Israel Sets Up Apartheid Zones Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 6, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- IN THE NAME OF SECURITY: ISRAEL SETS UP APARTHEID ZONES By Sara Flounders Occupied Palestine [From May 17 to 24, a delegation from International ANSWER visited Gaza, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem, Ramallah and Jenin in occupied Palestine. This report by delegation member Sara Flounders of the International Action Center focuses on the lockdown of Palestinian communities.] At every checkpoint and roadblock you can feel the rage and frustration. The Israeli military lockdown controls every aspect of life in occupied Palestine. To travel a 10-mile stretch of road between East Jerusalem and Ramallah involves long waits, numerous ID checks, changing cabs and vans up to three times, taking back roads and no roads, then walking for a mile past Israeli army tanks and heavily fortified gun emplacements. This is daily life for tens of thousands of Palestinians. In Gaza on the only road running from north to south, the line of stalled traffic stretches over a mile. For more than seven hours the hot sun has beat down on thousands of angry drivers and their passengers. While young children run up and down the gridlock of cars, trucks, buses and vans, many older people try to find some shade. The waiting is all the more painful because no one knows when he or she will be allowed to pass--or, if they pass, whether they will be able to return. For hundreds of feet on both sides of the road we see gashed, barren fields. Homes and groves of orange and olive trees have been bulldozed for "security." APARTHEID ROADS An 8-foot wall of cement barricades stretches into the distance, dividing the highway into an Israeli settler road on one side and a Palestinian road on the other. On the Israeli side of the wall, the cars and trucks of settlers with yellow Israeli license plates zip past. Israeli tanks move back and forth into position. On the Palestinian side of the wall, all traffic is choked off at the checkpoint for most of each day. After hours of waiting, the road may open for a couple of hours. There is no schedule, no way of knowing when or why or how many cars will be allowed through. Fruit sits rotting in the hot sun. Truckloads of cattle and chickens can die before they reach market. Medicines and other fragile materials are spoiled. Because we had U.S. passports, the Palestinian truckers we talked to suggested we try approaching the cement bunker to ask how long the blockade would last. Although we weren't hopeful of receiving any information, we agreed. Our hands high in the air, holding up our passports, we slowly approached the gun barrels poking out of slits in the round cement bunker at the checkpoint. Behind them was a line of tanks. The Israeli soldiers yelled to us that as Americans we could come to the front of the line and then travel on the Israeli side of the walled road. We declined. They didn't know or care how long the Palestinians would have to wait. They were "just following orders." Because of the closure the ANSWER delegation was able to visit only half of the 30-mile sandy strip of land along the Mediterranean known as Gaza. The people who live there are unable to leave. Palestinians from the West Bank cannot enter Gaza. The day after our wait at the checkpoint, Gaza was further divided into two parts. It is no longer possible for Palestinians living in Jabalya Camp or Gaza City to travel a few miles south to Rafa or Khan Younis. Only Israeli settlers and a few Palestinians with special permits can move around. Only restricted amounts of food are let in to prevent the population from stockpiling food for use during an Israeli offensive. Social cohesion and mobilization of the entire population are used as a form of mass resistance. Based on the experience in the West Bank, where medical staff and ambulances were prevented from reaching injured people, medical care in Gaza is being reorganized and widely dispersed. Hundreds of emergency medical kits have been distributed throughout many neighborhoods. WALLED GHETTOS The roadblocks and checkpoints are part of the U.S.- supported Israeli effort to totally strangle the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, of the past year and a half. Now even the limited autonomy of the Palestinian Authority in the cities of the West Bank and Gaza has ended. During our visit we saw that the policy of checkpoints had evolved into a total lockdown of the population into small ghettos, surrounded by barbed wire and cement walls. Israeli tanks and troops move at will into and out of Zone A areas, that were to be administered by the PA. Apache attack helicopters swoop in to carry out missile strikes and assassinations. The 2.1 million Palestinians who live on the West Bank have been walled off into eight ghettos, where Palestinians are totally surrounded and locked down. The average Palestinian is no longer permitted to move anywhere outside his or her area of residence. Even traveling 10 miles for work or school is prohibited; so is an emergency visit to check on an aged parent. Under the newest restrictions trucks throughout the West Bank will not be permitted to enter the eight zones. The entire contents of each truck will have to be unloaded, inspected and transported to another local truck authorized to operate within the zone. This time-consuming and expensive process will add to the cost of basic food and daily necessities. This systematic strangulation of the local economy is already in place in Gaza. No Palestinians will be permitted into Israel at all. Already tens of thousands of Palestinians who used to