Palestine & Lebanon face new crisis
U.S.-Israeli tactics provoke clashes
By
Sara Flounders
Published May 24, 2007 12:47 AM
The urgent need for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle was put in
sharpest terms this May.
Israeli air strikes targeted apartment houses, cut off vital supplies and
carried out a new round of targeted assassinations in Gaza. The Israeli army
moved tanks and soldiers over the Gaza border and carried out eight air strikes
on May 17 and 18.
This week in the West Bank the Israeli army invaded the Jenin refugee camp and
the nearby Kufer Dan village in the northern part of the West Bank and clashed
with members of the local resistance.
On May 21 the Israeli army also invaded Nablus and nearby villages, attacked
Palestinian media outlets in the city and confiscated media equipment. Troops
also attacked the southern West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, searching
homes and kidnapping four civilians.
While Israeli forces attacked Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the
U.S.-backed Lebanese government surrounded and shelled a refugee camp housing
more than 30,000 Palestinians in northern Lebanon, outside Tripoli. More than
60 people are dead. Electricity and water have been cut off to the camp and
health workers are not permitted in to evacuate the injured.
In the face of these attacks it is more important then ever to increase the
support and defense of the Palestinian people and their heroic struggle for
sovereignty, self-determination and the full right of return.
Despite decades of occupation and the most extreme use of imprisonment, torture
and mass displacement, the Israeli state has been unable to defeat the
Palestinian resistance. This present crisis in Gaza is rooted in the
U.S./Israeli policy of using every means—military, political and
economic—to exacerbate factional differences within the Palestinian
movement.
Since the democratic election of a Hamas-led government in Gaza, Israel has
attempted to break the national resistance, starve the entire population and
sow dissention. The Israelis have stepped up bombing and assassinations in
combination with a financial blockade.
By withholding tax revenues and promised funds, they have cut off wages to the
Palestine Authority’s civil servants, teachers, and security forces. More
than one-third of the population in Gaza is dependent on this income for
survival. Israel’s seizure of Palestinian funds has impacted on schools,
hospitals, sanitation, water, electricity and the most basic urban
maintenance.
Media reports of military clashes between Hamas and Fatah forces—the two
major Palestinian organizations—seem to reflect the same U.S./Israeli
divide and rule tactics. Fatah National Security Advisor Mohammed Dahlan
initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian Unity Government and provoked the
latest round of fighting.
The Bush administration was opposed to the formation of a National Unity
Government in Gaza including both groups and opposed to the decision of the
president of the Palestine Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to join the coalition
government with Hamas in order to end the crisis in Gaza.
Israel tried to further envenom the divisions and factional clashes by opening
a bombing campaign in the midst of the fight between the two Palestinian
factions. Hamas and other resistance forces responded by firing Qassem rockets
from Gaza into Israel.
The left secular forces—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP) and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—have
organized joint demonstrations in both northern and southern Gaza demanding
national unity and calling on both Hamas and Fatah to end the clashes and
“point the guns at the occupation.”
In the face of Israeli bombing, President Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail
Haniya of Hamas have agreed to a new ceasefire as of May 22.
War on defenseless in Lebanon
Meanwhile the Lebanese government has opened attacks on the Nahr el-Bared
Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Over 450,000 Palestinian refugees
within Lebanon have lived in the most oppressed and impoverished conditions in
13 refugee camps for almost 60 years. The government claims the attack is in
response to a bank robbery carried out by an isolated group called Fatah El
Islam which lacks popular support and is allegedly linked to Al Qaeda.
This Lebanon army offensive against the most oppressed sector in Lebanese
society comes at a time when the shaky and illegitimate Lebanese government is
trying to again focus attention and blame on Syria rather than the U.S. and
Israel for the continuing crisis in Lebanon.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora’s weak, divided government—an
ally of U.S. imperialism—is in the midst of a political crisis. The
Lebanese Parliament has not met in months. A broad opposition coalition led by
Hezbollah and including secular, progressive and some Christian forces has
called for the resignation of Siniora’s government for nine months.
Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, has been the scene of ongoing massive
political street protests and a giant encampment in front of Parliament that
has lasted for months. This opposition is a united force that cannot be
politically marginalized or ignored.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Communist Party and other groups opposing the
government have continually warned that Washington and reactionary Lebanese
forces backing the weakened government may try to enflame civil war and sharpen
religious, sectarian and national differences in order to break up the
progressive opposition.
