Proceso, No. 1325
March 25, 2002
By Homero Campa

MEXICO D.F. - Global Exchange has recently conducted a research visit to the Middle East, with aims at dispelling myths that on a daily basis circulate in the American community about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The human rights director of the organization, Ted Lewis, and its coordinator in Mexico City, Craig Adair, recount some of their impressions to Proceso: the bureaucratic web that suffocates the Palestinians; the strategy behind the Israeli settlements; the interview that they held with Yasser Arafat and the fragility of his leadership, paradoxically strengthened by the hostility of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon.

When Ted Lewis arrived at Khan Younis, at the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, he saw a devastated zone: 103 Palestinian houses in rubble. Israeli Army bulldozers had destroyed them.

Lewis is the human rights director of Global Exchange, a nongovernmental human rights organization that traveled to the Palestinian territories from January 28 to February 8.

The purpose: To obtain first hand information about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and thereby dispel the myths that circulate among Americans on a daily basis, namely: that the conflict is unsolvable, because it has existed for centuries; that it is basically a religious problem; that every act of Palestinian resistance is synonym to terrorism; that the Israeli settlements are small and harmless...

The members of the delegation -- 18 persons, including human rights advocates, teachers, activists and students -- met with officers of the National Palestinian Authority, including its president, Yasser Arafat, they held interviews with members of the Palestinian Popular Liberation Front and with a representative of the Refugee Agency of the United Nations; they also met with foreign and local journalists; however, most important of all, they talked to Palestinian people, in cities, in rural areas, and in refugee camps at Dehaishheh (West Bank) and Shati'i (Gaza Strip). They also talked to families, whose houses had been demolished in Rafa (Gaza Strip).

Interview with Arafat

The meeting with Arafat took place in late January at the house of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. At that time, the Israeli government had already forbidden him to leave the city.

Lewis recounts: Arafat manifested his disposition to talk directly to Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, in spite of the fact that a few days earlier the latter had expressed regret for not having killed Arafat when fenced in Beirut. He said that he missed Itzhak Rabin (Israel's former prime minister and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994), and referred to him as his "partner" in the search for a "peace for the valiant". Then he went through a series of Israeli aggressions: the harassment, the destruction of the olive trees, the existence of military posts and the Palestinian women killed there on their way to the hospital to give birth, etc; nothing that we hadn't read in the press.

Nevertheless, something drew Lewis' attention, the leader's physical weakness: At two meters from him I noticed his trembling. He looked physically fragile. He asked his aides for help, as he had trouble recalling data. He admitted not having the same memory as before.

- Did he talk about a political solution to the conflict? Did he mention his internal situation with respect to the radical groups?

- He didn't touch those issues. But we could see that his situation was difficult. On one side the pressures from Sharon, the U.S. and the international community, on the other the radical actions of Hamas and his own organization, Al Fatah. That doesn't leave much room for negotiations (...). He gives the impression of not having control over many of these groups' actions, and for many young Palestinians Arafat's leadership lacks relevance.

He comments that the Palestinian people are fully supportive of the acts of resistance within the occupied territories. They appeal to Article No. 4 of the Geneva Convention, which establishes the right of every people to defend itself in its own territory. Opinions split regarding suicide acts -- like self immolations with bombs, to kill Israeli people -- in Israeli territory. My impression is that a lower percentage supports this kind of actions.

Lewis states that during the trip they heard numerous criticisms against the high ranks of the Palestinian Authority, because of their corruption and lack of democracy: Palestinians complain that their leaders thicken their pockets with funds received from international organizations. This is a rather extended belief.

Craig Adair, coordinator of Global Exchange in Mexico City, and a member of the delegation that traveled to the Palestinian territories remarks: This stands out. While traveling across the Gaza Strip, you see humble houses and rubble. All of a sudden there appears a luxurious residence. In many cases, it happens to be the house of the representative of the Palestinian Authority in the area. Other Palestinians are well aware of that.

Regarding the lack of democracy, Lewis tells us what several citizens denounce: family connections and pressures to vote one way or another are commonplace during the elections to renovate the Palestinian Parliament. Given those descriptions, such elections resemble PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party, Mexico's ruling party for a major part of last century] elections during the seventies.

However -- says Adair -- many Palestinians think that there is no better option than Arafat for the moment.

Lewis adds: If not Arafat, then who? There is no obvious substitute. Palestinians have a leadership problem similar to the Cubans'. With all its weaknesses and defects, Arafat is still the only person with enough authority to unite a group of considerable proportions. Others have no consensus.

Adair comments that -- according to a member of the Palestinian Authority -- Israelis did not discard assassinating Arafat. They would try to eliminate the only Palestinian spokesman, so that they could then negotiate separately with the leaders of the occupied territories and refugee camps. That would foster divisions and would facilitate Sharon's strategy of frontal attack without limits.

But the harassment against Arafat and the excessive violence of the last days -- which took the lives of tens of Palestinians, left hundreds injured, and got thousands arrested; and which resulted in the transient occupation of several cities, including Ramallah, Palestine's administrative capital -- became self defeating to Sharon's plans: far from weakening Arafat, they have strengthened him politically.

Now, in view of the external pressure, people defend him, rather than question him. Sharon has succeeded in uniting people around the Palestinian leader, and no more criticisms are heard against the corruption and lack of democracy, says Lewis.

