Opinion Editorials, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Middle East Challenges
Arab News
27 October 2003
The violence the Israeli occupation engenders in the Palestinian territories is continuing. This month alone has seen the devastation of Rafah, where 12 Palestinians were killed and 100 wounded, most of them civilians. Then came the Palestinian reprisal, the killing of three Israeli soldiers the following week and three more on Friday. On Saturday came the Israeli reply, the destruction of three residential buildings in Gaza which left at least 180 families homeless. The houses were described by Israel as observation posts for attacks on the Netzarim settlement in Gaza, but Palestinian sources say they belonged to the families of members of the Palestinian security forces.
The raid is consistent with Israel’s “need to defend itself.” Palestinian fighters feel the same about the fierce resistance they must put up and the Israeli leader they face. Addressing the Knesset while the missiles rained in Gaza, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised more of the same attrition.
Sharon reiterated his government’s commitment to the road map, but he included “Israel’s 14 reservations, which are an integral part of the plan” and which would make it impossible for any Palestinian leadership to implement. He also said his government would not only accelerate but complete construction of the West Bank security barrier within one year. It is now understood that the barrier could become a unilaterally imposed border annexing the strategic Jordan River Valley to Israel. If carried out this would leave Palestine with three non-contiguous cantons in the West Bank and enable Sharon to impose a provisional state upon them. It will bury chances of a genuine settlement for generations.
Sharon has not recently spoken about settlements; his government’s plans, however, are doing the talking for him. Israel will build nearly 300 homes in West Bank settlements despite a freeze on construction required by the road map. The independent Israeli settlement-monitoring group Peace Now said the government had now published 1,627 tenders for new homes in the settlements since the beginning of the year.
Israel appears to be winning the battle. Still, the Palestinians received a massive symbolic victory last week for their campaign against the barrier when 144 countries — including the 15-member European Union bloc — supported a UN General Assembly resolution describing Israel’s construction of the barrier on occupied territory as a “contravention of international law” and demanding that it take it down.
The challenge facing the Palestinian leadership is whether it can translate what is now a huge international consensus against the barrier into a political strategy that can break an equally solid Israeli consensus in favor of it.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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