The attack took place when Washington was again pushing the U.N. Security
Council to initiate a war crimes tribunal to charge Syria with the
assassination two years ago of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The Bush administration immediately issued messages of support for the Lebanese
government’s attack. The BBC described the clashes as
“Lebanon’s bloodiest internal fighting since the country’s
civil war ended 17 years ago.”
Hezbollah issued a statement on May 22 that said: “We feel that there is
someone out there who wants to drag the army to this confrontation and bloody
struggle ... to serve well-known projects and aims. We are hearing calls for
more escalation and fighting, which will ultimately lead to more chaos and
confrontation in Lebanon.” The statement called for a political solution
to the crisis.
This crisis is still developing. Little is known of the group under attack.
What is known is that U.S. policy in the region has always been to attempt to
divide the resistance and enflame the situation when faced with a crisis.
New understanding of old tactics
The British Empire achieved world domination in the 19th and early 20th century
through a sophisticated and cynical policy of divide and rule in every region
of its empire. The British Colonial Office’s 1917 Balfour Declaration,
which opened Palestine to Zionist settlement, was the expression of this policy
in the Arab world.
The state of Israel was from the beginning an instrument of British and then
U.S. control in Western Asia. In 1948 with the establishment of Israel, British
troops were withdrawing and there were no U.S. troops in the region. At the
time of the June 1967 Arab/Israel War, there were no U.S. troops or bases in
the area. By arming and supplying Israel, U.S. imperialism was able to attack
Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan again and again and set back social and
political gains.
A sea change has now developed in the consciousness of the masses. Despite
decades of occupation, road blocks, walls and hundreds of check points, Israel
was forced to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The Israelis’ many efforts to
break and demoralize the Palestinian resistance have also failed in the
occupied West Bank despite even more extreme walls, ghettos and land
confiscation.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, despite a massive
bombardment of the entire country, faced a powerful, well-organized resistance
and failed to secure a position even one mile inside Lebanon.
This all means that despite an endless supply of the most high-tech weapons in
the Pentagon’s arsenal and an endless line of credit, Israel is no longer
able to carry out the very tasks for which the U.S. has funded and supported it
for decades.
Not only has the Israeli position changed, but U.S. imperialism can no longer
rely on Israel to successfully police the region in U.S. interests. Now
Washington must send its own forces and become the focus of global hatred.
But the Iraq experience has shown that even this drastic step is no sure
solution for Washington. Despite stationing 150,000 troops in Iraq and 100,000
private contractors—that is, mercenaries—tens of thousands of other
forces in the region, a whole series of bases and aircraft carriers, the U.S.
has been unable to secure control of Iraq. Despite doing all in its power to
create and intensify sectarian divisions in the Iraqi population, U.S.
imperialism faces an irresolvable disaster in its attempt to occupy Iraq.
The high-tech weapons of the Pentagon are ever more destructive and deadly. But
they no longer have the ability to create massive panic and chaotic flight.
Their political weapon of division, while still dangerous and combustible, is
also losing its impact.
The resistance in Palestine, in Lebanon and in Iraq deserves the full support
of all progressive forces who struggle for unity and human solidarity.
‘END ALL OCCUPATION!’
The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and United for
Peace and Justice have called for a protest and teach-in on June 10 and a lobby
day on June 11 in Washington, D.C., “to protest the 40th anniversary of
Israel’s illegal military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East
Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.”
As events this week so starkly confirm, the crisis in the region is rooted
in the creation of the state of Israel and the massive expulsion of the
indigenous Palestinian population in 1948. It is essential that actions
in solidarity with Palestine address the whole crime and demand an end to all
occupation.
The state of Israel could not continue its crimes against the Palestinian
people and all the people of the region for one day without massive daily
military and economic aid from the U.S. In light of the current attacks, it is
vital that all who support the Palestinian struggle participate in the
demonstration on June 10 and look for many other ways to build solidarity with
Palestine under attack.
Al-Awda Right to Return Coalition has called for Liberation and Return
Contingents within the June 10 demonstration. These contingents will address
the fundamental issue of the Palestinian right to return to all of its original
lands.
The International Action Center will help organize transportation to
participate in the march in these contingents.
—S.F.
Call 212-633-6646 for transportation information.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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