BY REEM HALAWANI
As the Palestinian intifada enters its eighth month, the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon remains intransigently against granting any concessions to the Palestinians. Instead, it has escalated its attacks on the occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian death toll is more than 422.
Daily clashes between Israel's troops and unarmed Palestinians have now been supplemented by overnight bombing raids and incursions by the Israeli military, increasing the terror and devastation inflicted on the Palestinian population. The intention is to weaken the resolve of the Palestinian people to win an independent Palestinian state and for the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.
On April 27, fighting erupted between the Israeli army and armed Palestinians during a 2000-strong protest against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank town of Ramallah. When the gunfire intensified, Israeli troops fired seven rockets at the Palestinian bureau of statistics, severely damaging the facade of the building. Seven Palestinians were injured in the attack.
Several tank shells also hit the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the nearby town of Bireh. In the Gaza Strip, nine youths were injured, one critically, when Israeli troops opened fire on unarmed protesters.
On the night of April 30, two young children were killed when bombs rained over Ramallah.
Such events have become the daily reality for the Palestinian people of the West Bank and Gaza, who have been under siege since September last year.
Blockade
In an attempt to crush the resistance, the government of Israel has tightened the blockade around the occupied territories, severely restricting the movement of Palestinians in and out of the territories.
For eight months, 130,000 Palestinian workers have not been able to get to work, crippling the local economy. Palestinian students are routinely denied access to their schools and the population is prevented from travelling, even if the purpose of the journey is for medical treatment or to visit relatives.
The Israeli army has been secretly reoccupying land previously under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority (PA). While Israel's brief open reoccupation of part of the Gaza Strip in April caused a global outcry, Palestinian security officials and frustrated residents say that Israel has been expanding its control of the land for months.
Palestinians have been unable to access around a third of Gaza Strip land nominally under the control of the PA, according to Colonel Saeb Al Ajiz, commander of national security forces for the northern Gaza Strip.
"The occupation comes in various guises", Ajiz told the local media. "In this case, the Israeli army is commanding the area with gunfire." He said that, in this way, the Israeli army has reoccupied around 100 sq kms of the narrow 360-sq km strip of land wedged between the Mediterranean Sea and Israel's Negev desert since the latest intifada began. This is on top of the 60 sq kms of fortified Jewish settlements Israel already controls in the Gaza Strip.
"The objective is to reoccupy the areas in such a way that the picture is not exposed to international public opinion", Ajiz said.
International condemnation of Israel's first open reoccupation of Palestinian land since the Oslo autonomy accords forced the Sharon government to withdraw its troops quickly. But Gaza landowners say the army is in effect occupying their land without having to deploy its tanks and troops.
"We're being occupied", said 75-year-old Mohammad Waheidi who owns orange groves at Martyrs Crossroads, where a road to the fortified Netzarim Jewish settlement intersects with Gaza's main highway. "It's like the front-line between France and Germany during the World War. Anyone who goes there dies. That land out there as far as Netzarim is useless. We can't work on it because the Israelis will shoot at us. The land has gone to waste and the crops are all rotting."
Regularly, Israeli tanks roll on to Palestinian land at night to demolish security outposts, raze houses and bulldoze farmland. Palestinian farmers look on in despair as their olive groves and crops are uprooted to make way for further Jewish settlements or to give the Israeli military more room to manoeuvre.
Troops have also occupied Palestinian homes, setting up permanent camp on at least three rooftops around Netzarim.
Mohammad Abu Dahruj, a civil servant at the Palestinian ministry of labour, has had to share his staircase with Israeli soldiers living on his roof since January. His home lies within a wide belt of land the army has turned into a buffer zone along the road that links Netzarim to the Karni border crossing with Israel. Describing his life as "hell", Abu Daruj and his family have to put up with Israeli soldiers shooting at Palestinian fighters from their rooftop.
Egyptian-Jordanian proposal
The Sharon government is refusing to return to the negotiating table. The Egyptian and Jordanian governments have put forward a peace initiative that includes calls for a cease-fire, an army pull-back from Palestinian areas, a release of funds destined for the PA by Israel, a freeze on Israeli settlement construction and the resumption of talks on a final settlement for a Palestinian state.
The plan has the backing of other governments in the region and is considered a step in the right direction by the United States, Russia and European governments.
But Israel wants guarantees that Palestinian "attacks" will cease. It also refuses to stop settlement construction. Sharon has indicated he wants to negotiate a long-term interim agreement and not a full peace treaty.
Given the wide-ranging concessions already given by the Palestinians, any alterations to the plan would not be accepted. Israel, knowing this, realises that any conditions it places will stall or destroy any negotiations. The Israeli government is not interested in negotiations but wants to crush the Palestinians militarily.
Two faces of Israel
Despite this, Israel is still sensitive to international public opinion. The recent international condemnation of Israel's bombing of Lebanon and of its reoccupation of Gaza sparked a flurry of diplomatic meetings with international leaders. Israel has been careful not to reject the "Egyptian-Jordanian peace proposal" outright and has made a number of statements about the need for peace and respect for the rights of the Palestinians to placate international opinion. In reality, the war against the Palestinian people is at its most brutal point since the intifada began eight months ago.
As well, while Israel still has the backing of the major imperialist governments around the world, especially the United States, these governments are keen to see the "peace process" get back on track to resolve the Palestinian question once and for all, so that they can get on with exploiting the resources and markets of the region.
Given the enormous solidarity felt by all Arab-speaking people towards the Palestinian struggle, the imperialist powers don't want to alienate the pro-imperialist governments in the region such as Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf states, Egypt and Jordan.
Neither do they want to see the intifada continue or broaden. An intransigent government and an increasingly defiant Palestinian people could form the conditions for revolutionary change, out of their control.
All these factors place pressure on Israel to appear to be committed to resolving the Palestinian question, even though a genocidal campaign is being carried out against the Palestinian people. They also place real constraints on Israel's policy and expose a contradiction between the narrow interests of the Zionist state and the imperialists' interests.
Palestinian resistance
The intifada continues to strengthen. Conditions inside the territories are deteriorating rapidly, but Palestinians continue to resist the Israeli aggression. Unarmed men, women and children continue to throw stones at fully armed Israeli soldiers.
Armed resistance is also a growing aspect of the struggle. In recent developments, Fatah, Yasser Arafat's political faction, has declared a united struggle with Hamas, the popular Islamic resistance movement. For the first time in many years, the Palestinian resistance is united.
In response, Washington has added Fatah and its youth organisation Tanzim to its list of organisations that have carried out "terrorist attacks".
Despite its show of military force against the Palestinian people, Israel's position has weakened in recent years. Its expulsion from Lebanon in 2000 by Hizbullah guerillas was a major defeat for the Israeli army.
Its inability to crush the intifada is also creating contradictions in Israel itself. For example, at least 60 young Israelis, mostly women, have been imprisoned for their refusal to be conscripted into the army.
But most of all, Israel is losing the war of international public opinion because the just cause of the Palestinians is increasingly being recognised.
The second intifada of the Palestinian people is putting enormous pressure on the Israeli government and the Israeli people to confront the historic injustice committed against Palestine. This is because the Palestinian people are prepared to fight until the end for justice, their land and nationhood.