The Abyss is in the Pyramid II- The Wall, Violence, and Legitimized Genocide
This installment of the Abyss is in the Pyramid will look at the Wall being built in the occupied territories along with several other aspects of the occupation which support the notion that this is not a wall to protect Israel, but rather a tool to destroy Palestine. A key component of all this was the Gaza withdrawal. Sharon made the decision to “withdraw” at a time in which Israel was coming under under unprecedented criticism, the wall being a major point in the international debate over the Israel-Palestine conflict. The deeper issues that this post examines is the question of when, and to whom, violence is seen as legitimate, and the role of violence in the Occupied Territories.
I have tried to provide as much documentation and links to the reports of major Human Rights Organizations whenever possible, so that this thread can be a useful resource.
First of all, let’s confront reality: after the Gaza “withdrawal,” Israel was left in control of the area’s borders, water supply, and roadways. This is not the end of an occupation. This is a provocation. The reoccupation of Gaza followed the kidnapping of three Palestinians, one a well-known doctor, which was responded to with the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. Just enough time was allowed to elapse for the occupied territories to elect a new government totally at odds with the international community and hopelessly associated with 9/11 as far as America was concerned, and for the effect of economic sanctions put in place in response to that election to begin to cause unrest.
Between August and November 2006, according to B’Tselem, Israeli military forces killed over three thousand Palestinians in the Gaza strip, over half of which were unarmed civilians, sixty one of whom were children. If we had any reason to believe that the Israelis did NOT want a Palestinian genocide, we might say that these were accidents in the heat of battle, but at every step of the way, the record shows otherwise. Every aspect of the oppression and destruction of the Palestinian people shows a genocide that is being conducted along “debatable” lines. And while the debate takes place, the Palestinians are wiped from the face of the earth.
At the end of June, Israel bombed Gaza’s power stations, and the consequences for the citizens of Gaza has obviously been disastrous. B’Tselem stated the following in a brief from Nov 16 2006:
“On 28 June, Israel bombed Gaza's only independent power station, which produced 43% of the electricity needed by the residents in Gaza . Since then, most of the population has electricity between 6 and 8 hours each day, with disastrous consequences on water supply, sewage treatment, food storage, hospital functioning and public health.”
Fenced in, with controlled access to water, sparse access to electricity, and Israeli pundits claiming that the Palestinians are letting the land that Israel gifted them with go to waste and ruin, what option is there but the immediate one: violence? And make no mistake: violence is what Israel wants. Because violence will legitimize a counter strike that can kill yet MORE Palestinians. Let us not forget David ben-Gurion’s famous statement in the pre-mandate days, “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second-because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.” While perhaps not as extreme as this, the modern Israeli government has shown itself willing to use settlements to make Israeli domination into a fact on the ground in the occupied territories, which certainly involves exposing its PEOPLE to danger through criminal efforts to gain TERRITORY. If Palestinian violence against Israeli PEOPLE leads to more Israeli TERRITORY, it will be considered a sacrifice well made by Israeli policy-makers.
But, back to the phoney withdrawal. The following is also from the above B’Tselem brief:
“Israel cannot shirk its responsibility for this growing crisis. Even after its Disengagement in 2005, Israel continues to hold decisive control over central elements of Palestinian life in the Gaza Strip:
1. Israel continues to maintain complete control over the air space and territorial waters.
2. Israel continues to control the joint Gaza Strip-West Bank population registry, preventing relocation between the West Bank and Gaza , and family unification.
3. Israel controls all movement in and out of Gaza , with exclusive control over all crossing points between Gaza and Israel , and the ability to shut down the Rafah crossing to Egypt .
4. Israeli ground troops conduct frequent military operations inside Gaza .
5. Israel continues to exercise almost complete control over imports and exports from the Gaza Strip.
6. Israel controls most elements of the taxation system of the Gaza Strip, and since February has withheld tax monies legally owed to the PA, and amounting to half of the to total PA budget.”
So did Israel withdraw from Gaza? Or did they simply destroy a few settlements for American camera crews to drum up a little sympathy that would justify the obscene random violence against innocent civilians that was to follow, which those of us who have paid any attention have seen going on since the summer? Israel’s record on this issue is crystal clear. Every time peace threatens, the Israeli government attacks. This was the motive behind Sharon’s first Lebanon invasion, a fact which was openly discussed in the Israeli media, although it had to be characterized as a “fight against Hitler” for American audiences. More recently, Israel’s conduct during the Al-Asqua Intifada shows that it worked to prevent Fatah and Hamas from reaching any kind of deal, all the while demanding that Arafat “bring Hamas under control.” Let us pause, before we consider the impact of the Wall on the settlements and its role in providing “security” to Israel, to examine the sincerity of Israel’s commitment to peace.
