Sealing Off the Palestinians Won't Guarantee Israel's Security

By Rachelle Marshall

On April 9, shortly after Israel authorities cut off all access to Israel from the occupied territories, Israeli Police Minister Moshe Shahal announced a special operation to "clean" Israel of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. His words had a fearful resonance, recalling such phrases as "Judenrein" and "ethnic cleansing. "

Historical parallels have only limited usefulness, but like earlier attempts to subdue entire populations, Israel's sealing off of the West Bank and Gaza for an indefinite period promises to have dangerous consequences for both sides. Someday the borders will be reopened, if only because Israel's economy requires it. Meanwhile, the closings have deeply intensified the anger and frustration of the Palestinians.

According to Dr. Hatem Husseini, president of AlQuds University, "these are some of the darkest and worst days in their modern history. " Tens of thousands of Palestinians are prevented from reaching their jobs in Israel; students are unable to attend schools in East Jerusalem or to travel from Gaza to West Bank universities; doctors, nurses and patients are cut off from major hospitals; and tons of fruit rot in the sun at the Gaza border while truckers await permission to cross into Israel. Palestinian families already suffering severe hardship now face destitution.

There is evidence that the closure will be longlasting. The cabinet's decision to import 18,000 foreign construction and farm laborers was clearly intended to reduce permanently the need for Palestinian workers in Israel. There is irony in the fact that Asians, Bulgarians and Rumanians will now be allowed to work and live on land that for centuries belonged to the Palestinians but from which they now are barred.

In addition to being deprived of their livelihoods, the Palestinians must continue to live at the mercy of a military occupation that in normal times was cruel and unpredictable but now is appreciably worse. Since the signing of tentative peace accords last fall, violence by the army, by rightwing Israeli settlers, and by Palestinian dissidents has increased. As always, the majority of the casualties are Palestinian and it is Palestinians who are punished, no matter who commits the violence.

Hearings before an Israeli commission of inquiry revealed that when Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein fired on Muslims at the Ibrahimi mosque on Feb. 25, killing at least 29 worshippers, soldiers did nothing to stop the carnage and may have added to it by shooting at the survivors trying to flee. In the aftermath of the massacre, six Israeli extremists eventually were detained while more than a million Palestinians were put under round-the-clock curfew for five weeks, during which Israeli soldiers killed an additional 76 Palestinians. Most of the victims were youths whose crime was throwing stones. Many others, including several children, were hit when police fired into crowds.

In the days that followed, a 34-year-old mother of five children, Handaq Zahdal, was killed and 20-year-old Manal Qneibi seriously wounded when Israeli troops used a children's hospital in Hebron as a base for attacking suspected members of Hamas occupying a nearby house. The four suspects were found dead. after an 18-hour siege in which the Israelis used 90 antitank missiles, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and finally a bulldozer to demolish the house.

Routine Bombardment

The bombardment was similar to those carried out in Gaza and other West Bank cities where the Israeli army has chosen to blow up houses in a search for suspects rather than risk face-to-face confrontation. Such operations, like the indiscriminate shooting into Palestinian crowds, are emblematic of an occupation based on a dual system of law and a dual evaluation of human lives. The message is that Palestinian life and property are cheap and that the rabbi who said recently, "A million Arabs are not worth a single Jewish fingernail" was guilty only of exaggeration. Israeli soldiers admitted, when they testified before the commission of inquiry, that their orders were never to shoot at Israeli settlers, even when the settlers were shooting at Palestinians.

When the curfew was finally lifted in early April, a Palestinian blew up a bus in the Israeli town of Afula, killing himself, seven Israeli Jews and an Israeli Arab. The militant Arab group Hamas claimed it was an act of revenge for the Hebron massacre. Once again all Palestinians were punished, sealed off indefinitely behind their borders with Israel. Yet only a week later, on April 14, Hamas was able to carry out another suicide bombing, this time in Hadera. Six Israelis were killed and nearly 30 wounded.

Israel justifies collective punishment as necessary for security. But as the car bombings in Afula and Hadera tragically demonstrate, the policy hasn't worked. Since the 1970s, actions taken against the Palestinians by successive Israeli governments have invariably provoked rather than prevented violence. With various inducements, the government has encouraged the growth of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, so that today at least 120,000 Israelis live in communities throughout the West Bank, with several thousand more in Gaza and the Golan Heights. Some 25,000 of the settlers are Orthodox Jews affiliated with Gush Emunim, which has sworn to go to war to prevent the surrender of land to the Palestinians.

Gush Emunim's record of violence goes back long before the massacre at the Ibrahimi mosque. In 1980 Gush members set off car bombs that crippled two Palestinian mayors. Shortly afterward they exploded a fragmentation grenade in the Hebron market that severely wounded several children. Three years later Gush members dressed as Arabs burst into Islamic University in Hebron and killed three students. More recently, Gush Emunim's leader, Moshe Levinger, spent 10 weeks in jail for murdering a Palestinian shopkeeper, and was hailed by his followers as a hero when he got out. In mid-March the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reported that since 1988 settlers had killed at least 62 Palestinians but that few of the killers had been punished. Eighteen year-old Fatima Kahlaifa was not included in B'Tselem's list of casualties. She was killed on April 12 when a settler drove through her village firing wildly at stonethrowers.

At the same time it was planting armed Jewish fanatics in their midst, the Israeli government was making day-to-day life for the Palestinians all but intolerable. Such routine activities as getting to a job, planting a crop, repairing a house, running a bakery, or even visiting a relative in another village involve time-consuming delays at roadblocks or the need for permits that might or might not be granted.

Students face frequent school closings, often at crucial exam times. When Israel closed all Palestinian schools for nearly two years during the intifada, tens of thousands of children were denied even a chance to learn to read. Adding to this brew of frustration and humiliation are sudden and unexplained house raids that make a shambles of the family's belongings, and round-the-clock curfews lasting for weeks at a time.

The wonder is not that from time to time a Palestinian commits a hideous act of violence such as the recent bus bombings but that the vast majority retain their sanity. How long can two million people remain behind barbed wire, enduring repeated torments, before they become desperate? Outbreaks of irrational violence are almost always rooted in frustration and a sense of powerlessness.

Two Essentials for Peace

If the Israeli government hopes to protect its citizens from future terrorism and salvage any hope for peace, it must take at least two immediate steps. The first is to reopen Gaza and the West Bank to allow Palestinians to earn a living and begin to rebuild their economy, which according to Palestinian economist Abdul Abu Shuka lost $289 million in the month of March alone.

A second essential for peace is Israel's recognition that the Palestinians' need for security is as great as the Israelis' and therefore Jewish religious zealots must be removed from the West Bank and Gaza. The remaining settlers can be given the choice of either moving back to Israel or living as immigrants in a Palestinian state.

In the last analysis, Israel's hope for lasting security depends on its acceptance, Before it's too late, of peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians in two separate independent states. Otherwise Israelis are bound to learn that you can't lock someone in a cage year after year, constantly prodding him through the bars, and expect that he will never exact revenge.

Rachelle Marshall is a freelance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.