Democratic Palestine : 18 (ص 18)
غرض
- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 18 (ص 18)
- المحتوى
-
been all but strangled by Israeli
imposed limitations on fishing grounds.
These have been reduced to one sixth of
their original size with daily catch
reduced accordingly. Fishermen who
violate the 12 mile limit risk fines,
having their boats confiscated and
being shot at by the Zionist forces. Yet
Israeli boats fish in the forbidden areas.
The Israeli authorities’ deliberate
neglect of social services also contri-
butes to poverty. Most glaring are the
grossly substandard medical facilities
and generally unhealthy living condi-
tions. None of the camps, and only
three towns and villages, have a sewage
system. There are thus constant over-
flows, sometimes resulting in outbreaks
of cholera. Benvenisti reported Gaza’s
Shifa Hospital as a scandal - patients
two to a bed, mice, no X-ray machine,
patients waiting up to a year for some
operations, and emergency patients
sent to Ashkelon bleeding, due to lack
of intensive care equipment. The fact
that the Israeli authorities refused to
disclose the health budget for Gaza in
1985 to the WHO, is damning in itself.
While before the 1967 occupation,
funding to public services in the Strip
was 20% of the area’s gross national
product, today under Israeli occupa-
tion, it is less than 10% The result in the
field of health can be deduced from
indices such as the infant mortality rate
which is four times higher than among
Jews in ‘Israel’.
THEFT
The most interesting finding in Ben-
venisti’s report is the extent to which
the Israeli authorities have actually
robbed the Gaza Strip, by extracting
taxes without giving commensurate
services. Subtracting what the Israeli
administration has expended on the
Gaza population from the taxes paid by
Gazans (direct taxes and income taxes
paid by those working in ‘Israel’, plus
VAT on Israeli goods paid by all),
Benvenisti calculates that the Zionist
state owes Gazans $500 million for
their contribution to the Israeli eco-
nomy over 19 years of occupation.
(One could, of course, arrive at an even
larger sum if one counts the value of
land confiscated and labor power
exerted at substandard wages.)
A similar grand larceny has been
committed against the South African
masses. In a complex process of colo-
nization stretching over three decades,
the vast majority of the people were
deprived of all but 13% of the
country’s land, i.e., relegated to the
bantustans where the soil is least fertile
and there are no jobs, social services or
infrastructure to speak of. South
African Blacks do the grueling labor in
agriculture and the mines for wages
averaging one-fourth those of white
workers. Studies in the eighties show
that the gap between Black and white
wages is widening, and in places like
Soweto real wages are declining mar-
kedly. In short, the African masses
18
have built the wealth of the country,
but are deprived of political rights and
basic necessities. To give just some
examples: 30% of Black children are
malnourished. The budget for all health
care in the 10 bantustans amounts to
the cost of running one white hospital
in Johannesburg. The government
spends almost ten times more to edu-
cate a white student than a Black.
According to official figures, the infant
mortality rate among Blacks is six times
higher than for whites. In the Bantus-
tans, it is higher still.
GHETTOS BESIEGED
While the Israeli and South African
governments and capitalists thrive on
Gaza and Soweto as labor camps, they
also fear these concentrations of the
oppressed. Thus, Gazans and Sowetans
live under a perpetual state of siege.
It is not without reason that the ra-
cist rulers fear the masses in these two
ghettos. Thousands of African youth
were radicalized in the 1976 uprising in
Soweto, which can correctly be termed
the precursor of the current mass upri-
sing in South Africa. Also the Gaza
Strip has been a focus of resistance.
