[MER
Editorial - 2/26/97]
The
pattern is now so clear that it's quite amazing how few see it clearly
and how few are willing to speak up honestly. As Israeli settlement
"thickening" (i.e., expansion) continues throughout the occupied territories
and especially in the ever-expanding Jerusalem area, the Israelis make
more and more threats against all Palestinians should anyone dare to speak
up or otherwise react. At the same time the Israelis (with unprecedented
encouragement form the United States whose Middle East policies are practically
dictated by the Jewish lobby) increasingly twist Yasser Arafat more and
more into playing the role of "collaborator" (Edward Said), "vassal" (Naseer
Aruri), "warden" (Mark Bruzonsky) and "client" (Noam Chomsky). Their
goal is clearly to use him, abuse him, and so fracture and demoralize Palestinian
society that he will be totally discredited and maybe assassinated, while
the PLO and the Palestinian national movement are dealt what this time
might be a lethal series of blows.
The
latest Israeli Jerusalem expansion has now officially begun -- after all
kinds of meaningless and non-credible threats from Arafat's naive crony
representative in Jerusalem, Feisal Husseini. What is really going
on -- as we have previously commented on (see http://www.MiddleEast.org/Jerusal1.htm)
-- is
specifically
designed to all but terminate any possibility of Palestinian resurgence
in the Jerusalem area. The Palestinians of Jerusalem are simply to
be penned up in their few remaining enclaves -- a kind of shrinking, isolated,
economically deprived Arab ghetto within an expanding Jewish Jerusalem.
Since 1993 in fact -- thanks to Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres -- Palestinians
from outside Jerusalem cannot even visit the city without special passes
and still-tightening restrictions.
According
to a Reuters report today, Israeli "sources estimate that the Palestinian
reaction to a decision to build on Har Homa (a formerly Arab area of expanded
Jerusalem) will not be extensive, and certainly not on the scale of the
intifada. They feel that Yasser Arafat will not allow it so soon before
his visit to the
United
States, following warnings from the Administration to the Palestinians
not to react with violence.
Furthermore,
according to the Reuters report, "Israel has warned the Palestinian Authority
that if there is an outbreak of hostilities, the first stage of the upcoming
withdrawals -- scheduled for next month -- will be postponed."
Additionally, it has been learned that when Arab students at Haifa University published a flyer calling for the Palestinians to confront Israel's policies, threats of expulsion from the university have resulted against the Arab student leaders.
Overall,
it is a masterful policy of intimidation and blackmail that the Israelis
use -- with help of different kinds from the Americans, the Arab "client-regimes"
and the so-called "Palestinian Authority" -- and it is directly against
all Palestinian institutions and organizations with increasingly ferocity
and effectiveness. How tragic, and how frightening, that more and
more what the Jews are doing to the Palestinians is reminiscent of what
was done to them in the ghettos of Europe of old. And maybe, indeed
likely, sometime in the future, there will be a horrible price to be paid.
For
the brutal reality of today's situation is that in the name of "peace process"
the Palestinians are being ground and crushed into submission. Middle
Eastern apartheid -- complete with "Jews only" settlements and by-pass
roads and "Palestinian-only" ghettos and pass-laws -- marches forward.
MAB