Palestine: Resistance victorious over its enemies
From the beginning of the
Second Intifada – the al-Aqsa Intifada – in September 2000 to the beginning of
August 2006, 4,200 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis were killed. Since then
hundreds more Palestinians have been slaughtered by the Israeli butchers. The
zionist killing machine has gone into overdrive since the electoral victory of
Hamas in January 2006, it being the aim of the zionist colonial authorities to
force the Palestinian people, through collective punishment, to disavow their
support for their legitimately elected government led by Hamas.
Out and out war
The killing of two Israeli soldiers and the capture
of the third, Corporal Gilad Shalit, by the Palestinian resistance, among them
fighters from Hamas, on Sunday 25 June 2006, served as a pretext for the
zionists to wage an all-out war against the Palestinian people, especially
those living in the concentration camp known by the name of Gaza. The day
following the kidnapping of Corporal Shalit, the resistance demanded the
release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in exchange for information
on the fate of the Israeli soldier. On 27 June, Hamas and Fatah agreed on a
common front, which included the implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas. Ignoring these developments, in the early hours of 28 June, Israel moved its troops into the south of the Gaza Strip, while attacks by its Air Force
destroyed a power station and bridges in the Strip. At the same time Israeli
fighter planes provocatively flew over the palace of Bashar al-Assad, the
Syrian president, to warn Syria against supporting Hamas. On Thursday 29 June
Israeli troops arrested scores of Hamas activists, lawmakers and ministers in
the West Bank. Since then, 30 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council,
including eight ministers have been rotting in the Ofer jail in Israel.
In just the first ten weeks of its assault on Gaza, named Operation Summer Rains, Israeli forces killed 202 Palestinians, of which, 44
were children, carried out 267 air strikes, damaged hundreds of buildings, many
bridges, and the Gaza power plant. “Gaza is a prison now”, wrote Deborah
Orr in The Independent of 30 August 2006 (‘Israel has turned Gaza into a prison’).
While the world’s attention was soon to be focused
on Israel’s other border against the Lebanese people, Israel unleashed unprecedented brutality on the inhabitants of Gaza. The Lebanese war, however,
proved to be a total disaster for Israel, resulting in its humiliating defeat
at the hands of Hizbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement. Licking its
wounds from the devastating defeat it suffered in the 34-day war in Lebanon, Israel, like a wounded beast, became even more vicious in its treatment of the people of Gaza – inflicting further collective punishment on them in the hope of chalking up some
success in its wars on the oppressed people of Lebanon and Palestine.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces destroyed hundreds
of square kilometres of olive groves.
Internal split
The internal split within the national liberation
movement, resulting in the takeover of Gaza by Hamas at the end of June 2007,
the illegal dismissal of the legitimately elected Hamas government by Mahmoud
Abbas’s Fatah, and the equally illegal takeover of the West Bank (WB) by his
security forces – all with US and Israeli connivance and active support – gave
Israel the green light to pursue its anti-Hamas campaign in the Gaza with
intensified vigour, with the Israeli army closing all border crossings of the
Gaza at the end of June.
Qassam rockets
One of Israel’s pretexts for its never-ceasing
attacks on Gaza is the firing of Qassam rockets by the Palestinian resistance
from north-western Gaza at the Israeli town of Sderot and its environs.
Usually these rockets are fired in response to Israeli outrages and, as the
record shows, they cause little damage and very few fatalities. Since 2001,
the Qassams have killed 12 civilians, while the Israeli army killed 235 Gazans
in 2007 alone, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. What
really irks the zionists, however, is the sheer act of defiance against
occupation and oppression that these rockets symbolise. In addition, they
force the 20,000 residents of Sderot to use bomb shelters, prevent children
from playing outdoors and oblige the authorities to convert open-air bus stops
into concrete cubicles. Worn out by the daily alarms, 3,000 of the 20,000
residents of Sderot left the town in 2007. During the last six years, over
7,300 Qassams have been fired by the Palestinian resistance. What worries the
Israelis even more is that, whereas earlier versions of these rockets had a
range of 3 km and carried 500 gm of explosives, the newer version can travel 10
km, carry 20 kg of explosives as well as metal pellets, and can hit as far as
the town of Ashkelon, which is but little prepared for them.
