wfn.org | Palestinians say trenches, barricades are weapons in Israel's war

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Note #6468 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

for despair
29-March-2001
01109

Palestinians say trenches, barricades are weapons in Israel's war for
despair

"I'm not sure it's possible to end the violence," Israeli protester says

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - If you ask Rabbi Arik Ascherman why he is tearing down what the
Israeli army calls "security barricades" on Palestinian roads, he'll answer
simply.

"That's a good question," he said one day after Arab suicide bombers
detonated the latest wave of attacks across the Jewish state. "But more and
more Israelis are ... separating Palestinians who are doing violence against
us and (waging) a mass war against non-combatants."

That's why Ascherman spent last Friday hauling dirt out of the middle of a
road near Rantis, a tiny Palestinian town on Israel's pre-1967 border that
is sealed off by one of dozens of new Israeli roadblocks put into place just
days after former general Ariel Sharon was inaugurated as prime minister.

Sharon has described his strategy as clamping down on areas where there is
violence, and rewarding those who live where it is "completely quiet." He
has told U.S. newspapermen that he opposes "collective punishment."

Ascherman - a spokesman for a group called Rabbis for Human Rights - also
opposes collective punishment. That's why he was hauling dirt from the
roadblock and filling in the massive hole in the highway that the Israeli
army's bulldozers dug.

He wasn't alone.

About 200 Israelis helped move the mound of dirt, first with shovels - which
were soon confiscated by Israeli soldiers - and then with their hands. They
filled in the hole and opened the road to traffic.

The demonstrators - members of Rabbis for Human Rights, which includes
clergy from both left and right; the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace, an
umbrella group of eight peace organizations; and the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions, a group founded in 1996 to help defend
Palestinians against Israeli bulldozers that level homes and flatten
orchards.

Across the West Bank, giant concrete blocks, ditches, checkpoints and mounds
of dirt called "mahksouns," are closing off Palestinian roads in an
unprecedented security crackdown. The Biblical city of Jericho is surrounded
by a 10-mile-long trench that one Israeli observer says is so cavernous that
a tank could fall inside.

Another series of blockades has been thrown up around Ramallah, a volatile
Palestinian enclave just outside Jerusalem, cutting the city off from
neighboring villages and isolating Birzeit, the home of Palestine's only
university. The road to Birzeit was destroyed about three hours after Sharon
took office.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) was unable to comment at
press time, although he did say that an exact count of operational
checkpoints is hard to obtain because some are dismantled after a threat
passes.

Gila Svirsky, an Israeli activist who is a spokeswoman for Women in Black
(and the interfaith representative at last year's Gathering of Presbyterian
Women in Louisville), told the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) that she
learned later that the IDF returned to Rantis with heavy machinery after the
protesters left and dug fresh trenches.  Concrete slabs were hauled in to
protect the ditches - and the truck that delivered the concrete drove off
the road, destroying crops.

Svirsky also said that one Palestinian was beaten.

"Israelis are told by the army that these obstacles are necessary for their
security, and they believe it. ... They know there is an injustice going on
involving those who are innocent, but they'd rather have security," said
Svirsky, who pointed out that three bombs had gone off inside Israel in the
past two days despite this siege.

In a town like Rantis there is no doctor. One woman reportedly gave birth at
the edge of the trench, unable to cross to a hospital.

Ascherman, speaking while Israeli media were reporting army strikes against
Yasser Arafat's presidential guard in Ramallah and Gaza, said most Israelis
are shell-shocked. "This is like a nightmare where you see things spiraling
out of control, but you don't know how to stop it," he said.

Shell-shock also is evident in Hebron, a combustible city of 120,000 people
where about 450 Jewish settlers have moved into the downtown district,
according to the U.S.-based Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), which monitors
the area. It was in Hebron that a Palestinian sniper killed a 10-month-old
Israeli baby girl on Monday.

Since then, according to Rick Carter of CPT, Israeli soldiers have kept a
tight curfew on Palestinians - keeping 30,000 people inside their homes.
Soldiers had a hard time keeping angry settlers away from the neighborhood
where the shot was fired. Carter said some settlers were arrested.

The settlers, who are free to roam the city, set fire to nine cars owned by
Palestinians. According to Carter, they also were randomly firing guns into
Palestinian homes during the night.

In the mayhem, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy was killed. 

"It is a tragedy that a 10-month-old baby was killed," said Carter, who has
been in Hebron for 18 months, "but what about the 10-year-old boy?
Palestinian (deaths) do not make it into the western press. And here, we
have 30,000 people locked in their homes - they can't go out to get
groceries, they can't go to school, they can't go outside - so 450 can roam
the streets."

The Associated Press has reported that the parents of the baby girl have
refused to bury her until the army controls the Palestinian-occupied hill.

Carter said the army has moved heavy machinery into Hebron. His guess is
that the IDF intends to demolish some homes, perhaps the vacant ones that
snipers use.

Jeff Halper, an Israeli anthropologist who is the coordinator of the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions, contends that this security push is the
beginning of an orchestrated effort to defeat the Palestinians and take
possession of the entire land of Israel.

What outsiders have never understood, Halper argued, is that the first goal
of the occupation was to fill the Palestinians with despair. He cites a 1936
comment from David Ben-Gurion that Palestinians will acquiesce to a Jewish
state "only after total despair on the part of the Arabs."

"To paraphrase Clinton, 'It is an occupation, stupid,'" Halper said . "This
is an occupation, and nothing Israel ever proposed ... loosened (Israel's)
control. It wants to control the area and get rid of Palestinians or lock
them into a Bantu-like state."

Halper predicted more house demolitions, land expropriations, settlement
expansions and road-construction, just beginning in Hebron, that will be
described as "justified responses to terrorism."

"After all," he told PNS, "Sharon was elected to bring personal security
back to the Israeli public. But this cynically conceals the major goal of
the Sharon-Peres government:  creating such despair among the Palestinians
that they will finally submit to Israeli dictates."

Halper said the city of Jerusalem and the Israeli Civil Administration for
the West Bank and Gaza issued dozens of demolition orders this week.

Meanwhile, new settlements are being expanded, Halper said, and the
government intends to build a new city in the Etzion Bloc with 6,000 housing
units in the initial stage.  And acres of farmland are being cleared for
another "bypass" road near Hebron.

Halper argued that the escalating expansion was enough to "spark the attacks
on Israeli civilians this week, to jump-start the Campaign of Despair.
Israel is again the victim, with no responsibility, able to blame
Palestinians for the 'violence.' Meanwhile, the United States is let off the
hook."

Halper predicted that Israel will agree to a "mini-state" for Palestinians,
because that would stop the absorption of three million Arabs into Israel's
Jewish population - but the Palestinian state will not be viable.

This new state, he said, would be completely encircled by Israel, unable to
develop a workable economy (its people forever laborers in Israel's
economy), and squeezed in between settlements, bypass roads and Israeli
checkpoints.

"The bottom line is that the Palestinians better accept this 'reality' - or
else. Occupation by consent, or absolute suppression," Halper wrote in a
paper titled "Despair: Israel's Ultimate Weapon."

Ascherman said he also knows something about despair.

"It is one thing to attack those who are threatening you," he said. "It is
quite another to attack innocent people."

"I'm not sure it's possible to end the violence; there is no magic wand, or
word. But I do hope our action demonstrated that, in the midst of this
violence we cannot control or stop, we can preserve our humanity in some
small way."

He also said the road in Rantis is a different message from Israeli
protesters to their government:  it is not just a demonstration, but
resistance.

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