Sixth
Anniversary Of Al-Aqsa Mosque Intifada Passes Still Unresolved
By Stephen Lendman
02 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
September
28 marked the sixth anniversary of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's provocative visit to the al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem
(the Noble Sanctuary for Muslims and Temple Mount for Jews and Christians)
that caused the eruption of the al-Aqsa Intifada still raging today
with Palestinians on the painful receiving end of most of it. From that
time till now, the Israeli Defenses Forces (IDF) committed unending
and egregious war crimes and breaches of international law against defenseless
Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Instead of abating,
the assaults have intensified over the past year. They especially escalated
dramatically after the June 25 incident at an Israeli military post
near Kerem Shalom crossing, southeast of Rafah, resulting in the killing
of two IDF soldiers, injuring several others and capturing a third still
held. The clash followed a series of bloody June Israeli attacks on
Gaza including the widely reported beach shelling that killed eight
Paletinians and injured 32 others including 13 children.
The IDF "Operation Summer
Rain" response was just another deadly chapter in how Israel is
allowed to get away with any excuse it uses to attack the defenseless
Palestinians. Beginning in late June, that assault was swift, brutal,
disproportionate to the minor incident that took place, and is still
ongoing over three months later unabated. Israel followed its attack
and re-invasion of Gaza by closing all border crossings and sealing
off the territory to restrict movement in and out including for humanitarian
supplies such as food and medicine. The IDF also began shelling northern
Gaza with hundreds of rounds of artillery shells daily; it launched
round-the-clock attacks by F-16 fighter jets and helicopter gunships
firing air-to-surface missiles and dropping one-ton bombs on civilian
targets; it conducted mock air raids; and it had its aircraft break
the sound barrier over Gaza at low altitudes inflicting eardrum shattering
sonic booms to terrify the population. The terror tactics traumatized
children themost.
In addition, the IDF targeted
and destroyed Palestinian government buildings including the Ministry
of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of National Economy
as well as the office of the Palestinian Prime Minister who was forced
into hiding to prevent being targeted for extra-judicial assassination.
Other facilities were destroyed as well including a number of educational
institutions, the electricity generation plant providing nearly half
of Gaza's electrical power, other electricity networks and transmitters,
the main water pipe for the Nusairat and al-Boreij refugee camps, six
bridges linking Gaza City with the central Gaza Strip, many roads, and
the government compound in Nablus. The IDF also destroyed hundreds of
donums (each one about 1,000 square meters) of agricultural land and
hundreds of houses in indiscriminate-like acts of banditry against vulnerable
civilians helpless to stop it and to make it easier later to seize more
Palestinian land for settler developments or whatever othr purposes
the Israelis want to use it for.
All the while, Israel continues
building its separation/annexation wall inside the West Bank on other
seized Palestinian land. It's doing it in defiance of the July, 2004
World Court in the Hague ruling that its construction is "contrary
to international law....destroyed and confiscated (property and greatly
restricts Palestinian movement, and it) severely impedes the exercise
by the Palestinian people of (the) right of self-determination."
The Court ruled construction must end at once, its existing portion
be taken down, and affected Palestinians must be compensated for their
losses. In its decision the Court cited binding international law under
the Hague Regulations of 1907 (dealing with the laws of war and war
crimes) and the Fourth Geneva Convention (relating to the protection
of civilians in time of war). As it ignores all binding UN resolutions
against it, Israel refused to comply with this one by the World Court
and continues building its wall on confiscated Palestinian land in open
defiance of he rule of law and all international norms of propriety.
In addition, Israel has tried
to destroy the democratically elected Hamas-led government by seizing
and arresting 31 of its Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) members
including the Speaker, Deputy Speaker and Secretary. Later the Deputy
Speaker was released. Also, eight ministers including the Deputy Prime
Minister, were arrested. Three of them, including the Deputy Prime Minister
were later released, but the others are still in administrative custody.
They're being held in detention along with about 10,000 other Palestinians
arrested forcibly. Most of them are being held administratively and
indefinitely without charge and are subjected to abuse and torture according
to Amnesty International and the Israeli human rights monitoring group
B'Tselem.
