INTIFADA ANNIVERSARY: Fate
of
the Palestinians
G H E T T O
S A N D R E S E R V A
T I O N S ?
"For
the brutal reality
of today's situation is that in the name of 'peace process'
the
Palestinians are being ground and crushed into submission.
Middle
Eastern apartheid -- complete with "Jews only" settlements
and by-pass
roads and "Palestinian-only" ghettos and pass-laws -- marches
forward."
MER - www.MiddleEast.Org -
Washington - 10 December 1997:
At this time of
the 10th anniversary of the Palestinian Intifada the basic issue of
what is happening to the Palestinians as a result of the
American/Israeli/Arab regimes "Peace Process" should be confronted and
reevaluated.
Since Madrid and
Oslo the Palestinian standard of living, already low, has declined
about 10% yearly; while the gap between rich and poor has continually
grown. The situation is worst of all in Gaza where Arafat's cronies
have built multi-million dollar mansions while poverty and hunger have
expanded all around them.
Since Madrid and
Oslo Palestinians have been further dispossessed of their lands and
further displaced by still-expanding Israeli settlements and military
areas. The ruse of land being "returned" to Palestinians is clearly a
subterfuge attempting to mask what is actually happening to them as in
reality they are surrounded by Israeli settlements and controlled by
Israeli military restrictions.
The overall
reality is that Palestinians are being continually pushed onto
modern-day reservations in the name of a duplicitous "peace process"
that is but a continuation of the tricks and deceptions that go back
throughout most of this century. And at the same time these
"Palestinian population centers" are more and more taking on the
classic characteristics of encircled ghettos.
This MER Editorial was
originally published last February and is particularly fitting to
recall at this time of the 10th anniversary of the "uprising".
JEWS GHETTOIZE PALESTINIANS IN TRAGIC
REVERSAL OF THEIR OWN HISTORY
For press contact call 202
362-5266
[MER Editorial - 2/26/97]
The pattern is now
so clear that it's quite amazing how few see it clearly and how few are
willing to speak up honestly. As Israeli settlement "thickening" (i.e.,
expansion) continues throughout the occupied territories and especially
in the ever-expanding Jerusalem area, the Israelis make more and more
threats against all Palestinians should anyone dare to speak up or
otherwise react. At the same time the Israelis (with unprecedented
encouragement form the United States whose Middle East policies are
practically dictated by the Jewish lobby) increasingly twist Yasser
Arafat more and more into playing the role of "collaborator" (Edward
Said), "vassal" (Naseer Aruri), "warden" (Mark Bruzonsky) and "client"
(Noam Chomsky). Their goal is clearly to use him, abuse him, and so
fracture and demoralize Palestinian society that he will be totally
discredited and maybe assassinated, while the PLO and the Palestinian
national movement are dealt what this time might be a lethal series of
blows.
The latest Israeli
Jerusalem expansion has now officially begun -- after all kinds of
meaningless and non-credible threats from Arafat's naive crony
representative in Jerusalem, Feisal Husseini. What is really going on
-- as we have previously commented on (see http://www.MiddleEast.org/archives/jerusal1.htm) -- is specifically designed to all but
terminate any possibility of Palestinian resurgence in the Jerusalem
area. The Palestinians of Jerusalem are simply to be penned up in their
few remaining enclaves -- a kind of shrinking, isolated, economically
deprived Arab ghetto within an expanding Jewish Jerusalem. Since 1993
in fact -- thanks to Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres -- Palestinians
from outside Jerusalem cannot even visit the city without special
passes and still-tightening restrictions.
According to a
Reuters report today, Israeli "sources estimate that the Palestinian
reaction to a decision to build on Har Homa (a formerly Arab area of
expanded Jerusalem) will not be extensive, and certainly not on the
scale of the intifada. They feel that Yasser Arafat will not allow it
so soon before his visit to the United States, following warnings from
the Administration to the Palestinians not to react with violence."
Furthermore,
according to the Reuters report, "Israel has warned the Palestinian
Authority that if there is an outbreak of hostilities, the first stage
of the upcoming withdrawals -- scheduled for next month -- will be
postponed."
Additionally, it
has been learned that when Arab students at Haifa university published
a flyer calling for the Palestinians to confront Israel's policies,
threats of expulsion from the university have resulted against the Arab
student leaders.
Overall, it is a
masterful policy of intimidation and blackmail that the Israelis use --
with help of different kinds from the Americans, the Arab
"clients-regimes" and the so-called "Palestinian Authority" -- and it
is directly against all Palestinian institutions and organizations with
increasingly ferocity and effectiveness. How tragic, and how
frightening, that more and more what the Jews are doing to the
Palestinians is reminiscent of what was done to them in the ghettos of
Europe of old. And maybe, indeed likely, sometime in the future, there
will be a horrible price to be paid.
For the brutal reality
of today's situation is that in the name of "peace process" the
Palestinians are being ground and crushed into submission. Middle
Eastern apartheid -- complete with "Jews only" settlements and by-pass
roads and "Palestinian-only" ghettos and pass-laws -- marches
forward.
MAB