Volume 2, No. 10, October 2001

The Palestinian uprising Intifada will complete its one-year in the end of September 2001. About one thousand people have been killed in this uprising, about 800 Palestinians and 200 Israelis. Notwithstanding the huge losses, the Palestinians have continued their resistance with greater determination and vigour. Despite many agreements and conferences between the Palestinian Authority and the State of Israel, despite the mediation of the US and other world powers like the EU, Russia and Germany, and despite the Palestinian Authority’s appeals to the Arab world to do something, things stand as they were. In the eyes of the bourgeois media and the political analysts "the situation has worsened only" and the "chances of peace are almost dead."

The great aspect of the Palestinian scene is that despite the widespread fascist terror created by the criminal State of Israel, despite US imperialism’s abetment and backing to the Zionists, despite the spinelessness of the Arab leaders and despite betrayal by the Palestinians leadership under Yassir Arafat the Palestinian masses are continuing their heroic resistance to the occupation of their land. They fight now with stones, now guns and occasionally by converting themselves into human bombs.

The Palestinians have carried out some of the most daring bombings in the recent times. These have been against the Israeli security forces and the Israeli settlements which dot the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the Jordan River. All along the Israeli occupiers have refused to vacate these settlements and hand them over to the PA though the Oslo Agreement had envisaged Palestinian control over some parts of the Land of Palestine. The question of settlements came up when the setting up of a truncated Palestinian State was taken up by the PA as a ‘permanent’ settlement of the Middle East problem. But the successive Israeli governments have refused to vacate these settlements that were erected after the 1967 war. Instead they continued to build more settlements even after the Oslo accord. When Ehud Barak had come to power after Netanyahu with the promise to the world that his government would stop the further construction of settlements (which was considered as a first step to the complete withdrawal from the PA held areas) the promise was never carried out. Only a halfhearted ban was imposed on more constructions and nothing was done to vacate the settlements as the question of control over Jerusalem had acquired more prominence at that time. Then Barak was shunted out and Ariel Sharon, the culprit of the 1982 horrendous assault on Sabra and Shattila refugee camps in Lebanon, took over the reins. He promised the Israelis that he would not allow the abandoning of Israeli settlements in PA ‘held’ areas, and neither would any part of the city of Jerusalem be conceded to the PA for full Palestinian control.

Though attacks on the Palestinians have never stopped since the Oslo Accord, these have even seen a steep rise in intensity and barbarity under Sharon. The Palestinian resistance too has increased during his regime though it had never ceased during the rule of his predecessors. The Palestinian resistance has been a permanent feature ever since the so-called peace accord of Oslo was signed in 1994. The present mass uprising is the third one since then. Its intensity has far exceeded that of the previous ones. This phenomenon has disturbed the imperialists and reactionaries in the Middle East and made them more desperate. Sharon’s "hawkishness" is partly a reflection of that desperation. The imperialists and Zionist accuse Arafat of inability to control the Palestinian resisters, of failing in his duty to perform as per the needs of the ‘peace process’. Now, among the Israelis, voices are being raised that Yassir himself should be eliminated or made to go "back to Tunis" along with his leading aides and a new moderate leadership be installed as the PA to control the Palestinians, especially, the guerrillas of the Hamas. In recent months the desperate Israeli authorities have drawn up a plan to liquidate top Palestinian activists, many among them belonging to the Fatah faction of Yassir Arafat. Nearly a dozen of them have already been killed and a hit list of 60 others has been sent by the Israeli secret service for approval from the Israeli government. The making of the list is no longer a secret as an opinion poll conducted openly in the Israeli media has said that 75% of the Israelis support the targeting of selective Palestinian fighters by what ever means possible and wherever they are found. In this way, "incursions" into the Palestinian ‘held’ areas are being justified and the terror tactics of the Israeli government being given righteousness.