line up for day labor in Israel have been unemployed for over a year. The restrictions will totally cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. East Jerusalem, the largest concentration of Palestinians, is the political, economic, cultural and religious center of Palestinian life. The Palestinian residents of East Jeru salem hold Israeli residency papers but are not Israeli citizens. They will no longer be permitted into the West Bank. The many hundreds of Palestinians who work for international aid agencies based in East Jerusalem, along with teachers, technicians, doctors and med i cal staff who work in the major hospitals and schools in East Jerusalem and live in Ramallah or Bethlehem, will be unable to get to work. The delegation was unable to reach Nablus. The city was totally locked down following an Israeli assassination of three resistance organizers. One bystander was also killed in the attack by Apache helicopter gunships. On May 25 Israeli forces again swept into Bethlehem, Tulkarm and Qalqilya searching houses, making arrests and tightening still further the restrictive curfews. The Israeli offensive has not ended. The international corporate media pulled back after reporting that Sharon had released President Arafat from the siege at his compound. However, the Israeli forces in most cases pulled back only several hundred feet to the perimeter of encircled, locked- down cities. International solidarity is more important than ever in the face of the continuing and overwhelming Israeli violence. Everywhere we traveled in the West Bank and in Gaza Palestinians had heard and seen coverage of the demonstration of over 100,000 people in solidarity with Palestine in Washington, D.C. Even though they are surrounded on every side, the resistance continues because they know they are not isolated. * WHY ISRAEL CAN'T ACHIEVE ITS GOAL By Richard Becker In the occupied West Bank and Gaza many aspects of Israel's latest offensive against the Palestinians are obvious: the devastating destruction to refugee camps and cities; the deliberate targeting of infrastructure and government institutions; the omnipresent "checkpoints" isolating all the major Palestinian population centers. But not apparent to the eye is the most important aim of the Israeli offensive: the destruction of the Palestinian resistance, dubbed "Operation Defensive Wall." The primary objective of the ongoing operation is to destroy the organizational structures of the resistance by the killing and capturing of leaders and activists. A number of key leaders of such organizations as Fatah- Palestine National Liberation Movement, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hamas-Islamic Resistance Movement and Islamic Jihad have been assassinated or imprisoned in the operation. At the same time, it is clear that the heightened repression has by no means halted the struggle. In the past week, in fact, there has been an intensification of attacks on Israeli targets. The goal of liquidating the Palestinian Revolution is hardly a new one. Israel has sought to wipe out all resistance to its colonial seizure of Palestine for more than half a century. Nor is it Israel alone that desires to crush the Palestinians. Both the U.S., and reactionary Arab governments like those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have long viewed the Palestinian movement as a threat to their interests. However, the militant mass demonstrations in many Arab capitals in April in solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people were the largest in many years. The April protests showed once again the organic link between the Palestinian struggle and the broader Arab national movement, and were seen as a threat to the pro-U.S. monarchs and dictators in the region. U.S. plans for a new war against Iraq were derailed, at least temporarily, by the manifestations of mass anger in many Arab countries. Popular outrage in the region was focused not only on Israel, but also on Washington, due to the enormous U.S. military, economic and diplomatic support of the Israeli state. OFFENSIVE ENDS OSLO 'PEACE PROCESS' The new phase of the war began with the invasion of the Balata refugee camp on Feb. 27, followed by the massive Israeli army assault on Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and other cities and towns on March 29. The Israeli offensive effectively put an end to the Oslo "peace process." Under Oslo, eight West Bank cities-- Jericho, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Qalqilya, Tulkarem, Nablus and Jenin--as well as 60 percent of Gaza, were designated Zone A. Zone A areas, comprising less than 5 percent of historic Palestine, were placed under Palestinian security and administrative control. By reoccupying the Zone A cities, Israel demonstrated that it no longer pretended to respect Palestinian sovereignty over even a tiny fraction of the land. Although the Israeli army pulled back to the edges of most West Bank cities in late April and early May, there have been repeated incursions since then in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah and elsewhere. On May 27, the Israeli army indefinitely reoccupied Bethlehem, "to search for militants." In both the massive invasion begun on March 29 and in the subsequent attacks, the primary objective has been to kill or arrest targeted activists. MILITARY ORDER #1500: 'DETENTION FOR SELECTION' A key element of the Israeli operation is the mass roundup of Palestinian men under the new Military Order #1500. As the Israeli army with its overwhelming firepower swept into Zone A in early April, it ordered all males between the ages of 15 and 50 years of age (in some cities from 