Israel's assault against
the Palestinians in June didn't just erupt because of a minor border
incident. Israeli General Yoav Galant, in charge of Gaza, revealed in
a candid interview he gave it was planned earlier, and the IDF had been
preparing for it by training for a large-scale incursion and reoccupation
of the Strip. It all stems from the Palestinians having made an unacceptable
choice in the legislative elections held in January, 2006. They were
expected to return the supine and subservient Fatah-led government to
power led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and traitor to
his own people for having sold out to Israeli and US interests years
ago for the special privileges he gets in return. Fatah lost because
the people were so fed up with years of institutionalized corruption
under its rule, they voted it out and democratically elected a majority
Hamas-led government they had far more faith in. This was intolerable
to the Israelis, the Bush administration and the European Union (EU)
that efused to recognize the new leadership. They responded by cutting
off all international aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and supported
Israel's refusal to hand over what it owes the PA from the taxes it
collects from the Palestinian people. The plan was to starve the government
and people into submission, and it did it by creating a severe economic
crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) preventing salaries
from being paid and causing a state of extreme deprivation that's grown
worse throughout the year and especially after the late June resumption
of open and intense conflict.
The long-suffering Palestinians
have paid a terrible price throughout this period and for decades earlier
while the world community ignores their desperate plight and is complicit
in causing it. World leaders are comfortable remaining shamelessly silent
while innocent people are made to suffer painfully while the IDF's overwhelming
force is allowed to operate with impunity. The Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights (PCHR) on the ground in the OPT has painstakingly documented
the daily toll of pain and suffering. It reported 237 Palestinians were
killed in Gaza alone including 53 children and 13 women since June 25.
In addition, the PCHR reported 821 Palestinians, including 220 children
and 35 women, were wounded. The numbers continue mounting daily as does
the human suffering overall.
In total, according to PCHR
reports, over the past year, 504 Palestinians have been killed including
93 children and 14 women, 138 of them by targeted extra-judicial executions
against 90 targeted persons that also killed 48 others. Covering the
entire six years of the al-Aqsa Intifada, PCHR reports 3859 Palestinians
have been killed including 585 by extra-judicial assassinations that
targeted 376 persons and killed 209 others nearby including 71 children.
Over the past year, the IDF
intensified its operations in the OPT, especially in Gaza from which
the Israelis staged a media event withdrawal (under its "disengagement
plan") in August and September, 2005 evacuating 8,500 settlers
from 21 settlements. In fact, no withdrawal took place. The Gaza Jews
were merely resettled on other seized Palestinian land in the West Bank,
and the IDF just redeployed away from the settlements they were guarding
to new positions on the border. Gaza continues to be sealed off, it
remains the world's largest open-air prison, and the IDF freely reenters
the Strip on any pretext as it did there and in the West Bank with brute
force after June 25. The beleaguered Palestinians know no peace or relief
as the IDF continues assaulting them daily inflicting an intolerable
amount of pain and suffering on them.
This is part of Israel's
long-standing imperial and racist policy of collective punishment and
ethnic cleansing to destroy the Palestinian identity and prevent the
people from ever having a viable sovereign state of their own under
a government of their own free choice. Israel's plan is to make life
in Palestine so intolerable, the people there will choose to leave voluntarily
to seek refuge wherever they can find it in other Arab states. Israel
could then seize their land and advance toward its eventual goal of
a greater "Eretz Israel" Zionists believe belong to them that
includes the ancient lands of "Judea" and "Summaria,"
the West Bank biblical parts of Israel the Palestinians claim as their
homeland. Despite the overwhelming oppression and hardships inflicted
on them, the Palestinians have resisted for decades and courageously
defended their rights - but at a great cost in lives lost, land seized,
homes and other facilities destroyed and continuing human misery some
independent observers believe is s great as or even greater than anywhere
else in the world.