Complete Closure
In an effort to squash the resistance and to defeat
Hamas through draconian measures, including starving the 1.5 million residents
of Gaza, on 19 September 2007, the Israeli government declared Gaza “a hostile entity”. This was followed by the complete closure of Gaza on 17
January this year on the orders of the Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak,
bringing unmitigated misery, poverty, death and disease to the entire Gazan
population in an act of Nazi-style collective punishment for supporting the
resistance movement Hamas. Not being content with the results of the
near-total blockade of Gaza, turning it into the world’s largest open prison,
on 19 January, the zionist authorities stopped the supply of industrial fuel,
without which modern life is impossible. On Sunday 20 January the only power
plant in Gaza was shut down. Consequent upon the brutal zionist blockade, the
whole of Gaza was plunged into complete darkness, petrol stations ran out of
fuel and had to be closed, sewage began flooding the streets, bakeries could no
longer bake bread, and only with the use of generators could crucial power
supplies to the hospitals be maintained.
In the circumstances, the UN issued a dire warning
that food aid to nearly 900,000 Palestinians could come to a halt unless the
blockade was lifted. Even the EU, which is normally content to ignore, and
look benignly on, all acts of Israeli brutality towards the Palestinians, felt
compelled to condemn the blockade as an act of collective punishment of the
whole population of Gaza. In the face of world-wide condemnation of their
actions, the zionist authorities eased the blockade for just one day, allowing,
on 22 January, a small consignment of industrial fuel and medicines into Gaza.
Blockade burst
However, the besieged people of Gaza took matters
into their own hands and burst the blockade in a revolutionary way. On 23
January, armed men, presumed to belong to Hamas, blasted a gaping hole in the
border fence which separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt, allowing nearly half a
million Gazans back and forth across the border and enabling them to stock up
with the daily necessities of life. The result of this revolutionary measure
by the Palestinians to break the zionist blockade caused great consternation in
Tel Aviv and Washington.
While Palestinians everywhere marked this victory
with joy, US imperialism put great pressure on the Egyptian government to once
against seal the border. Shamefully, although not unexpectedly, the Mubarak
government, in meek compliance with this blatant US imperialist interference,
began closing the border on 25 January. However, the attempt failed as,
confronted by tens of thousands of Palestinians, to the accompaniment of Hamas
militants driving a bulldozer to blast still more holes in the border fence,
the Egyptian riot police could do little other than look on while the
Palestinians went about breaking the blockade with ruthless, and businesslike,
revolutionary zeal.
Annapolis charade
Let it be said in passing that, while the
inhabitants of Gaza were being subjected to the horrific existence described
above, Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction were collaborating with US imperialism in
the enactment of the charade which went by the name of the International
Meeting on Palestine in Annapolis (Maryland) on 27 November. This
‘International’ meeting on ‘Palestine’ was neither international, nor did it
have anything to do with helping the cause of Palestinian liberation from the
jackboot of zionist colonialism. While Iran and Hamas were excluded from this
gathering, laughably the Brazilians and the Sengalese were included. This is
hardly surprising, considering that the sole purpose of this meeting – the
participants could not even agree on calling it a conference – was to bolster
Abbas and isolate Hamas and Iran, as well as to create the conditions for a US attack on Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank protested
against this meeting. While these protests were fully supported by Hamas, and
led by it in Gaza, in the West Bank they were suppressed by the security forces
of Abbas.
As was to be expected, the outcome of the Annapolis meeting was a non-binding declaration, whereby Abbas and Olmert agreed to hold
discussions once a fortnight and to “… make every effort to conclude an
agreement before the end of 2008…” It involved no Israeli concessions;
there was not even a mention of the status of Jerusalem, the dismantling of
Jewish settlements or the right of return of Palestinian refugees to the homes
from which they were forced out of by zionists colonialists at gun point.
