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Feature

prising Is
of 21-year occupatic

By MAUREEN EASON

n the morning of
June 5, 1967, fly-
ing low to escape
Arab, American,
British, and Soviet
radar screens, the
Israeli air force
launched a_pre-
emptive strike

_ against Egypt. At the end of the “Six-Day

War,” as it would later be called, Israel

| occupied a piece of Egypt (Gaza and Sinai),
_ a plece of Syria (the Golan Heights), and a
_ piece of Jordan (the West Bank).

Sinai was later given back in a U.S.-
brokered agreement, and Golan — effect-

_ ively annexed — remains all but forgotten,
_ except by its residents and the Syrian
_ government. But this week, as 21 years of

military occupation coincide with the six-
month anniversary of the Palestinian upris-
ing In Gaza and the West Bank, it is useful
to examine what sparked “‘intifadeh” in an
attempt to determine how long it might last.

For much of Gaza and the West Bank

Palestinian population, the 1967 war was

yet another chapter in continuing disposses-
sion; they became refugees during the estab-
lishment of an Israeli state in Palestine.
After the 1967 war, land expropriation,
deportation and beatings became routine

' fare in the occupied territories.

Ina special issue entitled ““The Uprising,”

__ Middle East Report outlined a few statistics:

© Between 1967 and 1982, Israel’s mil-

_ itary government demolished 1,338 Palesti-

nian homes on the West Bank and detained
more than 300,000 persons without trial.

© The number of Palestinian protests in
the territories averaged 500 per year during
1977-1982. Since 1982, protests have aver-

aged between 3,000 and 4,000 a year.

It is fair to say that Israel’s maximalist
strategy fed the Palestinian sense of despair
and frustration. There would be no negotia-
tion with the PLO, no Palestinian state, no
self-determination. No hope.

In addition, the Arab states, bogged
down in internal divisions, offered their
own shameful record in dealing with Pales-
tunlans. The three-year siege of Beirut refu-
gee Camps by the Lebanese AMAL militia is
only one recent example.

The Dec, 8 killing of four Palestinians in
a “traffic accident” is widely attributed to
have Caused the present insurrection. But
American journalist Ellen Cantarow said
that according to Dr. Israel Shahak, the
head of the Israeli League for Civil and
Human rights, the seeds of Intifada were
sown by “a sharp increase last summer in
anti-Arab vigilantism by Jewish extremists.
In cities within Israel — not in the occupied
territories — a number of pogroms (the

_ invasion of Arab apartments, the smashing

of furniture, the beating of inhabitants)
made Hebrew press headlines.”

Cantarow said that talk of the mass
“transfer” (a euphemism for expulsion) of
whole Palestinian populations was advo-
cated, and not just by the ultra-reactionary
Kach party leader Rabbi Meir Kahane,
“but by ex-General Rehavam Zeevi, a good

_ friend of Defence Minister Yitzhak Rabin

and Deputy Minister of Defence Dekkel.
Transfer isn’t discussed as a matter of secur-

_ ity, moreover, but as one of Zionist princi-
ple.”

With the U.S. backing Israeli occu-
pation-expansionism to the tune of $3-4 bil-
lion annually and continuing to block
progress towards a peaceful settlement, the
Palestinians fought back. As Dr. Chris
Giannou, the Canadian doctor who

_ worked for years in the Shatila refugee

camp, said recently, “They would rather die
on their feet than live on their knees.”

