reply by
John Calvin
4/28/2002 (12:55) |
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the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
It is housed in an imposing building, probably going back
to British times, a mixture of neo-Classic European and
oriental styles. In front of it there was a rose garden –
'was', because a tank has crisscrossed it, for no
apparent reason, leaving only one purple rosebush in all
its glory. Just so. To teach them a lesson.
On the upper floor, where the archives and computers
were housed, the destruction was total. The computers
were taken apart and thrown on the floor, the safe
blown open, the papers strewn around, the drawers
empty, the telephones crushed . Some of it was just
plain vandalism. The money in the safe was stolen, the
furniture upturned, the papers dispersed. But when one
looked closer, the real aim of the operation became
clear. All the hard disks were taken from the computers,
all the important files taken away. Only empty shells
remained. All the important contents of the ministry were
taken: the lists of pupils, examination results, lists of
teachers, the whole logistics of the Palestinian school
system.
The Ministry if Health suffered the same fate. The hard
disks that contained all the information, state of
diseases, medical tests, lists of doctors and nurses, the
logistics of the hospitals had been taken.
Even the people most critical of the Palestinian Authority
admitted that these two ministries – Education and
Health – had been functioning well. They have been
utterly destroyed.
This happened to virtually all the Palestinian government
offices. Gone is the information pertaining to land
registration and housing, taxes and government
expenditure, car tests and drivers’ licenses, everything
necessary for administrating a modern society.
The lists of terrorists were not hidden in the land
registration books, the inventory of bombs was not
tucked away among the list of kindergarten teachers.
The real aim is obvious: to destroy not only the
Palestinian Authority, but Palestinian society itself: to
push it back with one stroke from the stage of a modern
state-in-the-making to the primitive society of Turkish
times.
This is true for the civil society, and even more so for the
security system. The headquarters of the security
services were destroyed, files burned, computers
crushed, the information concerning armed underground
organizations and all other details pertaining to the war
against terrorism were obliterated. There is no better
evidence of the aims of this operation: not war on
terrorism, but destruction of organized Palestinian
society.
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