Rihab Charida & Nikolai Haddad
If the olive branch is the symbol of hope, then Israel's uprooting of hundreds of thousands of ancient olive trees from Palestinian land is a fitting metaphor for the current situation. With each passing day, Palestinians have less to hope for and more to fear as Israel annexes yet more land, builds more illegal settlements, destroys more homes and assassinates political leaders.
Since the start of the current Palestinian intifada (uprising) in September 2000, the Israeli occupation has caused such a deterioration in living standards as to destroy any semblance of a normal life in Palestine.
The resulting hopelessness is exacerbated because Israel's offensive is unchecked by any of the Western powers. US support for Israeli militarism and expansionism was confirmed during Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to Washington in mid April.
US support
At a press conference held after the April 16 meeting, US President George Bush declared for the first time US support for the annexation of parts of the West Bank — the last remaining area of Palestine where it would be possible to build any semblance of a Palestinian state.
Bush's justification for the switch from tacit to open support was the "changed realities on the ground". But changing the "realities on the ground" has been the cornerstone of Israeli policy since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Since then, around 200,000 Israelis have occupied East Jerusalem, completely changing the demographic and cultural character of the city. A further 180,000 Israelis have "settled" throughout the rest of the occupied territories, with associated infrastructure including the settler-only roads, fences, walls and military installations that carve up the West Bank into a cluster of small cantons.
Occupation of land by force, annexing occupied land, changing the character of occupied land and the transfer of settler populations to occupied territories are expressly prohibited under international law.
A repeat of Balfour
Bush's statements were reminiscent of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which affirmed British support for the colonisation of Palestine by European Zionists and the establishment of the State of Israel on Palestinian land. In both cases, a declaration denying Palestinian aspirations was made by an imperialist government, and, as Edward Said wrote in 1979, "in flat disregard of both the presence and the wishes of the native majority resident in that territory".
Walling off
During the April 16 meeting, Bush also agreed to the continued construction of the apartheid wall. The wall is yet another Israeli land grab. In effect, it annexes 10% of the most fertile parts of the West Bank for Israeli settlers, further dividing Palestinians into small fenced off enclosures controlled by Israeli occupation forces.
The Israeli policy of separation and control prevents Palestinians from regularly attending school or travelling to hospital or to work. Even visiting the next town has become a near impossible ordeal.
On April 1, Israeli restrictions forced the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to cease distribution of emergency food aid to some 600,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip.
The right of return rejected
Bush's support for illegal Israeli settlements, and for the apartheid wall, would have been enough to intensify Palestinian despair, but Bush has gone even further, rejecting the right of Palestinians expelled by Israel since 1948 to return to their homes.
Palestinians' right to return was affirmed in December 1948 by United Nations Resolution 194, and it has been upheld more than 100 times by the United Nations General Assembly. It is a central demand of the Palestinian people that can never be negotiated away.
Since Israel's expulsions in 1948, more than 5 million Palestinian refugees have been condemned to live in the worst of conditions in crowded refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank and neighboring Arab countries. Generations of Palestinians have been denied basic human rights, such as the right to education, work and freedom of movement just so Israel can maintain a Jewish majority.
There can be no just peace without resolution of the refugees' plight. No people can be expected to accept a political solution that condemns them to a permanent state of poverty, statelessness and refugeehood.
Hamas political leader, Dr Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, explained it simply in an interview published in the December 2002 issue of Middle East Policy: "So, because [Israelis] fear being a minority, 4 million Palestinians should live in misery for life?"
It couldn't be put more simply than that. The right of return is a basic demand for equality. Bush's casual rejection of it is another example of Washington's unqualified support for Israel's actions.
Rantisi assassinated
Only two days after Sharon's triumphant return to Israel, the Palestinians were dealt another blow when Israeli forces assassinated Rantisi in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli helicopter gunship launched a missile at his car while he was travelling through the centre of Gaza City. His two bodyguards were instantly killed and four other civilians wounded in the strike.
Rantisi and his family moved to Gaza after being forcibly expelled from their home in a village near Jaffa during the campaign of ethnic cleansing that led to the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. Since then, Rantisi has been a refugee in Gaza, where he practised as a pediatrician.
The attack came less than one month after the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader and founder of Hamas. Tehran has now declared that it will target Hamas political leader Khaled Mishaal in Damascus and Hizbollah's Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.
The assassinations show Israel's contempt for international law. However, Western countries remains silent, despite knowing that Israel carries out the assassinations in densely populated civilian areas, with blatant disregard for Palestinian life.
On July 23, 2003, an Israeli fighter jet shelled an apartment building in a crowded neighbourhood in the heart of Gaza town, in an assassination strike against Hamas political leader Salah Shehada, who was killed in the bombing, along with his wife, daughter and bodyguard. Nine children and two adults in the building were also killed. More than 100 people were injured, 47 of them critically.
The assassination of Rantisi was followed by a two day Israeli invasion of the town of Bait Lahiya in Gaza that killed 13 Palestinians over April 22 and April 23. During the same period, Israeli forces demolished another 12 Palestinian homes and killed another four Palestinians. Throughout the Gaza Strip, they fired upon demonstrators protesting the assassination of Rantisi.
Israel's aims
Assassinations and military assaults are just tactics in Israel's strategy to consolidate the appropriation of Palestinian land, by either expelling or totally controlling its inhabitants.
Israel has made it abundantly clear that it is completely opposed to the creation of a viable Palestinian state in any part of the occupied territories.
Even the planned "withdrawal" from Gaza will leave Israel in exclusive control of the borders, air space and even coastal waters. Gaza would be one big prison — its 1.6 million inhabitants, mostly refugees from other parts of Palestine, completely surrounded on all sides.
The West Bank and Gaza together constitute only 22% of pre-1948 Palestine — and yet Israel and the United States are not even willing to accept the Palestinian compromise of using just this land as a new state.
The system of total Israeli control in the form of fences, curfews, closures and checkpoints, has resulted in a Palestinian unemployment rate of 60%. Seventy percent of Palestinians live on less than US$2 per day. Thirteen percent of children in Gaza suffer from malnutrition. Israel's aim is to expand its borders and make the living conditions of Palestinians so critical that they will either be forced to leave their land or accept a life of total deprivation in small, isolated and fenced-in communities.
Article II of the United Nations Genocide Convention proscribes that "deliberately inflicting on the [national] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part" is genocide. When Sharon retuned to Israel on April 17, after securing US support for his vision, he told reporters that his plan was a "lethal blow" to the Palestinians and "will bring their dreams to an end".
This is not the first time that Israeli leaders have made such claims. Resistance to Zionism's colonial project has never been more steadfast and the worst excesses of Israeli expansionism has only ever made Palestinians more committed to their cause. No Israeli leader can ever decide the fate of their dreams.
For some, there is hope that a situation so fundamentally wrong cannot possibly continue to go on unchallenged by the rest of the world.
A serious effort is required of the populations of countries that provide material and political support to Israel to make their governments accountable for the crimes being committed in their name. Without this, Israel will only ever escalate its assault against the Palestinian people.
[Rihab Charida and Nikolai Haddad are members of Sydney-based Sawiyan — Palestine Solidarity.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 29, 2004.
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