Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 32)
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- Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 32)
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anomaly in a world where direct col-
onialism is all but abolished. The
guarantee for such states is their con-
nection with imperialism, but im-
perialism’s world-wide dominance is
also on the decline. The Palestinian
uprising, on the other hand, as the
flashpoint of the overall Palestinian
revolution, is part of the world-wide
national liberation movement which
points the way to the future. As such,
the uprising has brought Palestinian
statehood into the realm of practical
possibility, as the antithesis of Zionist
occupation.
In a more immediate perspective,
statements like Shamir’s are but a
cover-up for Zionism’s failure to
resolve the contradictions inherent in its
own projects. The ‘iron wall’ has in-
deed been erected against the Palesti-
nians and never more obviousiy than
today when the occupied territories are
simply sealed off if there is reason to
expect widespread protests. But the
Palestinians neither disappear behind
the wall nor stop struggling. Instead,
such measures have elicited more fric-
tion in the Zionist camp. A case in
point was the situation around Land
Day when the occupied territories were
sealed off for three days. Trade and
Industry Minister Ariel Sharon and
settler groups openly opposed this
policy because it collides with their
‘reality’ that the territories are part of
‘Israel’. They advocated mass deporta-
tions as an alternative. However, both
sealing the territories and mass depor-
tations, like the Palestinians’ general
strikes, raise the question of where
‘Israel’ would recruit a labor force to
do the low-status, manual work which
Israeli Jews today avoid.
Referring to the Likud, Abba Eban,
former Israeli foreign minister and now
chairman of the Knesset committee on
foreign affairs and defense, wrote in
the New York Times: «Do they not
realize that the collapse of the Schultz
approach could make 1988 a tragic year
for Israel, dividing the country,
escalating violence in the occupied ter-
ritories, dragging down the economy,
eroding Israel’s international relations
and, at the end, threatening war with a
united Arab coalition?» (International
Herald Tribune, April 4th).
Actually this influential Israeli was
unwittingly paying tribute to the impact
of the uprising. It is not solely Shamir’s
obstinacy which blocks the Schultz
plan, but more broadly that this im-
32
perialist proposal does not begin to
address the essence of the conflict, 1.e.,
the Palestinian question which, with the
uprising, is on the ascent. The Schultz
plan being merely a new version of the
Labor Party settlement model, the
uprising has also exposed before the
world that Labor offers no alternative
to the program of the Zionist right,
much less to the Palestinian issue.
Labor’s proposals for resolving the
issue of the 1967 occupied territories via
cooperation with Jordan are actually
another model of the ‘iron wali’,
designed to protect the demographic
‘purity’ of the Zionist state. However,
the Zionist ultraright always exploits
crises and signs of Labor ‘softness’ to
strengthen its own hand, while from the
Palestinian vantage point, as stated by
Edward Said, «Peace must be made
with us, and not with a ‘demographic
MASADA, 1988
problem’ - and the occupation musv
end» (International Herald Tribune,
April 28th).
The real position of the Labor
establishment can be read in statements
like that of Peres upon deportation of
eight Palestinians and ordering 12 more
expelled on April 11th: «We are not
deporting residents, just inciters and
agitators and extremists» (International
Herald Tribune, April 12th). Like the
Zionist official who spoke about «ex-
tremists driving the Arab community,»
Peres cannot admit that ‘Israel’ is fac-
ing a whole people, united in their
simple determination to be free. Such
an admission would undercut the fun-
daments of the Zionist colonial project
which was marketed both to Jews and
internationally, under the false label of
«A land without a people for a people
without a land.» The ‘benign occupa-
tion’ which Zionism has boasted has
always been a myth, and this myth has
now been irrevocably shattered by the
stones of the Palestinian uprising.
Thus, a ‘statesman’ like Peres is reduc-
ed to absurdities such as that those
Palestinians deported from Palestine
are anyway not residents.
BEITA, APRIL 6TH
Events in the West Bank village of
Beita, near Nablus, presented a
microcosm of the dilemma which the
uprising presents for the Zionists - and
the extreme absurdities to which they
resort. On April 6th, a group of settler
youth from Elon Moreh settlement just
‘happened’ to take a nature tour near
Beita. Later ABC television asked one
of the hikers why they went where they
did at such a time of tension. She
replied, «We have to show them that we
are the owners of the country» (/nter-
national Herald Tribune, April 18th).
Even without this admission, it was
obvious that the nature tour was a set-
tler provocation, showing readiness to
endanger even Israeli lives for the sake
of expansionist goals.
When some Palestinians threw stones
at the settler group encroaching on their
village, one of the two armed guards
accompanying the settler youth opened
fire, killing two Palestinians and an
Israeli girl, and injuring a number of
others. Immediately the Israeli army
announced she had been killed by a
stone, starting what grew into a
credibility crisis.
With settlers crying for revenge,
hundreds of Israeli soldiers besieged
Beita and nearby villages. Curfew and
collective punishment of Palestinians
for Zionist crimes was the watchword
of the operation led by Israeli Chief of
Staff Shamron: Hundreds of Palesti-
nians were rounded up, scores of
houses were demolished and large areas
of almond and olive orchards were
bulldozed, while settlers went on the
rampage throughout the area, damag-
ing Palestinian property and shooting
wildly. Six Beita residents were later
deported.
When an Israeli military autopsy
showed that the Israeli girl had been
shot in the head, an absurd debate en-
sued as to whether she had died from a
stone or the bullet, or whether a
Palestinian had shot her, even though it
was established that a Palestinian had
only taken the settler’s gun after he had
fired all the bullets. When the army
issued its final report, it admitted that - هو جزء من
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