in one place was there something resembling a battle -- in Hebron, where Israeli forces besieged
the Governorate building, one of the few PA institutions left intact in the whole West Bank. Earlier, it had been
spared because of a local cease-fire agreement in the Hebron area, under which the local Palestinian Police made
considerable efforts to stop Hamas activity in the city. This time, it was attacked because somebody on the Israeli
side decided for some reason that such agreements were no longer worth keeping.
Soon after being surrounded, the Palestinian Police in the building gave themselves up, and some of
them were led away handcuffed. The Army insisted, however, that there were at least fifteen militants hiding out
in the building, and continued shooting and calling upon them to surrender.
A member of the Palestinian Legislative council entered the building with Israeli permission and returned
telling that it was empty. The army commanders on the spot refused to believe him, continued their shooting and
calls for surrender, and finally blew up and destroyed the entire five-storey building. But there were no bodies
to be found under the ruins.
Largest prison on earth
Though the outside world did not seem to fully realize it, in the week between June 19 and June 26
the state of Israel effectively transformed the West Bank into the largest prison on earth, housing between one
and two millions inmates (dependent on whether or not the outlying villages are included).
In city after city of the West Bank, total curfew was imposed. City streets became a forbidden territory,
and anyone venturing into them was liable to be hit by a tear gas canister in the best case, a shell from a tank
in the worst.
Every few days, inhabitants were allowed on the streets for a few hours -- as prisoners are occasionally
allowed out of their cells into the prison courtyard. But ordinary prisoners at least get fed by the prison administration,
while West Bankers under curfew are expected to buy food with their own money. Soon, many of them had little or
none; in an economy totally paralyzed by the curfew, it is not possible to work or earn money -- and the Palestinian
economy had already been in such a very bad shape before.
Israel did not offer to take any responsibility. While its army took control of every city and of
every aspect of daily life, the Palestinian Authority was not abolished, nor were Israeli military governors appointed.
In theory, the governors appointed by Arafat were still in charge -- though they were imprisoned in their homes
like everybody else.
Page 13
Obviously, the PA was in no condition to help its own citizens. In default of that, Sharon proposed
to let international relief organizations support the population -- though in many cases also their work was hampered
by the curfews and roadblocks. The donor countries -- those which in the past tried to develop the Palestinian
infrastructure and saw much of their investment destroyed by Israeli airplanes and tanks -- were more or less expected
to keep the population from bare starvation. Meanwhile, the extensive Hamas network of relief and charity organizations
became the last resort for many Palestinians, increasing the Islamic group's grassroots support the longer the
curfew lasts.
If official pronouncements are to be believed, the curfew with all its hardships is nothing but a
byproduct of the need to stop the suicide bombings -- and most Israelis tend to accept it as such. Commentator
Aluf Ben in Ha'aretz, recounting the strategic thinking of the new Army Chief-of-Staff Moshe Ya'alon, was more
honest in stating:
The economic pressure applied upon the Palestinian population, via closures and curfews, is the main
weapon through which Israel can win the present war of attrition with the Palestinians (Ha'aretz, Aug.1).
Jefferson in Ramallah
While trying to adjust to the hardships of living under the curfew of indefinite duration, Palestinians
received another blow -- seeing on the TV screens the long-awaited policy speech of President Bush, and finding
that the text emerging from the administration's internal wrangling was the best that Sharon could hope for.
While repeating his formal commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state "within three years"
(but without specifying its borders), the president devoted the bulk of his speech to placing the onus upon the
Palestinians. The present Palestinian leadership was explicitly disqualified from being a fit builder of the future
state of Palestine, and the alternative leadership -- whoever that would turn out to be -- was charged with establishing
a full-blown Jeffersonian democracy, complete with a constitutional separation between the legislative, executive
and judicial branches of government. Rather a tall order for people needing the Israeli army's permission to cross
from their home to the neighboring house. (The word "curfew", or any other reference to the Palestinians'
present plight was entirely absent from Bush's speech).
A far cry from his demand for "immediate withdrawal, and I do mean immediate" of two and
half months previously, the president now made Israeli withdrawal from the conquered towns dependent upon a vaguely
defined "improvement in the security situation." And Bush did not omit preaching that the future Palestine
be based upon "free market principles" -- and that, to a people who are right now denied the free market
even in the most elementary sense of the word, i.e. the possibility of peasants to bring their produce to market
in the nearest town...
There are, indeed, quite a few Palestinians who grumble about Arafat's style of leadership (and who
express such grumblings far more openly than other Arabs can express criticism of their countries' respective leaders);
an even greater number of Palestinians complain of corruption in the PA's institutions; and democratic reforms
have been the slogan of many Palestinian intellectuals already back at the time when George W. Bush was the Governor
of Texas with little interest in and knowledge of international affairs.
