[GushShalomPress] Promenade of death

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/

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Promenade Of Death
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by Adam Keller
Nov. 18, 2002, Tel-Aviv

Last week  an apprehension - now a sad reality. 
A bit more than a week ago, the Israeli army in Jenin assassinated Eyad Sawalha, a 
major leader of the Islamic Jihad. As usual, "the successful liquidiation of an arch-
terrorist" was celebrated by the Israeli press in banner headlines. As usual, the 
assassinated  leader's followers vowed "a dire revenge". There was no need to have 
great expertise, or access to classified information in order to take that threat 
seriously. One just needed to remember the history  of the past decade, particularly of 
the past two years, and the devastating effects which assassinations of this kind had 
again and again. And knowing Ariel Sharon's penchant for ordering assassinations 
exactly at times when the backlash would serve his political and miltary purposes, one 
cannot but wonder at Sharon's motive for conspicuously striking at the Islamic Jihad - 
a small, close-knit, ultra-radical organization - at precisely the time when Fatah and 
Hamas, the two major forces on the Palestinian political scene are holding talks at 
Cairo under Egyptian  and European auspices, with the declared aim of agreeing on 
terms for a 
cease fire with Israel. 

The above is conjecture, which cannot be proven. But the undoubted fact is that Islamic Jihad 
did launch its revenge attack last Friday - an ambush of Israeli military forces at Hebron, on 
the opposite side of the West Bank to where Sawalha was killed. This revenge left twelve 
Israeli soldiers, officers and settler militiamen dead, and many others wounded. Today's 
papers show another fact: whether or not anybody intended that result, after the Hebron 
attack the mainstream Israeli public opinion is even more sceptical about the Cairo talks, or 
any other Palestinian move towards a cease fire, than it already was.
 
And so, the cycle of revenge upon revenge upon revenge moves further on. Once again, after 
a short and very partial respite, the ancient city of Hebron is under full Israeli  occupation. 
Once again, curfew keeps its 150,000 Palestinian inhabitants imprisoned in their homes, while 
religious-nationalist settlers  are free to roam the streets and destroy Palestinian cars and 
property. Prime Minister Sharon and the newly-installed Defense Minster Mofaz instructed 
the army to exact "heavy retaliations" for the Friday killings. Already, military bulldozers are at
 
work destroying  fields and olive grove around the scene of the deadly ambush, and three 
houses were blown up in the same area - apparently without any inquiry as to whether or not 
their inhabitants had been in any way implicated in the attack. Elsewhere in the city, six more 
houses were destroyed - some on the charge that they had been the homes of the now-dead 
Islamic Jihad fighters who ambushed the soldiers; other houses - because allegedly, other 
members of the same organization, now dead or in hiding, used to live there. 

Is the rendering homeless of at least a hundred persons, many of them children, truly an 
effective measure against the recurrence of such attacks upon Israel's occupation forces? And 
what of the aarmy's decision to shut down Hebron's District Coordinating Office, where since 
Oslo Israeli and Palestinians officers used to meet and try to solve currently recurring 
problems?  The DCO's Palestinian officers were rudely turned out and their computers and 
papers confiscated.. They were told never to come back - the group of Palestinian officials 
who, more than anyone else, tried over the past seven years to make the Oslo framework work, 
who under often impossible conditions tried to sort out complicated problems by way of 
dialogue with their Israeli colleagues. Such efforts on the Palestinian side are, obviously, no 
longer appreciated or wanted by those who now hold power in Israel.

Meanwhile, the media in this country finds it extremely difficult to give a clear definition to 
what happened on Friday night. The terms "massacre", "terrorist attack", "ambush" and 
"battle" are all heard, sometimes within the same news broadcast or article. By all objective 
criteria, "massacre" it was  not-unless one was to accept the consistent pacifist argument that 
all wars and all battles are murder and massacre. Still, it is deeply disturbing for the people of 
Israel - especially after being repeatedly told that the Palestinians are "near collapse" - to 
come to terms with what happened on Friday: three Palestinian fighters withstood for hours a 
far superior Israeli force, and before being finally overwhelmed and killed they managed to kill 
twelve Israeli soldiers and officers,  including a colonel.

In part, this bloody outcome resulted from the brave but foolhardy behaviour of the Israeli 
troops. Repeatedly they charged head-on, in the open, against the fire of hidden opponents - 
a conduct which the world's armed forces learned at a terrible price to avoid, at least since the 
First World War. But it is not entirely surprising that an army which got used to lording over 
helpless civilians and breaking any resistance by the massive use of tanks, helicopter 
gunships and hightech electronic gadgets would get a bit rusty on elementary tactics…

Meanwhile, the settlers seem unperturbed by such issues. Their main aim is to use this latest 
incident - as they used all violent incidents in the past twenty years - as a pretext to further 
extend their armed enclaves in the heart of Hebron at the expense of the land and homes of 
their reluctant Palestinian neighbors. Already last night, more than a thousand vengeful 
settlers held a turbulent rally on the site where three Palestinian homes had been bulldozed 
and Palestinian olive trees uprooted, declaring their intention to establish a new settlement 
"neighborhood" on this spot so as to achieve "territorial continuity" between the settlement 
enclaves inside Hebron and the larger settlement of Kiryat Arba just outside.  
Prime Minister Sharon, who visited the site today, warmly endorsed the idea, frankly speaking 
of the Friday attack as "an opportunity   which must not be missed" to "create accomplished 
facts". Yitchak Levy of the National Religious Party, Minister of Tourism in a country to 
which virtually no tourists come in the past two years, already announced that his ministry 
will finance the construction of a "Kiryat Arba - Hebron Promenade"… 
 
This evening, we joined a Peace Now vigil outside the Defence Ministry, to protest that mad 
idea, that abuse of bloodshed as a pretext for an act which can only lead to further bloodshed. 
To call fro withdrawal and the dismantling of settlements at Hebron in particular and in the 
Occupied territories in general. The idea is to continue with these vigils every day at 6.00 PM, 
for the rest of this week. Not that anybody can entertain any illusion:  Sharon, if re-elected in 
January - as the opinion polls at present give him a good chance to be - will for sure construct 
the settlers' promenade of death and other costly follies.

Gush Shalom
pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033
info at gush-shalom.org
telefax: 03-5565804
mobile phone: 056-709603

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