Once More, Massive Israeli Aggression in Jenin

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Once More, Massive Israeli Aggression in Jenin

PNA to Give Official Response to US "Road Map"

Sam Bahour and Michael Dahan on the US "road map" for the Middle East:
Roadmap to Nowhere

Thousands Demonstrate in US to Condemn Iraq War

Tens of Thousands Around the World Rally against War

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) are persisting in their aggression against Jenin. Far from Israel ending the occupation of the Palestinian lands, they are once more showing utter contempt for human rights and the force of world opinion.

Backed by columns of tanks and armoured vehicles, they have also invaded the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian who was throwing grenades at them. Palestinians said he was apparently infiltrating from Egypt, according to reports.

Rafah city sources said that the IOF are aiming at forcibly evacuating citizens from their homes in preparation for a wide-scale home demolishing, especially since the invading troops were accompanied by a number of bulldozers.

Moreover, Israeli occupation soldiers took control of dozens of homes in the re-occupied neighbourhood, turning them into military outposts. Snipers were also deployed on the roofs of many buildings, citizens said.

Children are constant targets of Israeli occupation army’s fire, Palestinian medical sources say, stressing that at least a dozen child were killed by IOF during the past month alone.

In the northern West Bank City of Jenin and its refugee camp, the Israeli occupation army has escalated its aggression against Palestinian civilians, terrorising some 250,000 people, whom they imposed a curfew on, only hours before US envoy William Burns met Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon.

In early April, during the IOF’s six-week reoccupation of the West Bank, the Jenin refugee camp was flattened, dozens of Palestinian civilians were killed, as well as 13 IOF. The Palestine National Authority (PNA) accused Israel of a massacre and war crimes. The UN Security Council set up a fact-finding committee to investigate, but the Israeli government barred the committee from entry.

On this occasion, Israeli occupation soldiers have raided almost every house in the city looking for 20 alleged "wanted" militants, whom Israeli security sources claim are their main target. At least 40 homes were also occupied and turned into military outposts. One 13-year-old boy was killed, and three other teenagers were injured seriously, medical sources said. Witnesses and the military said soldiers opened fire after the youth climbed onto a tank. The military said he was shot because soldiers thought he might be carrying a firebomb, but he was not.

At least 40 tanks, jeeps and armoured personnel vehicles had rumbled into Jenin and its refugee camp in the invasion code-named by the IOF "Operation Vanguard." The Israelis attacked before dawn, eyewitnesses in Jenin told news agencies by phone.

Israeli occupation soldiers were shooting at anyone they saw on the streets as they carried out house-to-house searches while the Israeli army enforced a curfew, Palestinian security sources said. In the centre of town, electric poles were uprooted and cars smashed by the tanks. The army also dug trenches on Jenin’s main access roads.

"We intend to cover the entire city, imposing a curfew, conducting searches and setting up stakeouts to get the terrorists," an Israeli IOF officer claimed, speaking to reporters outside Jenin. Israeli security sources said the army’s largest military offensive in three months would take a long time, insisting that IOF would "continue as long as necessary, even a long period if we must to reach all the objectives the army has set". An IOF officer said the renewed Jenin invasion was launched in response to the Monday bombing, which was claimed by the Islamic Jihad resistance group.

Eyewitnesses say that the Israeli army took over buildings in four residential areas in the town, close to the refugee camp. Palestinian fighters, representing the United Front of the Intifada rushed to face the invading army, resulting in a bloody confrontation, where five Palestinian fighters were wounded, some seriously. The top floors of more than forty homes were seized by troops, while inhabitants were forced to take refuge on the ground levels or in the open air.

Reuters reported that IOF "troops commandeered 40 to 50 houses as stake-out posts in battle-scarred Jenin". Soldiers were shooting in the streets as they carried out door-to-door searches. Men were rounded up at gunpoint for questioning, and some of them taken away by the army, according to Palestinian security sources.

