Government’s "Even-Handed" Approach Exonerates the Guilty

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Middle East:
Government’s "Even-Handed" Approach Exonerates the Guilty

Unlawful Israeli Incursion in Gaza

Eyewitness Account of the Invasion of Rafah

Official Statement

Attack on Syria Approved by Washington Warmongers

UN Security Council Strongly Condemns Israeli "Security Barrier"

The government continues to pose as "even-handed", as a so-called "honest broker", with all its customary detachment which thinly covers its imperialist values, over the crimes being committed in the Middle East. A thousand and one facts confirm that it is US imperialism which is financially, militarily and politically behind the Israeli aggression and crimes against humanity in the Middle East. Yet Foreign Secretary Jack Straw continues to act and speak without a sense of justice and compassion for the Palestinian people who are suffering the most inhuman treatment and denial of their national and political rights by Israel. Today and historically too, the British government has been involved to the hilt in the crimes committed in Palestine and the Middle East in pursuit of its economic and political interests.

In answering a question in the House of Commons on October 14 on the apartheid wall being built by the Israeli government, Mr Straw said: "We consider its building on Palestinian land to be unlawful and unacceptable, but it must be understood that the decision to build the wall was not an abstract one. It arose from a profound sense of fear among people in Israel and from their belief that they have to protect their security. That does not make the decision lawful or justifiable in our view, but it does explain it. If we want to see an end to such actions and to get the road map back on track, the first and essential precondition is for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other rejectionist terrorist groups to announce a ceasefire and give up the idea that it will be possible to help the Palestinians to achieve a peaceful and secure future through the sort of terrible and rejectionist terror that those groups adopt."

The Foreign Secretary considers it "unlawful and unacceptable" but reserves his criticism for what he calls "rejectionist terrorist groups", not referring to the Israeli government or the imperialists in the White House, but in order to justify the continued aggression by Israel, as Sharon himself is doing. This is an approach which exonerates the guilty. On October 6, George W Bush confided to reporters that he had telephoned Sharon to assure him that Israel has the right to do whatever it pleased in the name of "self-defence". With British "civility" and sense of "fair play", Jack Straw is doing the same thing.

The working class and people must reject such rejection of justice and step up the struggle in defence of the rights of the Palestinian people and of struggling humanity throughout the globe.

Early on the morning of October 10, Israeli occupying forces conducted a large-scale incursion into the Rafah refugee camp, adjacent to the Egyptian border in the southern Gaza Strip. Under cover of intense shelling and gunfire from tanks and helicopters, Israeli forces invaded the area, which is one of the most densely populated in the Gaza Strip.

The demolition of homes left over 2,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, homeless and greatly added to the increasing number of Palestinian families that have been left homeless following similar Israeli operations since the beginning of the Intifada. Israeli authorities claim that the operation was aimed at the uncovering of tunnels that they claim are being used to smuggle weapons across the Egypt-Gaza border. This excuse has been used repeatedly in incursions into Rafah, and has resulted over the past three years in the destruction of hundreds of homes.

The facts on the ground prove that the demolitions are part of a strategic policy to clear a large area of Palestinian land near the border with Egypt to facilitate a wide buffer zone to increase Israeli military control in the area. Israeli forces have begun construction of a concrete and metal wall parallel to the border with Egypt on land cleared of Palestinian homes in similar demolition operations.

Prior to this operation, for the previous week Rafah town and refugee camp (pop. 140,000) had been isolated and completely cut off other areas of the Gaza Strip. The whole of the Gaza Strip was also divided into five completely isolated areas by Israeli military checkpoints and roadblocks (including the permanently isolated Mawasi).

This lockdown prevented scores of patients from reaching hospitals, and increased the deficiency of medications at medical facilities, which are supplied from the central Ministry of Health drug supply stores in Gaza city. Oxygen cylinders and emergency drugs are amongst the most urgent needs.

Given this situation, various medical facilities in Rafah were unable to cope with the increasing number of casualties resulting from the Israeli incursion.

