Red Cross calls settlements war crime
U.S.-Israeli war against Palestinians escalates
By Richard
Becker
Advanced U.S. F-16 fighter-bombers flown by Israeli pilots
bombed five Palestinian cities on May 18. At least 16
Palestinians were killed and more than 140 wounded in the air
raids on Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, Jenin and Tulkarem.
The attacks were the first by fixed-wing warplanes since
Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the June 1967
war.
"This is war, my friends, this is war," the Israeli
minister of communications told the media following the
bombings.
The May 18 raids marked the most dramatic escalation of
the U.S.-Israeli war against the Palestinians in a week of
very dramatic escalations. Aside from its nuclear, chemical
and biological arsenal, Israel is now employing much of its
heaviest and most advanced weaponry--almost all of which is
supplied by its Godfather, the Pentagon--against the
Palestinians.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, have no tanks,
planes, warships, anti-aircraft systems or even a regular
army. In the eight-month-long Intifada, or Uprising, more
than 450 Palestinians have been killed and over 14,000
seriously injured. In the same period, 87 Israelis have been
killed and several hundred wounded.
Nearly all the death and destruction has taken place
inside the 22 percent of historic Palestine that comprises
the West Bank and Gaza, conquered by Israel 34 years ago. Yet
the corporate media here constantly projects an image that is
the polar opposite of reality, depicting the Palestinians as
the aggressors and the Israelis as the victims.
Why? Because the glorious "free press" of the United
States is the propaganda mouthpiece of Corporate America,
especially when it's wartime. And the latest incidents prove
that it is a U.S.-Israeli war.
The terms of the U.S. supplying F-16s, among the most
advanced fighting aircraft in existence, include the
provision that Israel can use them only for "defensive"
purposes. This has always been a fiction, of course, but it
is one that is all-too-clearly exposed by the use of weapons
of mass destruction on defenseless civilian cities.
Therefore, even from the very narrow viewpoint of
bourgeois legality, the U.S. should now withdraw all the
advanced aircraft it has supplied to Israel. Instead, Vice
President Richard Cheney has only called for Israel not to do
it again.
Although the U.S. mass media has largely hidden it from
the population here, the world is outraged by the heavy
bombing. A comparable situation would be if the Pentagon used
F-16s against urban rebellions in Los Angeles or
Cincinnati.
Even much of the Israeli press has condemned the bombings,
but on the basis that it is damaging Israel's "democratic
image"--an image nourished by the vast U.S. propaganda
machine but repudiated by most of the world.
That "democratic image" took another stunning blow when on
May 17, Rene Kosirnik, head of the International Red Cross in
Israel and Palestine, called Israeli settlements "a war
crime."
"The installation of a population of the occupying power
in occupied territory is considered an illegal move," said
Kosirnik. "It is a grave breach of law. In principle it is a
war crime."
This startling development went virtually unreported in
the U.S.
Week of sharp escalation
On May 14, the Israeli army assassinated five members of
the Palestine Authority's National Security Force at a small
checkpoint in the town of Beitunia, in a 2 a.m. surprise
attack on the post. The NSF, all sides agree, has not been
involved in any combat operations. The officers were
methodically executed one-by-one by Israeli snipers as they
were preparing a late-night meal.
On the same day, the Israeli Navy and Air Force launched
assaults for the first time since the eight-month-old
Intifada began.
Then on May 15, the 53rd anniversary of the formation of
the Israeli state, huge demonstrations swept the West Bank,
Gaza, the Palestinian areas inside the 1948 borders of
Israel, and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and
Syria.
At least five Palestinians were killed and more than 200
wounded in clashes with Israeli forces on this day known to
Palestinians and all Arab people as al-Nakba--catastrophe
day. Three-quarters of the Palestinian population, which then
stood at about 1.1 million people, were forcibly driven from
their homeland in 1948 to make way for the Israeli state.
On May 16, Israeli officials admitted that the killing of
the five NSF officers was "a mistake," but issued no apology
nor indicated that any action would be taken against those
responsible.
