Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 12)
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- Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 12)
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mine Palestinian subsistence. West
Bank agricultural villages continue to
be besieged and deprived of their water
supply. In July, a series of villages
south of Jerusalem were prohibited
from selling their fruit crops. Accor-
ding to one resident, their fruit was
rotting, for while 20% of the village
produce could be marketed locally,
80% was usually exported through
Jordan. The village was thus robbed of
90% of its annual income.
Suspension of services has been
another Israeli economic weapon to
threaten the population into stopping
civil disobedience. On June Ist, the
Israeli authorities announced the
suspension of public services in the ter-
ritories, due to the fall in tax revenues.
Free treatment was abolished at
government hospitals, a measure that
hits everybody, but especially the in-
jured of the uprising. Some specialized
care is only available in Israeli
hospitals, but the occupation
authorities also closed this valve by re-
quiring that Palestinians from the ter-
ritories pay $150 for admission to
Israeli hospitals. Palestinian doctors,
however, immediately said that they
will disregard this new ruling, marking
a new phase in the struggle for medical
care.
In addition, the civil administration
announced the dismissal of 1,000 of its
17,000 Palestinian employees, implying
a cutback in both services, however
minimal they may be, and in Palesti-
nian incomes. In mid-July, the military
authorities announced that Gazans will
have to change the licenses on their
vehicles and pay a new car tax, amoun-
ting to $200-265 - about half an average
worker’s monthly wage
WHO’S IN CONTROL
The question of who’s in control has
also been underscored by an increase in
planned attacks on Israeli targets and
collaborators. Starting in May,
widespread fires brought the uprising
into the heart of the Zionist enemy. By
early June, the fire brigade in Upper
Nazareth (Israeli setlement in the
Galilee) had already expended its an-
nual budget fighting fires set by
Palestinian nationalists to burn the
forests and other economic interests
reserved for exclusive Jewish use. Later
in the month, the Israeli police and
military were on full alert, including air
patrols, for the June 24th Day of Fire
proclaimed by the United National
Leadership. The many fires that day
12
included two in Israeli factories. In
May and June as a whole, there were
well over 400 fires, damaging over
40,000 acres, seven times the extent of
destruction from fire in ‘Israel’ in the
years 1974 to 1986.
The impact of the uprising has
been brought home to the Israeli
population in other ways as well.
Within ten days in June, there was a
firebomb attack on Tel Aviv’s main
mall; an explosion at Hertzalia settle-
ment, which injured a number of
Zionist settlers; and an explosion in Bir
Sheba, which injured three, while an
Israeli settler was killed with a knife
within the ‘green line’. In early July,
Israeli Police Commissioner Krauss
reported that there had been over 1,000
protests in the preceding three months
in what he considers ‘Israel’ - including
730 in the Jerusalem area, in addition
to 51 firebomb attacks. He blamed
Palestinian nationalists for the majori-
ty of fires plaguing the Zionist state,
and reported the arrest of 900, 55 of
them for arson.
The trend continued with the July
14th bomb explosion near Tel Aviv
University, and the August 19th
grenade attack that wounded 25 Israelis
in Haifa. On August 21, Israeli radio
reported a marked increase in tension in
the Tel Aviv area, after three Palesti-
nian workers were burned to death; in
the ensuing days, there were a series of
stonethrowing and petrolbomb attacks
and attacks on settlers.
In mid-June, Defense Minister Rabin
acknowledged the increase in violent
protests. Firebomb attacks on Israeli
soldiers had become a near daily
phenomenon in the occupied territories,
occurring even in West Jerusalem.
Other methods were employed by the
militants of the uprising, such as the
mid-August sabotage of the water lines
to a Zionist settlement in the Al Khalil
(Hebron) area. Daring acts by the
masses also posed the question of who
controls the territories. One such inci-
dent occurred in East Jerusalem in
mid-July when thirty Palestinians at-
tacked six policemen with sharp objects
in the courthouse, in an attempt to free
a detainee. Similar daring was exhibited
by a Palestinian while visiting a de-
tained relative in the Gaza City prison;
he drew a knife and stabbed and
wounded an Israeli soldier. In late
June, an Israeli settler was stabbed in
the Hebron market. On August 12th, a
group of Palestinians confronted an
Israeli patrol in the Gaza Strip with
axes, chains and clubs.
The increase in armed attacks on the
occupation troops was continuously
bolstered by the ongoing mass action.
Despite all the Zionists’ repression, the
people have continued to demonstrate
and confront the occupation troops in
the streets. To give an example from
just one period, the English language
weekly in the occupied territories,
facts, reported 114 major clashes in 62
locations in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, between July 4th and 9th. While
general strikes averaged six to seven per
month in the preceding period, there
were nine in August, after the United
National Leadership called four strikes
in the last week of the month in
solidarity with the expelled and those
killed in the Tel Aviv fire and by the
Israeli troops shooting on hunger
strikers in Ketziot prison.
The masses’ daring and creativity is
being exhibited daily. Here we can only
name some examples such as on July
4th, when over 100 masked, uniformed
Palestinian youth, armed with knives
and iron bars and carrying Palestinian
flags staged a 15 minute march in
Nablus. In mid-August, the Gaza
masses were faced with round-the-clock
curfew and total sealing off of the Strip
for the third time since the uprising
began. They responded by repeatedly
breaking the curfew to demonstrate,
shouting: «We want a state.»
At the same time, the militant masses
of the uprising continued to besiege all
those who collaborate with the enemy.
The June 7th attack on Hassan Al
Tawil, appointed mayor of AI Bireh,
showed the seriousness of the leader-
ship’s call for such officials to resign.
In late August, five collaborators were
attacked in three days in the Gaza Strip
and West Bank; one of them was killed.
Call no. 24 issued by the United Na-
tional Leadership on August 23rd urged
more attacks to drive out the occupa-
tion troops, and more severe measures
against those who don’t heed the will of
the masses. Most important, the call
defied the Israeli ban on the popular
committees by calling for redoubled
efforts to build even more of them.
«The people are the popular commit-
tees and will not abandon them,» said
the leaflet. This in a nutshell, explains
the success of the uprising so far and
the reason it cannot be crushed, despite
the Israeli terrorism against the masses
and their leadership. ) - هو جزء من
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