From
Khan Yunis refugee camp, Gaza, Palestine. 13th January,2003
The Diary of
journalist Christopher Hedges ("Gaza Diary").
"I sit in the shade of a
palm-roofed hut on the edge of the dunes, momentarily
defeated by the heat, the grit, the jostling crowds, the
stench of the open sewers and rotting garbage. A friend
of Azmi's brings me, on a tray, a cold glass of tart, red
carcade juice."
"Barefoot boys, clutching kites made out of scraps
of paper, and ragged soccer balls, squat a few feet away
under scrub trees."
"Men in flowing white or gray galabias -- homespun
robes -- smoke cigarettes in the shade of slim eaves. Two
emaciated donkeys, their ribs protruding, are tethered in
wooden carts with rubber wheels."
"It is still. The camp waits, as if holding it's
breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a
disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker."
""COME ON, DOGS," the voice booms in
Arabic. "WHERE ARE ALL THE DOGS OF
KHAN YOUNIS? COME! COME!""
"I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective
continues to spew:
"SON OF A BITCH!" "SON OF A WHORE!"
"YOUR MOTHER'S CUNT!""
"The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes
to the electric fence that separates the camp from the
Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored
jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with
loudspeakers."
"Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in
anticipation of what is to come."
"A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no
more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running
clumsily across the heavy sand. They
descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me.
There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with
silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end
over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in
the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs
ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos."
"Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight
young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen.
One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an
eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four
more, three of whom are under eighteen."
"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have
covered -- death squads gunned them down in El Salvador
and Guatemala, mothers with
infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb
snipers put children in their sights and watched them
crumble onto the pavement in
Sarajevo -- but I have never before watched soldiers
entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for
sport."
Palestine Report 13th January 2001
(RapprochmentPalestine)
http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=4&id=96
Thanks to Rela Mazali for
forwarding this article...
Sharon`s
Fingerprints On Latest Suicide Bombing
January 12,
2003
By Steve Niva*
It is difficult to imagine that Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, with his much vaunted military and
strategic acumen, did not understand the bloody
consequences of his policies during the past six weeks.
Since the last suicide bombing on November 21, escalating
Israeli military assaults have killed over sixty
Palestinian civilians, culminating in the December 26
wave of killing and abductions, in which Israeli
occupation forces killed at least nine Palestinians,
injured more than 30 and abducted several others.
On that day alone, Israeli execution squads assassinated
three prominent members from the three militant
Palestinian groups responsible for the majority of
suicide bombings: Hamza Abu el-Rab of Islamic Jihad,
Ibrahim Hawash, of Hamas and Gamal Abu el-Nader of
Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. All three groups vowed
revenge.
As if on que, revenge was indeed taken. The horrific
double suicide bombing near the old Tel Aviv bus station
took place within ten days of these assassinations, on
January 5, and reports have now confirmed that the
bombers were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigade.
Twenty two Israeli's and foreign workers were killed and
a hundred more injured.
Any observer with elementary skills in discerning cause
and effect could see this latest suicide bombing atrocity
coming.
In fact, the vast majority of the nearly 100 Palestinian
suicide bombings since they began in 1994 have followed
an almost predictable sequence: Israeli attacks that
cause major Palestinian civilian casualties or Israeli
assassinations of important militant leaders are the most
common trigger leading to suicide bombings, usually
within two weeks.
This escalating cycle of violence can be traced to the
first Hamas suicide bus bombing inside an Israeli city on
April 4, 1994 following the February 1994 Hebron
Massacre, when the American-Israeli settler Baruch
Goldstein murdered 29 praying Palestinians in a mosque.
Hamas launched its second bus bombing campaign in 1996
following Israel's assassination of its bombing
mastermind Yehiya Ayash, known as "the
Engineer." Similarly, Islamic Jihad claimed
responsibility for its first suicide bombings in 1994 and
1995 following the Israeli assassinations of its leaders
Hani Abed and Fathi Shiqaqi.