Earlier, President Yasser Arafat condemned the re-occupation of Rafah. "The IOF invasion of Jenin and its refugee camp is a continuation of the crimes perpetrated by the occupation army and its settlers against our people, children, women and infrastructure," Arafat told reporters in Ramallah on Friday.

Once more, various world leaders uttered pious words. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said the renewed aggression "is not what we hoped for and expected....It is the wrong way to go."

"Almost besieging, as it appears today, a whole city seems to be out of proportion and gives rise to concern, not least for human rights violations," he told an EU summit news conference. "We urge Israel to put an end to its operation and withdraw troops from the city."

While the US and Britain are doing their utmost to coerce the UN into rubber-stamping a war on Iraq, the Israeli state carries out its crimes against the Palestinian people with impunity. Untold demands that Israel end its occupation and aggression have gone unheeded. Not only does the US back Israel in its attempts to wipe out the legitimate Palestinian authority, but it too openly declares that Arafat must go and refuses to deal with him. In these circumstances also, the UN tamely bows to the dictate of the US and Israel, as its resolutions are flouted. The British government, while saying it is adopting a "balanced" approach, focuses on Israel’s "need for security", while doing nothing to end its aggression and attempts to wipe out the Palestinians as a people and finally destroy Palestine as a meaningful entity.

The British working class and people, in taking a stand on what is just, must vehemently demand that enough is enough, condemn the British government for its backing for Israel under the guise of humanitarian concerns, demand that the aggression and occupation be ended, and support the heroic Palestinian people in their struggle for their existence and the Israeli people who are also taking a stand for peace and justice.

The Palestine National Authority (PNA) has announced it will present a written official response to the "road map" peace plan presented by US envoy William Burns to the Palestinian side last Thursday. On Friday, President Yasser Arafat said that the US "road map" is to be discussed first with Arab leaders.

The six-page "road map", worked out by the Quartet of the UN, the US, the EU and Russia, calls for comprehensive political and security reforms in the PNA and a Palestinian state with temporary borders by the end of 2003, and a final status agreement by the end of 2005.

At the same time, the plan calls for Israel to withdraw its occupation forces to lines before September 28, 2000, when the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation started and to cease military operations in reoccupied Palestinian areas.

PNA acting Minister of Planning and International Co-operation Nabil Sha’ath told reporters the Palestinian leadership would convene soon to issue the written response to the American side.

"The Palestinian side might need making some changes in the plan related to changing dates, to improve or to add certain points and reservations," Nabil Sha’ath said. He added that the PNA would also demand that Israel’s settlement construction inside occupied Palestinian territory should be immediately frozen and that international monitors should be sent to the region.

Yasser Arafat told reporters in Ramallah that the Palestinians would give their final response on whether they accept or reject the US plan after the Palestinian leadership scrutinises it and presents it to Arab leaders.

Saudi Arabia and Syria voiced reservations on Saturday about the "road map". "The first remark is that (the plan) does not make equal requirements of both (Palestinian and Israeli) sides," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters in Riyadh after a meeting of a Saudi-Syrian co-operation commission he co-chaired with his Syrian counterpart Faruq al-Shar’. "The onus should be on the side that triggered the current cycle of violence, and we all know that this cycle was unleashed by Sharon’s infamous visit to al-Aqsa mosque" in occupied Jerusalem in September 2000, he said.

The second point to be made "is that any plan should lead to the Arab peace initiative, meaning that the peace process should lead to full withdrawal in exchange for full peace," Prince Saud stressed.

"The plan has no future because Israel will reject it and the United States is not ready to do anything to push it forward, and that is why the Palestinian position is irrelevant," said acting Palestinian Labour Minister Ghassan al-Khatib, the same day William Burns left Israel.

Khatib criticised the "road map" for "dictating conditions on reform including on the legislative elections and the nomination of a Prime Minister. All of this is an internal Palestinian affair. We reject such dictates."

