Fw: Palestinians Under Occupation Fight Bravely While Those in Exile Fail Miserably
Lutfi M. Hussein
lutfi.hussein at ASU.EDU
Fri Feb 22 02:44:58 UTC 2002
________________________________________
Lutfi M. Hussein
Department of English
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA
Email: lutfi.hussein at asu.edu
Homepage: http://www.public.asu.edu/~lutfiawa/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mid-East Realities" <MER at MiddleEast.Org>
To: <lutfiawa at IMAP4.ASU.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 5:27 PM
Subject: Palestinians Under Occupation Fight Bravely While Those in Exile
Fail Miserably
_______ ____ ______
/ |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
/ /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East
/_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ http://www.MiddleEast.Org
News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups,
and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know!
===========================
Now Choose Options Easily From MER Homepage:
MER WORLD - Important News and Feature Articles
SUBSCRIBE - Receive all MER articles - no cost
===========================
PALESTINIANS TAKE ON ISRAELIS WITH GREAT COURAGE AND
RESOURCEFULNESS...
BUT PALESTINIANS AND SUPPORTERS AROUND THE WORLD FAIL MISERABLY, ESPECIALLY
IN USA
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 2/21/2002: As
courageous and in some ways remarkable as the Palestinian struggle is
against an occupation army with high-tech weapons supplied by the world's
only superpower, the Palestinians now face a potentially even more
catastrophic fate. For what appears to lie ahead now is more ominous than
anything to date, except possibly the first war in 1948 that led to Israel's
creation and the "Nakba" (the "Disaster").
Manipulating both the affairs of his own country as well as that of the
superpower, General Ariel Sharon is clearly planning a major escalation to
attempt to liquidate the Palestinian fighters and vanquish the Palestinian
struggle. The Israelis will likely attempt to do this when the now
worldwide American "War Against Terrorism" has the world's attention focused
elsewhere. By handling the conflict as they are the Israelis are getting
the world use to the idea that jet fighters and combat tanks can be
legitimately used to brutalize an occupied people without access to modern
weapons or even means of defense. The likelihood is the Israelis are now
setting the stage for even greater ruthlessness and bloodshed than anything
so far; possibly included an attempt to ethnically cleanse considerably more
Palestinians and to restructure the political affairs of the entire region,
which could even include turning Jordan into "the Palestinian State".
Though the Palestinian fighters of the Intifada have in many ways shown
remarkable courage and resourcefulness the great problem they face is that
the Palestinian people have not been able worldwide, especially in the USA,
to make their struggle truly understood and appreciated. Partly this is the
price they are paying for their terribly corrupt and inept "leadership",
i.e. the Arafat "regime" of the "Palestinian Authority" and its mostly
third-rate crony-type spokesmen and representatives.
But its more than that...much more. While the Palestinians under
occupation have proven to be extraordinarily resourceful and resilient, the
Palestinian "Diaspora" has proven to be extraordinarily confused, cowardly,
and incompetent While the Palestinians of the Intifada have fought
remarkably in challenging their Israeli occupiers, the Palestinians living
abroad, especially those in the U.S., have failed miserably in the crucial
battle for hearts and minds...even though this is a much easier fight.
There's much more that needs to be said about this situation; with
specific finger-pointing for the deserving organizations and individuals.
We've done some of this difficult analysis and reporting in the past;
there's much more necessary now.
ISRAEL ATTACKS GAZA STRIP, MISSILES HIT ARAFAT HQ
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) - 21 February: Israeli warships fired at Palestinian
security compounds along the Gaza Strip coastline and tanks rumbled into
areas in southern and eastern Gaza on Thursday in a three-pronged night-time
assault.
For a second day in a row, Israel helicopters launched missiles at
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters, missing the
Palestinian leader who aides said was in his office at the time but was
unscathed.
A defiant Arafat said after the attack, which he described as "Israeli
rudeness": This is an attempt to make the Palestinian people and its
leadership kneel, but they don't know that this people and their leadership
are the mighty people."