As if to prove the futility and pointlessness of
the so-called peace process, within a week of the Annapolis jamboree, the
Israeli Housing Ministry, on 4 December 2007, gave the go-ahead to complete the
work on the most contentious of its settlements. In violation of international
law, and in breach of its commitments to peace proposals drawn up by US-led
mediators, which call for a freeze on settlements, the Israelis government
issued tenders for the building of 307 houses and infrastructure construction
at Har Homa, south-east of Jerusalem.
In order to grasp the significance of Har Homa, as
well as the timing of the Olmert government’s announcement, one must remember
that the original decision to erect 6,500 homes for 30,000 Jewish settlers at
Har Homa (Jabal Abu Ghneim to the Palestinians) was taken
in February 1997 by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. That decision was
universally condemned as a violation of international law and publicly
criticised even by the then US president Bill Clinton. What lay behind the
decision on Har Homa (which means ‘mountain wall’) was the determination of the
zionist authorities to close the last corridor linking Arab East Jerusalem to
Bethlehem and the West Bank, making it impossible for East Jerusalem to be the
capital of a future Palestinian state. By completing work on Har Homa, this
last bulwark in the wall of settlements surrounding East Jerusalem, the
zionists have made it only too clear, if such clarity was ever lacking, that Israel is not serious about a negotiated settlement of the Palestinian question.
The Israelis, having the full backing of US imperialism, are not bothered by any international condemnation of their actions. In his letter
of April 2004, US president George W Bush gave the assurance that Israel could keep the settlements around Jerusalem. Therefore, the zionists believe that the main
concern of Washington is to ensure that Mahmoud Abbas and his forces confront
Hamas and other resistance groups. Sadly, it appears that Mr Abbas and those
close to him are prepared to go along with this plan. Only this explains the
fact that, notwithstanding the total lack of any meaningful outcome for the
Palestinians from the Annapolis meeting, as well as provocative actions of the
Israeli government in the immediate aftermath of the meeting in Maryland, they decided to attend the international donors meeting in Paris on 17 December.
At this meeting $7.4 billion in aid was promised to the Palestinian Authority,
as a show of economic support allegedly to underpin a new Middle East peace
process apparently launched at the Annapolis meeting of 27 November. Designed
as it was to bypass the legitimate elected Hamas government, the Paris meeting
co-chaired by that notorious liar and war criminal, Tony Blair, was rightly
denounced by a Hamas spokesperson as a “declaration of war”.
Failure to isolate Hamas
But, the US and Israeli attempts to isolate Hamas,
all attempts at making the Gazans, through the imposition of extreme hardship
and starvation, rise up in revolt against the Hamas administration, have failed
miserably. On the contrary, they have conferred added legitimacy on Hamas,
which has shown, through its bursting of the Gaza-Egypt fence and the breaking
of the siege, that resistance alone offers the Palestinian people the way out
of the misery of occupation and oppression under Israeli colonial rule. Thus
the lock-down of Gaza and the efforts to imprison the Palestinian people have
only served to empower, instead of marginalise, those committed to resistance
against the occupation. Even the arming by imperialists of the Fatah warlords
in Gaza did not help much, for Dahlan’s Preventative Security Force suffered an
ignominious rout at the hands of Hamas on 13-14 June 2007, since when the
Gazans have enjoyed internal peace and have thus been able to confront zionist
aggression in complete unity.
Acquiring new
capabilities
To match it determination to wage armed struggle
against zionist occupation, Hamas and other sections of the resistance are
improving their technical ability and the quality of their armour to confront
their occupiers. That rockets of the resistance can now hit Ashkelon, a town
of 120,000 and further away from the Gaza-Israeli border, has served to give
notice to the Israeli security establishment of the likely turn of events. The
resistance in Palestine, especially in Gaza, is seeking to bring into being a deterrent,
similar to that possessed by Hizbollah, which has created a credible balance of
terror across Israel’s border with Lebanon, which enabled the Lebanese
resistance to inflict a crushing blow on the Israeli aggressors in the summer
of 2006.