The new US "road map" for peace in the Middle East presented by US Assistant Secretary of State William J Burns is no more than a place for consumption by both Palestinians and the world community in response to their pressuring Israel for positive movement toward immediately ending the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. It is also perhaps an attempt to somehow justify Bush's planned road trip to/through Iraq.

Doctors often prescribe placebos to patients that they feel are suffering from ailments that are not necessarily physiological, hoping that the patient will think that the medicine contains some active ingredient that will cure their ailments. Such medication may have been believed successful during the Oslo Peace Accords, but the latest 25-months of bloodletting has done additional physical damage to Palestinian rights, and thus, any treatment must be real and immediate. The draft details of the new "road map" that have been made public are so bizarre that it is a wonder that it is being presented at all. The US plan makes no mention of dismantling the illegal settlements (it only speaks of recently established "outposts"), and the plan will leave in place three Palestinian West Bank cantons or Bantustans (aside from the Gaza Strip) surrounded by Israeli troops, with full Israeli control of the roads and highways.

In fact there is nothing new about the "road map" (if it can even be called that). It is essentially the revival, with several insignificant changes, of the failed Tenet, Zinni and Mitchell Plans. The issue of Jerusalem and any discussion of the right of return of Palestinian refugees is left for later stages. The plan gives more attention to what Palestinians must "reiterate" and how Palestinians must re-elect and restructure their internal political life than it does to the gross and blatant violations Israel has been perpetrating on a daily basis for over 35 years now. The "road map" is a step backward to the pre Madrid/Oslo period. It pretends that nothing has happened in the past 10 years, let alone the last two years. The "road map" reduces the just Palestinian struggle for self-determination and independence to an item whose outcome is to be decided by a self-proclaimed set of mediators known as the "Quartet" – the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia. The "road map" ignores the fact that the resolution of the Palestinian issue is deeply embedded in international law and human rights covenants that already prescribe a clear remedy to the conflict - the prompt ending of the Israeli military occupation. Does the US believe that "might is right" and that after Israel has now battered the Palestinians for 24 consecutive months, the Palestinians will simply accept less than what is rightly due to them? Can the US be serious in demanding Palestinian Legislative Council elections while Israel has imprisoned members of that council?

The principles of a possible agreement between Israelis and Palestinians have already been sketched out in numerous UN resolutions (194, 242, 338, and 1397, among others). These resolutions continue to enjoy the full support of the world at large, including the historic official policies of the US and Britain. Such an internationally legitimate approach should remain the basis, with possibly some mutually agreed upon minor changes, for any initiative in the area, or rather any initiative with a chance for success. The Israeli retreat to the 1967 borders, the unqualified dismantling of illegal settlements (which apply to all settlements in the Gaza Strip and all settlements East of the 1967 Green Line in the West Bank), honest and creative discussion of the right of return, and the relinquishing control over East Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority or the de facto State of Palestine. These are issues that must be dealt with at the first stage, and not in the form of a "road map" that ignores the basic issues.

What is needed is a shot of legitimate political adrenaline, not a warmed over "road map" that lacks a destination and thus has little chance of success. Placebos, Mr Bush and Mr Burns, would work in this case only if the patients were imagining they have been under military occupation for 35 years. One would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not recognise this "road map" for what is: a pathetic attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the international community.

Mr Bush and Mr Burns, your strategic alley in the Middle East has become your strategic liability. It is also terrorising an entire civilian population. The time has come to abruptly end the occupation and not invest more taxpayer dollars travelling on a road to nowhere.

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman living in the besieged Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. Dr. Michael Dahan is an Israeli-American political scientist living in Jerusalem. Palestine Media Centre article

In the largest US anti-war protest in recent memory, at least 150,000 demonstrators encircled the White House on Saturday to demand no war against Iraq.