Following the 1967 occupation, armed
struggle reached the point that the
fedayeen controlled the Strip by night,
while the Israeli troops patrolled only
by day. The Zionist occupation’s res-
ponse was a particularly brutal appli-
cation of military rule. Ariel Sharon
directed a counterinsurgency campaign
whereby the camps in the Strip were
‘rearranged’. In 1971, 3,000 shelters
were destroyed to make way for wide
roads to accomodate the occupiers’
patrols. Thousands were removed from
the most densely populated areas into
‘townships’ - as Soweto is also euphe-
mistically called. This was the start of a
resettlement conspiracy that continues
until today; since 1971, 4,000 refugees
have been evicted from Rafah. Israeli
repression did not stop with the 1971
crushing of revolutionary cells, but is
ongoing. This May, a number of
entrances to Jabalia camp were sealed
off with barbed wire, and orchard
Owners were ordered to uproot their
trees along the main road, to prevent
attacks on military patrols.
Today, Soweto is under an intense
siege with the latest state of emergency,
hundreds arrested and the apartheid
police and army opening fire on any
movement of the masses. The Gaza
Strip experienced a similar siege during
the spring 1982 mass uprising in occu-
pied Palestine. A ten-day curfew was
clamped on Jabalia camp. Workers
returning from jobs in ‘Israel’ were
arbitrarily beaten and arrested, as were
parents who ventured out to retrieve
children who had left the house. In this
way, 700 men were assembled on a
single day and made to pay exorbitant
fines for ‘violating the curfew’.
WHY GAZA FIRST?
«The whole of Gaza is becoming a
labor camp for use by Israel...Gaza is a
profit-making business for the Israeli
treasury,» according to Meron Benve-
nisti. Added to Zionism’s overall
expansionist aims, these statements
explain the real reason for Peres’ cur-
rent attempt to find a separate solution
for the Gaza Strip, in order to perpe-
tuate the advantages of the status quo.
This plan has previously been billed as
‘autonomy first’, but aware of the mass
rejection of this conspiracy, the Zio-
nists have begun shuffling their words
around. The message, however, is
clear. In the spring, ‘Israel’ named 20
so-called directors general in Gaza for
administering local affairs. Commen-
ting on this, a senior Israeli official
said: «It’s not Camp David. I’m not
talking autonomy. It’s not home rule,
but instead of work being done by
Israelis, it'll be done by people who are
residents of the West Bank and Gaza.
They will not decide policy questions.
Let them improve their standard of
living and the quality of their lives.
We’re also giving them freedom to
bring in Arab money to build hospitals,
schools and so forth. The better the
econcmic situation, the less attraction
to terrorism. We’re not changing the
structure, but only who does what»
(Boston Globe, May 24th).
Gaza mayor Rashad Shawwe, known
feudalist and rightist, responded to the
Israeli plan by proposing autonomy for
the Strip under Arab sovereignty
(Egyptian / Jordanian). The masses,
however, won’t swallow this. The
people of the Gaza Strip understand the
essence of ‘autonomy’ no matter what
it is called, for they bore the brunt of
Camp David. Though the accord
included a settlement freeze, 12 of the
now 18 settlements in the Strip were
built after 1978. They line the southern
coast close to water aquifers. Dealing
another blow to Palestinian agriculture,
Zionist settlers sank 35 wells, while
Palestinians were forbidden to dig any.
The town of Khan Younis is now boxed
in by settlements. Rafah was redivided
as the Israelis withdrew from the Sinai.
Homes were bulldozed to create the
new border; families were divided and
owners separated from their orchards;
commerce was totally disrupted as most
people are forbidden to cross the divi-
ding line. Swedish camp in the same
area became a permanent military zone;
there is nightly curfew.
Despite the extreme hardship in
which they live, the Gaza masses are
not likely to fall prey to the illusions
which the Israeli occupiers are trying to
implant in order to maintain control
over the Strip, especially its work force.
The rise in the number and quality of
anti-occupation operations in the Strip
testifies to the people’s resolve to con-
tinue the struggle until genuine libera-
tion.
Facts about the Gaza Strip are based on
newspaper reports of Benvenisti’s fin-
dings and issues of Al Fajr (English
edition). Information about Soweto is
drawn from the book Freedom Rising,
written by James North and published
in New York by Macmillan in 1985. @ - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 18
- تاريخ
- أغسطس ١٩٨٦
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
Contribute
Not viewed