This three-article package
was published in War Times/Tiempo de
Guerras No. 2, April 2002. It is available for downloading as a two-sided
flyer in PDF format at:
http://www.war-times.org/pdf/palestine020405.pdf
War on Terrorism or Illegal
Occupation?
Israelis Mount Offensive
By
Max Elbaum and Hany Khalil
More
than 1,600 people-at least 1,287 Palestinians and 351 Israelis-have been killed
in the 18 months since the second intifada (uprising) began against Israel's
occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza.
The
death toll is mounting daily as Israel's powerful military has launched a major
new offensive. Justifying the siege, Israeli Internal Security Minister Uzi
Landau declared: "We're not facing human beings, but rather beasts."
Even
before this latest escalation, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called for an
end to Palestinian suicide bombings, and condemned Israel for conducting
"an all-out conventional war on Palestinian civilians."
Annan
told Israel's leaders: "You must end the illegal occupation. More
urgently, you must stop the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the
unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions and the daily humiliation of
ordinary Palestinians."
U.S.
BACKS OCCUPATION
The
current carnage stems directly from Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian
land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people. Washington's support of
Israel's daily violation of Palestinian rights and international law is a
central cause of the intense anger at U.S. foreign policy that exists
throughout the Middle East and South Asia. This anger is the soil in which
terrorism grows.
The
Bush administration has given the green light to Israel's escalation as part of
his global "war on terrorism" and the U.S. bid to dominate the Middle
East. The U.S. finances the occupation of Palestine by Israel's ultra-modern
military. Every year for the past 25 years, the U.S. government has provided
Israel with approximately $2 billion in military aid and more than $3 billion in
economic assistance, loan guarantees and indirect funding. (See box.)
Israel
uses U.S. aid to destroy the Palestinian economy and its social infrastructure,
making even ordinary life miserable. Palestinian unemployment has soared to 70
percent.
Most
of the recent killing and destruction has taken place in the West Bank and
Gaza, territories conquered (along with East Jerusalem) by Israel in the 1967
war. U.N. Resolution 242-which the U.S. voted for-holds that continued
occupation of these territories is illegal. That Resolution proclaims the
"inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war."
But
Israel refuses to end its occupation. Instead, since 1967, it has built more
than 150 settlements, populated by almost 400,000 Jews, on Palestinian land.
These settlements are strategically located military outposts connected by
four-lane highways that slice up the West Bank.
This
pattern of Palestinian dispossession goes back to Israel's founding and even
before. (See sidebar, "A People Dispossessed.") During the first
Israeli-Arab war in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were driven or frightened from
their centuries-old homes and lands. Though U.N. Resolution 194, passed in
1948, orders that these refugees be allowed to return to their homes, Israel
has refused to comply for the last 53 years. Despite voting for this
Resolution, the U.S. provides the money and political muscle that allows
Israel's refusal to stand.
Is
there a way to stop the deadly cycle of Israeli invasion and Palestinian
suicide bombing? Marwan Barghouti, a top official in Yasser Arafat's Fatah
movement, wrote in the Washington Post on January 16, 2002:
"For
six years I languished as a political prisoner in an Israeli jail, where I was
tortured, where I hung blindfolded as an Israeli beat my genitals with a stick.
But since 1994, when I believed Israel was serious about ending its occupation,
I have been a tireless advocate of peace...I still seek peaceful coexistence
between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine based on
full withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and a just
resolution to the plight of Palestinian refugees pursuant to U.N. resolutions.
I do not seek to destroy Israel but only to end its occupation of my
country."
--
A People Dispossessed
1900 The population of
historical Palestine-what is now Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem
-is 550,000 Palestinian Arabs and 50,000 Jews.
1946 Due mainly to settlers from
Europe, site of the Holocaust, the Jewish population grows more than tenfold to
608,000. The Palestinian population stands at 1,269,000. Jews own only six to
eight percent of the country's land.
1948 Israel declares
independence and conquers 78 percent of Palestine in a victorious war against
its neighbors. Driving 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and confiscating
most of their land reduce the Palestinian population within Israel's borders to
156,000.
The
Jewish population expands to 716,700. An additional 750,000 Palestinians live
in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, while many uprooted Palestinian
refugees flee to neighboring Arab countries.
1967 Israel initiates war
against its neighbors and occupies the remaining 22 percent of Palestine,
bringing another 1.1 million Palestinians directly under Israeli military rule.
2002 Israel's Jewish population
is approximately 5.2 million. Approximately 1.3 million non-Jews,
overwhelmingly Palestinians, also live within Israel's borders and face
legalized discrimination. Another two million Palestinians live in the territories
conquered by Israel in the 1967 war-the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. In
1967 less than 10,000 Jews lived in these occupied territories, but now close
to 400,000 Jews have seized close to 10 percent of the land.
-ME/HK
Sources: "Palestine's
Population During the Ottoman and the British Mandate Periods," by Justin
McCarthy and Norman G. Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Palestine
Conflict" 2001, pp.186-187
--
U.S. Funds Israeli
Occupation
Israel
is the largest recipient of U.S. financial aid in the world, receiving a
staggering $14 million per day for the last 25 years.
Direct U.S. aid to Israel routinely has amounted to around $3 billion each year
(usually 60 percent military and 40 percent economic) for the last quarter
century. Israel usually gets another two to three billion dollars in indirect
U.S. aid, such as loan guarantees and special grants. These funds have
subsidized Israel's huge military and its use of the most modern military
equipment against the Palestinians and other Arabs.
Between
1949 and 2001 the U.S. gave Israel more than $94 billion, according to the
American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. This is more than the U.S. gave to the
countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean combined.
These countries have a total population of over one billion mostly poor people.
Israel has only six million people and one of the highest per capita incomes in
the world.
-ME/HK
Sources:
www.palestinemonitor.org and www.sustaincampaign.org.