The missile strike signaled the depths of Israeli fury after Palestinians
killed six soldiers in a West Bank ambush on Tuesday, the latest in a wave
of heightened attacks on Israelis which included a suicide bombing that
killed two teenagers.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian doctors said five people, one a gunman,
another a 37-year-old civilian and the rest not yet identified, had been
killed and around 40 people wounded in the Israeli raids, which began
shortly after midnight.
After the raids ended, an Israeli warplane fired three missiles at a
Palestinian security building in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, Palestinian
officials said.
The attacks were part of a stepped-up response by Israel's government which
ordered more ferocious and varied retaliatory strikes against the
Palestinians Wednesday. Since the fierce Israeli sea, air and land strikes
began, 21 Palestinians have been killed.
The Israeli bombardments of Palestinian security installations were among
the heaviest since an uprising against occupation began in September 2000.
The violence has raised international concern the conflict could spiral out
of control.
U.S. BLAMES ARAFAT
The United States put most of the blame for the spiraling violence on
Arafat, who it said had "not yet taken adequate action." But the State
Department also said the Israeli air strikes worked against the "objective
of reducing the violence."
In New York, the Palestinians demanded late Wednesday an urgent meeting of
the U.N. Security Council to condemn Israeli bombardments.
Diplomats said they planned private consultations on Thursday on the request
backed by Yemen, the current head of the Arab group at the United Nations,
as well as Syria, the only Arab nation on the 15-member council.
The night silence along Gaza's Mediterranean coast was broken as naval
gunships traded machinegun fire with Palestinian security compounds and 10
tanks rumbled into a southern Gaza refugee camp shortly after midnight.
Seven tanks and several armored personnel carriers raided another
Palestinian-ruled town, east of Gaza City where they later blew up the Voice
of Palestine headquarters, knocking radio and television transmissions off
the air.
Israel has accused the Palestinian Authority-run Voice of Palestine of
inciting violence, a charge Palestinians deny.
Loudspeakers on mosques called for Palestinians with weapons to confront
Israeli forces and fierce fighting erupted throughout the Gaza Strip,
lasting for about three hours until the naval ships and troops pulled back.
The Gaza strikes followed a meeting with key cabinet members Wednesday, in
which political sources said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved an
increase in the scale and variety of military reprisals.
"We are in a war, a war that had been launched against us by the coalition
of terror that has been established by Chairman Arafat after choosing a
strategy of terror," Sharon later told American-Jewish leaders.
STRIKES CLOSE TO ARAFAT
Israel has said it has no intention of personally harming the Palestinian
leader. The strikes were the closest Israel has come to hurting Arafat in a
conflict which international mediation has failed to curb.
Frightened Rafah residents grabbed their children and fled deeper into
Palestinian-ruled territory as the tanks plunged about 700 meters (yards)
deep into the Brazil refugee camp from the Israeli-controlled Gaza-Egypt
border.
Israeli bulldozers destroyed a Palestinian police position in Rafah and
troops took over the rooftops of several buildings in the refugee camp, a
Palestinian security official said.
Earlier, Israeli warplanes destroyed a Palestinian security building with a
missile during an air attack on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of
Jenin. No one was hurt.
Most of the 21 killed were members of the security forces, but at least five
civilians have died. A leader of Hamas's military-wing in Gaza and another
Hamas activist were also killed.
Thirty-five Palestinians, including two suicide bombers, and 10 Israelis
have died in the surge of violence since Monday.
At least 884 Palestinians and 273 Israelis have been killed since the
Palestinian revolt began after peace talks froze.
ISRAELIS LOSE FAITH IN MILITARY SOLUTION
By Suzanne Goldenberg in Karnei Shomron, West Bank
[The Guardian Monday February 18, 2002]: A devastating wave of
Palestinian attacks on the symbols of Israeli military occupation - a Jewish
settlement, an army base and a road block - struck Israel to its core this
weekend, badly shaking its faith in the warrior prime minister, Ariel
Sharon.
