BY NORM DIXON
The Israeli military's massive November 20 air and sea missile bombardment of heavily populated residential areas in Gaza — which, with the West Bank and east Jerusalem, was invaded by Israel in 1967 — had little to do with "retaliation" for acts of "terrorism", as spokespeople for the Israeli and US governments rushed to tell the unquestioning Western mass media.
The dozens of missiles that rained down for more than an hour after dark, landing on houses, Palestinian Authority (PA) offices and those of the Fatah party, killing two and injuring 60, are part of the indiscriminate, collective punishment that is daily being inflicted on the Palestinian people. It is designed to terrorise, intimidate and penalise the Palestinian people for their determined resistance to Israel's 33-year occupation of their lands.
It is also part of Israel's longer-term project of "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians from those parts of the occupied territories that contain, or are earmarked to contain, the ever-increasing number of Israeli Jewish-only "settlements".
One-sided war
More than 12 Palestinians have been killed for each Israeli death (the large majority of whom have been occupying soldiers) since the current intifada (uprising) erupted and Israel launched its one-sided war. The Israeli military has unleashed hundreds of rocket and artillery attacks on Palestinian towns and villages. Homes, schools, hospitals, television and radio stations, even the YMCA's facilities for people with disabilities, have not escaped the Israeli occupation army's assault.
More than 250 Palestinians have been killed and 10,000 injured, the vast majority civilians — around a third under the age of 18 — since September 28 in this Gestapo-style terror campaign. More than 1000 face permanent disability. If these atrocities were taking place in Australia, the equivalent toll would be approximately 1500 killed and 60,000 injured.
Israel's excuse for launching its latest massive bombardment was a bomb attack earlier in the day on a settlers' school bus in Gaza that killed two adults and injured five children. The Western press accounts focused in emotional and grisly detail on the terrible injuries suffered by three young children, all siblings. The PA denied responsibility and condemned the terrorist attack.
Despite responsibility being claimed by three different groups — two never heard of before — the Israeli government immediately laid the blame at the door of the PA.
The Israeli military waited until after dark, in order to instill maximum terror and confusion. This has been the pattern throughout the intifada. Every night, sometimes for most of the night, tanks and helicopters bombard towns and villages throughout the occupied territories on the pretext that "shots" have been fired from their general direction. Rarely does a night pass when a half a dozen more funerals must be arranged the next the morning.
During the day, Israeli snipers shoot to kill Palestinians who they deem to be acting "suspiciously". Palestinian children are daily shot dead for the heinous crime of preparing to throw a stone. While the Western press and Israeli and US leaders shed tears over the injuries suffered by settlers' children in one terrible but isolated incident, there has been absolute silence at the Israeli military's systematic murder of scores of Palestinian children.
This was chillingly revealed in an article published in the November 20 Israeli newspaper Ha'artz. Journalist Amira Hass spoke to a Israeli Defence Force (IDF) "sharpshooter": "A sharpshooter fires a lethal bullet... A sharpshooter's bullet kills if it hits the body. This is a bullet that is a [full] metal jacket... If a sharpshooter isn't accurate with the first bullet — with the second it's almost a sure thing... If they tell a sharpshooter to fire, his intention will be to hit the head... He fires for certain to kill, unless there are specific individuals — in this war it hasn't happened much — whom you're told to shoot in the legs."
The soldier admitted that the army knows that "the Palestinian [gun] fire is pathetic ... most of it will go in the air... The IDF knows [it is just showing off] ... [but] if you decide to wound people, wounding fans anger even more."
The soldier described how the IDF defines children: "Twelve and up is allowed [to be shot dead]. He's not a child any more... That's what they tell us."
The soldier also revealed that the Israel army has "contingency plans that set out in astonishing detail ... if they decide, within a few days we occupy the territories we have given to them [the PA] and set up a military government like in the 1950s... Even I, a simple soldier, have heard about these plans."
Three million Palestinians in the occupied territories are being held hostage in an Israeli military siege. Israel is preventing vital raw materials from entering and the 125,000 or so Palestinian workers who are employed in Israel from leaving. Supplies of food, petrol, water and electricity are controlled by Israel. Refugee camps are being denied food supplies making starvation a real possibility.