Still, few Palestinians cared to have such reforms and changes of leadership rammed down their throat
by a US President in which they had little reason to place any trust. Israeli government experts noted that the
immediate reaction to the Bush speech was a new increase in Arafat's popularity among the Palestinian population.
And yet, Palestinian diplomats could do no other than trying to work within the very unfavorable terms
of reference set out.
The one relatively positive element to be found in the speech was the presidential commitment to holding
Palestinian elections "by the end of the year." Though Bush did not say so explicitly, it is internationally
accepted that elections cannot be held under conditions of military occupation -- certainly not of perpetual curfew.
Also, it is a common practice to have international observers present in such elections. There is, indeed, a clear
precedent -- the Palestinian elections of January 1996 were held after the Israeli army withdrew from the Palestinian
cities, and with international observers headed by former US President Jimmy Carter.
The present situation is, of course, quite different -- the main complication being Bush and Sharon's
determination to have a "non-Arafat leadership" emerge from the elections, whatever the opinion of the
Palestinian voters may be in the matter. And since elections could not take place without a pullout of Israeli
forces, Sharon is in possession of an effective veto power...
Meanwhile, after three weeks in which occupation and curfew in the Palestinian cities seemed to "do
the job" of stopping Palestinian assaults, it turned out that the Palestinian militants adjusted to the harsh
new conditions -- and located the army's weak point.
-----------------
'Don't come to see me after he is dead.'
'Tomorrow, my soldier son will be sent to defend a settlement. The army classified him as a non-combat
soldier, gave him only a superficial training in the use of weapons, and told him he will serve at a computer screen.
Yet now, without further training, without being able to defend his own life, he is sent to defend the settlements
with his own body (...)
Yona Rochlin of Kfar Saba created quite a stir with her open letter, sent to the press on June 28.
--------------
With limited manpower, sending the best fighting units into the cities meant thinning considerably
the forces available to defend the settlements and the roads leading to them. It was there that a long series of
lethal ambushes began, culminating with an attack on a settler bus outside the settlement of Immanuel,
Page 14
on July 17, leaving eight dead. "The blanket is too short, we just don't have the manpower for all the tasks"
complained an unnamed senior officer in Yediot Aharonot.
One way out of the predicament would have been a large call-up of reserves. That would, however, have
serious consequences for Israel's ailing economy -- not only burdening the government budget's with paying reservist
salaries, which are far higher than those of conscripts, but also regularly taking out of economic circulation
many of the country's most skilled and productive workers.
To top it all, a suicide bombing in the slums of south Tel-Aviv left five people dead and many other
wounded, giving a conclusive proof that Palestinians can do it even under conditions of total occupation and curfew.
Most of the randomly chosen victims happened to be migrant workers from Third World countries, a group
at the very same time targeted by PM Sharon. ('I have instructed the police to deport 50,000 illegal foreign workers
this year, to make place for unemployed Israelis. The deportations will be conducted in the style of a military
operation.') Many of the migrant workers wounded in the Tel-Aviv blast refused medical treatment, fearing to be
arrested at the hospital and deported.
Another smashed hope
Palestinians under the ongoing curfew found different ways of expressing their discontent: shouting
abuse at the military vehicles, making a din with beating upon pots and pans, flying out of their yards and off
their roofs kites with the Palestinian national colors. The idea of mass direct defiance of the curfew, while often
contemplated, was tried only on a small scale -- especially in places where the presence of international volunteers
gave some kind of protection from army violence.
Nevertheless, with the rapid deterioration of the Palestinian population's situation, the army became
haunted by the specter of food riots, tens of thousands of starving and desperate Palestinians breaking out of
their homes in an unstoppable tide. For fear of the political and military implications of such a scenario, the
generals began pressing the government for a slight easing in the noose around the Palestinians' neck. So did the
Americans, who widely published a USAID report on the alarming rise of malnutrition symptoms among Palestinian
children.
Thus, towards the end of July there was a marked increase in the number of hours per day and days
per week in which the curfew over the Palestinian cities was removed. In particular Ramallah, the de-facto Palestinian
capital, had ten consecutive days with the curfew lifted during the day, giving the inhabitants some semblance
of ordinary life. Even in Nablus -- the town singled out for the most harsh treatment, since the security services
declared it to be "the capital of terrorism" -- the army was for several days less strict in enforcing
the curfew.
Meanwhile, rumors proliferated of negotiations on the issue of the Palestinian reforms and elections,
with the formula offered that Arafat would stay "a titular president" and appoint "an interim executive
prime minister", and that in the January elections a prime minister, rather then a president, would be elected.