Let us take the case of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Hamas movement. He was declared an enemy combatant by the IDF, a ludicrous proposition which redefines combat in a way inconceivable to me, as Yassin was a paraplegic since childhood, but at any rate, after financing him in his conflict against Fatah in the 80’s and helping him found Hamas during the ‘89 Intifada, Israel turned sour on Yassin, and decided to drop a bomb on him. When you have one of the most technologically sophisticated military forces in the world, and you have to take out a guy in a wheelchair who’s hiding in an area which is geographically smaller than a mosquito you squashed on the map, what other choice do you have, right? If Israel had a problem with the charter of Hamas, written by Yassin in ‘87 which stated that killing Jews was the religious duty of all true Muslims, why were they so eager to register Hamas as an official representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in the occupied territories in ‘89? Why did Israel help to strengthen this fundamentalist group, previously not a popular religious tradition of Palestine, by encouraging the number of mosques in the West Bank to double, and in Gaza to triple (from 200 to 400 and 200 to 600 respectively) between ‘67 and ‘87, at a time in which they were working overtime to thwart secular freedom fighters who had accepted the two-state settlement outlined in UN Resolution 242? The answer is, as always, to provide legitimacy to their genocide.
In addition to the eight innocent civilians that were killed during the Yassin assassination, it seemed to be badly timed from the perspective of an Israel that wanted to be taken seriously as an advocate for peace. Fatah and Hamas had reached an agreement which was to lead to a cease-fire, and the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was blown up by the Israeli Military roughly forty-five minutes before that decision was announced. Needless to say, Hamas did not follow through with the deal. It is difficult to take the Israeli’s claim that they desire peace very seriously after something like that.
Was Yassin a terrorist? He certainly advocated violence, but...
“According to Yassin, the resort to war and violence has one sole objective, which is the removal of oppression and corruption and the establishment of justice, and not the destruction of human beings who engage in them. Those who defend oppression and try to sustain it are equal in the eyes of Islam, regardless of their religion or beliefs. Based in that, when Yassin and the Brotherhood resorted to firearms, they used them against the Israeli authorities who defended oppression (the occupation) and tried to sustain oppression by the force of arms. “
Ziad Abu-Amr, Islamic Fundamentalism in the West Bank and Gaza, p. 79
Whatever else that Yassin might have to say that I take issue with (his policy on hot-pants, frankly, appals me) I mostly agree with the above statement. The Tyrant cannot cry foul when the Enslaved hit below the belt. I would also say that resort to war and violence can have a much nobler meaning than what is portrayed here, but in the context of modern mechanized warfare where the sides are so drastically out of balance in terms of their capacity to wage war and the technology they have to commit acts of violence, the above definition seems entirely suitable.
But can that provide legitimacy to attacks on civilians? By the standards of International Law and major Human Rights organizations, no. But by Israel’s OWN standards, as we will see below, the attacks on civilians are absolutely justified.
On May 23 2003, the major Israeli Newspaper Haaretz observed that between November 2000, through mid-2003, Israel made roughly one hundred and seventy five “liquidation attempts” against Palestinian terrorists AND activists, which translated to about one assassination attempt every five days. There is no judicial process surrounding these affairs, and there is no effort made to spare innocent bystanders, or to bring these supposed enemies of Israel to justice by legal means. Sheikh Yassin is perhaps an extreme case. “Yes,” you might say, “he was confined to a wheelchair. All well and good, but he would certainly be well guarded by the finest fighters Hamas had to offer.” Too true. But...
In Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein refers to one of numerous cases that was well documented by both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, that of the assassination of Thabet Thabet. Thabet was a Fatah activist who had worked closely with the Israelis and the Americans during the Oslo process. When the beginning of the Al-Asqua Intifada signalled the end to Clinton’s Camp David charade, a number of targeted killings were carried out in the occupied territories. The victims were both “radicals” AND “moderates” (if negotiating with a Warlord/ Tyrant can be legitimately seen as moderation, or fighting a Tyrant/ Warlord legitimately seen as radical). Thabet was a practising dentist with a normal, daily routine, who was gunned down by IDF forces on his way to work on November 16 2000. If the issue was some kind of criminal wrongdoing, arresting Thabet would have been a simple matter. He had committed himself to non-violence, but his rank in the Fatah party meant that he was in control of a Tanzim cell, which implied that if he so chose, he COULD plan attacks against Israel. This was the rationale supplied by Prime Minister Ehud Barak. It fails to convince me.
What strategic objectives are fulfilled by killing Palestinians like Thabet? Simply put, perpetual war. The Palestinians who participated in the Oslo process and the Camp David accords, as Thabet had, developed the most important political weapon that anyone can have: personal connections with powerful officials. These people got to know the Israelis and the Americans. With the Intifada underway and Arafat in a frenzy of self-destruction, anyone who might be able to reasonably negotiate, or present the Palestinian case to the world, represented a threat. Particularly in the first stage of the Al-Asqua Intifada, this point was crucial. During the first few weeks, the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed was 20:1, according to B’Tselem. By November 2003, as the Iraq invasion was well underway, B’Tselem estimates that 2,316 Palestinians and 827 Israelis had been killed, a number which omits Palestinians who died of complications from their injuries. Access to proper medical treatment, even if well-trained personal and well-equipped hospitals were available, is severely limited by the fact that Palestinians are not allowed to drive the direct route on Jewish Only roads, and often must cross several checkpoints to reach a hospital only a couple of miles away, and as such, the Palestinian death toll is likely a great deal higher.
The construction of the Wall can only exasturbate this situation. In some cases we’re talking about a BIG prison, like in Gaza, but in other areas of the occupied territories the impact is far more severe. A section of B’Tselem’s 2004 activity report, which came out shortly after the International Court of Justice ruled that the “separation barrier” was illegal according to International Law dealt with an earlier report on the Palestinian village of Sheikh Sa’ad entitled “Facing the Abyss”:
“Sheikh Sa’ad is part of the contiguous urban area of east Jerusalem. In September 2002, the IDF blocked the only road leading out of the village with piles of dirt and concrete blocks. Since then, entry and exit by vehicle has been impossible. Residents without Jerusalem identity cards who want to leave the village must have a permit. However, the Civil Administration denies most requests for permits, forcing residents to remain confined to the village or risk harassment by the border police for entering Jerusalem illegally. ... If the construction of the separation barrier continues as planned, the Barrier will completely block access to the village and turn Sheikh Sa’ad into an enclave, forcing residents to choose between living as prisoners or leaving their homes.”
This is not quite as bad, perhaps, as showing up at a Palestinian home at three in the morning with bulldozers and giving a fifteen minute warning before demolishing the building with whatever possessions, children or paralyzed dependants remain inside, and then charging the family a fee for the bulldozer (classy, eh? more on house demolitions in the future, but see the B’Tselem report “Through no fault of their own,” Amnesty International Report “Under the Rubble” and Human Rights Watch report “Razing Rafah: Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip”) but it has to be considered that the Wall’s construction has closed hundreds of shops in the occupied territories by cutting them off from their customers, been built over land cleared by Israeli bulldozers, and takes convenient twists and turns so that Israel can uproot an estimated 100, 000 olive trees in a land with very little in the way of sustainable agriculture, which would be sold for the benefit of Israeli contractors inside Israel (according to the B’Tselem report “Behind the Barrier” 2003). What is happening in Sheikh Sa’ad is an example of a widespread dissection of property and community. This community is not being fenced in to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel. Such an idea is blatantly preposterous. The land is being confiscated, and the people there are being basically forced out.
The Wall also effectively annexes land occupied by 80% of the existing illegal settlements, “protecting them from Palestinian attacks.” In the B’Tselem report, however, the human rights group concludes that the Wall has been built, not for protection (there are Palestinians and Israelis on both sides of the Wall) but to facilitate the future annexation of this territory into Israel. The other thing that the Wall does is to keep Palestinians, now divided into two (major) starkly opposed factions involved in an ongoing violent conflict with each other, as well as with occupying forces, in close proximity to one another.
