No subject

was predicated on Israel's security concerns rather than Palestinian
national aspirations. The Palestinians maintain that they themselves made
the most generous concession by recognizing Israel's right to exist in 78
percent of historical Palestine. So why should they have to haggle for the
remaining 22 percent -- i.e. the West Bank and Gaza? 

In their view, Barak offered only 75 percent of the West Bank, not 95
percent as was widely reported, because East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley
and two large settlement blocs would have remained under Israeli control.
The Palestinian "state," meanwhile, was broken up into three separate West
Bank cantons and a distant Gaza Strip, all encircled by Israeli troops,
without a common border with Jordan or Egypt and totally dependent on
Israel for power, water and jobs. 

Although Palestinian demands for East Jerusalem as their capital and a
right of return for Palestinian refugees were major sticking points, every
Palestinian official I spoke to said they would have been negotiable if
Barak had offered a Palestinian state that was both contiguous and viable. 

But no Palestinian leader could accept what they call "bantustans" without
a revolt by militants in his own ranks, of which there are plenty. 

The intifada began two months after the failed Camp David summit. Israel
claims the uprising was preplanned. The Palestinians say it was a
spontaneous eruption of rage over a controversial visit by Ariel Sharon,
then opposition leader, to the Temple Mount, a Jewish holy site that lies
beneath the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in what Arabs call the
Noble Sanctuary, Islam's third-holiest shrine. 

Whichever is correct, both sides now regard themselves as victims of a
"siege." Israel says it is besieged by terrorists, the Palestinians say
they are besieged by the Israeli army. However, the notion that the
world's fourth-strongest military power is somehow "under siege" by the
people it is occupying seems patently absurd. 

Without question, Israel suffers periodic and devastating terrorist
attacks. Israeli settlements certainly are besieged, but life in Israel
proper is far less affected by the war than the Palestinian territories 

Stone-throwing Palestinian children are shot by well-armed Israeli
soldiers. Palestinian militants are systematically assassinated in
"targeted killings" that have also claimed the lives of 13 bystanders.
Palestinian houses, orchards and olive groves are demolished by Israeli
bulldozers. And Palestinian cities are surrounded by military checkpoints
that prevent workers from reaching their jobs, children from going to
school and sometimes even the sick or pregnant from reaching a hospital. 

Besides a detailed casualty count of combatants and civilians killed by
weapons of war, the Israeli peace group B'Tselem maintains a dreary
catalog of childbirths and deaths caused by delays at checkpoints: 

"Ala Hamdam Ahmad, age 10, died when her appendix burst after IDF soldiers
prevented her father from taking her to hospital in Nablus." 

"Al-Obeisi, infant girl from Beit Dajan, died at birth after the IDF
prohibited her mother from leaving the village to go to the hospital." 

"Abd' a-Rahman Mahmoud Abu-Jama, age 79, suffered chest pains while
delayed for an hour at the Tulkarm checkpoint and died en route to
hospital." 

"Naim Attallah Ahmad Huas, age 27, a kidney patient, died after IDF
soldiers prevented her from keeping a dialysis appointment." 

The list goes on and on. 

This year alone, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza has filed
more than 500 complaints of property damage or wrongful death with
Israel's ministry of defense. The response to all was a two-line form
letter saying: "The State of Israel is not responsible because there is a
state of war." 

Israeli army spokesmen maintain that checkpoints and other security
measures are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens. 

They concede that jittery soldiers sometimes have no way of knowing if a
car speeding toward them contains a suicide bomber or a frantic husband
taking his pregnant wife to the hospital, which is how accidental
shootings occur. And they express regret for the deaths of sick or elderly
people held up at the checkpoints. 

Personally, I found the behavior of soldiers at the checkpoints to be
totally arbitrary. Some read magazines and allowed our car to speed
through without so much as looking up. Others stopped every vehicle,
creating huge traffic jams up to a mile long. Some soldiers were polite
and friendly to the Palestinians. Others cursed, kicked or pushed them
around. 

More than 250 Israeli officers have become so sickened at being an
occupation army that they signed a petition refusing to serve in the
territories. They don't mind defending their country, they say, but they
do mind "occupying, deporting, destroying, blockading, killing and
starving an entire people." 

The refuseniks have a website listing some of their reasons. 

One rebelled against having to participate in nighttime raids on the homes
of suspected "terrorists" when he learned that they were simply petty
criminals whom the Shin Bet security service wanted to blackmail into
becoming collaborators. Another tells a poignant story of how a fellow
soldier felt so guilty about shooting a pregnant Palestinian woman he
eventually killed himself. 

