Violence in Israel/Palestine: Response and Responsibility

by Florence Steichen, WAMM

Stop the violence first, and then we will negotiate, Israel's Prime Minister Sharon insists. He means to stop Palestinian violence, unwilling to see that Palestinian violence is a desperate response to Israel's violence.

Israel continues to occupy Palestinian lands, imposing closures and curfews that strangle the Palestinian economy, deny medical care, and prohibit freedom of movement and worship. Israel demolishes houses, destroys olive groves, and confiscates land for the unrelenting expansion of settlements. Now the Palestinians endure trenches around cities and missile attacks (with weapons from the U.S.) against civilians, health clinics, and administrative centers in the West Bank and Gaza. All this is "restrained response to Palestinian violence."

Camp David II failed, in spite of Israel's "generous" offer of partial return of the Occupied Territories, because it did not meet the minimum Palestinian requirements: an end to the occupation; disbanding settlements; Israeli withdrawal from the occupied lands; an independent viable Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital; and the right of return for refugees. Numerous UN resolutions, international covenants, and accords support Palestinian demands. UN resolution 181 for the partition of Palestine, November 1947, stipulated a special status for Jerusalem.

Oslo marked the end of the basically nonviolent Intifada of 1987-1993. Palestinian leaders signed an agreement they hoped would guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian state within the full boundaries as of June 4, 1967, before the Six Day War. The Oslo accords and associated agreements were ambiguous, and did not ensure the rights of the Palestinians based on the relevant UN resolutions. Incredibly, the Palestinians agreed to bypass roads, financed by the U.S., that would circumvent Palestinian towns and villages. These were to be few and temporary to reduce friction between the Jewish settlers and Palestinians during the interim period. By 1998, however, bypass roads had taken 25,000 dunums of land, with some of the constructed roads more than 50 meters wide.

Since Oslo, the promised release of prisoners did not happen, and the number of settlers increased: in the West Bank and Gaza from 100,000 to 180,000; in East Jerusalem from 22,000 to 170,000 by the end of the 1990s. Over the last three decades, more than 7,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza--leaving more than 40,000 people homeless.

Events surrounding Baruch Goldstein's massacres of 29 worshippers and injury of many others in the Ibrahmi mosque in Hebron, February 26, 1994, marked a turning point. During the assault, the Israeli guards did not try to disarm Goldstein; they fired on the worshippers who tried to disarm him. When thousands rushed to the hospital to give blood, soldiers opened fire, killing at least seven more. In continuing demonstrations, 17 more Palestinian youth were killed. The Palestinian population of Hebron was under curfew for 40 days to protect the Jewish families; the rest of the West Bank and Gaza was under curfew for several weeks.

Because of these events, Hamas shifted its tactics and began to mount reprisals against Israeli citizens. So who is responsible for the violence, and who is telling the truth? And why did the U.S. oppose sending an observer force to Israel and Palestine? The situation looks to me like ethnic cleansing in slow motion.