By Jennifer Thompson The immediate costs of the four suicide bombings carried out in the last fortnight by groups in the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) are plain to see. While the Israeli political establishment has been quick to point the finger at Palestinian "terrorists" responsibility for the horrific acts is shared by the Israeli state and its prime backer, the US. Shalom Salaam, a group of Australian Jews who campaign for a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, expressed horror and condemnation at the bombings. However, the group said, "We are equally horrified at the continuing deaths and human rights abuses of Palestinians in the context of the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian land". Israel imposed an immediate indefinite closure of the entire West Bank and Gaza. According to Israeli foreign minister and former general Ehud Barak this is likely to last "till the [May 28] elections and beyond, if needed". Intermittent closure of Palestinian towns over the last month, including those under Palestinian National Authority control, "virtually turning them into crowded ghettoes", is a factor in the current upheaval writes Middle East International's Graham Usher. Scenes of the awful carnage were also a spur to the right wing in Israel which took to the streets chanting, "Death to the Arabs" and "[Israeli Prime Minister] Peres, you're next". The coming Israeli elections are weighing heavily on Israeli politicians' responses to the Hamas attacks, with Labor's Shimon Peres reportedly losing his 15% lead on conservative Likud Party presidential candidate Bibi Netanyahu after the first two attacks. The attacks are playing directly into the hands of Israel's extreme religious right wing, who have all along opposed Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza but were severely discredited by the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin in November by one of their adherents. The election of a Likud government would undoubtedly make the situation far worse for Palestinians, a problem acknowledged by Hamas. Khalid Amayreh, writing in the March 1 Middle East International notes that a Likud government would probably round up Hamas activists on mass, and smash Hamas' social infrastructure with the aim of stamping the organisation out entirely. Likud has also said that the West Bank and Gaza should be fully reoccupied and a military campaign be launch to raze Hamas.
Hamas and the PLO
Hamas has a misplaced self interest in its attacks. The movement was initially set up in the early 1980s, with encouragement from Israel, to form a religious counterweight to the PLO's secular nationalism. The beginning of the Palestinian
intifada in December 1987 drew to the organisation a new layer of Palestinians who linked their traditional religious view of civil society with Palestinian nationalism. Since then the political competition between Hamas and the secular nationalist PLO has been the main motivation behind Hamas. Hamas opposed the Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel, allying itself with the rejectionist left parties of the PLO. Graham Usher notes in his recent book
Palestine in Crisis that the logic of Hamas military attacks was political, the aim being "not to scupper the [accord] completely, but to stall its implementation. The longer the peace dividends could be delayed in the territories", he reasons, "the greater the PLO's loss of support and legitimacy". Hamas leaders have qualified their opposition to the process since September 1993. As Amayreh said then, "we can't stand up and say to people that we want the occupation to stay". In April 1994, Hamas Political Department head Musa Abu Marzuq proposed a cease fire on condition that Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders, begin the process of dismantling the settlements, release Palestinian prisoners and permit elections to a sovereign body. Over the last few months Hamas and the PNA have held reconciliation talks which resulted in a pledge from Hamas in Cairo in December for a "cease fire with the occupation" provided the PNA "protect" Islamist fugitives from Israeli attacks. It was this last arrangement, in particular, that Labor broke by assassinating Yahiya Ayyash, allegedly the brain behind Hamas' suicide operations. Ayyash's execution was merely the spark — the government's ongoing policies have laid the basis for the current attacks. Edward Said in the November, 1995 in
New Statesman and Society writes that if the area around East Jerusalem is included, "Israel has stolen and asserted presence on around 70% of the land of the occupied territories". Usher also notes Palestinian frustration caused by the continuing confiscation of large areas of Palestinian land, expansion of settlements around Jerusalem and the increased difficulties Palestinians face trying to move between the pockets of autonomous territories.
Labor's ambivalence
Labor's ambivalence towards the settlements is a big stumbling block for Palestinians. In addition to the ongoing land thefts — "confiscations" — for settlements and roads and buffer zones for settlers, Palestinians are still being attacked by armed settlers. Many of the settlers remaining in the occupied territories form the base of the far-right religious groups which are working for the complete annexation of the West Bank, Gaza and Syria's Golan Heights. It was no accident that the first bombing took place on the second anniversary of the massacre of 29 Palestinians in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque by a settler from Kiryat Arba on Hebron's outskirts. Labor has responded to the Hamas attacks by taking its policy of collective punishment a step further; it has blockaded 465 Palestinian towns and villages, sent troops into Palestinian refugee camps to make mass arrests and bulldozed the homes of those suspected of involvement in the bombings. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's protests that the blockades were a violation of the Oslo Accords went unheeded by either the Israeli government or the US — the "honest broker" and sponsor of the "peace" process. Israel has now rejected a new three-month cease fire proposed by Hamas' political and military wings. Peres is forcing Arafat to launch a massive crack down on Hamas in the autonomous areas on pain of Israel sending troops in to do the job themselves. This crack down, which won't prevent more attacks, is primarily geared to Peres' political needs which include painting the PNA as a security "subcontractor" for Israel. This, Shalom Salaam says, could be "disastrous for the peace process". "Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza and the West Bank needs to be speeded up. Repression and collective punishments can only hasten the descent into conflict without end."