War on the Palestinians PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 30 November 1999 00:00

Corey Oakley

The last century was one of unimaginable barbarity. War, genocide and suffering were inflicted on people across the globe to ensure the profits and the power of the world's rulers.
 
The death and destruction inflicted on the Palestinians in recent months show that if the likes of Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon get their way, this century is going to be just as bad.
 
In Jenin, hundreds were massacred by the Israeli military. One Western witness said:
 
If there is a hell on earth, it is here in Jenin. The destruction is beyond words Our host family was cornered in half a room for three days. They had to relieve themselves in one pot. IDF [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers, meanwhile, defecated all over their home - on their beds, in their cooking pots, on their bread, and also on their copy of the Koran.
One woman with an asthmatic son watched her husband get stripped and then shot by the IDF. Later, he was run over by a tank. She found one of his shoes this morning, on her way to look for her son's medicine in the rubble of her demolished home.
 
Bodies were buried in mass graves, or simply left rotting in the streets as the Israelis refused to allow medical and humanitarian aid into the refugee camp.
 
In Nablus, Apache helicopters and F-16 jets attacked from the sky, as tanks tried to overrun the makeshift barricades blocking them access to Palestinian streets. In the Kalandiya refugee camp a woman held the dead body of her son, a child torn apart by an explosive "dum-dum" bullet. Crying and pointing at her other sons, she said "I did not hate Israel, nor did my sons. I don't want to hate them. I don't want my sons to kill their sons. Help us. You Europeans, you world, you elsewhere."
 
But the world hasn't helped. The UN inquiry into the Jenin massacre has been blocked by Israel with the backing of the US - in exchange for the release of Arafat from the siege of his Ramallah compound. According to the US administration, investigating the massacre had become "a distraction from progress towards peace."
 
The Israelis, under the monstrous hypocrisy of "destroying terrorist infrastructure" have been able to impose a reign of terror on the Palestinian people, systematically destroying the infrastructure of people's lives - water supplies, homes, electricity grids, factories and the basic necessities of life.
 
With American weapons and American backing, Sharon has inflicted a severe defeat on the Intifada. Even the illegal imprisonment and deportation of American citizens - peace activists who attempted to enter the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - did not raise a protest from George Bush.
 
Despite the outpouring of rage throughout the world at Israel's actions, the US administration stood firmly behind Sharon.
 
This is nothing new. Israel has long been a central plank in America's domination of the region. Funded militarily to the tune of more than US$3 billion each year, its role is to impose the agenda of the US on the region by whatever means necessary.
 
In 1948, when Israel was established, this meant killing or driving from their homes hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Ariel Sharon cut his teeth in the Irgun, responsible for such atrocities as the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian villagers in Deir Yassin.
 
In the 1967 war, it meant devastating the Egyptian and Syrian armies, taking over what are now the Occupied Territories. It was this that convinced the US that Israel was a loyal ally, one that was willing to "discipline" any Arab regimes that threatened its oil interests.
 
These oil interests are vital to the continued domination of US capitalism. As the vice chairman of oil multinational Chevron put it:
 

The Middle East represents the heartbeat of our industry. And its significance will only grow with time. Two thirds of the world's proved oil reserves and one third of its gas reserves lie in the Middle East.

 
The US ensures its domination of the region by on the one hand supporting repressive Arab regimes who will do its bidding, and on the other funding the "Iron Fist" of Israel. In 1998 (during the "peace process") the US State Department granted export licences for anti-personnel riot control chemicals worth US$3.5 million, plus 28,539,400 rounds of ammunition and 12,768 military guns to Israel.
 
It is true that the US and Israel have not always agreed on tactics, at least openly. As far back as 1948, US oil giants consciously modelled themselves as "pro-Arab," while the US government went about funding the Zionist terror gangs expelling Palestinians from their land.
 
And through the "peace process" of the 1990s, the US mouthed the rhetoric of compromise, at the same time watching happily as Israeli settlements continued to grow across the West Bank.
 
But today the US is leaving no doubt as to which side it is on. As Bush waxed lyrical about the Saudi "peace plan" in April, Israeli troops were ploughing into Hebron. In a sick echo of the Nazi Kristallnacht attacks on Jews in 1938, Israeli settlers were scrawling graffiti on the city's shops - a Star of David with the words "Arabs out" written beneath.
 
The US administration, far from condemning such barbarities, calls on Arafat to "renounce terror," while receiving Ariel Sharon - the biggest butcher in the region - as a guest of state.
 
Israel is in violation of dozens of UN resolutions, is the only nuclear power in the region, and has again and again perpetrated massive violations of human rights and international law. And yet, according to George Bush, Sharon is "a man of peace."
 
At the same time, the US is gearing up for a full scale invasion of Iraq, on the flimsy pretext that it won't allow UN weapons inspectors into the country - something the Americans say they would never do. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld describes Iraq as a "world class vicious dictatorship," while praising Israel for its willingness to negotiate!
 
Some sections of the US administration seemed worried that the conflict in the Occupied Territories would make an invasion of Iraq harder. It is clear now the consensus in Washington is that if the "Palestinian problem" can be buried under the wheels of Israeli tanks, then so much the better.