Resistance attacks
Against heavy odds, and breaching elaborate Israeli
security measures, on 4 February two young men from Gaza launched a suicide
bomb attack at a shopping mall in the southern Israeli city of Dimona – the
heavily guarded site for Israel’s nuclear facility – killing one and wounding
nine. It was the first such attack since January 2007 bombing in Eilat, which
killed three Israelis. Significantly, the attack in Dimona was carried out
jointly by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the
Fata-linked al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB), a fact which cannot fail to
undermine the position of Mahmoud Abbas and pose a serious threat to his
capitulary policy which goes in the name of peace negotiations.
On Saturday 1 March two Israeli soldiers were
killed in gun battles with the resistance, confirming Israeli apprehensions
concerning a full-scale invasion of Gaza. Israel, with characteristic
brutality, responded with attacks on the weekend of 1-2 March, which left more
than 70 people dead and hundreds wounded in Gaza as it continued its biggest
offensive in years. The dead included several children, including a
21-month-old girl. The conflict spread on 2 March to cities in the West Bank
as tens of thousands protested against attacks on Gaza with offices, shops and
the Palestinian stock exchange shut in a demonstration of solidarity, mourning
and protest against Israeli attacks, forcing Mahmoud Abbas to suspend peace
talks with Israel – a blow to the US-sponsored attempts to stitch some kind of
shabby deal, to the determent o the struggle for Palestinian national
liberation, before the end of the year.
Ahmed Qureia, the chief Palestinian negotiator,
denounced Israeli attacks as “a massacre of civilians, women and children, a
collective killing”, adding that “what the Israelis are doing doesn’t
lend the peace process any creditability” (quoted in Financial Times,
3 March 2008, ‘Abbas halts talks as Israeli attacks kill 70).
Abbas maintained his stance on the suspension of
negotiating with Olmert even following his meeting on 4 March with US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. By the late afternoon of 5 March, however, he had
capitulated and agreed to resume talks without even getting the promise of a
ceasefire from Israel.
During the same trip, Dr Rice held a meeting with
Tzipi Livni, Israeli Foreign Minister, following which she (Rice) declared: “There
are enemies of peace that will always try to hold hostage the Palestinian cause
and the future of the Palestinian people for their own state. And Hamas, which
in effect holds the people of Gaza hostage in their hands, is now trying to
make the path to a Palestinian state hostage to them. And we cannot permit
that to happen”.
This being the case, the resistance answered in the
only language that Washington and Tel Aviv understand. On 6 March, an East
Jerusalem Palestinian shot dead eight students at an Orthodox Jewish seminary
in Jerusalem which has been at the heart of the West Bank settler movement.
Although there was no immediate response from Israel, on 12 March Israeli
forces murdered a leading member of Islamic Jihad (IJ), Mohamed Shehada, and
four of his comrades as they visited his demolished family residence in the
West Bank town of Bethlehem. The following day, Hammad Saleh, an 18-year-old
schoolboy, was shot in the head and killed by a settler in Ramallah. Huge
crowds came out for the funerals of the Palestinian young men slaughtered by
the zionists and called on Abbas to end all dialogue with Israel and to start unity talks with Hamas.
Mass
popular demand for unity
At the funerals of Shehada and his comrades,
Fatah’s military wing, the AMB, put out a statement to the effect that, in view
of continuing Israeli aggression, no option was open other than to work “… faithfully
to regain the unity of the Palestinian people since that is the most important
source of strength it has”. The statement also demanded that Abbas dismiss
his prime minister, Salam Fayyed.
The scenes of grief and anger among the flat-waving
mourners at the funeral on 13 March of Hammad Saleh in Ramallah, furnished
further proof that the anti-zionist struggle, and the thirst for unity among
various Palestinian factions, is spreading fast to the West Bank. The mood of
the population there is reaching boiling point, with the West Bank increasingly
being transformed into a barrel of gunpowder ready to explode any time.