An Account of the Last Six
Years Under Occupation
The PCHR documents how bad
things have been just in the last six years since the start of the al-Aqsa
Intifada. IDF daily attacks over that period included the following:
-- Hostile incursions into
the OPT
-- Mass killings and home
and property demolitions
-- Frequent extra-judicial
assassinations of targeted Palestinian resistance and political leaders
-- Destruction of the Palestinian
economy that's threatened with total collapse from an economic embargo
and withholding of tax payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA)
-- Creation of a serious
risk of infectious disease from a lack of clean water and little or
no sanitation because of the collapse of the sewage system
-- Destruction of a viable
Hamas-led PA through imprisonments and destruction of their civil and
security facilities
-- Using Palestinians as
human shields during IDF operations in the OPT
-- Closing Rafah and other
border crossings in Gaza cutting off essential traffic both ways including
for humanitarian supplies like food and medicine
-- Harassing Palestinian
fishermen preventing them from earning a living
-- Storming Jericho Prison
and arresting senior Palestinian political leaders
-- Harassing and humiliating
Palestinians at military checkpoints including those in ambulances prevented
or delayed from getting critically needed treatment
-- Unwarranted and illegal
deportations of targeted Palestinian activists from their own country
-- Continued illegal construction
of the separation/annexation wall on seized Palestinian land in the
West Bank in violation of the World Court and international law Israelis
never respect
-- Willfully killing Palestinian
civilians including women and children
-- Indiscriminately attacking
and shelling Palestinian civilian areas using warplanes, helicopters,
tanks and other powerful weapons including illegal ones
-- Denying Palestinians their
basic human rights to health care, education, freedom of movement, work
to support themselves and their families, and imposing a tight siege
on the OPT shooting to kill those violating it or on the streets when
curfews are in effect
-- Making mass arbitrary
arrests without cause resulting in about 10,000 Palestinians illegally
held in detention and subjected to grievous abuse and torture
-- Closure of charitable
societies in the West Bank
-- Permitting deliberate
and systematic attacks by Israeli settlers living on seized Palestinian
land against Palestinian civilians in their own homeland
The Collective Numerical
Toll of the Last Six Years on the Palestinian People Through September
28
>From September 29, 2000
through September 28, 2006 the toll is as follows as documented by the
PCHR:
-- 3,859 Palestinians killed
overall - 2137 in Gaza and 1722 in the West Bank
-- 724 children killed overall
- 430 in Gaza and 294 in the West Bank
-- 119 women killed - 58
in Gaza and 61 in the West Bank
-- 376 extra-judicial executions
-- 19 medical personnel killed
-- 10 journalists killed
-- 45 killed by illegal Israeli
settlers with impunity
-- 22,927 Palestinians injured
(many severely) - 12,927 in the West Bank and 10,000 in Gaza
-- 36,852 donums of land
destroyed
-- 2,831 complete home demolitions
and 2,427 partial ones
-- 677 industrial facilities
destroyed
Conclusions
Justice delayed is justice
denied, and for the long-suffering Palestinians the denial has lasted
nearly six long and deadly decades. They've been the victims of genocide
in slow motion aided by the indifference of the world community that
has a large share of the guilt for failing to forthrightly say "no
mas" - this no longer will be tolerated and must end. If world
leaders won't act, when then will enough people of conscience and mass
civil society stand together and do it for them demanding Israel be
held accountable for its actions and that there must be an end to what
never should have been allowed to begin in the first place.
Today the state of the Palestinian
people is so dire and the need for relief so urgent, the world no longer
can wait. Nearly six decades of unending persecution capped by the last
six years of it becoming especially intolerable can only lead to one
eventual unjust ending if not stopped too unacceptable even to imagine
- the destruction of a courageous and oppressed people with a proud
legacy going back hundreds of years.
A Jewish/Palestinian conflict
never existed until the founding of Zionism in the late 19th century.
It was structured on the myth that ancient Palestine was "a land
without people for a people without land" and "God gave this
land to the Jews." It's pure rubbish and ignores the wealth of
historical and archeological evidence that civilization flourished in
present-day Israel/Palestine at least 1,000 years before any Jews arrived.
From that time till the duplicitous British after WW I promised the
Jews a homeland in Palestine, for their own self-serving interests,
Jews and Palestinian Arabs lived mostly in peace.
The key turning point destroying
any chance for coexistence came on November 29, 1947 when the UN General
Assembly passed a resolution supporting the establishment of a Jewish
state. It voted to partition Palestine to create one for the Jews and
the other for the majority Palestinian population. At the time, the
Jews were a minority one-third of the population and owned 6% of the
land. The partition unfairly gave them 55% of it and led to the 1948
Israeli war of independence the Palestinians didn't want but couldn't
avoid. The outcome gave the Israelis 78% of the land, half again as
much as the UN mandate, and squeezed the Palestinians even more in what
became known as "al Nakba" or "The Catastrophe."
Things would never be the same again and now are as bad or worse than
any other time since that war and the one in 1967 when the Israelis
occupied all the land now known as the OPT.
Today in the Middle East,
Israel is a modern prosperous state and a nuclear power making it virtually
omnipotent in the region. No Arab state can or would dare challenge
it, and the Palestinians are virtually helpless against a hostile and
powerful occupier intent on their destruction as a people. When will
the world community or enough people of conscience act to stop what
will eventually happen if they don't. It's long past the time to end
the "last taboo" of failing to speak out and act forthrightly
against Israeli crimes and demand they end - or else Israel will be
made to pay a stiff price for not complying. It's also long past the
time Israel be held to account for what it's done to an innocent people
wanting only to live in peace on the land rightfully belonging to them.
If not now, when will justice ever be served. Tomorrow may be too late.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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