On the contrary, Yarden Vatikay, a spokesperson for the
Israeli "Defense" Ministry, justified the assassinations,
stating: "There are no bad guys or good guys among the
Palestinian organizations. All are fighting us now and no one
is clean."
Zeev Schiff, military affairs writer for the Israeli
Ha'aretz newspaper, wrote: "This Beitunia mistake will not
hold back the army as it conducts its new offensive . . . To
the army, the Beitunia mistake is merely the type of mistake
that happens during a war."
On May 18, Mahmoud Ahmed Marmash, a 21-year-old member of
the Izz el-Din Al-Qassam Brigades--the military wing of the
Hamas organization--walked into a shopping mall in Netanya,
Israel, and exploded a bomb strapped to his body, killing
himself and five Israelis and wounding more than 100
people.
A statement by Hamas said that Marmash carried out the
attack to avenge the deaths of the five NSF officers and a
four-month-old baby, Iman Hijjo, killed by Israeli tank fire
in Gaza earlier this month.
A few hours later, the F-16s carried out their deadly and
destructive raids across the West Bank, reducing several
large buildings to rubble.
'Retaliation'--what's in a word?
Virtually the entire U.S. capitalist media--including CNN,
New York Times, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune,
etc.--labeled the F-16 attacks as "retaliation," as
usual.
The intent is to perpetuate the image of Israel as the
victim, acting in "self-defense" as Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon claimed. The idea that the Israelis were
"retaliating" also implies that their actions were
justified.
The same media has conveniently developed collective
amnesia regarding Sharon's war crimes against the Lebanese
and Palestinian people. But those who were the targets have
not.
Sgt. Major Castro Salameh, a top Palestinian security
commander, was wounded in the May 18 air raid on Nablus. Of
the 70 people under his command, 10 were killed, including a
cook and a computer specialist.
"I remember these kinds of big rockets in Lebanon,"
Salameh told the Associated Press. In 1982, Sharon directed
three months of intensive bombing against Beirut which killed
20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. The object was to
drive the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) out of
Lebanon.
After the PLO, including Salameh, was driven out, Sharon
presided over the massacre of more than 2,000 Palestinian
civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
'Diplomacy is perjury'
While the U.S ruling class and its political agents
support Israel as an irreplaceable instrument in the U.S.
quest to dominate the oil-rich Middle East, they are also
worried by the current developments.
Bush, Cheney, Powell and the rest are concerned that the
region could be "destabilized" by the escalating
conflict--meaning there could be mass social explosions
against U.S. client regimes in the region like Jordan and
Egypt.
So, on May 21, the administration launched a new
diplomatic offensive.
Within an hour-and-a-half of each other, the long-awaited
Mitchell Commission report and a new proposal by Secretary of
State Powell were announced at media conferences in
Washington.
An initial reading of summaries of the two proposals,
which not surprisingly share many of the same elements,
brings to mind the old saying that "diplomacy is
perjury."
The Mitchell Commission, headed by former U.S. Senator
George Mitchell, calls for the Palestinian Authority to make
"a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorism" and to arrest all
"terrrorists" in its territory. The Israeli "Defense" Forces
should develop "non-lethal" responses to unarmed
demonstrators--no "100 percent" provision on the latter.
Israel should also freeze all settlement building, says
the Mitchell Commission. After a "cooling-off period,"
negotiations could start again.
Powell picked up on the Mitchell Commission's findings to
announce that he was sending three U.S. diplomats to the
Middle East to "facilitate implementation of the report's
recommendations."
But the Sharon regime has announced that it has no
intention of stopping settlement building--the on-going
seizure of more and more Palestinian lands with the objective
of preventing the emergence of a real Palestinian state.
Yet at his May 21 press conference, Powell flat-out lied
when addressing a question on the issue. He declared, "New
settlements, we have clearly said, and the Israelis have
said, they are not creating any new settlements."
Two days earlier, however, the liberal Israeli group Peace
Now had issued a report saying that since Sharon took office
in March, 15 new settlements have been initiated in the West
Bank and Gaza.
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