Diplomatic offensive
Palestinian leaders have gone on a diplomatic offensive to win support for a United Nations-backed international protection force — with little success. Palestinian UN observer Nasser al-Kidwa on November 17 called on the UN Security Council to act on Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's request for a 2000-strong UN protection force for the occupied territories by November 26.
In response, the United States, other permanent Security Council members France and Britain, and UN secretary-general Kofi Annan have said that any international force must first win the approval of Israel. Such a position is at odds with the Security Council's two key resolutions — 242 and 338 — unanimously passed after Israel's invasion in 1967 which demanded Israel's immediate withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
Meeting in Marseilles on November 15-16, European Union foreign ministers heard PA minister for international cooperation Nabil Shaath's pleas for an international protection force and a return to the UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis of any peace settlement. The EU ministers stated that the US must play the "fundamental role" in the "peace process". The EU ministers stated that they could only play a role if it had "the agreement of both parties".
The PA is keen to involve European governments — either directly or through the UN — to break Washington's monopoly over the "peace process". This reflects the views of the Palestinian people: a recent poll showed just 3% of Palestinians in the occupied territories consider the US neutral.
That the demand for a UN protection force can be won was proven by the mass movement that developed in Australia in 1999. It demanded that an armed UN force be sent to East Timor to stop the Indonesian occupation army's and its proxies' terror campaign, force their withdrawal from East Timor and allow the East Timorese people their right to national self determination.
As with Israel's invasion of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, Australian and US imperialism had accepted and endorsed Indonesia's continued illegal occupation of East Timor and for almost 25 years refused to budge on its backing for Indonesian rule. As with Israel, the Australian and US governments hypocritically refused to back the sending of an armed force, even as the liberation movement and its supporters were being slaughtered, because it would not have the blessing of the cravenly pro-imperialist generals in Jakarta.
Yet, thanks to the long and determined struggle of the East Timorese people, and the decisive intervention of the mass mobilisations of the solidarity movements in Australia and other Western countries, imperialist governments were forced to reverse their policies and approve the sending of a UN armed force. That success shifted the balance of forces in favour of the East Timorese people.
Mass mobilisation
The demand for a UN protection force that is capable of forcing the withdrawal of Israeli troops from all the lands illegally seized in 1967 — in concrete terms meaning that the US government is forced to withdraw its support for Israel's occupation — cannot be won if the call is only advocated through diplomatic channels or argued behind closed UN doors.
When taken up by the movement in the streets both in Palestine and around the world, such a demand can expose the imperialist powers' hypocrisy and double standards, as well as their cynical disregard for the lives of millions of Palestinians held hostage by Israel's terrorist army.
The sight of Washington refusing to allow the UN to act to enforce its own resolutions against Israel undermines illusions that US imperialism is motivated by "humanitarianism" or respect for "international law". It can therefore help to build a mass solidarity movement against the US-backed Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are moves to defuse the Palestinian leadership's demands — and the Palestinian people's hopes — for an effective protection force. France has proposed the deployment of unarmed military observers on the condition that Israel gives its consent. Al-Kidwa, however, said a new Palestinian proposal may "take into consideration some of the French ideas" — presumably the idea that the UN force not carry arms.
There is concern among the Palestinian left and most non-government organisations at the PA's vagueness on the specifics of the international protection force it is calling for. While not opposing a protection force, the "street-level" organisations fear that if the PA does not spell out precisely the mandate of the force it may be used to put an end to the intifada by placing peacekeepers around Palestinian areas to legitimise the current "borders" between Palestinian- and Israeli-controlled areas. They also fear that the PA may agree to this.
A consensus seems to be emerging among the intifada-aligned Palestinian organisations that the international protection force should be of limited duration and have a clear mission of protecting Palestinian civilians as part of a process of facilitating the establishment of a Palestinian state in West Bank and Gaza. The protection force should be deployed along the 1967 borders and not around Palestinian towns.