16 to 55) to surrender themselves. Soldiers then conducted house-to-house searches, destroying and stealing property and viciously beating any man or boy who had not given himself up. Military Order #1500 was based on the old Emergency Laws implemented by the British military when it colonized Palestine in the early 20th century. The Israeli army frequently resorts to using such laws in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Order 1500 allows "detention for selection," a novel "legal" concept, to say the least. Under the order, an individual can be arrested and detained simply because he or she is Palestinian. Any military officer of the rank of captain or above can order a detainee held incommunicado for up to 18 days. During that time, the detainee has no access to a lawyer or family members, nor is the military required to inform the family of the whereabouts of the prisoner. Between 5,000 and 8,000 boys and men were taken into custody under Order 1500. All were blindfolded, tightly handcuffed and held under terrible conditions. In the newly opened Ofer detention camp outside Ramallah, thousands were detained outdoors for days in unseasonably rainy and cold weather, without even the benefit of tents. For days there were no toilets, little food and virtually no medical attention, even for those badly wounded or suffering from life- threatening health conditions. Many of the prisoners were badly beaten and otherwise abused by the soldiers guarding them. (For more details, see the web site of the Addameer Prisoners Rights organization, www.addameer.org.) All the detainees were subjected to interrogation. Some were then sent to the infamous Moscobiya torture center in Jerusalem for more questioning and abuse. Most were released after several days of severe mistreatment. Between 1,200 and 1,500 prisoners were held over for military "trials" inside the detention camps. A typical "trial" lasted about five minutes, before a panel of three Israeli military officers. Neither the detainees nor lawyers trying to assist them were notified ahead of time. Often the proceedings took place in the middle of the night. The military prosecutor presented to the judges--and only to the judges--an intelligence report on the detainee. Neither the detainee, nor--if he was lucky enough to have one--his lawyer were allowed to see this secret evidence. Following the inevitable verdict, the defendants were then sentenced to three-month or six-month terms of administrative detention. Administrative detention sentences can be renewed indefinitely at the sole discretion of the Israeli military. As part of Israel's apartheid system, the "legal process" described above is reserved for Palestinians only. U.S. PRESSURES PA TO TURN OVER MILITANTS During April and May, world attention was focused on the sieges of Palestine Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The Israeli army attack on the compound completely destroyed a building housing four men jailed by the PA. The four were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular leftist organization. They were accused of killing former Israeli tourism minister Rehovam Ze'evi. Ze'evi, an extreme right-winger and Arab-hater, was shot last October in retaliation for the Israeli military's assassination of PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa inside his Ramallah office in August 2001. While offering no apologies for the murder of Mustafa, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had demanded that the PA arrest and hand over the four accused PFLP members. Sharon also demanded that Arafat turn over the new leader of the PFLP, Ahmed Saadat. In response to this demand, the PA arrested Saadat several months ago, and was also holding him inside the compound. Throughout April, Sharon repeated his position that for the siege to end, the PFLP leader and members must be turned over, along with an official of the PA, Fuad Shubaki. The U.S. intervened and negotiated a deal that called for the six to be transferred to a PA jail in Jericho, under the super vision of U.S. and British officials. Other elements of the arrangement included: 1)calling off the United Nations investigation of the Israeli army destruction of the Jenin refugee camp, and 2) Arafat's support for ending the siege of the Church of the Nativity by accepting the expulsion to Cyprus of 13 Palestinian fighters. While the PA president's public standing had risen while he was held prisoner inside his compound, the deal for his release was very unpopular. At the urging of his advisors, Arafat cancelled a visit to Jenin refugee camp in early May due to fears that he would face popular disapproval. The deals in Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as a surrender by PA security forces of their building in Beitunia early in the offensive, which allowed Israeli forces to capture several Hamas leaders held captive there, were widely viewed among Palestinians as unwarranted concessions to the U.S. and Israel. The concessions by the PA leadership are seen in many quarters as endangering Palestinian unity. One response has been moves toward stronger cooperation among militant resistance organizations. And as even the Israeli media and military must concede, the Palestinian resistance groups immediately began taking measures to recuperate from the blows they have suffered. After the widespread destruction and humiliation inflicted by the Israeli army in recent months, there is no shortage of new recruits eager to join the struggle. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. Subscribe wwnews-on@wwpublish.com. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytact-05.30.02-09:13:04-31530