The
Great Experiment In Gaza
By Uri Avnery
17 October, 2006
Gush Shalom
Is
it possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation
by starving it?
That is, certainly, an interesting
question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and
the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged
in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive
answer.
The laboratory for the experiment
is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter
Palestinians living there.
In order to meet the required
scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare the laboratory.
That was done in the following
way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements that were
stuck there. After all, you can't conduct a proper experiment with pets
roaming around the laboratory. It was done with "determination
and sensitivity", tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed
and embraced the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli
army is the most-most in the world.
With the laboratory cleaned,
the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were hermetically
sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world outside.
That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have
prevented the building of a harbor in Gaza, and the Israeli navy sees
to it that no ship approaches the shore. The splendid international
airport, built during the Oslo days, was bombed and shut down. The entire
Strip was closed off by a highly effective fence, and only a few crossings
remained, all but one controlled by the Israeli army.
There remained a sole connection
with the outside world: the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. It could
not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian
regime as a collaborator with Israel. A sophisticated solution was found:
to all appearances the Israeli army left the crossing and turned it
over to an international supervision team. Its members are nice guys,
full of good intentions, but in practice they are totally dependent
on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from a nearby control
room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli kibbutz and can
reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.
So everything was ready for
the experiment.
* * *
THE SIGNAL for its beginning
was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly democratic elections,
under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter. George Bush
was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East
was coming true.
But the Palestinians flunked
the test. Instead of electing "good Arabs", devotees of the
United States, they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush
felt insulted. But the Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas
victory, the Americans and Europeans were ready to take part in the
experiment. It could start:
The United States and the
European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the Palestinian
Authority, since it was "controlled by terrorists". Simultaneously,
the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.
To understand the significance
of this: according to the "Paris Protocol" (the economic annex
of the Oslo agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli
customs system. This means that Israel collects the duties for all the
goods that pass through Israel to the Palestinian territories - actually,
there is no other route. After deducting a fat commission, Israel is
obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.
When the Israeli government
refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it
is, simply put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs "terrorists",
who is going to complain?
The Palestinian Authority
- both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - needs this money like air
for breathing. This fact also requires some explanation: in the 19 years
when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, from 1948
to 1967, not a single important factory was built there. The Jordanians
wanted all economic activity to take place in Jordan proper, east of
the river, and the Egyptians neglected the strip altogether.
Then came the Israeli occupation,
and the situation became even worse. The occupied territories became
a captive market for Israeli industry, and the military government prevented
the establishment of any enterprise that could conceivably compete with
an Israeli one.
The Palestinian workers were
compelled to work in Israel for hunger wages (by Israeli standards).
From these, the Israeli government deducted all the social payments
levied on Israeli workers, without the Palestinian workers enjoying
any social benefits. This way the government robbed these exploited
workers of tens of billions of dollars, which disappeared somehow in
the bottomless barrel of the government.
When the intifada broke out,
the Israeli captains of industry and agriculture discovered that it
was possible to get along without the Palestinian workers. Indeed, it
was even more profitable. Workers brought in from Thailand, Romania
and other poor countries were ready to work for even lower wages and
in conditions bordering on slavery. The Palestinian workers lost their
jobs.
That was the situation at
the beginning of the experiment: the Palestinian infrastructure destroyed,
practically no means of production, no work for the workers. All in
all, an ideal setting for the great "experiment in hunger".
* * *
THE IMPLEMENTATION started,
as mentioned, with the stoppage of payments.
The passage between Gaza
and Egypt was closed in practice. Once every few days or weeks it was
opened for some hours, for appearances' sake, so that some of the sick
and dead or dying could get home or reach Egyptian hospitals.
The crossings between the
Strip and Israel were closed "for urgent security reasons".
Always, at the right moment, "warnings of an imminent terrorist
attack" appeared. Palestinian agricultural products destined for
export rot at the crossing. Medicines and foodstuffs cannot get in,
except for short periods from time to time, also for appearances, whenever
somebody important abroad voices some protest. Then comes another "urgent
security warning" and the situation is back to normal.
To round off the picture,
the Israeli Air Force bombed the only power station in the Strip, so
that for a part of the day there is no electricity, and the water supply
(which depends on electric pumps) stops also. Even on the hottest days,
with temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade in the shade, there
is no electricity for refrigerators, air conditioning, the water supply
or other needs.
In the West Bank, a territory
much larger than the Gaza Strip (which makes up only 6% of the occupied
Palestinian territories but holds 40% of the inhabitants), the situation
is not quite so desperate. But in the Strip, more than half of the population
lives beneath the Palestinian "poverty line", which lies of
course very, very far below the Israeli "poverty line". Many
Gaza residents can only dream of being considered poor in the nearby
Israeli town of Sderot.
What are the governments
of Israel and the US trying to tell the Palestinians? The message is
clear: You will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do
not surrender. You must remove the Hamas government and elect candidates
approved by Israel and the US. And, most importantly: you must be satisfied
with a Palestinian state consisting of several enclaves, each of which
will be utterly dependent on the tender mercies of Israel.
* * *
AT THE moment, the directors
of the scientific experiment are pondering a puzzling question: how
on earth do the Palestinians still hold out, in spite of everything?
According to all the rules, they should have been broken long ago!
Indeed, there are some encouraging
signs. The general atmosphere of frustration and desperation creates
tension between Hamas and Fatah. Here and there clashes have broken
out, people were killed and wounded, but in each case the deterioration
was halted before it became a civil war. The thousands of hidden Israeli
collaborators are also helping to stir things up. But contrary to all
expectations, the resistance did not evaporate. Even the captured Israeli
soldier has not been released.
One of the explanations has
to do with the structure of Palestinian society. The Hamulah (extended
family) plays a central role there. As long as one person in the family
is working, the relatives, too, do not die of hunger, even if there
is widespread malnutrition. Everyone who has any income shares it with
all his brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins and their
children. That is a primitive system, but quite effective in such circumstances.
It seems that the planners of the experiment did not take this into
account.
In order to quicken the process,
the whole might of the Israeli army is now being used again, as from
this week. For three months the army was busy with the Second Lebanon
War. It became apparent that the army, which for the last 39 years has
been employed mainly as a colonial police force, does not function very
well when suddenly confronted with a trained and armed opponent that
can fight back. Hizbullah used deadly anti-tank weapons against the
armored forces, and rockets rained down on Northern Israel. The army
has long ago forgotten how to deal with such an enemy. And the campaign
did not end well.
Now the army returns to the
war it knows. The Palestinians in the Strip do not (yet) have effective
anti-tank weapons, and the Qassam rockets cause only limited damage.
The army can again use tanks against the population without hindrance.
The Air Force, which in Lebanon was afraid to send in helicopters to
remove the wounded, can now fire missiles at the houses of "wanted
persons", their families and neighbors, at leisure. If in the last
three months "only" 100 Palestinians were killed per month,
we are now witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians
killed and wounded.
How can a population that
is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive
hospitals and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air,
hold out? Will it break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy?
Or will it find inhuman strength and stand the test?
In short: What and how much
is needed to get a population to surrender?
All the scientists taking
part in the experiment - Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice, Amir Peretz
and Angela Merkel, Dan Halutz and George Bush, not to mention Nobel
Peace Price laureate Shimon Peres - are bent over the microscopes and
waiting for an answer, which undoubtedly will be an important contribution
to political science.
I hope the Nobel Committee
is watching.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli
writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.
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