Dog endorses tail
Bush backs Sharon's war on Palestine
By Richard Becker
Dec. 18--The much asked question, "Where will the U.S. war
go after Afghanistan?" is already being answered in the cities,
villages and refugee camps of occupied Palestine.
Israeli forces armed and supported by the U.S. have launched
a massive assault, unlike any seen in the West Bank and Gaza
during the past three decades. Using F-16s, helicopter
gunships, naval bombardment and armored units, Israel has
destroyed many of the institutions of the Palestinian Authority
(PA), including its radio and television stations, Central
Statistics Bureau, offices and security installations. Hundreds
of homes have been destroyed by missiles, tank fire and
bulldozers.
The death toll in the offensive of the past three weeks is
at least 70 Palestinians, with several hundred seriously
wounded. In the same period, 44 Israelis have been killed.
Since Sept. 28, 2000, when the new Intifada began, more than
800 Palestinians and 230 Israelis have been killed.
Israeli military forces have reoccupied much of Zone A, the
5 percent of Palestine supposedly under the control of the PA.
The offices of PA President Yasir Arafat have been shelled and
rocketed, and Arafat is reported to be in a bunker in the West
Bank city of Ramallah, surrounded by Israeli tanks.
U.S. vetoes international monitors
Washington's political as well as military support was
underlined by the U.S. veto of a UN Security Council resolution
on Dec. 16. The mildly worded resolution "condemned all
terrorist acts," urged "all concerned to establish a monitoring
mechanism, " and reaffirmed the "essential role" of the PA. The
vote was 12 in favor, two abstaining, with only the U.S
ambassador, John Negroponte, voting against. Among the
imperialists, even Britain abstained, and France voted for the
resolution. But due to UN rules, the U.S. negative vote meant
that the resolution was defeated.
Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, the
regional organization of 22 Arab countries, "expressed his
astonishment and intense concern" that the U.S. vetoed what he
described as "a balanced and objective" proposal. The
Palestinian Authority "strongly condemned" the U.S. veto.
Israeli officials and newspapers, on the other hand, hailed
the U.S. veto. Ranaan Gissin, a spokesperson for Ariel Sharon,
attacked the idea of international monitors as "only
complicating the situation." In other words, the Israelis don't
want anyone with international credentials reporting on what
they are doing to the Palestinians on a daily basis.
The rightist Jerusalem Post was euphoric, not only about the
veto, but about the entire direction of U.S. foreign policy,
including the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. renunciation of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. In a Dec. 17 editorial, the
Post applauded what it called the U.S. decision to "ditch the
evenhandedness that had plagued U.S. policy toward Israel's
fight against terrorism."
Nahum Barnea, a leading commentator in the Israeli Yedioth
Ahronot newspaper, wrote on Dec. 14: "Israel has not had such
support for military action from any president of the United
States, except perhaps from President Reagan in the early days
of the Lebanon war." While Barnea's statement is a bit overly
exuberant--after all, Nixon threatened to use nuclear weapons
in defense of Israel in the 1973 war--it reflects the clear
understanding that Washington has given the green light to
Israeli military operations against the Palestinian
population.
Powell peace initiative brings intensified war
Since Secretary of State Colin Powell announced his new
"peace initiative" on Nov. 19, the death toll has risen
sharply.
Twenty-six of the Israelis killed died in suicide bombing
attacks in early December in Jerusalem and Haifa. These
casualties have been the near-exclusive focus of the U.S.
capitalist media, which relentlessly conveys the view that
Israeli lives are far more valuable than those of
Palestinians.
In their single-minded devotion to mobilizing public opinion
in favor of the expanding "war against terrorism," the
mainstream media has deliberately ignored the role played by
Israel's government, headed by Ariel Sharon, in escalating the
conflict.
Secretary Powell's Nov. 19 speech urged a resumption of
negotiations, while including the usual calls for the
Palestinians to desist from the struggle and the Israelis to
"show restraint."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon showed his "restraint"
three days later, when the Israeli army assassinated Mahmoud
Abu Hanoud, one of the top leaders of the Hamas-Islamic
Resistance Movement. Abu Hanoud, along with two associates, was
killed when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at his
car.
