Democratic Palestine : 45 (ص 10)
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- Democratic Palestine : 45 (ص 10)
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universities is also part of the attack on
the people’s welfare and outlook for the
future, and intends to lead them to
despair. While Hebron and Bethlehem
Universities have been allowed to
reopen, these two benefit only a quarter
of all the university students in the
occupied territories. Moreover, three
senior classes have graduated since the
closures started in 1987, without the
chance to enroll in higher education
(Al Fajr, June 10th).
The failure of economic warfare to
sap the intifada in the short run was
clearly seen in the rise of militancy as the
wartime curfew was lifted. The war of
knives resumed and escalated; petrol
bombs against Israeli targets are a daily
affair; and the use of firearms has
increased. Recently, it was reported on
Israeli television that there were 53
gunfire or grenade attacks on Israeli
targets from January to June this year,
as opposed to 33 in the same months last
year. There have been several armed
attacks on soldiers and settlers in the
West Bank, but the Gaza Strip became
the real focus of the recent escalation.
On July Ist, an Israeli soldier was shot
and injured in Bureij camp. In the
second week of July, PFLP militants
operating in the Strip carried out three
attacks on Zionist settlers and military
targets, using firearms. In one of these
operations, near Khan Younis, an Israeli
officer, responsible for security in the
South of the Strip, was seriously injured.
The next week, PFLP militants attacked
the military governor’s headquarters in
Rafah with hand grenades, injuring at
least five Israeli personnel.
The problem remains, though, that
neither courageous acts nor daily mass
protests, even when well— planned and
executed, can by themselves bring an
immediate halt to the most formidable
threats to the intifada’s future —
massive immigration, settlement —
building and Israeli government
intransigence. What can erode these
phenomena in the long run is the steady
empowerment of the people and
construction of firm, popularly —
oriented, alternative social and economic
structures. This would enable radical
escalation of the intifada until the Israeli
polity sees that the occupied territories
are ungovernable. The first two years of
the intifada made substantive gains in this
direction, but few comparable gains have
been registered since. In some fields,
hard-won ground was lost as is most
apparent in the functioning of the various
popular committees. Besides arrests,
organizational factionalism and attacks
on women have retarded the work of
10
these committees, whichare the key ele-
ment in attaining real independence from
the occupation’s structures on a daily
basis. The problem, in a nutshell, is that
the intifada has lost the initiative. The
current discussions reassessing the
course of the intifada must focus on how
itcan regainits dynamics.
Test ballon for «autonomy»,
The real danger of Israel’s economic
warfare on the occupied territories is that
it is a ground—breaker for injecting
political conspiracies, with the
Occupation authorities banking on
exploiting internal problems in_ the
intifada. Into the pool of popular
desperation they hope to have created,
the Israeli authorities have begun
throwing their bait — softening some
economic restrictions, with a distinct
class bias. For example, they have
granted more operating permits to
Palestinian entrepreneurs per month
recently than they normally do in a
whole year; these entrepreneurs will
enjoy tax exemptions for three years — a
real departure from usual occupation
policy (The Other Israel, May — June).
In this context, one understands why
the occupation authorities allowed and
even encouraged Chamber of Commerce
elections in Hebron in June, for the first
time since the 1967 occupation. This was
a trial ballon for «free elections» under
occupation, with an eye for conducting
municipal elections in a way that would
usher in «autonomy.» It is surely not by
chance that Hebron was chosen — the
only district of the West Bank where the
Israeli government could hope for an
Islamic victory to detract from the
people’s united adherence to the PLO. In
the elections, all candidates were
screened by the occupation forces; the
Islamic list won six seats, while the
pro—PLO bloc attained four; one
independent was elected. The PFLP and
DFLP both issued statements
condemning these elections, and the
explosion of two petrol bombs near the
polling station attested to Palestinian
opposition to the political aims of such
«exercises in democracy.»
In call no. 71, the UNL had called on
the masses to confront the occupation’s
attempts to make use of suspicious
personages in Chamber of Commerce
elections. It stipulated that such elections
should be held according to a national
decision and under national supervision.
Notably, the Gaza Chamber of
Democratic Palestine, August 1991 - هو جزء من
- Democratic Palestine : 45
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