Teams working for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said in a statement that Israeli forces demolished 114 refugee shelters and six non-refugee homes during their incursion from 9 to 11 October. Another 117 buildings were damaged, but liveable, the agency said.

UNRWA said it has been providing the homeless with tents and hot meals, as well as cash to pay rent, but "three years of demolitions has created an acute shortage of property in Rafah".

The agency said in June last year that Rafah’s registered refugee population was 90,638.

The Israeli occupying forces began proceedings to transfer 16 Palestinians being held under Israeli military administrative detention orders from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. The 16 Palestinians were being held in administrative detention in Israeli military detention facilities on suspicion of providing assistance to Palestinians who were involved in attacks against Israeli targets.

Major General Moshe Kaplinski, GOC of the Israeli military Central Command, which includes the West Bank, issued an order effectively transferring the 16 individuals from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. In accordance with the order, the 16 were transported to detention facilities at the Erez military compound where they were supposed to be handed the signed transfer order.

The Israeli government has stepped up its genocidal attacks against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories. The imposed clamp-down has been extended until at least October 22, imprisoning millions in their homes or communities. Meanwhile, the US-backed Israeli government has committed aggression against Syria and continues to threaten it.

Laura Gordon, writing from Rafah, occupied Gaza – 14 October 2003

Then the streets started screaming and we were running almost without thinking, down the edges of the street around the people who had lost their fear, around donkey carts loaded full, ran until we found a corner to turn into and then we ran past families and children, through narrow streets far enough from the main street not to know the worst, far enough that we were the ones spreading the news that the army had come back.

Old men's eyes opened wide and mothers pulled their children inside, casting weary gazes in the direction from where we had come. We found Sea Street and a taxi and headed towards Block J. A machine gun fired from a tank as it entered Yibneh. It was maghreb time. The sun burning a hole in the sky as it fell behind the wall at the edge of town.

When we'd come to Yibneh the camp was already in exodus mode. Donkey carts piled high with furniture, men removing the doors of their homes from the hinges, children holding the keys to their homes on neon green keychains, the modern picture of a refugee descended from refugees, meeting exile every other generation.

The army had come during the night leaving a city stripped bare, the broken bones of houses like twisted bodies reaching up to heaven. Trees and streets, power lines and water pipes, broken, twisted around each other, uprooted. A graveyard of life things. The real dead had been carried out on stretchers, mostly after lying on the street for hours between tanks and the fearful closed doors of curfew, while the ambulances negotiated with the army to gain access. It was a perfect autumn day, soft clouds dotting a sky blue as swimming pools.

The army had come during the night in the sound of thunder rumbling down the border frightening the whole town. It left, not through the streets as it had come, but by creating a path through the homes still standing in Yibneh, demolishing anything in its way and driving over the remains.

It left 10 people dead and upwards of 80 injured; over 100 homes demolished and 2,000 people homeless, according to the UN's estimate. And even then, the army left incompletely and provisionally, remaining stationed along the border, and Moshe Allon calling to deploy more reserves. The word on the street is that the army has left just long enough for the frightened families to leave the camp, an empty shell for the army to finish demolishing.

That night I stayed with Noura and the family down by Salah el-Deen gate. In the morning we peeked over the balcony. A tank was still sitting by the Block O tower. It didn't stop shooting either. All day in spurts.

...

Most of the dead were teenage boys with more curiosity than fear who went outside just to see what was in their street keeping them inside their homes. They were wheeled out on stretchers to sit in the hospital refrigerators for days, waiting for their family to identify them, some unidentifiable. Held in limbo waiting for the army could leave so their families could bury them.

When they did hold funerals it was not in the camp where the army was threatening to reinvade, but far away, in the centre of the city, in Hay Il-Ijnena. But not far enough. An Apache dropped a missile on an empty field next to a funeral on the second day of invasion, the funeral for someone who lives in Hay Il-Ijnena, the most expensive part of town, known for its distance from the border. They died when an Apache fired explosive bullets through the roof of his home.

...