After the election of Hamas to the Palestinian Authority, world-wide economic divestment in the occupied territories began. This was in a large part because America is unable to distinguish between Al-Qaeda and Hamas, and was putting immense political pressure on the UN for sanctions to an area whose borders and airspace were completely under the control of a foreign, occupying power, and is totally reliant on foreign aid. Ridiculously, Hamas was subsequently forced into a joint government with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, which not only lost the election, but is lead by a man with about a five percent approval rating last time I checked. The only alternative at that point was starvation.
Joint governments are always difficult. When one party has been in power for a long time, a radical party has won the popular vote, and the tax system, population registry and general funds are in the control of an occupying power who supports the unpopular side in the conflict, things become a little more severe. Add lack of food, lack of clean drinking water, lack of proper medical supplies, lack of wages for government officials, and the occasional Israeli bombardment into the equation, and it seems absurd to suggest, as Gil Troy does in the January 8 2007 episode of Democracy Now! that the conflict has been perpetuated because the Palestinians have:
“...a toxic political culture, where right now we’ve seen five hundred Palestinians killing each other in an internecine civil war.”
The phrase “toxic political culture” seems very appropriate. The point, however, is that this political culture has been poisoned by Israel, with intent, since 1967. To suggest otherwise, or to suggest that circumstances have arranged themselves in this way purely by accident, is laughable at best, and slappable, if you are within my reach. To Wall these two groups in together, along with the citizens of the occupied territories, is to condemn everyone within that enclosure to death. It is a de facto Concentration Camp, with the crucial difference that there is no one coming to save the day, because if anybody tried, the United States and Israel would unite to destroy them. Furthermore, we would be likely to see more popular support for such a war in America than any of the wars it has embarked upon for decades. Going to war with popular support is a lost art in the west, but in both Israel and Palestine we see that the population supports the conflict.
The notion of popular support as providing legitimacy for attacks on civilians has been put forward, strangely enough, by Israel, as justification for its policy of using housing demolitions as a way of punishing “terrorists” (i.e. people who are accused of terrorism by the IDF, who will never stand trial, have evidence presented against them, or even necessarily know about it at the time), for dropping bombs on densely populated urban areas, and for air strikes on small villages. Popularity ratings for the 1982 Lebanon invasion, “Operation Defensive Shield” which featured the Jenin massacre, and the more recent Lebanese invasion/ Gaza reoccupation all coasted around 80% in Israel. This is important, because it clarifies something that is very significant to this debate: By Israel’s own standards, although not be the standards of International Law or major Human Rights organizations, the attacks on Israel are legitimate, including the targeting of civilians.
Obviously, I think highly of the Israeli human rights movement (I do quote them an awful lot). But suggesting that they represent the majority of Israeli opinion is demonstrably false. Rather than take my word for it, if anyone cares to dispute this, look at the statistics on popular Israeli support of the recent Lebanon invasion. This was not a country torn, or a country divided on the issue of war on a civilian population.
But what about those who give up their own lives, these suicide bombers, in their crazed, assault, fuelled as it surely is by fanaticism and madness?
“THERE IS ALWAYS ONE ALTERNATIVE TO SLAVERY- WE CAN DIE FIGHTING.”
-Jack Parsons (irony- not lost on me)
In the occupied territories, there really are no other alternatives. On page 218 of Beyond Chutzpah, Norman Finkelstein refers to a 1991 Amnesty International report “The Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories” on an Israeli High Court Ruling which states that Israel’s policy:
“criminlizes and makes punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment almost every form of political expression in the Occupied Territories, including non-violent forms of political activity, ... raising the Palestinian flag, wearing it’s colors, or making the ‘V’ sign.”
We will discuss Palestinian prisons in the future. But, if you’re curious, check out B’Tselem, “Ill treatment, or torture?,” “Standard Routine,” with some helpful and illustrative photographs here. There is also as the Human Rights Watch report “Israel’s Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories” and Amnesty International’s “Broken Lives-A year of Intifada.” (warning: that last one is a big .pdf) If you’re going to be beaten and tortured in prison for resistence, I don’t know about this personally, but I think you’d want to take some of the fuckers down with you.
I am not an expert in psychology. But if someone knows that torture, starvation, degredation and abuse is to be their fate, whether they deserve it or not, they probably feel better about it if they’ve done something to deserve it, preferably something violent. Israel created these conditions. Israel wants land, and to legitimize taking that land, first there must be violence. Israel wants violence.
The A is in the P, pre., The A is in the P I