By most accounts, the whole population
has been mobilized — women, children,
students, the labour movement and shop
and business owners. The revolt has been
imaginative; by using sling shots and
attempting to sail “a ship of return,” Pales-
tinians have lifted a page from Zionist
history — and touched a nerve. Bf

Israel’s response — bombing the ship in
Cyprus, sending a hit squad to Tunisia,
invading Lebanon — underline a few hys-
terical measures taken to maintain “law and
order.” Meanwhile, to counteract the Israeli
brutality shown on television screens
around the world, the godfather of US.
Middle East policy, Henry Kissinger,
advised an American Jewish audience:
“The insurrection must be quelled imme-
diately, and the first step must be to throw
out television, a la South Africa.” —

With that step taken, Israel is now
launching a $5 million U.S. advertising

campaign entitled “Israel: See For Your-

self,” to counter a tarnished image and a
steep decline in tourism. What people will
see is not yet clear, but what they won’t see is
the latest prison camp, Ketziot, nicknamed
Ansar II, after the notorious Israeli-
operated prison in Lebanon. Located near
the Egyptian border in the Negev Desert,
Ketziot holds 4,000 persons and is report-
edly scorching hot in daytime and freezing
at night.

the legac

According to Guardian correspondent,
Anita Vitullo, “Prisoners must work in the
hot sun 15 hours a day at hard labour, with
only one bucket of water for every 25 peo-
ple. For refusing a work order detainees are
handcuffed and kept in the sun all day.”
Lawyers describe it as ‘“‘a kind of dumping
ground for political prisoners who are iden-
tified not by name but by a military-issued
number.” Of the 25 detainees they weré
allowed to see, “‘all said they did not know
why they were detained, had been asked no
questions since their arrest, had no idea
when they would be released, had not seen a
lawyer, a family member, or even been
given a change of clothes.”

The treatment meted out to Palestinian
civilians over the past six months has
enraged much of the world. Jane Hunter,
editor of the monthly, Israeli Foreign
Affairs said: “In February at the UN
Human Rights commission in Geneva, only
the U.S. Norway, West Germany and Bri-
tain voted against a resolution accusing
Israel of “genocide against the Palestinian
people.” She said that other good friends,
such as Costa Rica, Belgium, France and
Portugal abstained in the 304 vote.

Even Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper’s
Magazine, (not heretofore considered an
anti-Israeli publication) expressed his dis-
gust at Israeli policy. In the June, 1988 issue,
Lapham asked: “... . does the terrible suffer-
ing visited upon the Jewish people by Nazi
Germany invest them with the rights of the

Scenes from the uprising in the West

Bank (I); Israeli soldiers check Palestini-

an’s identity papers.

martyred and grant them with a kind of
moral droit du seigneur? If so, how long
does the licence last? Indefinitely? For forty
years? Until the Holocaust has become a
parable and all the Palestinians have been
deported or lost at sea?”

One would think that such talk in the
mainstream U.S. media establishment must
might shake up the system a wee bit and
have congressmen and senators quest-
ion — perhaps for the first time —
whether the Israeli state is offering too
much bang for the buck. Ifso, how long can
the U.S. politically and financially bankroll
an Israel whose policies are increasingly fas-
cistic?

Lapham gives a clue: “...1 think I would
be wary of American promises ... Fora few
years we pretend that our ally is demo-
cracy’s best friend in one or another of the
poorer latitudes, and for however long.
American public opinion (notoriously
fickle) remains convinced of its moral
beauty, we send F-16s and messages of
humanitarian concern. But then something
goes wrong with the slogans or the band
music. For one reason or another we decide
we can’t afford to sponsor any more
parades, and we leave by helicopter from
the roof of the embassy. By aligning Israel
with the American dream of cut-rate
empire, Shamir casts his lot with Diem,
Somoza, Thieu, Marcos, Noriega, and the
Shah of Shahs.”

Faced with an intransigent and increas-
ingly unsupportable Israel, the U.S. has
tried to find a negotiated way out of the
impasse, one that would end the uprising
without altering the status quo in the occu-
pied territories and without addressing the
issue of a Palestinian state.

But if the history of the last 40 years
shows anything, it is that the Palestinian
flame has burned more brightly in the face
of occupation and repression. The end to
the conflict in the Middle East still depends
on the establishment of an independent
Palestinian state and the hail of rocks that
has continued unabated for six months has
shown that it is the whole Palestinian popu-
lation which is united behind that demand.

The uprising continues.

Maureen Eason is a Vancouver freelance
writer.

Pacific Tribune, June 8, 1988 « 9