When the army entered we were on the roof passing around stories and dreams. The Apaches came in like a foreboding signal of the end of the world, dropping fist-sized bombs -- boom boom boom, explosions every several minutes from the planes and the tanks. We spent the night in the office waking with fear and coffee, every bullet sounding like it was coming through our windows. We are in the centre of the city. All the shooting comes from the borders, and even if it doesn't reach our walls it shoots in our direction, it sounds awful, like retching rain.

People filled up the hospital and in the morning it was already low on supplies. Nobody could get to the European Gaza Hospital, the only descent facility in the area, where tanks had been parked for days not letting anyone out or in. The dead waited in the refrigerators for identification. The beds were full and overflowing.

My friend Adwan was the first to identify his friend since 12 years. 19-year-old Mabrouk, whose name means "congratulations", was shot three times in the head and five in the back while walking home.

In the mosque, men gathered for prayer and sharing information. Mohammed came back with news. The sheikh at the library, the one we all know, had been killed while walking down the street, a bullet in the heart. One of the ambulance drivers that drove Rachel Corrie to the hospital had also been killed on his way to rescue the injured. His was one of two ambulances the army shot at that night.

Down the street from my friend Feryal in Block J, an eight-year-old boy -- her neighbour’s son -- was killed at the door of his home when a tank backed into his home and then shot him as he ran out, and then denied the ambulance entrance for two hours while he bled to death. Feryal was pregnant and expecting her fifth child any day. Four tanks were parked at each corner of her block.

...

I went with the municipality workers to negotiate with the army to let them fix the water and electricity on a street that hadn't had for days. The real heroes here are the municipality workers and the ambulance drivers who have lost their fear in order to keep the city together. I spoke from a distance of ten yards with a soldier in an APC, to see if the workers could fix the water system. He gave me a thumbs up sign. He appeared to be trying to understand. Parallel universes colliding. I couldn't believe I was talking with a real person inside this massive machine; I was so hungry for human contact, to put a face with the military machinery. We shouted to each other from opposite sides of a roadblock the army had put up, the divide was a gulf none of us could cross. I stood for too long, gawking at him, wishing I could talk to him for hours until he left his tank, feeling naive and silly in the afternoon sun.

The army had uprooted the entire street. Water was filling the sand everywhere in the places water pipes had been broken. People had run out of food, had no water or electricity for two days at that point. Two women who wanted to bring clothes for their children inside the militarised area were denied entry. The municipality, who wanted to bring food relief to the people in the sealed-off area and to fix the water and electrical systems there, was denied entry.

...

The night before I had slept with Naela's family. The invasion was one day old. Jenin was the word on everyone's lips, Bb'eyn Allah ("God sees").

...

My friend Anees' house was partially demolished. Abu Ahmed, the carob juice vendor, his house was demolished.

...

The army used some kind of nerve gas for the first time in Rafah, leaving people in convulsions for days.

...

And last night, I ran from Yibneh's streets as the army came back in and found my way directly to Feryal's house in Block J, better to be with her under curfew than to worry from outside. The army didn't come as it had before but drove in enough to scare the people into exodus and then shot all night long. I began to mix all loud noises with gunfire, the way I used to when I first arrived here.

We slept incompletely. Outside, everything around had been demolished. The morning was still. Families were sitting on the doorsteps of their neighbours' homes gazing at the damage. The area had gone from a crowded lively neighbourhood to a strange antique gallery, children rummaging through the best climbing spots of twisted cars and broken homes. A few more weeks and the army will finish its work and "clean" the area -- dig away the dead bones of the city - until nothing remains but a flat, sandy expanse, a military parking lot. Even the ghosts will leave the area, searching for better horizons.

Even as I sit by Feryal now in the crowded clinic benches full of pregnant women and screaming children, tanks shoot into the camps. It hasn't stopped all morning or all night, and there are four new injuries. The whole town is frightened, afraid to let out its breath. The sadness is dry and wordless. People are staying in tents on the street; some families have room to take in the new homeless.

