I FOUND myself treating Palestinians with an outward contempt that contradicted every instinct my upbringing had instilled in me...I broke into homes after midnight and held women and children under guard....I screamed at old men and bullied teenagers...A majority of my buddies saw nothing wrong with Israel having built a Jewish town in the middle of the West Bank.
—Haim Watzman, describing his service as an Israeli soldier stationed near Hebron in 1988. New York Times, May 20.
The Americans let the genie out of the bottle.
—Ghassan al-Atiyya, director of the Iraqi Foundation for Development and Democracy, referring to the sectarian violence that followed the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
An old proverb warns that he who mounts a wild elephant goes where the elephant goes. It is a warning that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President George Bush would do well to keep in mind. Both leaders have sought to impose their will on another people by force, and both now face consequences they did not predict and cannot control. Sharon’s refusal to give up control of the occupied territories is undermining moderate Palestinians and therefore making Israelis less secure. In Iraq, Bush is using an over-extended American army to fight a war it cannot win.
Thirty years ago Sharon devised a plan to settle the West Bank with Jews in a way that would permanently prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Accordingly, successive Israeli governments—Labor and Likud alike—confiscated Palestinian land, built settlements in strategic locations, and laid out an elaborate road network designed to connect them with Israel. In 1998, when then Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to a limited withdrawal from the West Bank, Defense Minister Sharon urged settlers to “Grab more hills, expand the territory,” before the withdrawal took place, assuring them that “Everything that is grabbed will remain in our hands.” Settlers responded by planting more than a hundred new outposts on Palestinian land, which the government termed “unauthorized” but nevertheless provided with water and power lines.
Maps of the West Bank show that Sharon has largely achieved his objective. Palestinian communities in the West Bank are now islands surrounded by Israeli settlements and roads. The expansion currently under way at the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim will give Israel territorial continuity almost all the way to Jericho and virtually split the West Bank in two. There can be no genuinely independent Palestinian state as long as Israeli settlements remain.
Veteran Israeli news broadcaster Haim Yavin recently produced a documentary film on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in which he says, “Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerers, occupiers, suppressing another people.” Yavin describes a Palestinian woman who gave birth while waiting at a checkpoint, and interviews an Israeli soldier who says that settlers repeatedly urge him to shoot Palestinian children.Yavin said in an interview, “I don’t see any solution. The settlers are so strong. In a way they run the country, or run the agenda of the country.”
If so, Sharon’s settlement policy has put the fate of all Israelis in the hands of an extremist minority.
By mid-June Palestinian militias had refrained from major attacks on Israel for more than four months, but the lull in violence brought no meaningful response from the Israelis. Roadblocks and other restrictions remained in place, the government continued to expand settlements and demolish Palestinian homes, and only a few hundred of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners were released. Meanwhile, Israel dashed Palestinian hopes of a capital in East Jerusalem by designating for destruction 88 Palestinian homes in that part of the city, undoubtedly to make way for Jewish housing. Many of the homes to be destroyed date from before Israel was established, but Israeli officials said the owners lack building permits, which are routinely denied to Arabs.
Despite the cease-fire, Israel continued to carry out manhunts for wanted Palestinians. On June 6 a squad of “counterterrorism” soldiers entered Jenin and in a gun battle killed an official of Islamic Jihad and an unarmed Palestinian policeman. Islamic Jihad responded with a mortar attack on a Gaza settlement that killed two Palestinians and a Chinese worker. Militants said they would continue to observe the truce, but reserved the right to retaliate when Israel violated it.
Israel’s most visible and inescapable provocation to the Palestinians is the construction of the giant separation wall that is swallowing up Palestinian land on the West Bank. Israelis and Palestinians and international volunteers have been holding weekly demonstrations in Bil’in, a village near Ramallah that lost hundreds of acres of agricultural land to the nearby settlement of Kiryat Sefer and will lose 250 more to make way for the wall. Soldiers frequently beat and arrest the nonviolent participants and on June 3 fired rubber bullets that injured 15 people.
