BY AHMAD NIMER
RAMALLAH — On March 29, I was awoken in the early morning as Israeli soldiers invaded the apartment block in which my room-mate and I lived. The soldiers ordered everyone in the building to gather in the apartment upstairs.
I quickly pulled on some clothes and went upstairs to face an Israeli soldier pointing an M-16 rifle at me. He ordered us to lift our shirts "to check for explosives", place our jackets on the ground and to move to the sitting room where the other residents of the building had been forced to gather.
There were eight of us in the small room, including an eight-month-old baby and an eight-year-old child. The soldiers refused to allow us to make phone calls and ordered us not to speak. They threatened that if there was any movement seen around the building — "even a bird" — we would be shot dead.
We were kept in the room for two days without electricity and prevented from making contact with the outside world. During this time, around 20 soldiers used the house as a base. Snipers were placed on the roof. I discovered later that the snipers had killed my neighbour as she tried to cross the street to collect her baby from a nearby house.
When the soldiers finally left, they cut the electricity supply and phone lines to the house.
My terrifying experience was relatively mild compared to that suffered by thousands of other residents in Ramallah. Other people I have spoken to have had their belongings smashed, money stolen and children terrorised during similar house occupations.
Following Israel's invasion of the city on March 28, a complete curfew was placed on the 40,000 residents. No-one is able to leave their house at any time of the day or night for fear of being shot dead. All water supplies have been cut because Israeli military bulldozers deliberately severed water pipes and Israeli troops have destroyed the water pumps in the city's main pumping stations.
The lack of water threatens to trigger a humanitarian disaster. Residents are forced to survive on water supplied from reserve tanks on their roofs.
Many areas are without electricity; some have been without water for more than a week. Food rots in the houses and residents are unable to go outside to dispose of garbage.
Atrocities
More than 30 people have been killed in Ramallah alone as Israeli soldiers rampage through the city. Israel's military has refused to allow ambulances to move freely in the city. It is expected that many corpses will be found once the curfew is lifted.
In one horrific scene, the Ramallah hospital was forced to dig up its car park to make a mass grave for those killed; proper burials have been prevented by the military.
Israeli soldiers are going house to house and making mass arrests. More than 700 people have been arrested so far in Ramallah alone and their whereabouts are currently unknown. In some areas, Israeli jeeps mounted with loudspeakers are ordering all males aged 14-60 to leave their houses and gather for arrest. Those arrested are refused legal assistance and allowed no contact with the outside world.
The Israeli military has repeated a similar pattern in all Palestinian cities in the West Bank. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the past week alone, the majority of them unarmed civilians.
As I write these words, the radio has announced that 20 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops in Nablus.
The brutality of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been revealed in all its ugliness during these invasions. The lie of Israel's "restraint" has been exposed with vicious actions of the Israeli army.
Stories of atrocities abound: a family in Bethlehem was forced to lock their six children in the bathroom to protect them from seeing the rotting corpses of a 60-year-old woman and her 38-year-old son killed by Israeli gunfire because Israeli soldiers refused to allow medical personnel to remove the bodies; a young woman was forced to give birth on the street and lost her baby when complications arose; five Palestinian police officers who were executed in a building in Ramallah as they tried to surrender, the splashes of blood on the wall indicating they were slaughtered as they were lying on the ground; a terrified 10-year-old girl could no comprehend why Israeli soldiers ripped the head and arms from her doll during a violent search of her house.
As each news broadcast updates the death toll and reports further Israeli invasions of Palestinian areas, residents expect the onslaught to continue for the foreseeable future. The most optimistic predictions are of another week of curfew; the Israeli army talks of months.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned in their homes, waiting for Israeli soldiers to bang on the door.
US-Israeli ultimatum
As Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat sits in his headquarters, with the Israeli army just two doors away, the US has moved to force the PA to agree to an unconditional surrender of Palestinian rights.
With Israel's tanks surrounding Arafat's office, Tel Aviv has agreed to let US envoy Anthony Zinni meet the Palestinian leader to convince him to acquiesce to Israel's demands. The "Zinni Proposal" compels the PA to revert to the role designated to it by the Oslo Accords — Israel's police force in a Palestinian bantustan.
The PA as a whole has never been a reliable or consistent leadership for the Palestinian population. Its social base largely rests on a small layer of comprador capitalists whose profits stem from its privileged relationship with the Israeli state, codified through the Oslo Accords.
