By Jennifer Thompson
Following the October 19 suicide bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv by Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin made it clear the attack would be used as a pretext to move further toward his government's apartheid-like vision of peace with a bantustan Palestine. "We cannot keep having this mixture of Jews and Arabs. We have to decide on separation as a philosophy. There has to be a clear border", Rabin declared the next day.
According to officials, Rabin wants to bring forward the talks on a final settlement for Palestinian autonomy, originally scheduled for the third year of Palestinian self-rule. Rabin said that the Israeli army "spends more time protecting Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza than in protecting Israel".
Immediate action by the Israeli cabinet included the indefinite closure of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and moves to recruit 15,000 extra foreign workers to replace cheap Palestinian labour. The action will affect tens of thousands of Palestinians who work in Israel, mainly in construction and agricultural jobs.
Israeli police ranks will be boosted by 1500, and the army will be involved in more police tasks.
Yossi Sarid, a cabinet member from Labor's junior coalition partner, Meretz, said the closure was temporary, but Rabin described it as not for one or two days but a "way of life".
Meretz reluctance also appeared to slow down plans to bring in draconian new security legislation. The new laws would introduce jailing without trial, new interrogation arrangements and wrecking or sealing of the homes of suspected Hamas members. Rabin berated the Israeli Supreme Court, which in recent years has banned some of the worst excesses of the Israeli military.
The Israeli government's tough stand against Hamas is not really in contradiction with its earlier policy of subtly promoting the group, which doesn't recognise the state of Israel and opposes the Middle East peace process, as a counter to the PLO within the occupied territories. Israel is now using Hamas attacks to turn the screws on the PLO and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) even further.
Rabin loudly held Arafat personally responsible for a kidnapped Israeli soldier, maintaining the soldier was being held in the Palestinian self-rule area in Gaza, although it was later discovered he was being held in the major portion of the West Bank not under PNA control. But Palestinian police in Gaza detained approximately 300 Hamas members for questioning. While most were released, the impression of the PNA being forced to do Israel's dirty work suited both Hamas and Rabin.
Hamas has claimed that its attacks are retaliation for the exiling of 415 Palestinians to southern Lebanon in 1992 and the massacre of Palestinians earlier this year by right-wing settler Baruch Goldstein.
Much has been made in the media of popular support amongst Palestinians for the Hamas attacks, cited by some commentators as boosting support for Hamas up to 35%. The perception among Palestinians that they have gained little from the peace process, and especially the resentment of the highly selective release of less than half of Palestinian political prisoners by Israel has naturally won support for Hamas amongst Palestinians who continue to live in conditions of extreme economic deprivation and an increased level of Israeli military interference in their lives.
In the negotiations over forthcoming Palestinian elections, Israel is demanding that Hamas and other groups opposed to the accords between the PLO and Israel be barred from standing or voting. Israeli negotiators want to place conditions on candidates of acceptance of the Declaration of Principles signed in Washington in September 1993, renunciation of violence against Israel and refraining from "racist propaganda".
These restrictions would mean that the elections lost much of their authority. The chief Palestinian negotiator and municipal affairs minister, Sa'eb Erekat, commented that Israel's demands are akin to "the PLO complaining about the participation of Likud, which opposes the Declaration of Principles, in Israeli elections".
Hamas' latest attack has unfortunately only strengthened the hand of the Israeli right and continued the Israeli job of undermining the PNA in a process in which the odds are already stacked against Palestinian self-determination. The US too has jumped on the bandwagon and is using the opportunity to place pressure on Syria to sign a peace agreement with Israel.