Residents of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA), heavily
patrolled by its security forces and hence one of the most peaceful of Palestinian
cities, gave vent to their fury at the funeral on 13 March, promising
retaliation for recent Israeli attacks on Gaza that have left more than 100
dead and several hundred wounded. Scores at the funeral expressed solidarity
with Hamas. As the funeral procession proceeded through Ramallah, its ranks
were quickly swelled by protesters representing all shades of the Palestinian
political landscape. Amid the sea of red, yellow and orange flags,
representing Fatah, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and
the PFLP, there were plenty of green banners of Hamas – a sight which many at
the funeral found remarkable. “This is the first time that I see Fatah and
Hamas flags in a demonstration here together”, said Muhammad Assad, a local
journalist marching with the crowd, adding: “We are here to prevent new
atrocities, to support the martyr who fell today and to ask for national unity”.
With the procession making its way towards the presidential compound, the
chants became louder and more political, with praise for Hamas and repeated
calls for unity.
The extreme brutality unleashed by Israel in the
first quarter of 2008, with hundreds of its Palestinian victims, poses a real
challenge to Abbas, who has staked his political credibility on a negotiated
settlement with Israel and has spared no effort in his attempt to isolate Hamas
as a political force on the West Bank (Gaza is already out of bounds for him).
This approach, in the light of rising mass anger at Israel, and the persistent
Palestinian demands for unity between Fatah and Hamas, lies in tatters. As a
result he has been forced to lash out at Israel in uncharacteristically harsh
terms, portraying the Israeli army’s attacks on Gaza as “worse than the
Holocaust”.
Palestinians are angry and complaining that,
instead of resisting the occupation, Abbas and his supporters are telling
people not even to go out and demonstrate against Israeli massacres of the
Palestinian people. Even before the outbreak of the latest bout of bloodshed,
opinion polls consistently revealed that for the Palestinian masses, on the
West Bank and in Gaza, national unity in the struggle against Israeli
occupation was the single most important issue. Mr Abbas and his close
colleagues are only too aware of the popular sentiment, but equally aware that
any attempt on their part to mend fences between Fatah and Hamas, vehemently
opposed as such a move would be by the US and Israel, would certainly put an
end to the negotiations with Israel – especially as Hamas insists on the
Palestinian people’s right to armed resistance and is presently firing an
ever-increasing number of Qassams at Israeli towns.
The popular pressure has compelled Mr Abbas to
change his mind yet again. At a meeting in Yemen between Fatah and Hamas
towards the end of March, the two sides agreed to open direct negotiations in
April. This decision has since then been approved by Mr Abbas. With the
suspension by Abbas of negotiations with Israel, the likelihood of further
violence and rising popular anger among the Palestinian masses in the near
future, Mr Abbas is under extreme pressure to adopt a more belligerent stance
towards Israel. These developments have brought to a nought all the attempts
of US imperialism and Israeli zionism to split the Palestinian national
movement, isolate Hamas and other sections of the resistance engaged in armed
struggle against the zionist colonial regime, and impose an unfavourable
settlement through the moderate wing led by Abbas.
The actions of Israel, its refusal to concede the
just national rights of the Palestinian people, the sadistic barbarity it
practices on them, and the unqualified support it gets from the US for its actions, are the best recruiting sergeants for Hamas and other militants.
Failure to isolate Hamas
Mr Abbas has accepted all Israeli and US preconditions, and yet this has not stopped them from undermining him. Within a few days after
the Annapolis meeting Israel decided to press ahead with yet more settlements
on the West Bank. Consequently Mr Abbas has next to nothing to show for his
policy of peaceful engagement. As a result, the overwhelming majority of the
Palestinian masses have little difficulty in seeing through the true nature of
zionist designs and their chief backer – US imperialism. The Israeli and US
attempts to isolate Hamas since its 2006 election victory, stepped up since the
takeover of Gaza by it in June 2007, have in fact been transformed into a siege
of the 1.5 million Palestinian people in Gaza.
As such, the Israeli/US war against Hamas can be
clearly seen for what it always was – a war on the entire Palestinian people
and their rights to wage armed resistance against the occupation. Precisely
for that reason, the policy of isolating Hamas has failed. This policy must
end, for there cannot be any solution to the conflict in Palestine without the
participation of Hamas.