In the Jewish settlement of Karnei Shomron yesterday, sobbing girls linked
arms and quietly sang at a vigil for two teenagers blown up by a suicide
bomber. But the adults of this West Bank outpost were overcome by anger -
much of it directed against Mr Sharon, who they say has failed to live up to
his 50-year legacy of crushing Israel's Arab enemies.
"As of right now, what I see from the results is that this man has failed,"
said Bob Duchanov, a builder from New York who has lived in Karnei Shomron
for 17 years. "There is no security in the country."
As if on cue, three hours later came another suicide bombing which, though
thwarted, deepened a feeling of unease amid a spate of attacks that have
killed seven Israelis since Thursday night.
"Ariel Sharon's strategy is collapsing," said the Ma'ariv newspaper. "At
this stage, as difficult as it may be to say so openly, the Palestinians are
losing the battles to a superior force, but Israel is losing the war."
In Ma'ariv's weekend opinion polls, some 49% of Israelis agreed, saying the
"national leadership has lost control of the security situation".
However, 44% disagreed, reflecting what the paper's political analyst, Hemi
Shalev, called "steadily growing confusion" as Mr Sharon fails to deliver a
political or a military solution to 17 months of bloodshed.
Three policemen were injured in yesterday's foiled bombing of an army base
in Pardes Hanna. Two Palestinians - the bomber, who blew himself up after a
police chase, and another man - were also killed.
The two suicide attacks follow the killing of an Israeli soldier at a
roadblock near Ramallah on Friday night.
The attacks suggest new levels of sophistication by Palestinian militants,
targeting soldiers and Jewish settlements - which are considered illegal
under international law - rather than civilians in Israeli cities in an
apparent attempt to mute international criticism.
Saturday night's attack was also a double first: the first time a suicide
bomber has penetrated a heavily guarded Jewish settlement, and the first
time the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has used a
suicide bomber, usually the preserve of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The force of the explosion embedded nails in walls 25 metres from the pizza
counter where a house painter from the West Bank town of Qalqiliya - himself
a teenager of 18 - blew himself up, shattering the windows in seven nearby
shops and killing Keren Shatsky, aged 14, and Nehemiah Amar, 16. The mall,
built less than a year ago, is a magnet for teenagers: Keren was waiting for
her mates after planning a surprise birthday party for a friend.
In destroying such innocent pleasures, Palestinian militants magnified
doubts about Mr Sharon's strategy for dealing with the uprising, which
includes assassinations, tank invasions of the West Bank and Gaza, and the
bombing of Palestinian security installations by F-16 warplanes.
Israeli helicopters fired missiles on security installations in the West
Bank city of Nablus early yesterday, and tanks roared into the el-Buriej
refugee camp in Gaza on Saturday, killing three Palestinian police. In the
West Bank city of Jenin, a Hamas commander was blown up by a car bomb.
For the adults of Karnei Shomron, it was not enough. "After more than a year
of this, we should have been able to see results," said Yitzhak Shwartz,
whose photography shop was gutted by the blast. "Sharon has no plan. The job
of this government is to defend its citizens and it is not doing that. It
doesn't solve our problems to blow up empty buildings. It does not do
anything."
For many here, there was a disturbing synchronicity to events. As Keren
Shatsky waited for her friends at Karnei Shomron, barely an hour's drive
away in Tel Aviv the Israeli left was mustering for a peace demonstration.
The turnout by past standards was hardly impressive - charitably placed at
5,000 people - but it was the largest since the start of the Palestinian
uprising, and a sign of the growing radicalisation of the Israeli left as
well as the right.
Opinion polls at the weekend showed 35% of Israelis support what is coyly
known here as "transfer" - the wholesale expulsion of the Palestinians - and
there is a growing clamour to re-invade and re-occupy the entirety of the
territories.
