Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 11)
غرض
- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 11)
- المحتوى
-
the campaign begun earlier in the Gaza
Strip, to force all Palestinians to get
new identification cards. Besides being
a form of bureaucratic harassment,
forcing people to wait in offices for
hours, revoking ID’s was intended as a
new form of control, to single people
out for arrest and to register who had
paid taxes. All in all, this campaign,
which from the beginning elicited
resistance from Gaza residents, reminds
one of the abhorent pass system used by
the apartheid regime in South Africa to
control the movement and lives of
Black citizens of the country.
In Ramallah, El Bireh, Beit Sahour,
Qalqilya, Tulkarm and other places,
Israeli soldiers arrived before dawn,
sealed off the towns and embarked on
nouse-to-house searches, confiscating
{D cards and summoning residents to a
central location to be presented with
bills for overdue taxes and future
estimates. Those who resisted had
belongings confiscated and, in some
cases, their businesses shut down. The
general response was for Palestinians to
close their shops themselves in protest,
and clashes often ensued between the
masses and the Israeli soldiers. Attacks
were staged on institutions of the oc-
cupation, such as the July Sth attack on
the cars of Israeli customs officials in
Tulkarm, and the July 11th burning of
the Ramallah traffic department.
The tax sweeps were connected to the
Zionists’ overall war against Palesti-
On May 2nd, Hadashot reported the
ing of a «new» detention center for
ren 8 Oe on to sixteen yes of
eke are S gentcaced. to a “max-
| imum of me ae a | were
he closure sof the. center by the military
authorities, oak that the closure
br eit i in 1 to peat the detainees whose
NING CHILDREN |
crea ae
given any “information aoe thelr’
_ children. |
went mad, took an iron bar and beat
him until he was only a bundle of flesh
and bones. I heard afterwards that he
had been hospitalized and put into a
cast. While by was ‘A t ting them, 1 I felt a
have killed ie nol ‘because i hey did
anything to me, but. because t ey are
harming the state so much.»
Since this type of brutal beating has
been common since the uprising began
and is officially sanctioned by the
oe — “one can ee
kas any moaning, or even ny it van
closed. Perhaps it was due to illusions
that the «moral fiber» of the Israeli.
military can be protected by ending
some of the most sordid examples, after |
they have been a oo
In Gaza, parents have to pay bail
nian self-sufficiency and civil disobe-
dience. The calls of the United National
Leadership in July emphasized storing
supplies, breaking blockades to assist
besieged villages and camps, voluntary
work, building cooperatives, etc., as
prerequisites for moving to more ex-
tensive civil disobedience.
Beit Sahour residents were among the
many Palestinians persecuted for their
self-sufficiency and civil disobedience.
The village had become a model for
home gardening, raising poultry,
organizing the distribution of provi-
sions and alternative, popular educa-
tion for the children. Intense confron-
tations started with the July 7th tax
sweep where Zionist brutality led to
widespread arrests. Hundreds of
residents marched to the municipal
building, shouting, «This is not our
government; we don’t want the Israeli
identity cards.» Over a thousand turned
in their ID’s to the deputy mayor.
As punishment, Beit Sahour Ves
placed under curfew for ten days. “
the beginning of the curfew it was an-
nounced that the curfew would last un-
til the crops were destroyed or, failing
that, fields would be bulldozed. People
attempting to irrigate or work in
backyard gardens were shot at. While
the threat to bulldoze was not carried
out, the lifting of the curfew came after
one crop had been ruined» (Database
Project on Palestinian Human Rights).
About 200 people were arrested during
the curfew, including eight members of
the popular committee, who were
placed under six-month administrative
detention. One of those detained was a
Bethlehem University professor who
had responded to the United National
Leadership’s call for self-sufficiency by
selling seedlings to his fellow citizens
for their home gardens. Even before
his arrest, he had been forced to stop
this little enterprise due to Zionist
harassment.
However, Beit Sahour was not
passified by this repression any more
than the uprising will dwindle due to
the banning of the popular committees.
Clashes between the masses and the
occupation troops continued in the en-
suing days, intensifying after a town
youth was killed by a building block
which ‘fell’ on his head from the roof
of an Israeli lookout post.
ECONOMIC WARFARE
Israeli economic sanctions took
many forms in an attempt to under- >
11 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 30
- تاريخ
- سبتمبر ١٩٨٨
- المنشئ
- الجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين
Contribute
Not viewed