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March
13, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
March
10, 2002
Thomas
Croft
Year
of Living Dangerously
March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
When
Business Men
Make Boo-Boos
CounterPunch
Exclusive
Enron's
Spooky
Image Consultant
Rep. Ron
Paul
Stop
the War on Colombia
Andre
Achong
The
Failed War on Drugs
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
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bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
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Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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March 13, 2002
Are the Occupied Protecting
the Occupier?
By Amira Hass
In recent days, the IDF and armed groups of Palestinians
have displayed a common interest in presenting a distorted picture
of reality. Both sides are greatly exaggerating when they talk
about "Palestinian military resistance" to the IDF
incursions into the refugee camps - and yesterday into Ramallah
- referring to "battles" and "firefights."
But in Qalqiliyah and Deheisheh, where
a conscious and level headed decision was taken not to take part
in the show called "resisting and repelling the military
invasion," the military could not talk about a "battle"
or "combat." Nonetheless, when it was reported that
two Palestinians were killed in Qalqiliyah, there was an automatic
slip of the tongue and it was said they "died in a fire
fight." But there were no such battles in the town.
That doesn't mean that in some of the
camps, and now, in Ramallah, armed Palestinians did not try to
respond with fire to the Israeli forces. But the heavy price
paid by the families of those IDF soldiers killed in the recent
raids helps erase the real picture - the IDF is not conducting
battles in the territories. At most, the IDF, with all its sophisticated
advanced weaponry, has encountered a few groups and individuals
armed with much inferior weaponry and with only the most elementary
military training in combat tactics.
For the armed groups, it is important
to present their actions as an "uprising." They confuse
their desire to pick up weapons and die for what they are convinced
is their war of independence, and the results of their readiness
to battle one of the strongest armies in the world.
For the IDF and the Israeli government
it is important to speak about fighting, and to give the impression
that both sides are equals, thus burying the fact that most of
the Palestinian dead are civilians or members of the security
forces, who, even if they were armed, stayed out of the fighting.
And it is especially important for the army and government to
bury the fact that the IDF in the territories is an occupying
power. Only thanks to its far superior strength is Israel able
to continue controling the lives of three million Palestinians,
guaranteeing the existence of the settlements on the Palestinians'
land.
The gap between the bragging by both
sides - the IDF's and the armed Palestinians - and the limited
achievements, on the Palestinian side, of their guerrilla attacks
on soldiers, is what pushes most Palestinians into support for
the suicide bombers inside Israel and against Israelis. These
lethal attacks are perceived as the only significant response
to IDF actions deep inside civilian Palestinian populations.
But they are also an admission of the limits of the armed resistance
to the Israeli occupation.
Most Palestinians know their youths are
bragging. But apparently in Israel, the belief that the IDF is
indeed involved in a war, in other words, in something "symmetrical,"
is based on the fact Israelis like to regard the Palestinian
Authority as a sovereign political entity.
That wrong impression has deep roots
in the years of the Oslo process, and a distorted view of reality
that was fostered in Israel during those years. Israel very quickly
got rid of its civic duties to the occupied population, which
remained occupied because the IDF remained the sovereign in all
the 1967 areas. It was called "transferring civilian authority."
The PA was given responsibility for civic affairs, like sewage,
education, and road building, for three million Palestinians.
Thus, the Israeli and Western public could believe there had
been an "end to the occupation."
But Israel - and the West - paid no attention
to the fact, it was administrative control over people, without
authority over most of the area in which they lived, and without
any room for development, a requirement for every government.
Israelis and the West also did not notice - or know - that nearly
every administrative function by the PA required approval by
the Israeli authorities. Israel and the world saw the outer trappings
of sovereignty - a flag, an airport, jails, security forces,
and show trials - as proof that Palestinian sovereignty had been
established. Forgotten was the fact that Israel controled - and
continues to control - all the external borders, the passages
inside the West Bank and from it to Gaza and back, the water
sources, the economy, the movement of population into the territories,
and the registration of the Palestinian population.
Like the partnership between the IDF
and the armed Palestinian fighters who make claims of "battles"
when there were none, so did the partnership between Israeli
governments and the Palestinian leadership want to present the
PA areas as politically independent, describing Area A as "free
of occupation." The second intifada was a direct result
of that false portrayal of reality.
Continued Israeli control did not disturb
and still does not disturb the Israeli public from regarding
the "autonomous" areas of the limited, fragmented,
cantonized, territory, which has been splintered into enclaves
cut off from one another, as a "state." A "state"
with equal responsibility - indeed more - than its "neighbor,"
Israel, but without equal rights. A "state" that is
perceived as an aggressor. Thus, we've reached the point where
the occupied are being told it is up to them to guarantee the
peace and security of the occupiers.
Amira Hass
writes for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.
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