President Mahmoud Abbas’ inability to obtain concessions from Israel or offer hope of future independence have all but assured a strong showing by Hamas when the next parliamentary elections are held. Elections originally were scheduled for July, but Abbas has postponed them until the legislature comes up with a new election law (see Samah Jabr’s article on p. 24of this issue). A more compelling reason may be that he wants to give the Fatah party a chance to select candidates who can better compete with Hamas.
Reason to Worry
Abbas has reason to worry. In the May municipal elections, Hamas captured Rafah and Qalqilya, two cities that have suffered hardest from the occupation, and opinion polls show that it is gaining popularity elsewhere in the occupied territories. Hamas is regarded in the West as no more than a band of terrorists, but The Other Israel, a publication of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, recently described it as “principally a political and social force” that provides “a matchless network of charities and social services.” Hamas has remained free of any taint of corruption, and only a small minority of its members have engaged in violence. Consequently many Palestinians who don’t adhere to Hamas’ religious orthodoxy are nevertheless expected to vote for its candidates.
Sharon’s intransigence in the face of growing support for Hamas puts both sides on a collision course that could end in destroying chances for peace for years to come. Sharon insists that Abbas use his security forces—decimated by Israel—to dismantle Hamas and other militant groups before he will ease conditions for the Palestinians. Abbas would risk civil war if he tried to do so and instead is counting on Hamas to follow the route of Hezbollah in Lebanon and take on a political role. A show of support from Washington for Abbas’ position could help resolve the standoff, but democracy has its limits as far as Bush is concerned. Instead of welcoming the inclusion of Hamas in fair and open elections, the White House will continue to brand them as outlaws. “We don’t recognize that you have changed your behavior just because a group is running candidates as well as suicide bombers,” an administration spokesman said.
At a May 27 White House meeting with Abbas, Bush praised the Palestinian leader as “a man of courage” and assured him that the final boundaries of a Palestinian state would be left up to negotiations by the two sides. Bush had sent a different message to Sharon in April 2004, however, when he endorsed Israel’s permanent retention of the large West Bank settlement blocs. Bush repeated that pledge to Sharon this spring. Sharon refuses to reopen negotiations on permanent boundaries and other basic issues, and Bush has not pressured him to do so.
Instead he and Sharon expect Abbas to maintain law and order in a society whose members have no rights, even the right to earn a livelihood, and who are being given no hope of regaining their freedom. An editorial in the June issue of the Israeli magazine Challenge reminded readers that “In the 38th year of Occupation, the region’s ‘only democracy’ rules as absolute despot over four million people.” There is no way the Palestinians can build a state while they remain under occupation. If they see no hope of ending it under Abbas, they may choose a different kind of leadership.
Sharon would undoubtedly welcome Abbas’ replacement so that once again he can claim that Israel has “no negotiating partner.” But such an outcome would deal a serious blow to the peace process and benefit only hard-line extremists. Hamas officials say they will accept an indefinite cease-fire with Israel in exchange for an independent state on the 1967 boundaries, a shared Jerusalem, and the right of return for refugees. But they warn that, “Wherever there is occupation, there will be resistance.” Since Sharon is dead set against giving up more than a few fragmented chunks of territory to the Palestinians, militants sooner or later will resume their attacks. The Israeli army already has drawn up plans for a renewed intifada.
Since homemade rockets are no match for missiles fired by Apache helicopter gunships or for Caterpillar bulldozers, Palestinians would again be the chief victims. But prolongation of the conflict could eventually harm Israel even more. A country that is condemned by most of the world for its illegal occupation, and whose sons and daughters are trained to humiliate and oppress other human beings, is bound to suffer cracks within its own society. This is especially true of Israel, which calls itself a Jewish state but where the actions of the government contradict the basic principles of Judaism. A truly pro-Israel U.S. Middle East policy would recognize that only justice for the Palestinians can bring lasting security to Israel.
Self-Determination vs. “Terrorism”
Just as Sharon’s refusal to end the occupation threatens Israelis and Palestinians with continued conflict, the U.S. occupation of Iraq is fueling a guerrilla war with no foreseeable end. Sharon and Bush both claim to be fighting “terrorists,” but according to Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, the resistance forces in Iraq and Israel are motivated not by fanatacism but by the desire for self-determination. In an op-ed article titled “Blowing Up an Assumption” that appeared in the May 18 New York Times, he wrote that his study of suicide bombings and similar attacks between 1980 and 2003 shows that nearly all were aimed at forcing foreign armies to withdraw from territory the bombers regard as their homeland. Terrorist acts are not a product of Islamic fundamentalism, Pape wrote, but are aimed at strategic objectives: “...From Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to Chechnya, the sponsors of every campaign—18 organizations in all—are seeking to establish or maintain political self-determination.”
