Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 1996, pages 7, 105

Jerusalem Journal

Deadly Riots Quelled by Promise of Negotiations, But Still No Progress

by Maureen Meehan

Last month’s deadly clashes in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem were an expression of growing Palestinian anger and frustration. They also have further darkened the view of the ruling Likud-led government and its followers toward the Palestinian security services and Palestinians in general.

From all indications, Israel will operate on the assumption that Palestinians are not to be trusted—a sentiment never too far below the surface for many members of the Israeli electorate who chose Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister in the hope he would nix completely, or at least severely alter, the peace accords signed by the Palestinians and the previous government.

Fairness dictates noting here that Israel’s previous Labor Party government, despite its members’ current devotion to the peace accords and vociferous criticism of Netanyahu’s failure to implement them, must accept a large share of responsibility for the disaster that has befallen the entire process.

Land confiscation, Jewish settlement expansion, bypass road construction, house demolitions, and mass arrests of Palestinians marked the four years of Labor leadership under the late Yitzak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

Since the signing of the original Oslo accord in Washington in September 1993, fully 5 percent of the West Bank’s total land area was confiscated under the Labor government to build Jewish-only bypass roads or expand settlements. All this was in spite of an official but largely unobserved freeze on settlement construction which has since been overturned under Netanyahu. A total of 65 percent of Palestinian land has been confiscated since the beginning of the 1967 Israeli occupation.

In addition, the West Bank and Gaza have been under a permanent closure since 1993, with varying numbers of workers permitted to enter Israel and usually only if they meet the requirement of being at least 30 years of age and married. The entry age also can vary.

Labor’s insistence on postponing negotiations with the Palestinians over the future of Jewish settlements allowed it and its Likud successors to continue to establish new facts on the ground before the final round of negotiations could get underway sometime next year. Leaving 144,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza is viewed as a well-planned fait accompli by Labor, and one that has fallen comfortably into the lap of the Likud, which since has pledged to increase the numbers still further.

In fact, one Palestinian think tank, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, points out the irony of Netanyahu’s opposition to the Oslo accords: “They, like no agreement the Likud Party could have dreamed of in 1992, allow for Jewish consolidation to occur: first by successfully incorporating many of these policies into the realm of the peace process, and second by removing the issues of Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, borders, security and water from the arena of international law to a lopsided negotiating table.”

Perhaps it is Netanyahu’s uncompromising and bellicose rhetoric that best distinguishes him from his predecessors whose policies, as shown, bear a great deal of responsibility for the current volatile situation. Netanyahu’s open break from the land-for-peace principle, the linchpin of the peace accord, in addition to several provocative decisions made during his first five stormy months in office, also distinguished him from his predecessors. Indeed, a growing number of Israelis and the vast majority in the Arab world view his tenure as a potential disaster for the entire region.

Permanent Control

Since taking office Netanyahu's government policy guidelines seem to reflect a long-term Israeli objective of maintaining permanent military control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem while expanding Jewish settler presence, in addition to consolidating an infrastructure which will irreversibly outline the current Palestinian "enclaves" known as Areas A and B and which comprise 30 percent of the West Bank. The remaining Area C will remain under Israeli control.

Currently only Area A, which comprises 3 percent of the West Bank, is under Palestinian control. Negotiations over the transfer of Area B, 27 percent of the West Bank, are to be held at a later date.

At a moment’s notice, a simple but effective Israeli military operation seals Area A off from the rest of the country and isolates all Palestinian towns and villages. Known as an internal closure, nothing and no one passes in or out of Area A. Not food, medicine, school buses, gasoline supply trucks, ambulances, laborers, medical workers, farmers, etc.

During the recent crisis, Israel imposed an internal military siege on the towns and villages of the West Bank and declared Area C as well as all major population centers to be closed military zones. This action placed Palestinian residents in a situation tantamount to town arrest.

Tanks were deployed at all access roads around the cities. Israeli border guards had orders to shoot any Palestinian approaching the checkpoints.

To maintain permanent control over Palestinian movement, Israeli authorities recently announced the introduction of a permit system to be required for internal travel within the West Bank. Palestinian attorneys point out that these moves are in violation of Article 12 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, guaranteeing the right of movement.

While still dealing with the shortages, inconveniences and frustration of the internal closure and new travel restrictions, Palestinians are reeling from September’s events in which 44 unarmed Palestinian civilians, including 16 children, 18 Palestinian policemen and 15 Israeli soldiers were killed in four days of violent confrontation. About 1,600 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes and at least two dozen remain in critical condition three weeks after the incidents.

As the dust settled from the unrest, disturbing details have come to light in relation to the Israeli army's handling of the situation. In its attempts to suppress the rioting, the size and fury of which surprised everyone, there are indications that the Israeli army employed a shoot-to-kill policy given the number of injuries and fatalities from live gunfire.

Hospitals in Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus report that 44 deaths, or 70 percent of the fatalities, were the result of injuries caused by live ammunition into the head or chest of victims, reflecting a plan to kill or wound rather than to disperse. Shooting from helicopter gunships was reported in Ramallah and Nablus.

Witnesses say Israeli snipers fired on crowds in those two cities as well as Bethlehem, where soldiers were also seen carrying portable grenade launchers.

Several reports by Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups state that unreasonable force was used by the Israeli security forces to quell the rioting. Numerous researchers also confirmed that Israeli forces fired on medical personnel as they carried out their duties, and that tear gas was launched into East Jerusalem’s Makassed Hospital, which already was crowded with wounded Palestinians.

The onslaught was re-enforced Sept. 30, when the Israeli military command in the occupied territories issued new orders by which Israeli soldiers were permitted to open concentrated fire with all types of weapons at anyone, even stone throwers, if they approach within 300 meters.

Army affairs correspondent Roni Daniel reported on Israeli television that if violence breaks out again, orders already have been issued to open fire “with all types of weapons, including tanks, in order to ‘mow them down,’ as a senior officer put it to me.”

Shooting incidents between Israeli and Palestinian security forces very likely will undermine one of the basic premises of the peace accord: cooperation in security matters in the West Bank and Gaza. In addition to operating in joint patrols in parts of the West Bank and along the Gaza Strip border, the two armed services were sharing intelligence information in their mutual battle against violence emanating from anti-Oslo extremist groups.

Meanwhile, all Palestinians seem to agree that the opening of the Western Wall tunnel, which heightened concern over holy sites and the fate of Jerusalem, was only the spark that ignited fires that still are smoldering today. These “could easily explode again at any moment,” according to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. He warned that he would not be able to prevent a new intifada if Israel continued its current policy of not implementing the peace accord.

The diplomatic flurry to get the peace process back on track, with the usual endless American tolerance for Israel while allies abroad criticize its behavior, has not dispelled frustration among Palestinians.

 “How could it? The situation has left Palestinians insecure, anxious and angry; these are ingredients for explosion,” said Salah Ta’amri, a former PLO guerrilla in Lebanon and currently a Palestinian legislative council member.

 “We have reached a turning point. The question now is whether there will be a new intifada which will make the old one look like a skirmish, or whether the Israeli government will return to its senses and realize that we’re at the doorstep of the 21st century and not the 20th century,” said Ta’amri.

 “There is an agreement which was signed by both sides and endorsed by the whole world and they must respect it,” he added.