By Jennifer Thompson
Israeli attacks on widespread Palestinian protests starting on September 25, resulting in a large number of deaths and injuries, in effect brought the infirm "peace process" to an end. The move towards all-out war against Palestinians — including Palestinian Authority police — caps a series of Israeli violations of the agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Israeli government.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) deputy finance minister, Dr Atef Alawneh, said the opening of a new tunnel running under the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque — Islam's third holiest site, in Jerusalem's old city — had been only the spark for the eruption of Palestinian protests and blamed the "humiliating policies" of the Israeli Likud government.
Palestinian outrage, already generalised by the previous Israeli Labour government's insistence on maintaining direct control of 73% of West Bank land and overall security responsibility for another 23% during the five-year interim phase of the Oslo agreement, was heightened by Israeli government and settler actions to cement their presence in the West Bank and Gaza. For Palestinians, even in the areas under Palestinian Authority control, the occupation had only been redeployed, and then not far down the road.
Hopes for improved living standards from development of a Palestinian economy have been crushed beneath agreements subordinating Palestinian economy to the needs of the stronger Israeli economy and the long periods of closure and near starvation imposed on the occupied territories.
The closure imposed on the Palestinian territories by Labour in late February, in response to suicide bombings inside Israel, has not yet been lifted, preventing many Palestinians from entering Israel to work, and sending Palestinian unemployment skyrocketing.
The entrenching of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza was begun by Israeli Labour. Land was confiscated on a large scale for "expanding" settlements — building "new" ones might have embarressed the US into withholding US$10 billion in loan guarantees and other assistance — and roads to allow settlers to bypass Palestinian towns and villages.
Since Likud and its right-wing coalition partners were elected to office in May, Prime Minister Netanyahu has abandoned any pretence of withdrawal from the occupied territories and announced the accelerated construction of new and expanded settlements and roads, confiscating ever more Palestinian land.
In doing so, Israel has violated an understanding in the September 1993 Oslo agreement that the "permanent status negotiations", supposed to begin not later than the third year of the interim five-year period, should not be prejudiced by either party changing the facts on the ground. The issues slated for permanent status negotiations — which were to start in May but have not seriously begun yet — include the eventual fate of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders and relations and cooperation with other neighbours.
The sharing of scarce water resources was added after agreement was not reached in the negotiations leading to the September 1995 "Taba agreement" timetable for Israeli redeployment from eight West Bank cities, transfer of civil administration to the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian elections.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had said only a week earlier that if Israel continued to resist its commitments in the peace agreements, a new Palestinian intifada [uprising] might erupt.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli defence minister Yitzhak Mordechai had met on September 18 at Gaza's Erez checkpoint, but there were no tangible results. According to the Palestine Report, the meeting was used by Israel to present proposals for altering previously signed agreements, particularly regarding autonomy and redeployment from Hebron and the passageways between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Two days before the meeting, Palestinians, Israeli troops and settlers had clashed in Hebron when a group of Palestinians attempted to implement a Taba agreement provision and reopen sealed shops in a vegetable market in the centre of the city.
A resident of one of the Hebron settlements, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers and wounded 100 more at the Ibrahimi Mosque in February 1994, and city centre shops had been sealed off since then.
The Israeli partial redeployment from Hebron is nearly six months overdue, and Israel is holding the redeployment hostage to the PA closing down its institutions in Jerusalem. The aim is clearly to change the demographic balance in the city by decreasing the number of Palestinian residents, says the September 20 Palestine Report.
More and more Palestinians from Jerusalem have reported that their Jerusalem ID cards have been arbitrarily withdrawn by the Israeli government in recent months. Without IDs, Palestinian Jerusalemites cannot live in the city, and require a special permit just to enter it.
On September 25, two days after the tunnel under the holy sites was opened, Palestinians observed a general strike in Jerusalem. Israeli police and border guards attacked demonstrators with clubs near Jerusalem's old city.
Palestinian protesters marched from Al-Aqsa Mosque towards the Damascus Gate after mid-day prayers. The Islamic Waqf — responsible for maintaining and protecting holy sites — Palestinian Legislative Council members, PA officials and prominent figures in the city participated in the demonstration.
According to the September 25 Palestine Report, the Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, said the opening of the tunnel was the culmination of secret Israeli Archaeological Authority excavations, begun after the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967. The tunnel now runs underneath the length of the Wailing Wall, and then turns right beneath the northern wall of the al-Aqsa compound.
"We first discovered Israel was conducting excavations beneath our land when a room in a building near the Qattanin Gate collapsed in the early 1970s", Mufti Sabri said. Since then, the Islamic Waqf has been protesting the digs to the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality and the Archaeological Authority, but to no avail.
Palestinian Legislative Council member Ziad Abu Zayyad said, "We are not against excavations, but we are against acts which aim to strengthen the claim of one side to Jerusalem, and weaken the claim of the other".
"It is a very dangerous act ... Israel is trying to prove that the city belongs to them", he said, adding that the Israeli Archaeological Authority is also excavating beneath the al-Aqsa Mosque itself, from the southern side of the compound.
The fighting and deaths mark the most intractable crisis of the flawed "peace" process. The realisation amongst Palestinians that Israel has no intention of dismantling the settlements or sharing an inch of Jerusalem has caused this crisis. n