Under cover of the Gaza Disengagement Plan the Sharon Government is carrying out far-reaching steps to deepen the occupation throughout the West Bank, especially in the Jerusalem Area. While the attention of Israeli and world public opinion is riveted to Gaza, erection of the so-called Separation Fence in Jerusalem was greatly accelerated. For nearly its entire length, this fence is passing through East Jerusalem, and its completion on that route would cut off from the city some 60,000 Arab East Jeruslemites. Not only is this a far-reaching political step, it would also seriously disrupt the private daily life of these tens of thousands. Any daily errand at the city center would require getting permits from the Israeli authorities and going through the ordeal which Palestinians go through when needing to get through Israeli barriers and checkpoints.
Meanwhile, the demolition of Palestinian houses in the Jerusalem area (and not only there) is sharply on the rise, and thousands of new demolition orders have been issued, which might be implemented in the near future. And at the same time, construction of Jews-only housing is also accelerated in the settlements around Jerusalem, and plans have been floated to even deepen the settler penetration into the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.
For Sharon, all of that is far from enough. Recently, the PM declared that "The Major settlement blocs" - which comprise the majority of the West Bank lands - would remain "forever" under Israeli rule. Moreover, he declared Jerusalem to be "non-negotiable". On other issues he would be ready to enter negotiations only "after the Palestinian Leadership dismantles all terrorist infrastructures". In effect, he is demanding that the Palestinian Authority embark on what amounts to a civil war. But this is less a concrete demand which Sharon expects the Palestinians to comply with, and much more a convenient excuse to avoid negotiations altogether, so as to perpetuate the existing situation of continuing Israeli occupation in the the great majority of West Bank lands.
Israeli exit from the 22 Gaza Strip settlements and from a very limited number of ones on the West Bank is a positive step in itself. It needs to be remembered, however, that this would not constitute a complete withdrawal, since Israeli would retain total control over all passages connecting the Gaza Strip to the outside world - by land, sea or air. An area which remains totally besieged by the occupier cannot in any way be said to be totally free of the occupation, even if the presence of settlers and army deeper inside is removed.
The Gaza Disengagement could, indeed, have been a step promoting a comprehensive solution to the conflict - but only if it had been carried out in the framework of an agreement with the Palestinian Authority on the basis of a complete withdrawal from the Gaza strip, followed later by evacuation of the other Occupied Territories and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. But what is actually taking place is quite the opposite: the Gazan settlements were "sacrificed" so that the far more numerous ones on the West Bank,holding a far greater number of settlers than in Gaza, would not only remain in place but go on expanding, pushing further the process of deepening occupation and de-facto annexation throughout the West Bank.
It should be noted that opposition to the Gaza Disengagement often entails extreme-right rampages - which the authorities fail to stop or adequately deal with. In fact, such rampages serve Sharon well, helping him to present himself as "a peace-seeker" to both the local and the international public opinion. Extreme-right militants get a wide audience in the mass media, both state-owned and private - and make use of it to make far-reaching nationalist pronouncements and even utter bald threats against anybody who dares oppose their views and acts.
It was against this background that an army deserter and extreme right sympathizer earlier this month carried out a murderous terrorist attack at the Israeli Arab town of Shefar'amer, killing at random four of its inhabitants and wounding several others. Two weeks later, a second such attack, at the West Bank settlement of Shiloh, claimed the life of four Palestinian workers. Evidently, both these assassins intended to precipitate a bloody cycle of retribution and counter-retribution, which might have have halted the Gaza withdrawal even at the last moment (which, of course did not happen). Still, responsibility for Shefar'amer attack is shared also by the individuals and groups who in recent years conduct a campaign of de-legitimation against the Arab population and its leadership. Part of this campaign is the presentation of the Arab population as "a demographic danger", presenting a "threat" which must be "countered" in whatever way.
Under these circumstances, one should highly commend the solidarity manifested by Israeli Jewish democrats and peace-seekers towards the Shefar'amer inhabitants and the Arab population in general. Peace-seekers arrived in the town for solidarity visits, met with the victims' families and condemned those responsible for creating an atmosphere conducive to such crimes. And when right-wingers came up with a provocative demand to "investigate the circumstances" in which the assassin was killed after shooting down four unarmed Shefar'amer inhabitants, peace-seekers rebuffed this crude attempt to distract attention from the real culprits and putting the victims in the dock.
Meanwhile, recently-published official reports make clear that in all spheres of life the discrimination of the Arab population in Israel is continually worsening. The percentage of Arab citizens suffering from severe poverty is much higher than in the general Israeli population - even though Israeli poverty in general is very much on the rise. All of this is yet another "achievement" to be chalked up to the credit of the Sharon Government - a government in which the Labour Party, led by Shimon Peres, is a majorpartner, fully responsible for all its policies.
According to the report published on August 8 by the National Insurance Institute, the number of Israelis living under the poverty line has reached 1.53 million, that is 23.6% of the population - which is the largest number and the highest percentage ever recorded in Israel. The number of children living in poverty has reached 714,000 - a third of all Israeli children (and a majority of children in the Arab population!).
This situation is the result of the enormous cuts in welfare benefits, carried out by successive Israeli governments over the past few years. The temptation should be resisted to place exclusive responsibility at the doorstep of Binyamin Netanyhu, the recently-resigned Finance Minister - even though he certainly carried out the welfare cuts in an especially blatant and brutal ways, while striving to benefit the rich by such measures as reduction of the taxation to which they are liable.
Given all of the above, we believe that intensive struggle should be conducted against all aspects of the government policy. Especially given the widely-mooted possibility of early general elections, it is vital to achieve the maximum possible cooperation between the political parties and movements active among the Arab population in Israel, as well as between these parties and movements and the consistent Israeli Jewish peace forces, so as to strongly confront the new conspiracies against the Palestinian people. A common basis for such a wide cooperation would include such principles as withdrawal from all the Occupied Palestinian Territories including East Jerusalem (and from the Syrian Golan Heights); the creation of a Palestinian state in the June 1967 borders, side by side with Israel; the right of Palestinian refugees to implement their rights in accordance with the the relevant UN resolutions; an end to the Arab population's discrimination in all spheres; and a substantial change in socio-economic policies, including the slashing of occupation, settlement and military expenditures, increasing the welfare budgets, and abolishing the draconian measures enacted in recent years against the workers and the disadvantaged.
