Washington Report, April 2006, pages 7-9

Special Report

Israel and the U.S. Take Aim at Palestinian Democracy

By Rachelle Marshall

BURNING bridges in politics is the easiest thing to do, but it has no perspective, it has no future.—Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, explaining on Feb. 9 why he will not declare Hamas a terrorist organization.

It’s not possible for the U.S. and the world to turn its back on an elected democracy. There is no way to retreat now.—Hamas spokesman Farhat Asaad, Feb. 13, 2006. 

What distinguishes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from most historical tragedies is the extent to which absurdity gets in the way of the truth. Israel’s 38-year military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has robbed millions of Palestinians of their land and their livelihoods and left them imprisoned within a maze of walls and checkpoints. Their homes have been demolished by Israeli bulldozers, their olive trees and crops destroyed by Israeli settlers, and their children killed by Israeli soldiers. Yet to the United States and its allies, it is Israel that deserves defending and the Palestinians who must renounce violence.

The incongruousness of this view was especially evident in the reaction to the Jan. 25 Palestinian elections, in which Hamas won 74 of the parliament’s 132 seats. The Palestinians showed their commitment to democracy by conducting one of the fairest elections ever held in an Arab country. What they received from democracy’s most vocal advocates was the threat of punishment. The Quartet that endorsed President Bush’s now-defunct road map—the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations—immediately announced that a Palestinian government that included Hamas would receive no further financial aid until Hamas agreed to reject violence and recognize Israel.

While the Americans and Europeans were demanding that Hamas commit to nonviolence, Israel was busy killing Palestinians. In the four weeks following the Jan. 25 election, Israeli forces using air strikes and ground fire killed at least 27 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. One of the victims was a 9-year-old girl who had strayed into a “forbidden area” in Gaza, others were suspected militants, and several were youths who were shot when they threw stones at soldiers when the army repeatedly raided Nablus hunting for militants. Hamas has observed a cease-fire since December 2004.

Graham Usher, writing in the Feb. 20 issue of the Nation, warned that if the Palestinian Authority is forced into bankruptcy, “the vacuum [could be] filled by violence, both intra-Palestinian and Israeli-Palestinian.” In spite of such warnings, Israeli and U.S. diplomats are planning ways to starve a Hamas-led government of money, with the intention of making it unable to function and forcing President Mahmoud Abbas to call new elections that will restore Fatah to power. According to The New York Times of Feb. 14, the plan calls for depriving the Palestinians of some $1.6 billion in international aid, closing off traffic in and out of Gaza and the West Bank, and withholding the roughly $54 million a month that Israel collects from Palestinians in taxes and customs duties.

Israeli officials persistently criticized Abbas for failing to disarm militants, and refused to negotiate with him. But immediately after the election, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised to “cooperate” with Abbas and other Fatah leaders “with the intention of strengthening those who acknowledge the right of Israel to live without terror and within safe borders.” Olmert’s change of heart came too late, however. Palestinians rejected Abbas’s Fatah party at the polls because of its corruption and lawlessness—high-level officials reportedly stole as much as $700 million from the Palestinian treasury—and because Abbas’s ineffectiveness in dealing with Israel has left them worse off than ever. The U.S.-Israel plan to starve them into submission is more likely to cause angry Palestinians to support Hamas than turn back to their old leaders.

It is true that Hamas does not recognize Israel and is anything but a pacifist organization. Its covenant adopted in 1988 declares: “The land of Palestine is an Islamic trust left to the generations of Muslims until the day of resurrection. It is forbidden to anyone to yield or concede part or all of it.” But covenants are relics that are often ignored in the face of reality. In any case, change the words “Islamic” and “Muslim” to “Jewish” and the passage sounds remarkably similar to the teachings of Orthodox rabbis and the beliefs of many Israelis.

The Likud party platform adopted on June 7, 1996 reads in part: “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is an eternal right, not subject to dispute…the Jordan river shall be the eastern border of the State of Israel, south of Lake Kinneret.” In other words, Likud does not recognize the Palestinians’ right to a state in the West Bank. Nor does Likud reject violence. The party adopted a resolution on Jan. 3 of this  year urging that Israel “bomb Iran’s nuclear reactor before it is too late.”

In fact no Israeli government has recognized the Palestinians’ right to an independent state. The Labor and Likud parties may differ in style and rhetoric, but there has been remarkable continuity in their policies toward the Palestinians. Both parties have encouraged the rapid growth of settlements in the occupied territories, both oppose the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and neither is willing to give up full control over the West Bank and its vital water sources.