Since then, the Islamic militant groups Hamas and Islamic
Jihad have adopted a routine policy of responding to
civilian massacres and especially assassinations with
suicide bombings.
And Israel's assassination of the leading Fatah militant
Raed Karmi on January 14 2002 led a militant group
associated with Arafat's Fatah party, calling itself the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, to deliver its first suicide
bombing on January 27, 2002. This group has conducted
over a dozen suicide bombings since that time.
Yet this striking pattern has become even more frequent
and predictable since Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister
in February 2001 and escalated military assaults on
Palestinian civilian areas and adopted a systematic
assassination campaign of Palestinian militant leaders.
The startling fact is that four times as many suicide
bombings--around 80--have occurred since Ariel Sharon
became Prime Minister than in the seven previous years
combined--around 20.
None of this has deterred Sharon from escalating the
assassination campaign against militants or violent
military operations that kill civilians. And suicide
bombings have continued.
But what is even more incriminating is the extent to
which Sharon has systematically ordered violent Israeli
military incursions and assassinations during major
cease-fires by militant Palestinian groups as well as
diplomatic efforts to ease the hostilities, resulting in
new suicide attacks.
The first clear case of this policy was when Sharon
ordered the assassination of the two leading Hamas
leaders in Nablus on July 31 2001, which put an end to a
nearly two-month cease-fire on Israeli civilians observed
by Hamas. Haim Shalev, an editorialist in a leading
Hebrew daily Ma'ariv, gravely warned on August 1 that
because "Israel has violated the cease-fire" it
should expect a new wave of suicide bombings, which
indeed came on August 9 in a bloody attack on a Jerusalem
Sbarro pizzeria that killed 15 Israelis.
More notorious was Sharon's decision to assassinate
leading Hamas militant Mahmud Abu Hanoud on November 23,
2001 just when the Hamas was upholding an agreement with
Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel and a few
days before US envoy General Zinni was to arrive in
Israel.
In a widely cited article from November 25 2001, the
conservative military commentator for one of Israel's
leading newspapers Yediot Aharanot, Alex Fishman, noted
that this assassination had the effect of
"shattering in one blow the gentleman's agreement
between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority." He
continued that "Whoever decided upon the liquidation
of Abu Hanoud knew in advance that [a terrorist attack
inside of Israel] would be the price. The subject was
extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon
and its political one, before it was decided to carry out
the liquidation."
The brutal bombings that followed Abu-Hanoud's
assassination gave Sharon the ideal pretext for his
subsequent declaration of war upon Arafat. Moreover, it
effectively scuttled the Zinni mission and Sharon
obtained an unprecedented open backing from President
Bush for more aggressive policies during his scheduled
visit to Washington the next week.
More recently, it was widely reported that the July 22,
2002 assassination of leading Hamas militant Salah
Shehada in Gaza, which also killed 15 civilians, 11 of
them children, came within hours of a unilateral
cease-fire declaration by both the Palestinian
nationalist militia Tanzim and Hamas. Sharon had been
briefed by EU go-betweens, yet he went ahead anyway.
Within two weeks, Hamas claimed responsibility for a
bombing at Hebrew University that killed seven Israeli's
and a bloody suicide bombing a week later.
And now, the December 26 executions of members from all
three militant Palestinian groups took place while
representatives from Fatah, Hamas and other factions were
meeting in Cairo to formulate a cease-fire on Israeli
civilians to last at least through the Israeli elections
on January 28 later this month.
The only conclusion one can draw from these actions is
that either Sharon thought it so important to kill these
militant leaders despite the bloody consequences for
Israeli civilians or that he took these actions precisely
because he expected these consequences and cynically
sought to reap the political gains. Either way, Sharon is
complicit the deaths of scores of Israeli civilians.
And any observer can easily discern the obvious political
windfall for Ariel Sharon generated by this latest
attack.