Some sources quoted Arafat as firmly rejecting that offer, others claimed that he would accept it under certain
conditions and even speculated over the possible candidates for Palestinian PM.
Moreover, a far-reaching effort was being made under EU auspices to obtain a formal cease-fire agreement
which would pave the way to Israeli withdrawal from the cities. Conducted with Arafat's knowledge, the initiative
centered on the grassroots activists of his Tanzim movement -- those best placed to either initiate or prevent
assaults against Israelis.
Precisely after having proven that they could strike painfully at Israeli targets, even under the
conditions of curfew, the militia heads seemed willing to de-escalate the situation. Moreover, the Hamas leaders
were contacted and seemed ready to consider joining the cease-fire initiative.
Things came to a head on July 22, as the well-informed Alex Fishman of Yediot Aharonot was to describe
vividly two days later. In the afternoon the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin gave an interview to Al-Jazeera TV,
raising as a positive possibility a cease-fire with Israel. At about ten in the evening the leaders of Tanzim who
met in Jenin agreed on the text of a cease-fire declaration, to be published on the following day in both the Palestinian
and the Israeli media, as well as in the Washington Post.
As Fishman noted, the Israeli government was well-aware of what was afoot, both from being formally
briefed by the European sponsors of the cease-fire initiative and from the information of its own security services.
Still, a few minutes after midnight -- less than two hours after the cease-fire document was agreed -- an Israeli
F-16 fighter flew over Gaza and dropped a one-ton bomb on a specifically designated three-storey building, completely
destroying it and severely damaging several neighboring houses. Seventeen people perished in the bombing: Salah
Shehadeh, a senior Hamas leader who was the official target of this "liquidation"; Shehadeh's aide; his
wife and teenage daughter; and thirteen of his neighbors, nine of them children.
An official statement by the government of Israel claimed that Shehadeh had to be killed, since he
was in the process of preparing a "mega suicide bombing" in which "hundreds of Israelis would have
perished." No proof was offered, as none ever is in the claims to justify "liquidation", and whose
veracity is taken for granted by the Israeli media and most of the public. The communique went on to deny that
any cease-fire had been contemplated on the Palestinian side or that the government was aware of any such Palestinian
initiative.
There was also an expression of regret at the death of innocent civilians, as the government normally
issues in such cases, and which is usually received with a cynical shrug on the Palestinian side (much as the Palestinian
Authority's condemnations of suicide
Page 15
bombings are received by Israelis). Once again -- as with the assassination of Ra'ed Karmi which ended the December
cease-fire -- Sharon has shown his hand rather crudely. Many commentators -- including some not usually inclined
to the views of the peace movement -- strongly condemned his act. Ari Shavit of Ha'aretz went so far as to explicitly
call the Gaza bombing "a terrorist attack initiated by Sharon." And the often-cautious Meretz leader
Yossi Sarid called it "state terrorism" on prime-time TV.
Still, Sharon's deed of blood was done and could not be undone. Once again, peace seekers could only
watch helplessly the avalanche and wait for Hamas' inevitable revenge and for the escalation to follow.
Back into the maelstrom
On the Palestinian side, the Gaza bombing produced an emotional reaction reminiscent of what happened
in Israel after the Natanya bombing in March. Not only was the footage of blood and gore shown on TV, but there
was on the Palestinian side a strong sense of hurt and insult, the feeling of a hand extended in peace which was
met by gratuitous violence. Many Palestinians hitherto sunk in war weariness and ready to embrace any halfway decent
compromise were aroused into fiery calls for revenge. Thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Gaza gave the
Hamas leaders an effective mandate.
It took a week before the first revenge attack was perpetrated, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
-- for once, not a suicide bombing but an explosive charge hidden under a cafeteria table; not that it made much
difference to the seven victims. It was followed a few days later by the blowing up of a bus in northern Israel,
and the boastful Hamas promise of yet more to come.
By the Israeli army there had been a new tightening of the curfew; and a new invasion of the Nablus
Casbah, destroying much of what survived the fighting in April; and the destruction of fifteen houses of the families
of suicide bombers, for the sole reason that they are their family members -- the demolitions approved by the Supreme
Court; and deportation orders -- from Nablus to Gaza -- issued against three such family members (human rights
lawyers still fight this one out); and the ongoing series of "liquidations"; and the phrase "shot
while trying to escape" appearing in official communiques; and...
And so, this account gets to the present. It has been written under difficult conditions, with the
writers -- in their capacity as Gush Shalom activists -- feeling the results of PM Sharon publicly denouncing their
movement as "traitorous", and getting obscene and threatening phone calls in plenty.