Of late, the Israeli armed forces have made many "incursions" into the PA areas and attacked the Palestinians with tanks, bulldozers, armoured cars, helicopters and warplanes. Almost all the cities in Gaza and the West Bank have been raided. It has destroyed PA offices, schools, police stations, residential quarters and the buildings it accuses of being used by the Palestinian gunmen. The Israelis have killed stone throwing children, young men, and some of the selective guerrilla fighters including many belonging to the Fatah faction within the PA areas. The Israeli "incursions" into the PA areas has proved the fact that these areas are not in the least an inaccessible thing for the Israeli army or the transgression of which may be considered a violation of the borders of a mythical Palestinian State. The Israeli authorities have said that they can enter into these areas to enforce order in accordance with and the needs of the State of Israel. Israel, in fact does not think these as incursions and considers this as its right. It is right in the footsteps of its master, US imperialism which considers it as its right to transgress every corner of this world to enforce its will.

All this is being done with the argument that Arafat is not maintaining law and order, not stopping the guerrillas from attacking the Israeli installations and is fanning the Intifada, the uprising. Israel also argues that these are only retaliations of or for pre-empting the suicide attacks by the Palestinian guerrillas. The Israeli attacks within these territories are huge and devastating yet the US and the world press have termed them as only "disproportionate". Their "condemnation" of Israel does not say a word even about violation or transgression of the Palestinian rights which the Oslo Accord is supposed to confer on them. More so, these ‘disproportionate’ attacks, by Israeli accounts, are nothing but a "restrained" exercise. For them, one can deduce from their argument, an appropriate attack by Israel would be a full-scale war against the Palestinian people. The US criticism of Israel is more critical of the Palestinian Authority than the government of Israel. The US and other imperialists have asked Arafat to arrest or rein in the Palestinian guerrillas and masses so that Israel is not attacked from the PA areas. The crux of the whole present controversy is how the PA can ensure peace for Israel and do the police work in areas under its control. But, Arafat says he is unable to do this unless Israel itself stops attacking and he is given the western part of Jerusalem to be made into a capital of the would be State of Palestine. Without that he finds it difficult to convince the Palestinians that he has been able to do something for them, or, with that, he can at least swoop down on the resistance movement. For him to act as an acceptable policeman certain of his requirements should be met with. The US has been non-committal on this proposal. During Clinton’s presidency, the US has been talking of solving the problem of claims over Jerusalem through a compromising solution, that of making it a joint Israeli-Palestinian capital. But the proposals of Arafat as well as that of Clinton have been unacceptable to the Israeli rulers of all hues. Even a partial solution of a truncated state of Palestine has remained evasive, pushing Arafat to the wall. He is trying hard to keep the Palestinian masses with him and sometimes exhorts them for their Intifada. Yet he has very clearly specified that the Intifada should be restricted to stone throwing only and firearms should not be used against the State of Israel. He has tried his best to be a good policeman. But the situation is not an ideal one for him to act. His mentors, the US imperialists, can do little for him though they consider that in the present circumstances he is the best moderate who can deliver something if there is any possibility. The US does not agree with Israel that Yassir should be made to go, as there is no better replacement available. They fear that Hamas will take over the helm after he quits and that, as a result, the land will be plunged into a full-scale war between the Palestinians and the Israelis. This may explode further the situation in the Middle-east and will also jeopardise the efforts and international image of the US as a broker between countries and nations and make way for other imperialist powers to sneak into the Middle East and entrench themselves. Due to the "biased" attitude of the US towards Israel Mr. Arafat has many times threatened to seek help from other quarters and has also made some attempts to involve Russia, China, Germany and the EU. His request to convene another conference of the Muslim countries has been rejected by Egypt as Hosni Mubarak is of the view that Muslim nations can do little to force Israel or the US to listen to the reality in Palestine. Although the UN Security Council has convened another meeting over the Middle East to decide about the request of the PA to send international observers into the PA held areas and to condemn the "excessive" use of military force by Israel yet little is expected of this meeting. The US has already said that it will veto any motion that strongly censures Israel. Yet, in the present circumstances, it may find it difficult to oppose the sending of an international monitoring force to the region.

