In just a few days, the blood of almost a dozen Palestinians, including children, has been spilt by the bucketful in horrendous fashion. The car ambush by Israeli helicopter gunships in the West Bank on Saturday killed five Palestinians while Israeli tanks killed four members of a Palestine family in a raid on the Gaza Strip on Thursday. In the West Bank, the two Apache helicopters so obliterated the vehicle and its occupants that it made identifying the dead difficult. But beneath the twisted and burning metal lay a boy and a girl, both nine, who were playing near the car, as well as a six-year-old girl. The Israeli attack in Gaza was said to be a mistake — though Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said the attack was a deliberate crime — which does not make it any less criminal. It prompted Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to express regret and order an army investigation but the apologetic tone did not appease Palestinian anger over the raid, which left the victims’ bodies sliced and torn, spattering the area with blood.
The reason for the West Bank attack, as announced by the Israeli Defense Forces, was to prevent attacks expected in the next few days. But the incident, as in Gaza, which drew vows of retaliation from Hamas, will ironically lead to reprisals of the kind the attack was supposed to prevent. It might also have dealt a fresh blow to Abdel-Razzak Al-Yahya, named Palestinian interior minister in June as part of a series of reforms demanded by Washington, to convince resistance groups that suicide attacks hurt the Palestine nationalist cause.
Al-Yahya had said activists must halt bombings against Israelis or else face ‘isolation’ by Palestinian society. “Stop the suicide bombings,” was Al-Yahya’s appeal. “Stop the murders for no reason.”
But there are reasons. As a result of almost two years of violence, Israel has bought time to introduce settlements, increase its control and ownership of Palestinian lands, push the Palestinians into ever-shrinking enclaves, escalate the violence against the Palestinian resistance and civilians and so deepen the misery of Palestinian lives that the Palestinians are forced to lash out via suicide bombings. Abandoned, beleaguered, isolated and unarmed, a few Palestinian men and women have responded to this Israeli humiliation by turning into human weapons. Their gut reaction has been to lash out in such manner because the bombers are the only weapon that Israel’s entire arsenal of lethal armament has not matched.
Until they were displaced as children, lived in an environment of fear, had their movement curbed, saw their houses demolished, their brothers and sisters going hungry, these Palestinians probably saw negotiations as the sole alternative to achieving their rights. To them, that is no longer a viable option.
The reforms that President George Bush has demanded of the Palestinians produced a moderate member of the Cabinet like Al-Yahya. But because Bush demanded near to nothing from Israel, its newest product is Moshe Ya’alon, the new chief of staff of Israel who last week stated the PA was a “malignant cancer that must be eradicated.” He claimed that Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation posed an “existential threat to Israel” and concluded by saying the only alternative available to Israel was to “inflict a decisive defeat on the Palestinians before the two sides can sit down around the negotiating table.” Meanwhile, Palestinian and European officials are meeting US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield in the West Bank city of Ramallah to discuss Palestinian ‘reforms,’ the specific goals that the Palestinians must meet with the burden shifting to the Israelis only after the Palestinians make changes.
Al-Yahya is one Palestinian reform measure; Ya’alon is Israel’s reply. Despite Al-Yahya’s warnings, recent opinion polls have shown that a majority of Palestinians approve of bombings inside Israel in the 23-month-old uprising. The number of “yeahs” will surely rise in the wake of this weekend’s bloody attacks.
