Palestinian resistance to occupation
-- appears ever clearer, writes Saleh Al-Naami
Rabbi Benny Elon, president of the right-wing Israeli National Union
Party, was unable to conceal his relief last Thursday when a Hebrew
radio news programme presenter asked him about his evaluation of the
recent plan devised by Quartet envoy and former British Prime Minister
Tony Blair. "Finally, even Blair agrees with us on two primary
points," Benny Elon said. "These are uprooting the Palestinian
terrorist organisations and solving the problem of the refugees
without holding Israel any responsibility for it."
Revealed the previous day, Blair's plan for the reform of Palestinian
Authority (PA) institutions left resounding reverberations in the
Palestinian arena. Factions, elites and the Palestinian public alike
were shocked when it became clear that "reform" of PA institutions, as
Blair sees it, means ensuring conditions that allow for a tightening
grip on Palestinian resistance movements, particularly in the West
Bank. The plan draws no tie between this and decreasing attacks on
Palestinians by Israel's occupation army and settlers.
According to the plan, a Hebrew copy of which was posted on the
Israeli Haaretz newspaper website last Wednesday, Blair views it
necessary to enact administrative reform in the security agencies of
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in order to make their war against
Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank more effective. The
plan draws a connection between the ability of Abbas's agencies to
wage a relentless campaign against Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the
future of a settlement to the conflict. In the plan's introduction,
Blair wrote that without the Palestinian security agencies conducting
severe operations against Palestinian resistance movements in the West
Bank, there is no hope of reaching a settlement to the conflict.
To make Abbas's security agencies more effective in their war against
Palestinian resistance movements, the plan recommends granting powers
to the judiciary and the Office of the Public Attorney in the West
Bank that allow them to try members and leaders of the resistance. In
addition, the plan recommends forming a new PA administration for the
supervision of prisons that includes European oversight so as to
guarantee that members of the resistance who have been tried are not
released.
The plan further calls for increasing the number of European
consultants who aid the Palestinian police in its activities to pursue
members of resistance movements. It also calls for increasing the work
of the team led by American security coordinator General Keith Dayton,
who is responsible for increasing the effectiveness of the PA's
security agencies and in particular the national security and
presidential security agencies.
Palestinians were appalled by Blair's recommendation to include
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak as a member of the committee to
supervise execution of the plan, alongside Palestinian Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad and Blair himself. Blair has submitted a copy of his plan
to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and plans to present it for
approval during the upcoming summit meeting set to convene this year
in Annapolis.
Yet Palestinians agree that the most alarming part of Blair's plan is
its attempt to lay a basis for settling the Palestinian refugee issue.
Using the argument of working to improve the economic conditions of
Palestinians, the plan recommends constructing new housing projects in
the West Bank with the goal of repatriating refugees there. At the
head of the projects recommended by Blair is the establishment of a
new Palestinian city near Ramallah in the central West Bank and
allocated to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees as
part of a plan to "rehabilitate" them. Israeli right-wing leaders and
pundits promote this same plan as a solution to the refugee issue.
In return for all the obligations the plan places upon the PA, it only
urges Israel to lighten restrictions placed on the freedom of movement
for Palestinians in the West Bank as Blair considers it important for
Palestinians there to feel a "positive" change in their standard of
life.
For their part, representatives of the Palestinian factions have
harshly criticised Blair's plan, describing it as seeking to eliminate
the Palestinian cause. Jamil Al-Majdalawi, politburo member of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and head of the
refugee committee in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), holds
that some of the parties close to Abbas had encouraged Blair to
propose his plan.
For his part, Khaled Al-Butsh, a prominent leader in Islamic Jihad,
says the plan aims to "cheat" the right of return under the slogan of
"rehabilitating refugees". It represents an attempt to essentially put
an end to the refugee issue. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Butsh
said that Blair sees no problem in Israel's "criminal assaults",
settlement activities, Judaisation of Palestinian areas, and settler
attacks.
For Yehia Moussa, vice-president of the Hamas bloc in the PLC, Abbas
is colluding with Blair to eliminate the refugee issue. Moussa points
to statements made by Abbas recently indicating the possibility of
finding "creative solutions" to the refugee issue. Speaking to the
Weekly, Moussa stressed that Blair and those in contact with him will
discover that the Palestinian people are capable of "undermining the
conspiracy they are plotting".
The rancour of Palestinians was piqued by the fact that Blair's plan
flagrantly ignores the oppressive measures visited upon Palestinians
by the Israeli army and settlers. This despite all the statistics
provided by human rights groups, including Israeli organisations,
confirming that Palestinian civilians are subjected to horrendous
abuses. According to statistics, the number of Palestinians killed by
occupation army bullets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the
beginning of the year is 350 while the number of occupation soldiers
and settlers killed by Palestinian resistance operations has been only
five.
According to Israeli human rights organisations, settlers committed
25,000 assaults against Palestinians throughout the West Bank since
the start of this year alone. In some areas, such as Hebron, these
assaults have led to large numbers of Palestinians leaving their
neighbourhoods. Despite the widening scope and intensity of such
assaults, only one settler has been sent to trial, and he was released
on a meagre bail. In the northern West Bank, settlers have uprooted
10,000 olive trees and have poisoned hundreds of artesian wells. They
have also let loose large herds of swine to destroy agricultural
crops. And according to an Israeli study, the military checkpoints
Israel has erected in the West Bank interfere with the lives of 80 per
cent of all Palestinians.
Yet even more serious in Blair's plan is the fact that it ignores the
frank and documented statements made by leaders of the Israeli army in
which they admit that they create conditions that facilitate settlers
committing crimes against Palestinian civilians. General Yuval Bazak,
head of the "military theory development" department in the Israeli
army's joint staff and who once led the Israeli army in the West Bank,
recently told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the
occupation army has for dozens of years ignored the assaults of
settlers on Palestinian civilians. "A grave deception is taking place
here," Bazak said. "We, as the army, are helping Jewish settlers to
commit crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians."
He added that the Israeli army covered for Israeli terrorist
organisations active in settlements. He further stressed that the army
and Israeli intelligence do not make any moves to dismantle Israeli
terrorist organisations.
At the same time that the plan recommends "reform" of the Palestinian
judicial system to make it more "competent" in dealing with
Palestinian resistance movements, it fails to address the Israeli
judicial system, which Israeli human rights organisations say ignores,
in a racist manner, the grievances of Palestinian citizens assaulted
by settlers. A report issued by the Israeli organisation There is Law,
which monitors occupation activities in the West Bank, states that
only one per cent of the complaints filed by Palestinian citizens in
the West Bank with the Israeli police over settler assaults made
against them end with positive convictions. In all of the remaining
cases, the file is simply closed.
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