BY AHMAD NIMER
RAMALLAH — On June 2, as I was trying to get back into Ramallah from Jerusalem, I was met with an all too familiar sight at the Qalandia checkpoint, a few kilometres south of the city. Thousands of Palestinians trying to leave Ramallah were gathered at the checkpoint where Israeli soldiers had decided that no-one was to be allowed out.
A very pregnant woman was screaming at the soldiers that she had to get through to go to the hospital. The soldiers were pointing a gun at her stomach and told her to go back to Ramallah. Another man, clutching his young daughter, tried to push through, yelling at the soldiers "you can shoot me if you like, I don't care if I die". Soon, the soldiers began shooting and throwing tear gas into the crowd, most of whom were trying to get back home from their day at work.
Scenes such as these are repeated on a daily basis all around the West Bank. This time however, the irony of the situation was not lost on a population whose permanent media backdrop over the week had been talk of Israeli "goodwill measures" in the lead up to US President George Bush's meetings with Arab leaders in the Egyptian town of Sharm al Sheikh and with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian PM Abu Mazen in the Jordanian town of Aqaba.
While the Arab media was covering the June 3 meeting in Sharm Al-Sheikh, the Israeli army tightened its closure of Palestinian villages and cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and continued a violent campaign against the population.
On the same day as the summit, Israeli soldiers imposed an indefinite curfew on the West Bank town of Ramallah and sealed all entrances to the city. While some residents in the town confronted the jeeps and armoured personnel carriers with rocks and Molotov cocktails, the majority of the population remained locked in their homes waiting for the curfew to be lifted.
Israeli troops also invaded the northern towns of Tulkarem and Nablus, and prevented all movement in and out of the cities.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers shelled residential areas in the southern refugee camp of Khan Yunis and surrounded large areas of agricultural land with barbed wire in preparation for confiscation.
Israeli forces continue to kill Palestinian civilians on a daily basis. In the week leading up to the Sharm al Sheikh summit, 13 Palestinians were killed, bringing the total number killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers since September 2000 to 2337, including 450 children. The vast majority of these deaths have occurred in situations where there were no armed clashes or demonstrations occurring.
While the Israeli media made a large fan-fare around Sharon's announcement that he would release 100 Palestinian political detainees to show his "good intent", sources inside the desert prison of Ketziot, currently holding over 1200 Palestinians, told Green Left Weekly that 78 of those scheduled for release were going to be released anyway in a few days, as their six-month administrative detention orders (detention without trial or charge) were due to expire. The reality of Israeli "goodwill" measures was thus somewhat lost on the Palestinian population.
All Palestinian factions remain extremely skeptical of the US "road map", seeing it very much as a continuation of earlier Israeli plans for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Essentially, these plans look to find a solution to Israel's main dilemma in occupying these areas — how to control the land and people without maintaining a direct military presence in Palestinian towns and villages.
Earlier plans, beginning with the 1967 Allon Plan, sought a solution in the bantustanisation of the West Bank, with isolated Palestinian areas ruled by a dependent Palestinian or Arab "entity". The realisation of these plans are much more likely today, given the massive program of construction of Israeli settlements between the major Palestinian towns which bar free Palestinian movement, and the complicated system of Israeli-issued permits required to travel between towns.
Moreover, a massive concrete wall is under construction which will completely surround the isolated Palestinian bantustans. This wall — stretching from the north of the West Bank to the south — will have only three exit points, guarded by the same security force which runs the Israeli airport. It will leave the Palestinian population with just over 40% of the West Bank, a figure consistent with Sharon's long-held vision of a "Palestinian entity" on 42% of the West Bank.
This is the backdrop to which Sharon's recent comments about "ending the occupation" need to be understood. His comments do not reveal a change of heart, but are completely in line with all of the official Israeli plans for the West Bank since 1967.
Sharon, like his predecessors, does not want a continued Israeli military presence in Palestinian towns and villages which would virtually guarantee continued popular uprisings. Rather, he wants a form of Palestinian self-rule in which a Palestinian body will protect Israeli security, while Israel controls the borders of the Palestinian state, and the Palestinian economy remains dependent on Israel, with its natural resources — water, above all — firmly in Israeli hands.
With the construction of the wall in the Qalqilya area, the largest aquifer in the West Bank has been annexed to Israel. Palestinian areas are completely reliant upon Israel for electricity, telephone, petrol and even access to the internet.
The deception continues with Israel's recent "difficult decision" to dismantle some settlement outposts. The road map calls for the dismantling of settlement outposts built since March 2001. These hill-top caravan settlements built by small groups of settlers have no impact on Israeli settlement plans.
Israeli settlements are concentrated in three major blocks which house hundreds of thousands of settlers. They divide Palestinian towns from one another and will not be affected by the road map.
The population of these settlements more than doubled following the signing of the Oslo Accords by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993. The construction of the West Bank wall will annex the majority of these settlements into the Israel state, making moot any point about eventual settlement dismantlement.
The summits in Sharm al-Sheikh and Aqaba seem to be much more concerned with legitimising Abu Mazen's position as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and winning support from the Arab regimes for US policies in the Middle East. For its part, Israel is seeking official Arab and Palestinian acceptance of the Israeli state — explicitly defined as a Jewish state. This would seriously undermine the key Palestinian demand for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants who were expelled or fled their villages with the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948.
For decades, Israel has been arguing that recognition of the Palestinians' right of return is impossible because it would demographically challenge the Jewish character of the Israeli state, which is enshrined in Israeli law, and manifests itself in the institutionalised discrimination against Palestinian residents of Israel. Because they are not Jewish, the latter are forbidden from owning or constructing buildings in 90% of the territory of Israel.
Logic dictates that when following a map to a final destination you have to know exactly where it is you are going. The US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority all seem to agree that the destination is two supposedly sovereign states living in peace and harmony. However, according to the map being laid down in practice by Israel, the eventual Palestinian state will be a checker board of isolated Palestinian cantons with control ultimately in an exclusively Jewish ruled state. Such a vision is neither new nor just, and it is certainly no basis for peace.
From Green Left Weekly, June 11, 2003.
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