BY URI AVNERY
TEL AVIV — The real aim of “Operation Defensive Shield” was not to
“destroy the infrastructure of terrorism”. This was merely a good slogan
for uniting the people of Israel, who are angry and afraid after the suicide
bombings.
It is also a good political device, allowing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
to ride on the bandwagon of US President George Bush's “war against international
terrorism”. Under the umbrella of “destroying the infrastructure of terrorism”
one can do practically anything.
If Sharon had really intended to “destroy the infrastructure of terrorism”,
he would have acted very differently. He would have given the Palestinian
masses hope of achieving their national freedom in the near future. He
would have fortified the position of Yasser Arafat, the only effective
partner for peace. He would have strengthened the Palestinian security
forces and radically improved economic conditions in the Palestinian territories.
But destroying the infrastructure of terrorism is not Ariel Sharon's
aim. His program is far more radical: to break the backbone of the Palestinian
people, crush their governmental institutions, turn the people into human
wreckage that can be dealt with as he wishes. This may entail shutting
them up in several enclaves or even driving them out of the country altogether.
As Sharon sees it, this would be finishing off the job started in 1948
— to establish the real Israel, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river;
a state inhabited solely by Jews. It was no accident that he openly supported
Slobodan Milosevic, the inventor of “ethnic cleansing”.
When I wrote this a year ago, it sounded like malicious slander. Sharon
was still pictured as a man determined to fight terrorism, not as a person
using the fight against terrorism as a means to achieve quite different
aims. No more.
Four days ago I was in Ramallah. I sneaked into the town (Israelis are
forbidden by the military commander from entering the Palestinian territories)
in order to see it for myself. I visited the Palestinian ministries. A
shocking sight, indeed.
Take, for example, 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 of 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
organisations 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 organised Palestinian society.
By the way, on that day I passed, with a group of Israeli peace activists,
through the centre of Ramallah — from the mass grave in the hospital parking
lot to the besieged headquarters of Yasser Arafat. We carried Hebrew posters
and encountered much sympathy and not a single sign of hostility. Even
at this time, the Palestinians know the difference between the Israeli
peace camp and those who are responsible for this brutal attack. Here,
perhaps, lies the only glimmer of hope.
[From <http://www.gush-shalom.org>.
Uri Avnery is a former member of the Israeli parliament and is a leader
of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc).]
From Green Left Weekly, May 8, 2002.
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