This morning, the radio told of the Palestinian cabinet in Ramallah "accepting in principle"
an Israeli proposal for "phased withdrawal" from some of the occupied cities. Hearing such news would
have been more hopeful had the Prime Minister of Israel been somebody else than Sharon -- but one can never know.
As it is, the coming months are more likely to be influenced by the grim threat by Police Minister
Uzi Landau: "If we suffer a mega terrorist attack, there will be a mega retaliation cubed, a complete changing
of the rules in our relations with the Palestinians."
Lutta continua
It is the darkest time we can recall. A time of waking up into -- rather than from -- a nightmare;
a time of turning on the news in dread of hearing bad news, more than in expectation of something good. Much that
would have been considered unthinkable a year ago has already become our daily reality -- and there is no assurance
at all that we have already seen the worst.
Ariel Sharon has had phenomenally favorable conditions, which he used cleverly and ruthlessly. He
knew how to provoke suicide bombings and how to utilize them to the full -- and on some occasions, Hamas seems
to have provided them gratis, precisely in time for Sharon's need. And of course, the PM had the enormous help
of Osama Bin-Laden in driving the United States to the mindset most conductive to an all-out Israeli assault upon
the Palestinians.
For all that, Sharon is neither invincible nor infallible, and his project of reconquest -- now several
months old -- has already run into considerable difficulties and built-in contradictions. His popularity rating
is steadily falling. The last time this happened, in March, he escaped by reconquering the West Bank. What new
recourse has he now?
Quite possibly, it will be the economy which will undo Sharon: the Israeli economy hit by a sharp
recession, registering a mounting unemployment and the first year of negative growth since the early 1960's --
and with the economists and leaders of the business community virtually unanimous in ruling that the economic crisis
is a direct result of war with the Palestinians, and that there can be no economic recovery without peace.
In many countries, a Prime Minister who presides over an economic debacle is likely to end his career.
But for that to happen to the Sharon government the perpetual motion of killings and counter-killings, which keeps
his constituency captive, must first be interrupted.
The editors
Tel-Aviv, August 10
July 24. After a F-16, sent by Sharon, ended the chances for a cease-fire as well as the lives of
15 civilians Gush Shalom decided to break through the feelings of shock and paralysis and call a protest opposite
the Defence Ministry in Tel-Aviv.
A clump of activists are already there before the appointed hour. By 6.00 more and more are arriving,
the usual faces but also quite a lot from other groups - altogether about 150. Banners are unfurled and handmade
signs held aloft: Killing follows Killing / Assassination causes Terror / The killing of Palestinian children is
terror, too / A targeted killing of peace / There is no military solution / Enough with war crimes / The economy
is collapsing under the burden of the occupation. A big, black-bordered banner reads We mourn the Israeli and Palestinian
children. At its side the combined flags of Israel and Palestine and the
Page 16
Gush Shalom motto: Two Peoples, Two States, One Future. While dispersing, more than one of us contemplated the
likely future occasions when we would have to come here again in the coming months -- the suicide bombings which
are the likely result of the Gaza bombings, and the new acts of repression to which these bombings will provide
a pretext, etc.
Action diary
The past months had seen quite a few protest actions in which different groups cooperated -- for all
that we often felt them to be inadequate to the grave situation. Following are some of the most significant.
The defence ministry has long been a focus point for spontaneous protests in Tel-Aviv. On March 30, about 500 people
turned up there, desperate and furious about the army's war against the Palestinian people and feeling sick with
anger at the cynicism of those in power doing everything to escalate and further escalate the situation.
The news which could be heard on the transistor radios which some had brought increased the tension:
in Ramallah -- the most worldly of Palestinian cities -- all men between 15 and 45 being ordered to turn themselves
in; contradictory rumors on the siege of Arafat's headquarters, with no journalists allowed to come near.
'The occupation is killing us all' placards, originally printed for the February 9 rally, had only
become more true. There were also huge newly-made ones Withdraw the tanks / International Intervention Now! and
a lot of handwritten signs produced at the spot: Get out of Ramallah Now -- Stop the Madness -- Tanks against civilians
breed suicide bombers. The people had been mobilized in less than twenty-four hours, through phoning and e-mailing
only.
The initiators, veteran activists Yehudith Har'el and Lev Grinberg, were the same who two weeks earlier
organized the petition calling for UN forces to be stationed in the Occupied Territories. It was joined by Gush
Shalom, Ta'ayush, the Women's Coalition and Hadash, whose group was led by Knesset Members Muhammad Barake and
Issam Makhoul.
Some of the internationals from France and Italy, who just arrived in the country in order to act
as human shields in the Territories, also joined in.