The web of bureaucracy

Global Exchange is putting together a report on its visit. Adair shares with Proceso excerpts of the report in advance:

Under the banner of security Israel -- having confiscated over 52% of the West Bank and 30% of the Gaza Strip -- has constructed a dizzying world of check-points, jurisdiction areas, by-pass roads, permit requirements, and the like for Palestinians living in these territories. They are, however, part of a very calculated strategy to entangle the Palestinians in a web of bureaucracy, or "matrix of control", as Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions calls it.

This web of bureaucracy has several objectives. First, it suffocates the Palestinian people economically. In 1993 at the onset of the Oslo "peace" process, Israel began implementing its policy of "closure" - stopping movement between towns and villages inside the Palestinian territories. This closure impedes commercial activity by preventing Palestinians from reaching jobs as well as preventing shipment of goods and raw materials. The result? 70% of Palestinians now live beneath the poverty line and Palestinian incomes are one-eighth of pre-Oslo levels.

The second effect of the web of bureaucracy is that it enables Israel to expropriate Palestinian resources such as land, water, and labor. Israel formalized this scheme in the 1968 Allon Plan, laying claim to the resources of the occupied territories and a good part of the arable land while leaving the administration of the Arab population to Jordanian or local authorities. As a result, Israel now controls 82% of the West Bank with basically only the major population centers (excluding Jerusalem) under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority.

Third, the web of bureaucracy also quietly diverts public attention, both Israeli and international, away from the realities of the conflict: military occupation of the Palestinian territories, displacement of local peoples and subsequent denial (in violation of UN Resolution 194) of Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes inside Israel, and massive human rights abuses. In North America, an uninformed public and a powerful Jewish lobby make a deadly combination with the seemingly objective nature of Israeli activities, resulting in misinformation of massive proportions (...) As long as conflict rhetoric festers only as far as "administration," "incursions," "the Law of Return," and especially "terrorism," the reality of the situation in Palestine will safely elude just and critically thinking minds.

The final objective of the bureaucracy imposed on Palestinians is that it enables Israel to capitalize on the pandemic War Against Terrorism. These various forms of civil harassment eventually take their toll. Just as a pressure-cooker is not exempt from the laws of physics, neither are Palestinians exempt from the laws of human nature. You can only oppress a people so long before they react. Impoverished, harassed, and humiliated; their land stolen, houses demolished, and their children shot at, the armed factions of the Palestinian liberation movement finally respond -- giving Sharon and the Israeli government just the pretext they need to add their belligerent voices to the fashionable cries of terrorism.

Palestine's apartheid

Adair comments that probably the most misunderstood and insidious dimension of the conflict is that of the Israeli "settlements" within the occupied territories. These exclusively Jewish areas, ranging from single buildings in densely populated areas to entire towns, have been erected (in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention) throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

He thinks it is crucial that the international community see settlements for what they are: the primary strategy by which Israel seeks to expand its borders to include all of historic Palestine and a threat to the viability of a sovereign, Palestinian state -- and thus a just and lasting peace.

More specifically, he says: Three settlement blocks are indicative of this strategy. First, the settlement of Ariel in the northern West Bank has been strategically situated on top of the largest aquifer in the region, giving Israel control of one of the area's most vital resources -- water. Second, the central block including settlements from Givat-Ze'ev to Ma'alei Adumin effectively cuts the West Bank into two sections. Obliging Palestinians traveling from north to south to pass through Israeli-controlled territory, this block renders a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. Furthermore, it isolates 200,000 Palestinians and 40% of Palestinian economic activity in Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. A third block from Efrat-Gush to Illit, southwest of Jerusalem, prevents safe passage between the Palestinian territories as well as brings another major West Bank aquifer under Israeli control.

In the larger picture, he explains, the settlements are slowly but surely altering the demographics of the region by inflating the number of Jewish inhabitants in the occupied territories -- thus providing a pretext for security measures, military incursions, and eventual annexation.

Washington's trap

Based on the experience of this visit to Palestine, Lewis expresses skepticism about the resolution passed last week by the United Nations Security Council -- with the support of the United States -- to give Palestine a vision of State.

Had it been approved under other circumstances, it would be a step forward, he says.

He explains: The Secretary of State, Collin Powell, has already referred to an acknowledgment of a Palestinian State under the same terms, and that has not had any effect toward a solution of the conflict. Moreover, the resolution is too general: To talk about a Palestinian State does not necessarily imply that Israelis will leave the occupied territories, that they will abandon their settlements, or that Palestinians will be granted their right to control East Jerusalem. One should talk in specific terms, because if not, the result might be a plan in which the only recognition will be that of certain limited and unconnected Palestinian zones, a condition that would make the existence of a State unviable.

In his opinion, this apparent gesture toward Palestinians hides a trap from Washington: to win the Arab nations' support for its strategy of war in the Middle East, more specifically against Iraq.

He adds: that is why U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney's visit to several countries in the region is not gratuitous -- last week he visited Egypt and Jordan -- as he is seeking support for an expanded war in the region.

According to international analysts, the visit of George W. Bush's special envoy, Anthony Zinni, to Palestine and Israel is not gratuitous either. He seems to carry proposals for security and cease fire -- military posts, apprehensions, concentration of Israeli troops and halt of Palestinian radical actions -- but not for the key issues at the basis of the conflict: boundaries, Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees, and jurisdiction over Jerusalem.

To the question:

- Are Palestinians just a chip in the game board of Middle East politics?

Lewis answers:

- It pains me to say so, but yes.

(translated by Agustin J. Avila-Sakar)