Arafat hopes that with an international force standing in the PA areas it will become easy for him to score points on the question of "excessive" and "disproportionate" use of Israeli armed might against the Palestinians. But taken as a guarantor of maintaining peace this force will be of little consequence. It will not make Israel yield to what Arafat demands as the minimum and neither will it be able to stop the Palestinian guerrilla from attacking Israel. But this will make it easy for Arafat to condemn Israel and also provide him with an opportunity to crackdown on the radical and Hamas Palestinian guerrillas to consolidate his own hold on the administration in Gaza and the West Bank. There are reports that there is a wide spread feeling among the Palestinians about the corruption prevailing in the PA’s administrative set-up. Arafat must be knowing it well as the US money coming in the form of aid to the PA finds its way into the pockets of his officials. To stem his corroding influence he desperately needs legitimacy to stay in ‘power’ as a political deliverer. As such, he condemns the Israeli raids and incursions and at the same time, calls on the people to fight back (with stones). He needs his position to be accepted by the world as genuine and in accordance with the requirements of the times. But Israel’s selective attacks also include some of his own men as many Fatah people and activists genuinely fight for the cause of Palestine. Moreover, the activists of the Fatah are being forced by Israel to retaliate with guns when it attacks without discrimination over the PA police and administrative blocks. Many times Israeli helicopters have hovered over Yassir’s office headquarters too in Gaza and once they have rained bullets and missiles over it to make him realise that he himself is not outside of the Israeli target if things ever get out of their hand. This is meant just to cow him further down and not to kill.

In more recent weeks the Israelis have occupied many PA offices in Gaza and the West Bank. At one time they even hoisted Israeli flags over a building used by the PA security forces as its headquarters with the help of tanks and armoured vehicles killing and wounding whoever came in the way. This was a dirty symbolic threat to remind the PA that Israel could take back ‘what it has given in exchange for peace’.

Among all these terror tactics, the tactics of individual terrorism being resorted to by Israel has become the most despicable method ever adopted by a State. All other states try to hide the fact when they resort to the liquidation of individuals and carry on such killings through unofficial death squads. But the Israeli authorities have done this openly in contravention to world opinion. Ariel Sharon, the war criminal and one of the arch exponents of Zionism has said that Israel will go to any length to kill individuals which are on its hit list. The latest to achieve martyrdom is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) chief Abu Ali Mustafa (Mustafa Zibir) who was hit by two Israeli missiles fired from a helicopter while he was sitting in his office in Ramallah. Israel says that when he was killed he was busy in making plans to carry out attacks on the Israelis. The Israelis cannot know that what exactly a particular person is doing at a particular point of time in a high security room, especially when there is always a threat from Israel that its security forces might attack any time. Abu had become the chief of the PFLP after George Habbash. PFLP is a constituent of the PLO but is against any kind of a peace with the Zionist State and stands for the creation of an anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist and secular and democratic Palestine over the whole of the ancient land. It had come into the lime light in 1970 when daring acts of plane hijacking were done to tell the world of the plight of the Palestinian people. After that the PFLP has never adopted the individual acts of terrorism and has always believed and striven to organise resistance from within Israel itself. The West and the reactionary Arab Governments have feared it more than any other organisation of the Palestinians. It was one of the first organisations of the Palestinians to denounce Arafat’s policy of compromise with the US imperialism and the Zionist State. It is quite different from the Hamas and the Hezbollah that are inspired by orthodox Islam. Though it has a sparse following now yet it stands by the basic declaration of the PLO which was rejected by Arafat and others to make way for the recognition of the State of Israel and the striking of the deceitful Oslo Peace Deal. With the dastardly killing of the PFLP leader the Oslo agreement has been further exposed as an agreement against the Palestinian people. This accord had tried to make peace with a State that is too horrendous, barbaric and cruel and, in the final analysis, an illegal one.

The Israeli incursions into the PA territory for raining death and destruction have become a routine feature and it has announced that it will carry on these attacks as long as the Palestinians continue their struggle against Israel. Peace with Israel was an illusion that was peddled by Arafat and his cohorts. Now it has been completely shattered. The continuing resistance of the Palestinians is a declaration in itself that the Oslo Accord and all other accords reached after Oslo are dead and any future accords that may come between Yassir’s PA and Israel are bound to boomerang on the so-called peace parties and would again see their death. Palestinians have no course other than to wage an all out armed struggle for the total destruction of the Zionist State of Israel. It was true in 1948, it was true in 1967 and it is true in the year 2001 and will remain true as long as the State of Israel exists.

August 27, 2001

<Top>