For part of the participants it was the second or even third demo they attended this day; a whole busload had arrived
directly from the Land Day rally in the Negev.
Halfway through the hours-long demonstration, hundreds of activists suddenly poured from the sidewalk
into the street, blocking the traffic and chanting angrily: Fascism is in Power / A Government of War Criminals
/ Occupation is Terror, the Refuser is a Hero / We will neither kill, nor die in the war of the settlements.
"At such a time, we can't just behave nicely and correctly" said a young activist. Near
him, the white hair and beard of Uri Avnery were conspicuous among the crowd advancing towards the Defence Ministry
gate, on the other side of the street.
"This is an illegal demonstration. You are ordered to disperse immediately" announced an
authoritative voice over the police car's loudspeaker. It was answered with jeers. "Are you going to bring
some tanks from Ramallah, to crush us?" shouted one. A few minutes later, police started trying to drag demonstrators
off the street. There were only a few of them, and they were not making much of a headway -- but the demonstrators
on the edge were receiving heavy blows from police sticks and from mobile radios, made of tough metal and wielded
as weapons.
Some were resisting, and suddenly there was visible a policeman bleeding from a gash in his head.
"This is enough! We made our point, don't escalate the situation here any further" called organizers
on the megaphone.
The crowd, surprisingly disciplined, turned back to the sidewalk. There was a further hour of chanting.
The police who were involved in the scuffle were standing just in front, some of them actually chatting with demonstrators
and seeming quite friendly. Then, however, a new police car pulled up, a bigger one with a lot of room at the back.
The reinforcements seemed bellicose and looking for a fight. Suddenly they picked on one demonstrator -- quite
randomly, it seemed, except for the fact that he was obviously an Arab. His identity card was taken away, and he
was told to show up at the police station and undergo interrogation.
At about 9.00, a large group of activists were preparing to go to the police station and hold a solidarity
vigil outside, and on the mobile phone came the message that the parallel Peace Now action outside the Prime Minister's
residence in Jerusalem had gone well (and more orderly), also attended by about five hundred.
Then suddenly a convoy of no less than nine ambulances, sirens wailing, tore across the street. In
the Israel of March 2002, this could mean only one thing. Sure enough, opening the radio we just caught the message
"...interrupting this program to bring you a special bulletin. A large explosion just happened at a cafe on
Allenby Street..."
From an e-mail message circulated April 2.
Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations initiate food and aid consignment -- request for
contributions.
The curfew and the siege on the Palestinian cities in the West Bank have left thousands of women,
men and children confined to their homes without food, drinking water, medicines and medical aid.
During the past few days we are getting more calls then ever before -- people are asking us to help
them move dead family members out of the living room, to insure medical care which the army prevents them from
getting, or to fight the ongoing hunger and thirst.
In addition to our ongoing work, we decided to organize a shipment of food and aid to the inhabitants
of these cities. In order to do that, we need your donation.
Financial contributions and basic food products (durable milk, baby food, flour, rice etc.) can be
Page 17
brought to the B'Tselem offices, 8 HaTasiya street, 4th floor, Talpiyot, West-Jerusalem.
March to A-Ram
The following announcement came from the Women's Coalition.
"On Wednesday, April 3, at 11.30 am we will march from A-Ram Checkpoint in north Jerusalem to
Kalandia at the edge of occupied Ramallah. We will march in white (as a symbol of peace and nonviolence). Trucks
of food and medical supplies destined for the Palestinian Union of Medical Relief and women's organizations will
accompany the march.
We will march to protest Sharon's War, to express our worry and dismay at what the army is perpetrating
in our name.
What exactly is happening behind the Kalandia checkpoint? Nobody knows for sure. Journalists are not
allowed in, and those who are already there are being expelled or muzzled. Palestinian friends report that in addition
to the senseless killing, the widespread destruction, and the siege on President Arafat's compound, the Ramallah
Government Hospital as well as other clinics are in desperate need of medical supplies.
Palestinian women's groups related that there is a huge shortage of basic foods. Later came horrific
reports of the killing of prisoners by IDF soldiers, as well as widespread looting of supermarkets and banks. (...)
The following groups decided to take part in this action (alphabetical): Bat-Shalom, Committee of
Arab Students, Gush Shalom, Hakampus Lo Shotek, New Profile, Peace Now, The Fifth Mother, Ta'ayush, Women's Coalition
for a Just Peace, Women Refuse.
Yehudit Har'el reported immediately afterwards:
"I just got back home from the checkpoint march. There was a big crowd of determined peace activists
-- more than 50 buses + private cars. Circa 3000 people -- Jews and Arabs, men and women from all over the country,
representing the Anti War Coalition of all the peace movements and organizations.