First, Sharon is now able to resist any pressure to agree
to the latest draft of the Middle East peace "road
map" drawn up by the so-called quartet, made up of
the United States, United Nations, European Union and
Russia. Sharon strongly opposed its recommendations that
in the first stage, from January to June 2003, Israeli
commitments would include a total freeze on Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and a pullback to positions
held before the uprising began in September 2000.
Second, the talks in Cairo between members of Yasser
Arafat's Fatah faction and representatives from Hamas and
Islamic Jihad about a temporary cease-fire are now
irrelevant. Arafat cannot claim any political gains from
restraining militants.
And finally, Ariel Sharon is now almost assured
re-election on January 28 as Palestinian attacks on
civilians inevitably give a strong boost to the hard line
parties in Israel that he leads.
Palestinian officials were quick to point out the obvious
following the December 26 assassinations.
"The escalation of violence by (Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel) Sharon is aimed at creating a volatile
atmosphere which he believes will serve him in his
election campaign," Palestinian Information Minister
Yasser Abed Rabbo told Reuters on December 27.
"Sharon is inviting retaliation because he wants ...
to prevent any possibility of an agreement (between
Palestinian factions) on a cease fire," he
continued.
By the same token, it appears that militant Palestinian
groups are more than willing to seize upon Sharon's
provocations through their myopic preoccupation with
revenge to bring untold misery upon both Israelis and
Palestinians, who often bear the brunt of brutal Israeli
reprisals.
Palestinian militants have not only soured the Israeli
public on peace, they have also severely damaged the
Palestinian cause in the court of world opinion. In
effect, they have aligned themselves with Israel's
expansionist right wing, led by Ariel Sharon, by
escalating the conflict into open military conflagration,
which could be disastrous for Palestinians. Large-scale
population transfer is now openly discussed in Israeli
political and military circles.
A Palestinian opponent of suicide bombings, the Bir Zeit
University professor Salah Abdel Jawad, has recently
argued that "The failure of Palestinians, both in
the leadership and among the population at large, to
grasp the danger of suicide bomb attacks results from
their failure to understand Ariel Sharon's aims following
the end of the Oslo process and the destruction of the
Palestinian authority. He wants to destroy Palestinian
civil society and thus move closer to a second expulsion
of Palestinians."
Nevertheless, based on the evidence from the past decade
of suicide bomb attacks, and Sharon's clear record of
inciting these attacks, Israel's actions are of
incomparably greater significance for stopping suicide
attacks than those of Yasser Arafat and what little
remains of his authority and security services.
Israel could easily refrain from actions that kill
Palestinian civilians and could suspend the assassination
campaign of militants. It could also lift the deadly
curfews that have created a major humanitarian crisis in
many parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But if Israeli leaders were truly committed to Israel's
long-term security, they would have to offer a political
vision attractive enough to enable Palestinians to
mobilize around returning to peace negotiations with
Israel, thereby marginalizing militant organizations and
depriving them of the crucial support they depend upon to
gain recruits and conduct their operations. This vision
must include the prospect of a viable Palestinian state
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that goes beyond the
three-part cantonization of the Occupied Territories
offered by former Prime Minister Barak at Camp David in
the summer of 2000.
However, none of this will happen for the simple reason
that Ariel Sharon's entire political career has been
based on his long-standing opposition to a viable
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and his
relentless support for colonizing these lands with
Israeli settlements. Suicide bombings have become a
crucial pretext for enabling the brute force and violence
needed to achieve this objective.
In a scathing August 2, 2002 editorial in Israel's
prestigious Ha'aretz newspaper following the
assassination of Shehada in Gaza City, Doron Rosenblum
declared that "In short, any four-year-old child who
examined this pattern of events would conclude that this
government, whether consciously or not, is simply not
interested in the cessation of the terrorist attacks, for
they constitute its raison d'etre".
*Steve Niva teaches International Politics and Middle
East Studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia,
Washington. He writes regularly for Middle East Report
(www.merip.org) and his articles have appeared in Open
Democracy, The Middle East Times, and The Jordan Times.
**This article first appeared at counterpunch.com.
[Palestine Chronicle www.palestinechronicle.com).]
|