The next day, an Israeli army booby-trap was exploded in the
Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, killing five young boys from
the same family.
Both of these attacks took place inside Zone A. Since
September, Israeli army units have occupied large parts of this
zone.
The killing of Abu Hanoud followed scores of other political
assassinations by the Israeli military and intelligence
services over the past 15 months. In August, U.S.-supplied
helicopters and missiles were used by the IDF to assassinate
Abu Ali Mustafa, the General Secretary of the largest
Palestinian leftist party, the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine. The following month, the PFLP retaliated by
shooting a right-wing fanatic in the Israeli cabinet.
Based on historical experience, the Sharon government knew
beyond the slightest doubt that Hamas would retaliate for the
assassination of one of their top leaders. The last time such a
high-ranking Hamas military leader was killed--Yahya Ayyash in
1996--his death triggered a series of car bombings.
The Hamas organization claimed responsibility for both the
1996 and 2001 bombings.
Why would Sharon order the assassination of Abu Hanoud
immediately following Powell's call for a resumption of
talks?
That question has gone virtually unasked in the U.S. media,
perhaps because the answer is all too obvious: What Sharon
wanted was for blood to flow, and not just Palestinian blood on
this occasion, but Israeli blood as well.
The timing of Abu Hanoud's assassination proved that Sharon
wanted to abort the new round of negotiations, even if it took
place under the onerous and unacceptable conditions he has
insisted upon.
Sharon moves to destroy PA
Sharon accompanied his unprecedented military attack with a
political offensive, declaring that the PA is "itself a
terrorist organization" and that PA President Arafat is
"irrelevant."
Utilizing the high-tech weaponry provided free-of-charge by
the Pentagon, the Israeli military has inflicted immense damage
on Palestinian civilian and security institutions.
At the same time, both the U.S. and Israel demanded that the
PA, which condemned the Jerusalem and Haifa bombings, crack
down on Hamas and other organizations carrying out armed
attacks.
Arafat has responded to these demands by arresting members
of Islamic and left organizations and shutting down their
offices, in an attempt to persuade the U.S to restart
negotiations. But Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the leftist Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine's armed wing have issued
statements refusing to stop the armed struggle against
occupation.
Clearly, the U.S. and Israeli authorities are playing a
public relations game in regard to the PA, calling on the
Palestinian police to take strong action while simultaneously
bombing their offices and killing their officers.
Also bombed in recent days was the Palestinian civilian
airport in Gaza and the buildings and tower of the Voice of
Palestine radio and television.
U.S. officials, including Bush, Powell and Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, made it abundantly clear that the U.S.
was in full support. Rumsfeld repeatedly stated to the media
that the U.S. was "not asking the Israelis to show
restraint."
The turn in U.S. policy was further emphasized by the State
Department's announcement that it would begin offering rewards
for information on Palestinians accused of killing American
citizens in Israel. Many of these U.S. citizens are among the
most rabidly racist settlers occupying the West Bank and Gaza.
Settlers from the U.S. frequently lead the armed, Klan-like
bands that roam the occupied territories with impunity, killing
and terrorizing Palestinian civilians. Now they have come under
State Department protection.
That the Sharon government is seeking to delegitimize the PA
and the Palestinian cause as a whole was further demonstrated
by an incident in Jerusalem on Dec. 16. Sari Nusseibeh, the
ranking PA official in Jerusalem and perhaps the most moderate
of the PA leaders, as usual invited foreign diplomats to a
reception marking Eid al-Fitr at the end of the Muslim holy
month of Ramadan.
The event was scheduled for the Imperial Hotel in Arab East
Jerusalem. But it never took place. Instead, Israel police
arrested Nusseibeh and other Palestinian officials and held
them for several hours.
In a ludicrous and extremely insulting statement, Israeli
Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said: "There's a whole
series of activities which are in truth terror activities, and
part of these activities are receptions."
Reprinted from the Dec. 27, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
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