The army is lying as usual, saying only 10 homes were destroyed and that the people killed were gunmen. Journalists are trying to get here but with difficulty and under the guidelines that they follow military instruction. The ultrasound machine sounds like gunfire to my frightened ears. Feryal looks forward, eyes cynical, sarcastic, watching from a distance.

Laura Gordon is a 20-year-old American Jew who came to Israel in December 2002 with the Birthright Israel programme and proceeded, three months later, to begin work with the International Solidarity Movement in Rafah.

Ramallah, 14/10- A Palestinian official spokesman stated the following:

Practices of Occupation Troops Against our People, Land and Holy Places are Sheer Crimes.

A number of tanks backed by Apache helicopters stormed a densely populated neighbourhoods in Rafah, Tolkarem, Nablus, Jenin and Gaza with a heavy barrage of fires and missiles launched at people's houses, creating catastrophic situation in all Palestinian areas, where hundreds of families were left homeless, infrastructure is destroyed and life is paralysed.

Our people wills steadfast defending its rights and nation, the Arab Nation and the peace of the braves.

Our people calls on the international community, specially the United Nation and the Security Council, the Arab Nation, the Non- aligned Movement, and all friends and peace-loving people in the world to take serious steps to stop this aggression by the Israeli occupation army including the segregation wall.

We reiterate the need the return the road of peace and negotiations to stop the bloodshed and for a better future for our and their children.

By Gordon Thomas

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s wildcat strike on a purported terrorist training camp in Syria was planned with the support of neo-conservative war hawks in Washington, who maintain close ties to the Likud Party in Israel.

Hours before Israeli fighter bombers attacked Syria, prime minister Ariel Sharon called Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld to tell him what was about to happen. Sharon’s call to Rumsfeld was the climax of weeks of intensive and secret planning between Tel Aviv and Washington to attack what both see as a "terror harbouring state".

US state-of-the-art listening equipment along the Iraq border with Syria and high flying spy planes based in Turkey provided vital information to Israel’s own electronic intelligence net over Syria.

The intention behind the attack was two fold. To issue a stark warning to the Damascus regime that it could be attacked with the same impunity that preceded the full-scale invasion of Iraq and to test the defences – and resolve – of Syria to launch any military counter strike against Israel.

Such an attack would be the final excuse that Sharon has been waiting for. His air force is on hard-stand readiness to make the 15 minute flight deep into Syria. American planes in Iraq could join in the assault – going to the "aid" of its one real partner in the region.

It is this grim scenario that could be the next stage of an already inflammable situation.

Israeli sources said that Rumsfeld told Sharon: "We, and you, are fighting a war against terrorism." Implicit in the words, said those sources, was that President George W Bush would see the attack – which violated all international treaties – as no different from America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or in previous US raids on Yemen.

The Israeli attack was on an alleged terrorist training camp at Ain Saheb, 10 miles north of Damascus. It was the first air strike in Syria by Israel in 20 years.

US surveillance aircraft in adjoining Iraq provided the Israelis with photo-reconnaissance details of the camp. But it has emerged that the camp was deserted when the attack came.

While Islamic Jihad issued its routine denial that it had training camps in Syria, similar camps operated by Hamas are known to be sited in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley, and the fact is that Washington pointedly refrained from condemning the Israeli air strike.

Privately, Bush’s closest aide, Karl Rove, let it be known that the president approved it.

"He saw it as a clear warning to terrorists that they can be reached anywhere," Rove told selected reporters. "See it as necessary shock therapy."

For Israel, the attack, coming on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War – when Egypt and Syria nearly overwhelmed Israel’s armed forces – was an essential reminder that Sharon is still the daring warrior of old, the general who saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

It is an image Sharon prefers rather than the one that continues to cling to him as his country’s defence minister who led the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which culminated in the massacre of thousands of innocent women, children and old men, in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

The danger is that this week’s attack on Syria will mark a risky escalation of the bloody Intifada into a regional war that could spill beyond.

"Syria will not stand by if there is any further aggression," said Farouq al-Shara, the country’s foreign minister.