Hard-headed imperialist and zionist politicians
recognise this reality and are advocating a dialogue with Hamas. Jimmy Carter,
the former US president, during his recent visit to the Middle East, on 18
April held two long meetings in Syria with Khaled Mashal, the exiled and very
influential leader of Hamas, to discuss the situation in Gaza and the fate of
Gilad Shalit. Carter’s correct perception, shared by two-thirds of the
Israelis according to polls, is that Israel cannot wage war on half of the
Palestinians and expect the other half to make peace with it. He is,
therefore, of the view that Hamas has to be part of any solution, instead of
being subjected, as has been the case so far, to sanctions, unrealistic demands
and siege. He urged Israel and the US to end their misplaced boycott of
Hamas. Mr Carter was criticised by the US and Israeli governments for meeting
Khaled Mashal. In response to these criticisms, Mr Carter stated that he knew
in advance that his meetings would be “viewed negatively in some quarters”,
nevertheless he insisted that it was a mistake to isolate Hamas and Syria. “We believe”, he said, “the problem is not that we met them but that the
US and Israeli governments will not meet [them]. The unwillingness to
talk makes peace harder to achieve”.
On his arrival in Israel, while he was shunned by
the Israeli government, one of Olmert’s minister, breaking ranks with his
colleagues, met Mr Carter. Eli Yishai, deputy prime minister and leader of the
religious Shas Party, during his meeting with Mr Carter offered to negotiate
directly with Hamas to facilitate the release of an Israeli soldier (Shalit)
held in captivity for nearly two years by the resistance in Gaza, adding that “I
would be pleased if you [Carter] can help”. Mr Yishai’s move was in
total defiance of his government’s official position. It is reliably believed
that at least one other minister, as well as several former army and intelligence
officials, have expressed support for talks with Hamas. What is clear is that
Mr Yishai’s move serves to emphasise the unease felt by a large section of the
Israeli population over the Israeli government’s visceral and virulent
opposition to the Hamas resistance movement.
Mortal danger facing
zionism
The Israeli government, and the US, while paying lip service to a two-state solution are doing everything to frustrate such an
outcome, while being fully aware of the consequences of their actions. At the
end of November, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, issued a stark
warning that failure to reach an agreement with the Palestinians on the basis
of a two-state solution would produce a “South African-style struggle”
and may pronounce a death sentence on the Jewish state. In the conditions of
continued occupation and the collapse of the two-state solution, Israel would
come under irresistible pressure to grant equal political rights to
Palestinians under Israeli occupation, threatening Israel’s Jewish majority
and, we might add, the theocratic and racist concept underlying it. This is
what he said in an interview, published in the Ha’aretz newspaper on 29
November 2007:
“The day will come when
the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle
for equal voting rights and, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished”. He added: “The Jewish organisations, which were our power base
in America, will be the first to come out against us, because they will say they
cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights
for all its residents”.
Thus it can be seen that the zionists, like
characters in a Greek tragedy, while fully realising the dangers ahead, are
being inexorably driven in the direction of the destruction of this historical
monstrosity – the racist state of Israel, built on the policy and practice of
expropriation, expulsion, terror and murder. All democrats, all
revolutionaries, have every reason to be well satisfied with such a prospect.
Way forward
Meanwhile, to hasten such an outcome, the
Palestinian people must intensify their resistance, including armed resistance,
to the occupation. Towards that end, they must achieve unity by putting behind
them the divisions of the past two years. Hamas and Fatah must revive the
Mecca Unity Accord and establish a government of national unity. They must
integrate their security forces into a single Palestinian national army, which
fights against the occupation forces and not the Palestinian people.
Now that Mr Abbas’s policy of appeasing Israel and
the US and isolating Hamas, and thereby getting a few crumbs of concessions,
has failed spectacularly, it is to be hoped that he will change course by
forging unity with Hamas. The Palestinian people ardently desire, and deserve,
such an outcome. Let Mr Abbas and Fatah rise to the occasion. It is still not
too late.
Victory to the resistance!