We were determined to come there despite the heavy rain, to express our solidarity with the Palestinian
plight and protest against the crimes of the Israeli occupation.
The women who initiated this protest march were leading it -- chanting slogans against the occupation,
demanding to end the war, end the onslaught against the Palestinian people. We were calling for Two Sates, for
a peaceful solution and coexistence between the two peoples based on equality for all.
But while waiting for the trucks to arrive, and doing in the meantime nothing illegal or especially
confronting, we were suddenly and without warning under a heavy barrage of tear gas canisters from the border police
or whoever those uniform-wearing hooligans were. They went on shooting into the middle of the crowd, again and
again. The fumes spread quickly in a heavy and concentrated form and people were choking. Me too. I couldn't breath
at all.
People started to run -- some fell into the mud. I found refuge in one of the neighboring Palestinian
homes. The people there took care of me, soothed me and provided me with onion -- an antidote for tear gas, as
Palestinians learned in the first Intifada.
After a while we gathered again and kept on standing and waiting and chanting slogans. About the time
the trucks arrived the police started shooting again -- once again, without any provocation that I could witness,
and I was standing in the first row, close to the checkpoint.
This time the police came out and started chasing the fleeing crowd, pushing people brutally, making
some of them stumble and fall into the mud and hitting them with sticks. The crowd started to distance itself from
the checkpoint but they came after us, shooting new waves of tear gas. I saw a woman faint and others were slightly
injured. MK Ahmad Barake's head was badly injured and Noa's hand was broken.
KM Dr Ahmed Tibi was hospitalized with a concussion, later appearing on television with his neck sustained.
A few activists were arrested but they were released after a short interrogation.
The authorities' claim that this was a violent and provocative action is an absolute lie. There was
no violence whatsoever and no stones were thrown at the police. Obviously, after being attacked we defied our attackers
by such shouted slogans as 'This is a Police State' , 'Fascism will not win' 'Shame on you' 'You are a shame to
the Jewish people' etc. Some activists shouted to them: 'You behave like Nazis', which made them ever more angry
and vicious.
We do not know for sure what happened to the trucks of food and medication. We heard that the police
let the convoy get through but we don't know for sure. (...)
[Only on the following day did the Ta'ayush activists who organized the convoy get final confirmation
that, though the march was violently dispersed, the supply trucks did make it to Ramallah. As it turned out, the
two truck drivers, Palestinians from East Jerusalem, had to go through a harrowing odyssey of their own, being
shunted between different roadblocks at the conflicting whims of various military commanders, and taking more than
nine hours to get from A-Ram to the Ramallah Government Hospital and there unload their precious cargo (in ordinary
times, a quarter of an hour would have been more than enough to cover the distance).
On Israeli TV, the action in which also a contingent of internationals participated was presented
as a violent one, with the presentation focusing on the Arab activists. But the international networks, who all
showed it, have presented it as what it was: a peaceful Jewish-Arab demonstration & humanitarian action which
was treated violently by the police.]
Women's Coalition, pob 8083, Jerusalem
Ta'ayush pob 59380, Tel-Aviv
****
Get Out Of The Territories
+++ The following report was written by the TOI staff immediately after the Peace Now protest march
of April 6. The march began at the Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv to the Defence Ministry -- ending in a rally.
Page 18
In the bus, on the way to the rally, the radio news told of thirty Palestinians killed today at the
Jenin fighting. The commentator prefaced this piece of news with "The Palestinians allege that...." In
fact, some Palestinian contacts with whom we spoke today gave much higher figures. With the army declaring the
whole of Jenin "a closed military zone" and no journalists or impartial observers of any kind, it is
impossible to know. What is clear is that at the Jenin Refugee Camp the army encountered an exceptionally stiff
resistance from the local Palestinians -- and reacted by exceptionally brutal measures designed to break that resistance
before international pressures force a withdrawal. The army's armoured bulldozers are known to be destroying houses
by the dozen -- and by some accounts, this time they are doing it while the inhabitants are still inside.
As the crowds started to gather at the Rabin Square, in preparation for the march, a group of youngsters
was visible at a corner, hastily preparing placards with Stop the war crimes in Jenin!, which were added to the
more general Stop the war / Stop the bloodshed / Get out of the Territories provided by the organizers. Soon, torches
were lighted, despite the drizzling summer rain, signs and banners were picked up, and the march set off along
the wide Ibn Gvirol Street -- row after row, supporters of Peace Now which organized the event and contingents
of the more radical groups such as Gush Shalom and Ta'ayush, and a significant presence of Arabs which is not the
norm in Peace Now actions.