However, the dynamics of the last six months have had a significant impact on the Palestinian power structure. In the last period, a new leadership has taken control of the intifada at the street level.
This competing leadership is composed of activists drawn from all the main opposition groups — Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — as well as, most significantly, a sizeable proportion of Arafat's Fatah organisation. It is coordinated across factions and has largely overcome many of the previous political divisions between the groups.
Fatah's evolution has had a considerable impact on Palestinian politics and is an unintended consequence of Israel's war against official Palestinian bodies and the hermetic seal placed around Palestinian towns and villages.
Israel's weakening of the PA's control has opened the door for a street-level leadership of Fatah based largely in the refugee camps, whose armed wing is organised through the Al Aqsa Brigades. It has played a leading role in the armed resistance to Israel's attacks over the last six months.
It is the development of this tenacious armed resistance that has pushed the PA into what seems, on the surface, to be an uncompromising position vis-a-vis the Israeli-US demands.
Israel's real target
Despite the mainstream media's focus on Arafat's imprisonment, Israel's strategic goal is not the end of the PA as such, but the destruction of this new developing Palestinian leadership and the forced submission of the PA to that goal.
While Israel's massive attack on the PA's Preventive Security (PS) headquarters in Ramallah, that began March 31 and lasted three days, may at first sight contradict this thesis, its outcome in fact confirms it.
The PS, led by Jibril Rajoub, has been distinguished by its lack of participation in the intifada. The PS has close relations with the CIA and Israel's security forces. A number of people wanted by Israel were held in this compound after they were arrested by the PA over the last few months.
When Israel invaded Ramallah, the political prisoners demanded to be released but Rajoub refused. When the attack on the PS headquarters began, the prisoners' request for weapons was also refused by Rajoub. Finally, Rajoub reached an agreement with Israel's forces to surrender, at which point the 300 prisoners were arrested and taken away in buses. Hamas has issued a statement calling Rajoub a traitor.
Those areas in which the PA's control has been weakened the most have been the most successful in resisting Israel's attacks. In Ramallah, where the PA was strongest, the opposition to the invasion was overcome in a matter of days.
In Jenin and Nablus, Israel has not been able to take control of the streets and at least five Israeli soldiers have been killed. The highest echelons of Israel's army have been flown to an army base near Jenin to coordinate the invasion of the city.
The position of Arafat is still unclear. Arafat has balanced between the PA and the street-level intifada leadership. His popularity has risen following the siege placed around him but there exists a great fear that he will submit to Israel-US pressure. Until now, Arafat has attempted to play US and European imperialism against one another, relying upon popular mobilisation when it suited his needs but not flinching from crushing Palestinian opposition when required. However, the space for this kind of manoeuvring has shrunk to zero.
US divisions
Arafat's contradictory role is reflected in the divisions within the US government. While Bush has given the green light for Israel's war of terror, he has also been careful to leave Arafat a way out if he submits.
While defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld — supported by US Vice-President Dick Cheney and other administration "hawks" — is doggedly pushing for an attack on Iraq before the end of the year, the US State Department realises the need to pacify the Palestinian population and the increasingly angry Arab "street" before Washington can launch a broader Middle East war.
Indeed, one of the most important developments since Israel's renewed onslaught has been the massive outpouring of support for the Palestinian struggle throughout the Arab world. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and other countries.
The overwhelming demand of the demonstrations, the largest in decades, had been for Middle Eastern regimes to take meaningful action in support of the Palestinian people, including cutting oil supplies to the US, opening borders and arming the population.
The demonstrations have frightened the region's authoritarian, pro-US governments, especially Jordan and Egypt. They are torn between taking token measures against Israel to appease their own peoples and forcibly repressing the demonstrations which may threaten their existence.
There is an urgent need for international solidarity with Palestinian people. There is growing understanding that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip must end. The wave of demonstrations in the Arab world, Europe, the US and Australia have given enormous confidence to the Palestinian people suffering in the midst of a brutal war.
Despite the difficulties, there is a palpable feeling here that this is a crucial moment and Israel's terror could be the last desperate attempt to enforce its rule on the Palestinian population. The outcome will determine the course of the Palestinian struggle for years to come. The time to act is now.
From Green Left Weekly, April 10, 2002.
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