In Tel Aviv, the attack is seen as a test to ascertain whether Syria’s still inexperienced president, Bassar Assad, has the commitment of his father, Hafez, to wage war against Israel.

Damascus, too, has its war hawks who could precipitate the start of a regional war that could spread be yond.

Israel’s attack has produced a ferocious response from the Arab press. It is calling for action – and sooner rather than later.

The attack came on the day the influential Jerusalem Post made Paul Wolfowitz their Man of the (Jewish) Year.

Wolfowitz’s fingerprints are all over the attack on Syria. He is the author of pre-emption – the doctrine of attack first and talk later.

He is the Bush administration’s velociraptor, a predatory dinosaur, in the pantheon of neo-cons led by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and Bill Kristol.

But it is Wolfowitz’s voice that has come through in the posturing following the raid on Syria. It was there in Bush’s claim that "Israel has the right to defend herself"; that the Palestinian Authority "must do more to fight terror."

Wolfowitz is the lightning rod – the smooth talker who whispers the words that Bush can use to justify his war on terrorism. The accolade from The Jerusalem Post is guaranteed to make his advice in the Oval Office even more eagerly sought.

Source:  American Free Press 14 Oct 2003

In a day-long Security Council meeting on October 14, 44 speakers raised concerns regarding the security barrier being built by Israel in the West Bank.

Opening the meeting, which had been requested by Syria on behalf of the Arab League, the Permanent Observer for Palestine said Israel was committing a war crime against the Palestinians by building an expansionist wall within occupied Palestinian territory.

Along with settlement activities, the construction of the wall involved the illegal, de facto annexation of expansive areas of occupied land that would effectively transfer large number of Palestinian civilians and would constrict the rest of them in several walled Bantustans. He said Israel's claim that the wall was a security measure to prevent suicide bombings was incredulous – Israel could build protective walls along the armistice line if that were the case.

The representative of Israel responded that his country had few other options to protect its people, with 870 dead and 6,000 wounded in the past three years due to terrorism. In the past 10 years, it had worked for a bilateral solution, he said, but the Palestinian Authority had refused to fulfil its obligations to dismantle terrorist groups, instead having encouraged them, resulting in the continued murders of innocent civilians.

Having a responsibility to protect its people, Israel was building the security fence with great reluctance, since it was likely to cause hardship to both Palestinians and Israelis and represented a massive expense, he said. It was, in addition, not a perfect solution to terrorism. Yet, an overwhelming majority of Israelis across the political spectrum had come to the conclusion that it was a regrettable necessity. He maintained it would not create facts on the ground, as Israel had shown it would willingly remove such fences if there were a negotiated settlement, which he hoped the fence would help bring about.

Almost all speakers at the meeting expressed strong opposition to the construction of the barrier, particularly regarding the fact that its route incorporated territory east of the Green Line. Most also maintained that it would present a major obstacle to the implementation of the Road Map, agreeing with Italy's representative, who spoke on behalf of the European Union, declaring continued strong support for that plan. The representative of Brazil said that the construction of a separation wall, as well as the Israeli announcement of new settlement activities, further discouraged the levels of mutual trust and confidence between the parties concerning the Road Map's implementation.

Syria's representative, introducing a draft resolution it co-sponsored along with Guinea, Malaysia and Pakistan, said the Security Council must make clear to Israel that the wall, along with settler colonialism and the aggression against Syria and Lebanon, were illegal actions. He called for the resolution to be submitted for a vote at the end of the debate.

Many speakers supported such a resolution throughout the day. However, the Council President, speaking in his national capacity as representative of the United States, said that a Council resolution focused on the fence would not further the goal of peace in the region. On the other hand, while he recognised Israel's serious security concerns, the wall was not consistent with the United States view of what the Middle East one day should look like. It was important not to intrude on the lives of Palestinian people and not to prejudge the outcome of negotiations. Norway's representative said that, if the Government of Israel chose to continue construction of the wall, it should be built on the Green Line, and not on the West Bank.