It comes as no surprise that the plan, Gaza-Bethlehem First, never got past first gear. The Palestinians did not care for the idea and the Israeli Army never looked like implementing it. Marketed by Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer the plan had the most minimal of aims. In return for PA police forces making efforts to reduce "terror and violence", Israel will relax its military and economic grip on the two Palestinian areas. To those uninitiated in Israel’s ways, initial signs were encouraging. The army lifted the curfews in Bethlehem for the first time in two months and withdrew armored patrols from the town center. But there was no such measure taken in Gaza where, in fact, a series of incidents took place leaving no one in doubt about the ultimate game plan.
In Gaza, a Hamas fighter shot and killed an Israeli soldier in reprisal for the army’s assassination a week earlier of a Hamas member. Israel’s response was predictable and totally disproportionate. It shelled the Palestinian residential area from which the fighter fired, killing a 15-year-old Palestinian boy. The next morning 20 tanks backed by helicopters invaded a part of the Khan Younis refugee camp, destroying two Palestinian houses. One man was killed under the debris and six were wounded.
There was no let up in the West Bank either. On Tuesday, a large force of Israeli soldiers and armor swept in the Tulkarm refugee camp, arresting 15 Palestinians and killing an activist from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. Later that day, an Israeli undercover squad entered Ramallah attempting to arrest activist Mohamed Saadat, brother of Ahmed Saadat, head of the PFLP. Cornered in an alley, Saadat fired back and was killed in the shoot-out. It is no wonder then that after such painful reminders of the vicious nature of Israeli troops that all of the Palestinian factions came down hard on Gaza-Bethlehem First, including Fatah and its armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades.
It has been denounced as a partial security solution that serves only to consolidate Israel’s reoccupation of six West Bank cities or as a ruse to buy quiet in the occupied territories in anticipation of an American strike against Iraq. Hamas said the agreement amounted to an unconditional surrender to Israel by the PA leadership, while Islamic Jihad called the plan an uncertain gamble. Fatah also criticized the agreement, saying it failed to guarantee Israel’s withdrawal from Palestinian population centers. It also complained that it included no commitment by Israel to end the policies of assassinations, incursions into Palestinian towns and villages and the blockade of population centers.
The crippling effects of the blockades in Gaza and the West Bank were highlighted over the weekend by an international task force meeting in Paris, which included members of the Quartet. The meeting raised concerns about the deteriorating Palestinian humanitarian situation. It called for the full, safe and unfettered access for international and humanitarian personnel. In the same vein, a UN special envoy cited increasing malnutrition and illness, precarious water supplies and difficulties in agriculture. The situation is not the result of a natural disaster or a lack of natural resources but a product of sanctioned policies by an occupying power. What the assessment of the blockade says is that the occupation is more than a soldier with a gun. It is a system of control that affects every aspect of the lives of three million Palestinians.
Against this background, the Gaza-First should be seen for what it is: The latest in Israel’s attempts to make the Palestinian leadership do what the Jewish state has always tried but failed to: Ending the resistance to occupation by means fair or foul.
