40 years of occupation and Palestinians never worse off

AFP, June 4, 2007

by Ezzedine Said

RAMALLAH, West Bank, June 4, 2007 (AFP) - Crushed militarily, hamstrung diplomatically and utterly divided, 40 years after Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, Palestinians have never had it so bad.

Israel's stunning victory in the 1967 six-day war humiliated the Arab world and galvanised Palestinian resistance as the Jewish state came to control Palestinians' daily lives in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In a bid to wrest international attention to their cause, the 1970s gave birth to the Palestinian terror tactics of plane hijackings and the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In the Palestinian territories, armed groups staged largely futile attacks against Israeli occupation troops in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

After 20 years, the fight to overthrow Israel in the occupied territories, orchestrated by the Palestine Liberation Organisation under the late Yasser Arafat, culminated in the intifada or the stone-throwing uprising of 1987 to 1993.

An armed intifada since September 2000 has featured suicide attacks and plunged the region into violence, seriously complicating the quest for a negotiated solution.

Palestinians, however, thought the end of occupation was near with the 1993 Oslo accords ushering in West Bank and Gaza autonomy after Arafat renounced "terrorism", recognised Israel and nullified the PLO charter calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.

But hopes were quickly dashed.

"In Oslo, the main issues such as settlements, water, the fate of Jerusalem and refugees were left aside. It was a clever Israeli tactic to neutralise the first intifada," says Palestinian information minister Mustafa Barghuti.

The number of Jewish settlers living on Palestinian territory has doubled since the Oslo accords, reaching its current 260,000 -- with an additional estimated 200,000 in occupied east Jerusalem.

The collapse of Oslo, which Barghuti blames on Israel, has allowed radical Palestinian factions, namely Hamas, to strengthen its position, he says.

Israel's election of right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu to power in 1996 after a series of Palestinian attacks, and more recently the construction of Israel's separation barrier carving up and isolating the West Bank, have sunk them.

Amnesty International said on Monday that Israel has plunged the Palestinians into unprecedented levels of poverty and despair through 40 years of occupation, yet failed to ensure its own security.

While acknowledging Israel's "legitimate security concerns," it said the Jewish state could not justify building its security barrier inside parts of the West Bank and condemned its settlement policies on occupied land.

At the height of the second uprising, Israel boycotted Arafat, who returned to the territories in 1994, declared him an obstacle to peace and accused him of doing nothing to prevent attacks. The peace process has never recovered.

Mahmud Abbas's election as Palestinian president in 2005 revived hopes but no concrete progress was made. The election to government of Hamas -- a terrorist organisation in the eyes of Israel and the West -- has deepened the stalemate.

While defending the Palestinians' right to resistance "in all its forms" Barghuti admits that suicide bombings in Israel have tarnished its image.

"These attacks have put us in the wrong and have been exploited by Israel to show the uprising as a conflict between two military powers," he said.

"The popular pacifist resistance we saw at the start of the first uprising is the most appropriate form of struggle for the Palestinians. That was the high point of our resistance," he said, accusing Israel of maintaining a "loathsome apartheid regime" to maintain its occupation in the territories.

Ahmed Abdelrahman, presidential adviser and former Arafat aide, admits that suicide attacks inside Israel have "turned world public opinion against us" but that resistance within the territories has borne fruit.

"The first intifada opened the way to the creation of the Palestinian Authority. The second intifada cleared the way to the vision of two states. If the Israelis don't withdraw, a third intifada will force them," he says.

The two-state vision is enshrined in the roadmap, the latest international peace plan that has basically languished as dead since its launch in 2003.

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but it continues to control its borders and carry out incursions, transforming the territory "into a big prison" according to Barghuti.

Political columnist Samih Shbeib sees the attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel after the advent of the Palestinian Authority in the context of the power struggle between the Islamist movement and Fatah, the secular party created by Arafat.

Since March, the two parties have been seated around the same cabinet table in a fragile unity government set up to resolve deadly infighting between their supporters, the political crisis, economic meltdown and diplomatic isolation.