Siege
Of Jericho Prison: US, Britain Complicit In Israeli War Crime
By Bill Van Auken
17 March 2006
World
Socialist Web
The
lawless attack launched against the Palestinian prison in Jericho Tuesday
marks a further provocative escalation in the offensive launched by
Israel against the Palestinian people in the wake of last January’s
election victory for Hamas.
The nine-hour siege, which
left three Palestinians dead and dozens wounded, is of a piece with
countless acts wanton violence and aggression carried out by the Israeli
state, from the storming of the al-Aqsa mosque, to the siege of Yassir
Arafat’s headquarters to the ever-increasing number of “targeted
assassinations” of Palestinian leaders.
What distinguishes this episode
from those that have preceded it, however, is the brazenness of US and
British collaboration in what can only be described as a war crime.
The Israeli attack was coordinated
with Washington and London, which withdrew their monitors stationed
at the facility only minutes before Israeli troops backed by tanks and
armored bulldozers stormed into Jericho and attacked the prison, knocking
down walls with the dozers and cannon fire and ultimately demolishing
the jail.
Israeli commanders threatened
to kill everyone inside the prison unless they surrendered, finally
forcing some 200 to strip down to their underwear and exit the building.
While releasing most of the inmates to Palestinian authorities, they
held some three dozen, including six high-profile political prisoners
whose capture was the immediate objective of the raid.
The six include Ahmed Saadat,
the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP),
and four other PFLP members, as well as Fuad Shubaki, a Palestinian
wanted by Israel on charges of arms smuggling.
Saadat and the other PFLP
members were wanted by Israel in connection with the October 2001 assassination
of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. The PFLP took responsibility
for the killing of Zeevi—an extreme right-wing Zionist who referred
to Palestinians as “lice” and called for their forced expulsion
from Gaza and the West Bank—declaring it an act of retaliation
for Israel’s own “targeted assassination” two months
earlier of the organization’s secretary-general, Abu Ali Mustafa.
Saadat was elected from prison
to the Palestinian parliament in the elections held in January.
The US and British monitors
were stationed at the Jericho prison to oversee the Palestinian Authority’s
custody of the six prisoners. Their deployment was worked out as part
of a US and British-brokered deal for lifting the month-long siege of
Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah in 2002. Arafat refused to turn
them over to Israel, but agreed that his administration would prosecute
and jail the six.
Both US and British officials
claimed that their decision to withdraw the monitors did not represent
collaboration with Israel’s plans to storm the prison, but rather
was motivated by concerns for the security of their personnel. What
threat was posed to their security—outside of the danger of becoming
caught in the crossfire of the Israeli siege—was not made clear
by either government.
The Israeli attack ignited
a firestorm of Palestinian anger. Over 15,000 marched through the streets
of Gaza, after news of the attack, and the next day the territory was
shut down by a general strike. A similar protest strike was launched
in Nablus. Crowds attacked buildings housing US, British and European-linked
organizations and there was a brief flurry of hostage-taking against
foreigners.
A significant share of the
popular anger was directed against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,
who acknowledged that he had been warned by the US and Britain of their
intention to withdraw the monitors, but said he was given no indication
when it would take place.
There are strong reasons
to believe that this effect—the further undermining of Abbas,
who is in political conflict with Hamas—was included in the calculations
of the Israeli state. The Jericho action makes a mockery of the Palestinian
president’s arguments that progress is to be made through recognizing
Israel, pursuing negotiations and counting on the benevolence of the
major Western powers.
The Israeli government has
welcomed the election victory of Hamas—itself the product of the
seething frustration and anger of millions of Palestinians over the
unending devastation and humiliations inflicted upon them by Israeli
policy and the seeming inability of the PLO-led administration to do
anything about it. The Israeli regime invokes Hamas’s designation
by Washington as a “terrorist” organization as a license
to eschew any form of compromise and negotiations in favor of naked
force.
In the first instance, it
sees Hamas’s ascension as giving it a free hand to redraw borders,
unilaterally seizing huge tracts of the West Bank and securing it behind
a massive militarized wall.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert is pursing this unilateralist policy, proposing to abandon some
isolated Zionist settlements in the West Bank, while annexing territory
without negotiations or international sanction.
Nonetheless, he faces opposition
from the right in Israel’s March 28 elections, in the form of
the Likud Party and its candidate, former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu,
who opposes giving up any of the settlements, charging Olmert with planning
to “hand land over to Hamas terrorists.”
Within Israel, it was widely
believed that the Jericho siege was initiated in large part with the
aim of deflecting this right-wing opposition with a show of force. As
the Israeli daily Haaretz put it, the raid represented the embodiment
of “a favorite expression” of former prime minister Ariel
Sharon’s advisers: “To return territory and kill Arabs.”
During a tour of police headquarters
in Jerusalem staged for the media, Olmert declared, “We are proud
that we have imposed justice on these killers.” He affirmed that
the Palestinians who were abducted by the Israeli military “will
be indicted according to Israeli law and they will be punished as they
deserve.”
The fact that some of these
same men have already been indicted, tried and convicted under Palestinian
law for the same crime—making a second Israeli prosecution illegal
under international statutes—is obviously of no concern to a government
that considers itself immune from far more basic considerations of international
law.
Indeed, the Israeli government
has made it clear that it will observe no legal constraints whatsoever.
Last week, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz indicated that if new terrorist
attacks are carried out against Israel, the response could well include
the Israeli assassination of the incoming Hamas prime minister Ismail
Haniyeh. “No one there will be immune,” he said when asked
if such a killing was in the cards.
The Israeli regime acts with
complete impunity because of the unconditional support it receives from
Washington. Olmert himself made this clear, gloating that the assault
on Jericho enjoyed backing from both the US and Britain. “I refer
you to the statement made by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the State
Department that all responsibility for the decision made by the US and
the British governments to pull the inspectors from the jail, and thus
to make the Israeli operation inevitable, lies on the shoulders of the
Palestinian Authority,” he told the Israeli press.
Meanwhile, sources at the
United Nations indicated that a resolution put forward by Qatar, the
sole Arab state sitting on the United Nations Security Council, condemning
the raid and demanding that the prisoners be returned to the Palestinian
Authority would be either buried by the council or vetoed by Washington.
The official reaction in
Washington to the siege of the Jericho prison was an obscene exercise
in hypocrisy and double talk. White House spokesman Scot McClellan told
the press Wednesday that Washington was appealing to all sides “for
calm and restraint,” a phrase meant to demonize the Palestinians
for protesting against the act of aggression by Israel, upon which the
US urged no restraint whatsoever.
He went on to declare that
“Hamas has a decision that they need to make... They need to renounce
violence and terrorism, they need to recognize Israel’s right
to exist, and they need to disarm.”
Israel, on the other hand,
has carte blanche to employ the methods of violence and state terrorism
against the Palestinians, whose rights they are in no way bound to recognize.
The Jericho operation has
once again exposed all the talk of a “two-state vision,”
“land for peace,” and a “road map” as a cruel
farce. The reality is that of a continued illegal Israeli occupation
that leaves Palestinians subject to military raids, assassinations,
abductions, bombings and curfews imposed by Israeli military might,
which is in turn financed and politically backed by Washington.