Outside the Defence Ministry, where the march ended, a rally took place at a rather irregularly-shaped
parking lot. At the edge of the crowd, where the undersigned were distributing the popular Gush Shalom Bring back
the soldiers! stickers, only snatches of the speeches could be heard. 'The black flag of manifest illegality and
flagrant immorality flies over the Sharon government and its policy.' 'They send the soldiers over there, to die
in vain, in vain, in vain!' 'It is not a war against terror, it is a war of occupation and reoccupation.' 'Occupation
and terrorism are bound up with each other, you can't end terrorism without ending occupation, and you can't end
occupation without ending terrorism.'
As the national anthem was sung and the crowd filed out, a white-haired man continued standing, still
and straight, and hold a handmade sign 'I served in the Palmach [pre-state militia]. I fought in the War of Independence
and in the paratroopers afterwards. I lost my son, killed in vain in Lebanon. I salute the courageous men of conscience,
who refuse to take part in Sharon's Lebanon War II.'
Israeli press reports estimated the turnout at 7,000. Not as many as there should have been, considering
the magnitude of what is happening. On the other hand, not negligible, considering the past week's series of lethal
suicide bombings.
****
Convoy to Jenin
This is from the invitation Ta'ayush sent out to fellow peace groups -- to join its 'March to Jenin'.
Fragmentary news coming out of Jenin Refugee camp tells of widespread destruction and extreme hardship
to the civilian population. This coming Saturday, April 13th, at 11:00 AM, we shall march in protest from the Megiddo
Junction to the Salem Checkpoint on the road to Jenin. The trucks accompanying us will carry much needed emergency
supplies for the homeless, the destitute and the expelled of Jenin.
There is a severe water shortage in the camp, and using water tanks turned out to be impractical in
the circumstances. We therefore ask activists to bring 1 1/2 L bottles of water (it is fine to refill bottles with
tap water), preferably packed in cardboard boxes. These will be loaded on a truck and delivered into the Jenin
Refugee Camp.
Other needed equipment is: clothing (decent condition only! Let's not insult the recipients and embarrass
ourselves), blankets and basic kitchen equipment (...)
This account by Natalie Rothman, appeared on the Indymedia Israel web site
We arrived at Megiddo Junction around 11 am. There were already about forty trucks waiting, loaded
in advance with humanitarian supplies gathered in the past week. On five additional trucks participants loaded
food, blankets, clothes, and lots of bottled water which they brought from home. There were thousands of people,
Jewish and Arabs with also the participation of some internationals, an impressive long line stretching along the
road under the blazing sun. The march took about an hour and a half, with marchers walking along, raising banners,
singing, and chanting slogans. Slogans expressed Arab-Jewish solidarity with the besieged people of Jenin and calls
for an immediate cease-fire, withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to war crimes. The march was explicitly nonviolent,
a token of organizers' and participants' conviction that violence can be resisted nonviolently.
We were stopped by the army at the military checkpoint on the West Bank border. For more than an hour,
the participants were standing or sitting down on the sparse grass, while organisers negotiated with the army.
At a certain moment, a military armored car passed clattering by, its machine gun pointed directly at the crowd
- an intentional threat or just the carelessness of soldiers. In the end it was agreed that the supply trucks will
be allowed to go through a different checkpoint, the one at Jalameh. The crowd dispersed while a group of human
rights activists remained on the spot to monitor implementation - a justified caution, as it turned out, since
only the first five trucks were allowed into Jenin, the others being held up at the city's outskirts. It took several
more days of pressures, getting international humanitarian organizations involved and appealing to the Americans
and the EU, before the word finally came through from the Jenin Red Crescent that all the consignment had finally
been allowed through after a very thorough security check.
Ta'ayush arab_jewish@hotmail.com
Page 19
The following "urgent press release" was sent out by the TOI staff during the night of April 5.
'The Tarik al Mahabe radio station at the reoccupied city of Nablus on the West Bank is at this moment
(3.00 am local time) under attack by the invading IDF forces, who shell the building where its offices and studios
are located. The army claims that there are 'armed men' in the building. However, the station's director Amer Abdel
Hadi told us on the phone that there is nobody in the building but two of his staff, unarmed journalists. He is
urgently asking anybody who can to help.
Two Knesset Members (Mossi Raz and Avshalom Vilan) as well as former Education Minister Shulamit Aloni
could be reached in spite of the nightly hour and immediately called the army. After a quarter of an hour came
the good news that military forces surrounding the building were indeed informed that the people in that office
were unarmed journalists and the firing stopped.
Raising our heads again
Beate Zilversmidt's report written on 'the night after.'