Shouting "No blood for oil!" and "Iraqis are people too!" the crowd of Americans from all walks of life rallied near the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial and then marched through the Capitol District to the White House. Home-made placards ranged from "Support the UN, not war" to "God bless hysteria", "Regime change begins at home", and "Smoosh Bush".

Signs referring to an "Axis of Evil," that included photos of Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defence, Richard Pearl; and National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, could be seen raised in the demonstration, along with banners demanding "End Palestinian Apartheid;" "No War on Iraq;" "No More Blood for Oil;" "Bush is a Warmonger; "Muslim Students Against War; and, "Money for Jobs and Education: Not for War." Placards denouncing Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a "war criminal" were also prevalent.

"We've got to liberate this country from militarism," Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney-general and leader of the ANSWER Coalition, one of the main organiser's, urged the rally. "This is not a democracy, it's a plutocracy. We know what's right, we just don't stand up."

"If we launch a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, we lose all moral authority," Reverend Jesse Jackson said. "How will we say no to India, to Pakistan, to China when they consider pre-emptive strikes?".

Lynn Stewart, criminal defence lawyer, and opponent of the monitoring of confidential conversations said from the podium to wide applause, "Stop them now! Stop the war machine. Our brothers and sisters around the world will be annihilated, if we don’t stop them."

Noted New York actress and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) member, Susan Sarandon said: "This war is about diverting our attention away from the Enron scandal and the economy. Let us hate war in all its disguises. Today, all of us together represent what democracy looks like. We are here to take democracy back."

The first unit in the line of march was a contingent from San Francisco, representing the (ILWU) International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Their huge banner read, "An Injury to One is an Injury to All." Its "Drill Team", all African-Americans, set the pace for the parade. The Bush administration recently forced the union back to work under the terms of the Taft-Hartley Act.

The "Act Now to Stop War & End Racism" (ANSWER) spokesperson Tony Murphy said another demonstration was planned for January 18 in Washington. "Only the people have the power to stop the war," he said.

Tens of thousands turned out for other anti-war rallies in San Francisco, Berlin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, San Juan, and other cities.

Tens of thousands around the world took part in mass protests, rallying against war and demanding lifting the US-led UN sanctions on Iraq. Chanting demonstrators at the weekend rallied in major world capitals and around the Arab world in one of the most organised day of anti-war protests.

In Cairo, thousands of university students staged a large protest in support of the Iraqi people, denouncing the United States government’s foreign policy, its support of Israel and its plans to wage war against Iraq.

In Baghdad, scores of international peace and human rights activists staged their protest in front of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, asserting that Iraqis are in need for food and milk, not bombs.

In Sydney, Australia, thousands of people took to the streets with signs and banners, denouncing war and calling for a lift to a crippling sanctions imposed on Iraq, following the 1991 Gulf War.

Australians called on their government not to follow the American lead in its "war on terror." Some of the banners read: "Sanctions are terrorism", "No War for Oil," and "George Bush, War Criminal."

Several thousand people on Saturday took to the streets of downtown Berlin to demonstrate against an imminent US intervention in Iraq, the media reported. The protesters passed the heavily guarded US and British diplomatic missions, shouting "No Blood for Oil".

Stormy and rainy weather were cited as the main reason for the low turnout of demonstrators in Berlin.

A spokesman for the German peace movement had earlier predicted up to 50,000 people for the anti-US war rally in the German capital.

In Rome, an estimated 1,500 people marched from the city centre to the Israeli embassy, under the watchful eye of riot police deployed along the protest route and outside the US and Israeli embassies, AFP reported.

Criticism of the US stance on Iraq was intertwined with those of Israel’s display of inhumanity and brutality on Palestinians. One banner read: "No to war in Iraq. No peace without justice for the Palestinian people."

Oblivious to harsh wind and rain, hundreds carried Palestinian flags and signs condemning US President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "the biggest terrorists of all".

Similarly in Amsterdam, many of the demonstrators also voiced their opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.