The soldiers' action has revitalized a peace movement that was thrown into
disarray by Palestinian suicide bombings. Israelis protesting the
occupation did not want to be seen as siding with terrorists, especially
after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. 

But anti-occupation does not mean pro-terrorist. The peace groups are
beginning to speak out again and their rallies, which once attracted only
a few hundred leftists, now draw huge crowds from all over the political
spectrum. Two successive Saturdays in downtown Tel Aviv saw turnouts of
more than 15,000. 

Spokesmen for Gush Shalom, Peace Now, the Committee Against Home
Demolitions and myriad other peace groups are gratified to see that
Israeli newspapers are beginning to take a more critical look at the
occupation and Sharon's handling of the intifada. 

Editorials, not only in left-wing newspapers but also the right, point out
that the prime minister who promised them security has made them more
insecure than any other leader in Israel's history. And many blame the
occupation. 

Lev Grinberg, a sociology professor at Ben Gurion University, calls the
growing anti-occupation movement "the voice of conscience." In the daily
Ma'ariv he wrote: 

"You cannot tell the voice of conscience that 'we' want peace but 'they'
don't because the daily abuse of the Palestinians and the provocative
exterminations are clear for all to see. You cannot distract the voice of
conscience by claiming that 'Barak offered everything' because that does
not justify the war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces. And
you cannot recruit soldiers with the militaristic argument that 'we must
win this war' because the occupation is not a war forced on us and woe to
us if we ever do win and thus succeed in continuing the occupation." 

The peace camp is still a relatively small segment of Israeli society. But
a much larger segment is calling for unilateral withdrawal from the
occupied territories, not necessarily because the occupation is wrong but
because it would give Israel more easily defensible borders. 

The Council for Peace and Security, a group of 1,000 reserve generals,
colonels and security officers from Shin Bet and Mossad, the Israeli
equivalent of the FBI and CIA, recently launched a public -campaign for
unilateral withdrawal. It calls for the immediate dismantling of some
settlements and recognition of a Palestinian state, without a cease-fire
or even Palestinian agreement, arguing that this would "force the
Palestinian leadership to change its behavior." 

But unilateral withdrawal is anathema to Sharon, who says he will never
"reward terrorism" and demands a week of complete calm before negotiations
can begin. Israel's prime minister appears focused on a military solution
and has announced his intention to seize yet more Palestinian land to
create "security buffers" against terrorism. 

Palestinian Cabinet member Nabil Shaath counters that such buffer zones
would be another step toward apartheid. 

"If separation is intended to stop suicide missions it has failed," said
Shaath. "If it's intended to stop trade and communication between the two
peoples, it has succeeded to the misery of both." 

A Saudi peace plan floated by Crown Prince Abdullah holds out some hope of
a breakthrough but risks being eclipsed by a sharp upsurge in violence. 

The escalation began with Israeli forces invading two West Bank refugee
camps in a hunt for "militants" that left 39 dead, including several
children and elderly civilians. A Palestinians suicide bomber then blew up
nine Israelis in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem and a
sniper killed seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians at a West Bank
checkpoint. 

On Monday, Sharon announced that his Security Cabinet had approved a plan
to "apply constant military pressure on the Palestinian Authority and
Palestinian terror organizations." The announcement was followed by air
raids on Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah and more invasions of
Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza. 

The Israeli peace group Gush Shalom noted that every time someone suggests
giving up land for peace, Sharon stages "a major bloody provocation which
precipitates an equally bloody retribution from the Palestinian side,
which brings about a new cycle of revenge upon revenge until the peace
initiative is drowned in blood and forgotten." 

The Saudi plan offers Israel peace with the entire Arab world in return
for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. President
Bush and other Western leaders have welcomed it, but Israeli government
officials have expressed reservations and Sharon himself has always
opposed a total pullout. Already one right-wing party in his coalition has
threatened to quit his government if Sharon changes his mind. 

As a general and a politician, Sharon has spent much of his life
championing Jewish settlements as a means of furthering the borders of
Greater Israel. However, his popularity is sinking and public opinion
polls suggest that many of his constituents would settle for a Lesser
Israel if it brought them peace with the Arabs. 

Sharon has publicly announced his intention to crush all Palestinian
resistance before he will even talk peace. But a growing segment of the
Israeli public believes that if victory means continued occupation, it
will also mean continued terrorism. 
	 
	Holger Jensen is international editor. E-mail: hjens at aol.com. 
	March 7, 2002 
	Copyright 2002, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved. 
www.rockymountainnews.com/cr/cda/article_print/1,1250,DRMN_86_1010752,00.html 

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