"Revenge and death, destruction and revenge: that is Sharon's political program. Its main stages:
starvation and humiliation, systematic destruction, civilian killings, and war crimes. Its purpose: to create a
"no choice" situation, to defeat the Palestinian people so as to be able to stand over smoking ruins
and proclaim: there is no one to talk to -- these were the opening sentences of the ad calling for a march and
rally in Tel-Aviv, on April 27, by the Jewish-Arab Coalition to End the Occupation. It continued:
There is a way out of this blood cycle:
-- Respond to the Arab Summit's peace initiative: full peace for full territory!
-- Establish an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders!
-- Dismantle the settlements!
-- Resolve the refugee problem justly, through mutual consent!
The most impressive part of tonight's big demonstration was undoubtedly the march. To walk with many
thousands through the streets of central Tel-Aviv chanting slogans in a powerful rhythm. It was raising our heads
again after the weeks of the rolling war machine and the "Blue and White" patriotic propaganda which
not only thundered from TV and radio, but also penetrated the schools and filled the commercial billboards.
The message (to the passersby as well as to ourselves): we Jews and Arabs, men and women, young and
old, we will go on until the bloody madness stops.
Signs spoke of Occupation is terrorism -- The refusers are the heroes -- The Crime in Jenin will not
be forgotten -- Arafat is our partner. The two-flag signs of Gush Shalom -- which the police tried in vain to banish
-- were very popular especially among a group of Arab youngsters who would have preferred to walk with Palestinian
flags, but the organizers had decided to make it a "no flags" event, to avoid a competition whose flags
would prevail. Most impressive: the Kvisa Sh'hora gay and lesbian youngsters who went blindfolded and their hands
connected through a rope into a long line -- evoking the pictures of Palestinians during the mass arrests.
The spirit continued after arrival on the Museum Square. The audience was extremely willing to clap
whenever a speaker put determination and anger in a sentence. After a short opening by actress Salwa Nakara (moderator):
bereaved mother Nurit Peled-Elhanan fulminating against the system which educates our children into becoming thugs;
Hulud Badawi, the charismatic woman student leader, attacking the minister of education for attempting to gag "non-patriotic
students and lecturers"; author Salman Natur with his biting sarcasm ('that the soldiers killed and robbed
we understand, but why did they have to destroy computers?'); reservist Idan Landau ('nowadays the most respectable
place to be is in prison'); Rela Mazali who spoke about raising children to follow their conscience and not military
dictates; Knesset Member Roman Bronfman -- the last in the row -- 'It is not the peace camp which is confused;
the confusion is in the center; it is the extremists on both sides who are to blame; stop terrorism, stop war,
stop occupation.'
And the voice from the other side, from the Palestinians right now suffering from harsh military repression
was there too: the voice of the physician and human rights activist Dr Mustapha Barghouti live on the phone was
sent through the loudspeakers ('we appreciate what you are doing very much; let's together make an end to massacres
and oppression') and drowned in applause.
****
We, bodyguards
Wednesday, May 8: five Gush Shalom activists who had been able to come at very short notice were on
their way towards Arafat's Headquarters in Ramallah -- a destination made urgent by repeated news broadcasts mentioning
Prime Minister Sharon as "seriously contemplating" the deportation of Arafat in retaliation for the previous
night's suicide bombing at Rishon Lezion perpetrated by Hamas.
The PM, en route back from meeting President Bush in Washington, had summoned the members of his cabinet
to meet him at the airport immediately upon his landing, evidently impatient to get immediate approval -- and immediate
implementation -- for whatever he had in mind. As the PM's plane flew over the Atlantic, the activists were finding
their way in the maze of tracks and side paths between Jerusalem and Ramallah.
The following is excerpted from Adam Keller's diary.
(...) In Ramallah we met our friend Neta Golan, the young Israeli woman who had withstood the entire siege at Arafat's
headquarters. Many of Neta's international friends were there too, having coming rushing back at the new threat.
The buildings which so often appeared on the world's TV screens in the past month were battle-scarred
and with blackened spots. Still, cars were stopping, Palestinian officials and foreign diplomats
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walked about -- much the kind of scene you could see at a government building anywhere.
Now that we had slipped past the military roadblocks there was no reason to keep our presence secret,
and in fact every reason to advertise it.
Some representatives of the international media were already present on the spot, and we called up
others. At 7.00 in the evening there was an improvised press conference on the outside steps of the headquarters
building. Uri Avnery reiterated that we were there not only for the sake of Arafat and of the Palestinians, but
also and especially for the sake of our own country; that we had come in an effort to prevent our government from
committing a terrible mistake which would blight Israel's future for years to come:
"Despite the massive campaign of lies conducted by the government of Israel, Arafat remains the
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