Sunday, November 25, 2001

Israel sends clear message

By PV Vivekanand

THROUGH another "targeted killing" of three Palestinians, one of them a prominent Hamas activist in the West Bank, Israel has sent the message clear that it wants little to do with the new American diplomatic effort to revive peace talks with the Palestinians and is also determined to pre-empt any chance of its success. For, if Israel was genuine in its pronunciations of commitment to peace talks with the Palestinians, then it would not have carried out the assassination of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud and two others two days before US emissaries William Burns and Anthony Zinni were due in the region to push the effort for revived talks.
Israel knew well that the killings, coupled with the death of five Palestinian boys in the blast of an Israeli booby trap near their school in Gaza, would incite Palestinian fury and foil chances for an atmosphere conducive to the Burns-Zinni mission. And sure enough, the more than 60,000 Palestinians who gathered in the West Bank and Gaza on Sunday to mourn the slain activists made a public pledge to avenge the killings.
We can now expect, notwithstanding whatever security measures in place, Palestinian retaliation in the form of suicide attacks in key Israeli areas.
Let us not forget that Abu Hanoud was the reputed mastermind behind several suicide attacks in Israeli towns and cities. Unlike amateurish activists who get intercepted on their way to suicide missions or die in prematured attacks without causing major damage, Abu Hanoud's men have a record of successful operations, and now they have an added reason to step up their activities.
It is no exaggeration that there are thousands of Palestinian youngsters ready for suicide attacks against Israelis. The suffering, indignity and humiliation they have gone through since birth under Israeli occupation and bleak prospects for future, coupled with a sense of serving the cause, have prepared them to accept martyrdom.
There are many in the world who question the futility of suicide attacks. Well, the simple answer is: it is one of the few options available to the Palestinians to press their resistance, given the military might of Israel and hi-tech equipment the Israelis use in their vain bid to quell the Intifada. What else a people armed at best with machineguns and crude homemade mortars could do when faced with an army supported by the most advanced weapons and surveillance and "security" equipment?
The Geneva Conventions define it as a right ot a people under foreign occupation to resist the occupier with whatever means available to them; the Intifada — the revolution of stones — and suicide attacks represent the means that are available to the Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation of their territory. That is precisely why Israel refuses to accept that the Geneva Conventions apply to its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
If anything, to say the least, it is a highly lopsided equation in Palestine.
Effectively, the Israeli military, which controls the land, sea and airspace around the Palestinians, is picking and choosing its targets and hitting them at will with little fear of direct military retaliation or international punitive action.
If anything, the impunity with which Israel is going around implementing its policy of "targeted killings" adds to the determination of the Palestinians to retaliate through whatever means available to them.
The international community and the UN, the very organisation which was created with the aim of preventing any country from undertaking such actions, seem powerless to act. At best, the UN could issue statements condemning Israeli actions and often even such symbolic actions are pre-empted by the powers that call the shots at the world body.
The geopolitical elements of the Middle East at this point in time rule out a military option to reverse Israel's occupation of Arab land. The only way to hit Israel is to hit it where it hurts most: posing real threats to the "security" of Israelis.
The only effective means to keep the Israelis reminded of the reality of the Palestinian struggle is to keep them always on their toes and looking over their shoulders with the hope that sooner or later they could come to accept the inevitability of respect, recognition and acceptance of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.
Definitely, it is not a method that the so-called advanced world would accept as a means of liberation. But then what has the so-called advanced world done about containing Israel's state terrorism against defenceless Palestinian civilians?
By any stretch of imagination, is there any justification to the death of the five children in Gaza on Thursday? An accident? But then, placing booby-trapped bombs in close proximity to a school could not have been an accident. It was a deliberate trap and Israelis could not care less whom it killed as long as the victim or victims were Palestinian.
Isn't that a crime that warrants retaliation in the same currency?
It is audacity at its peak for Israel to assert that Friday's killings were part of its fight against "terrorism" while affirming its "commitment" to achieving a "truce" with the Palestinian National Authority (I would not call that "truce" a ceasefire, since "ceasefire," in my reading, means an agreement between two warring parties with roughly balanced military capabilities to call off their guns. Here, Israel is the sole warring party and the Palestinians are the victims who are desparately trying to defend themselves against a militarily mightier enemy).
The Abu Hanoud killing has effectively drawn a bitter dark cloud over prospects for any truce. It has further weakened Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's ability and manoeuvrability to convince his own people to stay put while he tries the diplomatic approach as represented by the Burns-Zinni mission.
Regardless of what Israeli leaders have to say, the situation on the ground has become radicalised by their own actions and turned the elements around so drastically against prospects for the UN mission.
No doubt that is what Israel wanted since behind the Burns-Zinni effort is the reality that there is a 180-degree shift in the decades-old American stand that ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in Palestine.
What better way to foil it than fait accomplis that would do nothing other than conditioning the Palestinians for retaliation that would play to the Israeli game of holding them responsible for the volatility of the situation and accusing them of being terrorists?