The late Yitzhak Rabin, now legendary as a peacemaker, in fact betrayed the hopes raised by the Oslo accords, inadequate as they were. He doubled the number of settlements in Palestinian territory and delayed granting many of the concessions called for in the agreement, including the redeployment of Israeli troops from West Bank cities. It could even be said that the train of events leading to Hamas’s recent electoral victory began while he was prime minister.

Rabin’s Legacy

In February 1994, after a settler named Baruch Goldstein marched into the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron and gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers, Rabin ordered the thousands of Palestinian residents of Hebron to be put under round-the-clock curfew. Angry Palestinians who gathered outside the local hospital where the wounded had been taken were beaten and dispersed by Israeli soldiers. Instead of dismantling the illegal settlements that housed extremists such as Goldstein, Rabin allowed their members to move about the city freely, protected by Israeli troops. Hamas responded with suicide bombings, and Israel in turn shut down the borders of the West Bank and Gaza, punishing tens of thousands of Palestinian workers and their families.

Since then, Israel’s expansion of the settler population by more than 5 percent a year, and its construction of barriers and Jewish-only highways, have rendered the peace process meaningless. The now incapacitated Ariel Sharon was from the beginning determined to impose his own solution to the conflict. In a New Yorker article of Jan. 23 and 30, Ari Shavit reported that as early as April 2001, Sharon considered “bringing the Palestinians to a point of political chaos and then luring them into a partial agreement on Israel’s terms.”

Exactly a year later Sharon launched “Operation Defensive Shield,” a massive reinvasion of the West Bank. In describing the effects of the offensive, The New York Times reported: “It is safe to say the infrastructure of life itself and of any future Palestinian state—roads, schools, electricity pylons, water pipes, telephone lines—has been devastated.” According to Nigel Roberts of the World Bank, a Palestinian civil administration that was “highly functional, and delivered good services” was crushed.

The subsequent imprisonment of Yasser Arafat inside his compound in Ramallah, and the lockdown of the Palestinians behind roadblocks and checkpoints failed to stop suicide bombings but brought the Palestinian Authority close to the “political chaos” Sharon had envisioned. According to an editorial in the January-February issue of the Israeli magazine Challenge, “The destruction of the PA created a vacuum, which enabled Sharon to announce that there is no Palestinian partner...Into the vacuum, however, entered Hamas.”

Hamas leaders filled that vacuum primarily by providing Palestinians with social services such as schools, health care, and welfare assistance, and doing so without enriching themselves. Hamas also brought more efficient government to towns where it has won municipal elections and, unlike Fatah with its competing militias, has been able to exert enough discipline on its fighters to maintain a 14-month-long cease-fire. Nevertheless, a Hamas-led government will face daunting obstacles.

Most of the organization’s prominent leaders have been killed and many others are in Israeli prisons, including 15 of those who were recently elected. Israel will not allow Hamas legislators from Gaza to attend parliament meetings in Ramallah, and members from the West Bank will be in danger of arrest if they do, so parliamentary sessions will have to be held by video conference. Hamas could also face a challenge from the 70,000-member Palestinian security services, which are controlled by Fatah officials reluctant to give up their power.

But the basic problem for any Palestinian government, according to Joel Beinin of Stanford University, is the continuing Israeli occupation. Beinin, who is professor of Middle East history at Stanford University, wrote in a recent article that “Substantive democracy requires the rule of law, protection of civil liberties and minority rights, physical security, a reasonable standard of living, sovereignty, and political independence.” Palestinians under the existing occupation “have none of these.”

If Israel’s newly created Kadima party, with Olmert at its head, wins the March election the rights that Beinin listed as essential will continue to remain out of reach of the Palestinians. Olmert has vowed to carry out Sharon’s plan for “separation,” which calls for Israel to annex the huge settlement blocs that extend across the West Bank, retain sovereignty over a “permanently united” Jerusalem, and continue to control the area that borders on Jordan. The wall that winds through Palestinian territory and encircles Palestinian cities and towns will be a permanent boundary.

The result will be that Palestinians are confined to urban enclaves surrounded by Israeli highways and barriers, while Israel controls their borders, 60 percent of their land, and their main water sources. It is a solution calling for surrender rather than peace, and one that no Palestinian would willingly accept. The plan will also pose a threat to Israel’s security. An open-air prison on Israel’s borders, where the economy is stifled and poverty is rampant, will be a fertile breeding ground for the anger and desperation that lead to violence.