"Let them go into every single Arab city and make the 90% of them who are
good point out the 10% of them who are rotten apples, and get rid of all the
rotten apples," said Mr Duchanov. "Forget what the world says - let's do
what has to be done."
ISRAEL REELS FROM BOMB ATTACK ON ELITE TANK CREW
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
[The Independent, UK, 16 February 2002]: Israel's armed forces have
suffered one of their most disastrous 24-hour periods since the start of the
Palestinian intifada, with a devastating guerrilla attack on one of their
main battle tanks and the death of the commander of an elite undercover
unit, possibly killed by his own army's demolition work.
The army launched an inquiry yesterday into how a large mine managed to
destroy a heavily armoured and highly sophisticated Merkava-3 tank, billed
as one of the safest fighting machines in the world. Three of the crew were
killed, and a fourth was injured in the attack inside the Gaza Strip.
As the army contemplated the possibility of flaws in its standard work-horse
tank, it was hit by another disaster - the death of the commander of a
"Duvdevan" unit during a pre-dawn raid in the West Bank.
Reports said that 34-year-old Lt-Col Eyal Weiss was killed when a wall
collapsed on him while military bulldozers were knocking down an adjoining
house used by a suspected Islamic Jihad leader, whom the unit had arrested
in the village of Saida. This, too, will be the subject of a military
inquiry.
The attack on the tank was treated as highly sensitive by Israel, prompting
government censors yesterday to impose a ban on the publication of
photographs showing the wreckage on the grounds that it would "damage the
security of the state".
The Palestinians have never before destroyed any of the many scores of
Merkava tanks which have been operating in the occupied territories during
the conflict. The blast blew off the tank's turret.
A diplomatic source said: "It's the first time that a tank has been badly
damaged like this, and it's changed the rules entirely."
The bombing, on Thursday night, happened close to a road controlled by the
Israeli army between Gaza's Karni crossing and Netzarim, a little-populated
Israeli settlement inside the strip. The army has torn up orchards and palm
groves on much of the surrounding landscape to prevent such attacks.
Yesterday Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished homes and other buildings
near the scene.
An Israeli Defence Forces spokesman, Lt-Col Olivier Rafowich, said it was a
"carefully planned operation" against "the best we have".
According to the army, the mine comprised about 50kg of explosives. It was a
double ambush - one bomb set off to lure the armoured vehicle to the scene
for a much bigger second blast.
The Israeli media presented the attack as a defining moment in the conflict.
The Jerusalem Post newspaper said: "The tank's reputation for invincibility
has now been shattered and makes the conflict appear even more like
Lebanon."
The attack is the latest in a series of problems faced by the army which
include a revolt by more than 220 reservists who have signed a petition
refusing to serve in the occupied territories.
Responsibility for the tank attack was claimed by the Popular Resistance
Committee, a coalition of Palestinian groups fighting the intifada,
including Hamas and Fatah. It issued a leaflet saying the attack was in
answer to Israel's killing of five Palestinians during a large-scale raid on
Gaza this week.
A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Ismael Abu Shanab, was triumphant. "The operation
is an appropriate response to the invasion by Israeli tanks into Palestinian
areas.
"It is a change in the balance of forces in favour of the Palestinian
resistance," he told The Independent.
-----------------------------------------
IF YOU DON'T GET MER, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT!
YOU CERTAINLY CAN'T DEPEND ON CNN!
===========================
To receive MER regularly with our compliments:
http://www.MiddleEast.Org/subscribe
===========================
--------------------------
MiD-EasT RealitieS - http://www.MiddleEast.Org
Phone: (202) 362-5266
Fax: (815) 366-0800
Email: MER at MiddleEast.Org
To subscribe to MER with our compliments email to MERList at MiddleEast.Org
with subject SUBSCRIBE
To unsubscribe email to MERList at MiddleEast.Org with subject UNSUBSCRIBE
More information about the Critics-l
mailing list