According to Pape, the use of American forces in the Gulf region in 1990 served as a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, just as the occupation of Iraq is fostering the current insurgency. “Spreading democracy across the Persian Gulf is not likely to be a panacea so long as foreign combat troops remain on the Arabian Peninsula,” he concluded.
It is easy to see why the continued U.S. occupation increases support for the resistance rather than ending it. Michael O`Hanlon, head of the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index project, estmates that 50 to 100 civilians per month may be killed by American gunfire. In his Memorial Day speech on May 30 Bush boasted that, “Two terror regimes are gone forever, freedom is on the march, and America is more free.” As he spoke, 18,000 Iraqis were in prison, and more arrests were taking place. Many of the prisoners swept up in raids by U.S. and Iraqi forces eventually are released, but every arrest increases the resentment of the prisoner and his family. Even Iraqi workers complain that they enjoy no more freedom than before. Occupation chief Paul Bremer ordered that all state-owned industry be privatized but refused to lift the ban on labor unions imposed by Saddam Hussain, and it remains in place today.
As insurgents attacked Iraqi security forces and assassinated government officials seemingly at will, the army intensified its house-to-house searches and counterattacks. A report by Anna Badkhen of the San Francisco Chronicle of a raid in Samarra suggests why many Iraqis at least passively support the insurgents. Badkhen witnessed soldiers from a unit that had lost two men to roadside bombings break down a gate with their Bradley fighting vehicle and storm into a house where frightened children were clinging to black-clad women. The men “go from room to room,” she wrote, “sifting through the family’s meager possessions, tossing them on the floor.” When two Kalashnikov rifles are found, the sergeant angrily stomps on the scattered clothing, linens, cooking utensils, and construction tools, then rips open bags of flour and spreads the contents all over the floor. They interrogate the women but, not surprisingly, learn nothing.
The Sunni minority that lost power when Saddam Hussain was ousted are now thought to constitute a major part of the resistance movement. Political leaders have agreed to include 15 Sunnis, in addition to the 2 already named, on the 55-member committee assigned to draft a permanent constitution, but influential Shi’i still insist on excluding from the government Sunnis who were former Ba’ath party members. Iraqi officials angered Sunnis even more when they legalized sectarian militias, including the Kurdish Pesh Merga and the Iranian-trained Shi’i Badr Brigade.
Sunnis have complained that Shi’i militias were raiding their mosques and that Shi’i death squads had assassinated a number of clerics. Adnan Dulaimy, head of the office that manages Sunni mosques, blamed Shi’i forces for the fact that hundreds of Sunni clerics and their followers were being held on trumped-up charges of terrorism. At least two raids took place at the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni organization that was engaged in talks with the government.
The Sunnis were further outraged when Mohsen Abdul Hamid, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was arrested by American soldiers along with three of his sons and several guests. Hamid had been negotiating with the Iraqi government about securing a larger role for Sunnis in the political process. Soldiers broke into his house before dawn on May 30 and, according to Islamic party official Tariq Hashimi, “mishandled the occupants.” After being released several hours later, Hamid said he was blindfolded, taken by helicopter to another location, and interrogated about his party’s politics. The U.S. military claimed the arrests had been a mistake, but Hamid asked on Al-Jazeera television, “How could they arrest a president of a well-known party and a prominent figure in the neighborhood? How can this be a mistake?”
Whether or not it was a mistake, the arrest and manhandling of Hamid was emblematic of the actions and policies that provoke hostility to America throughout the world. Bush’s claim to be bringing freedom to the Middle East contradicts the reality that Palestinians face every day under Israeli occupation. The army’s abuse of Muslim prisoners has aroused protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other Muslim countries. And in Iraq, Iraqis and young Americans are dying in a war spawned by the duplicity and miscalculations of an administration blind to its own errors.
Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the Jewish International Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.
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