The alternative is a negotiated settlement both sides can live with. But peace negotiations must eventually take place between enemies, not friends, if the peace is to last. Palestinian voters were willing to risk their future with an Islamic organization because it offered hope of more honest and effective government. Israel, the United States and the European Union, which have far less to lose, should be willing to respect their choice. There is nothing to be gained by shunning Hamas and punishing the Palestinians who voted for them. A more effective way to assure an end to violence is to engage Hamas leaders in serious peace talks and insist that Israel stop its attacks on Palestinians.

The one note of reason came from Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, who declined to brand Hamas as a terrorist organization and invited Hamas leaders to Moscow to discuss possible solutions to the Middle East conflict. Israeli officials called Putin’s offer “a knife in the back,” but Hamas leaders immediately accepted the invitation. They had previously indicated their eagerness to enter talks with any members of the international community. Immediately after the election, Ismail Haniyah, a senior member of Hamas, made an appeal for continued Palestinian aid, saying, “We in Hamas are ready to meet and have an open dialogue. We assure you that the money will be spent under your supervision.” In an article published in a Palestinian newspaper on Feb. 3, Hamas’s top political official, Khaled Meshal, sent a message to Israel saying, “If you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, then we will be ready to negotiate with you over the conditions of such a truce.”

Such messages are a far cry from threatening to destroy Israel, and are a reminder that negotiations with groups such as the IRA and the African National Congress, which were once considered terrorist, led in time to an end to violence. Dr. Azza Karam of the U.N. Development Program pointed out in a Feb. 5 talk at Stanford University that even radical Islamists must be “political” once they are in office. “The newly elected government,” she said, “will need to address appalling conditions in Palestinian refugee camps, organize social services and come to the table with Israel.” She warned that the West would create martyrs by refusing to engage with Hamas, and pointed out that “Like any movement, Islamism consists of moderates, radicals, and those in between.”

Washington’s policy of threats and confrontation toward governments perceived as hostile to U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East has undoubtedly strengthened Islamic radicals. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, ostensibly aimed at combatting terrorism, have instead increased the number of militant fighters and led to unending violence. Nearly five years after invading Afghanistan, American forces are facing resistance from a resurgent Taliban and its allies. American air strikes that kill more civilians than enemy soldiers create even more hostility. Attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq are also increasing, along with sectarian violence, and conditions for ordinary Iraqis are now measurably worse than they were under Saddam Hussain.

According to the U.S. Government Acountability Office, oil production and the availability of electric power, sewage service and clean water are all substantially down from pre-invasion levels. Insurgent attacks are largely to blame, but are the corruption and inefficiency that have blocked reconstruction efforts. The controller and financial officer for the U.S. occupation authority, Robert Stein, recently pleaded guilty to stealing millions of dollars in Iraqi and American funds, taking at least a million more in bribes, and steering construction contracts to cronies who pocketed the money. One of his friends maintained a villa in Baghdad where women gave sexual favors to officials he hoped to influence.

In the light of such revelations one can only imagine the reaction of many Palestinians when an American president who has invaded two Muslim countries, whose budget calls for half a trillion dollars in military spending, and who defends torture and the detention of prisoners without trial, tells them to renounce violence and recognize the legitimacy of a country that is illegally occupying their land.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the Jewish International Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

SIDEBAR

An end to the neocons’ vision

The re-election—by one vote—of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafaari on Feb. 12 may have put a final end to the Bush administration’s plan to reshape the Middle East. Al-Jafaari, who has close ties to religious fundamentalists in Iran, was considered by many Iraqis to be an ineffective leader. He failed to restore essential services, and he allowed Shi’i militias under the Iraqi Security Ministry to kidnap, torture, and kill hundreds of Sunnis. But at the last minute Al-Jafaari was supported by the radical Shi’i cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose followers control the largest bloc in the ruling Shi’i alliance. Al-Sadr has led two uprisings against American forces and has demanded that they leave Iraq. He is certain to have a powerful voice in the new Iraqi government. As a result, the Bush administration theorists who were confident that ousting Saddam Hussain would lead to the replacement of neighboring regimes with compliant pro-West governments are likely to see the dominoes fall the other way. On a recent visit to Iran and Syria, Al-Sadr pledged that “If neighboring Islamic countries, including Iran, become targets of attacks, we will support them.” So the final irony of Bush’s ill-fated war may be that instead of creating a pro-West democracy in Iraq, it has turned that country into an anti-American theocracy allied with two regimes the United States regards as its enemies.—R.M.

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