Report: The Impending Abyss :: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Past and Future Trajectory of the Israel-Palestine Conflict :: (by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed)

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the year 2002, its specific concurrent causes, its general political background, and its probable future trajectory if current events continue on their course. The report analyses the broad historical context of the conflict, including the Oslo peace process, Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories, and the policies of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the 1990s.

This analysis provides the basis on which to elucidate the key reasons for the exacerbation of violence and repression, which consist largely of multiple Israeli programmes of domination in the Occupied Territories. Israel�s exploitation of Oslo contributed to the increasing irrelevance and redundancy of the �peace process�, which in turn eroded Palestinian faith in a meaningful political horizon leading to self-determination. Israel�s relentless policies of violence and repression, pursued within the matrix of an unabashed system of apartheid, compounded the latter, contributing directly to increasing indigenous incentive to intensify military resistance against the occupation. The ultimate result has been a cycle of violence, with Israeli State terrorism being preponderant in scale according to a comparative study of statistical data on Israel and Palestinian deaths. In this connection, the nature and impact of Israel Defence Force actions in the assault on Jenin refugee camp are assessed and documented, including a review of the controversy over whether a massacre occurred.

The available evidence, furthermore, strongly suggests that Israeli military intelligence planners have long been aware that the direct consequence of Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories will be to undermine the existing infrastructure of Palestinian society, including the power base of the PA, leading to increasing violence against Israel. The Israeli right-wing � now represented in the leadership of Ariel Sharon in his Likud administration - has for some time supported such policy with the explicitly expressed intention of undermining the PA, bypassing political dialogue, and generating conditions conducive to the rise of Hamas. In this connection, the report examines the sociological and psychological conditions in the Occupied Territories that have led to the rise in Palestinian militancy and the corresponding terror tactic of suicide bombing.

There is a consistent pattern indicating that the recent Hamas terrorist atrocities against Israel are deliberately provoked by the Israeli military in order to manufacture a pretext for brutal Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories. The ultimate purpose of this provocation appears to be longstanding right-wing plans to implement a significant �transfer� � ethnic cleansing � of vast numbers of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to neighbouring Jordan. The implications of Zionist grand strategy in the Middle East, including Israel�s willingness to resort to the use of nuclear weapons, are also evaluated.

Unless urgent preventative and responsive measures are taken by the international community and, most importantly, human rights activists around the world � as well as the general public - a devastating humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented epic proportions is more than likely to unfold in the Middle East, with the possible danger of a regional nuclear holocaust that would cause fundamental damage to the entire world.

This report draws from mainstream press sources, human rights reports, and the work of leading experts on the Middle East. It is being issued in an effort to generate public awareness of the past and probable future trajectory of the Middle East conflict, in the hope of contributing to a worldwide movement to forestall and prevent a regional humanitarian catastrophe. In this connection, it is hoped that this report plays the role of a comprehensive introductory guide to the Israel-Palestine conflict, to thus be used as an educational tool with which to inform, and ultimately, reform. Please distribute this report widely.

Despite the historical and documentary record, the myth of Israel�s victim-hood is consistently propagated by the regime to justify its illegal and increasingly brutal occupation of Palestine. This myth is achieved by the constant repetition, and distortion, of the following concept: that the State of Israel is under siege from Palestinian terrorists embarking on incessant suicide missions, resulting in the mass terrorisation of Israeli civilians. This concept is without doubt to some extent correct � however, devoid of qualification it becomes misleading.

The picture of Israel as a victim, rather than a perpetrator of terrorism, can only emerge from a presupposed pro-Israeli agenda, which focuses principally on the killing of Israelis by Palestinian suicide bombers, while completely blocking out all consciousness of the killing of Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). As a consequence, the historical record, along with the factual context of contemporary developments, is almost entirely erased from public consciousness.

To understand the reality of the Middle East conflict as objectively as possible, it is essential to inspect and compare the entire spectrum of violence committed by all actors within the conflict. Only in this way can the reality and scale of terrorism on both sides be clarified, and responsibility for the violence be thus proportionally assigned. This should be done comprehensively by drawing together the historical and contemporary record of conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces.

We may begin with the current crisis. The Israeli human rights group B�Tselem based in Jerusalem reports that: �Since Israel began its invasions into Palestinian refugee camps on February 27, dozens of unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed, including children and medical personnel�

�In every city and refugee camp that they have entered, IDF soldiers have repeated the same pattern: indiscriminate firing and the killing of innocent civilians, intentional harm to water, electricity and telephone infrastructure, taking over civilian houses, extensive damage to civilian property, shooting at ambulances and prevention of medical care to the injured.

�The grave results have not caused the IDF to change its course of action. Israeli policymakers knew the grave price to the civilian population after the incursion into the first refugee camp. Yet they continue to engage in actions that constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law.�[1]

According to authoritative statistical data on the number of fatalities for both Israelis and Palestinians published and endorsed by B�Tselem, between the beginning of the Intifada (9^th December 1987) and the end of January 2002, a total of 2,166 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli security forces and settlers. In the same period, a total of 454 Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians.[2]

Thus, the approximate ratio of fatalities between Palestinians and Israelis for this period is 5:1. In other words, Israeli violence resulting in death against Palestinians is approximately 5 times that of Palestinian violence resulting in death against Israelis.

Statistical data on the number of injuries on both sides is an even more damning indictment of the Israeli role. According to data produced by the Palestine Red Crescent Society for the period between 29^th September 2002 and 6^th April 2002 � and endorsed as reliable by B�Tselem � the total number of Palestinians (mostly civilians) seriously injured by Israeli use of live ammunition, rubber/plastic bullets, tear gas, shrapnel and bomb fragments amounts to 18,761.[3] In the same period, the total number of Israeli casualties (again, mostly civilians) amounts to 427. Thus, the ratio of casualties between Palestinians and Israelis is a shocking 44:1. In other words, Israeli violence against Palestinians resulting in civilian casualties is 44 times that of Palestinian violence against Israelis.[4]

The only logical conclusion one can draw from this analysis is that the statistical data proves very clearly that Israel bears overwhelming responsibility for violence and terrorism in this conflict, as a matter of record. The implications have been duly noted by respected observers, such as the Israeli political sociologist Dr. Lev Grinberg, Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva. He describes how Israeli State terrorism in the Occupied Territories is tolerated by the international community, and repackaged through the media as �self-defence�:

�What is the difference between State terrorism and individual terrorist acts? If we understand this difference we�ll understand also the evilness of the U.S. policies in the Middle East and the forthcoming disasters. When Yassir Arafat was put under siege in his offices and kept hostage by the Israeli occupation forces, he was constantly pressed into condemning terror and combatting terrorism. Israel�s State-terrorism is defined by U.S. officials as �self-defense�, while individual suicide bombers are called terrorists.

�The only small difference is that Israeli aggression is the direct responsibility of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Ben Eliezer, Shimon Peres and Shaul Mofaz, while the individual terrorist acts are done by individuals in despair, usually against Arafat�s will. One hour after Arafat declared his support of a cease-fire and wished the Jews a Happy Passover feast, a suicide bomber exploded himself in an hotel in Netanya, killing 22 innocent Jews celebrating Passover. Arafat was blamed as responsible for this act, and the present IDF offensive has been justified through this accusation.

�At the same time, Sharon�s responsibility for Israeli war crimes is being completely ignored. Who should be arrested for the targeted killing of almost 100 Palestinians? Who will be sent to jail for the killing of more than 120 Palestinian paramedics? Who will be sentenced for the killing of more than 1,200 Palestinians and for the collective punishment of more than 3,000,000 civilians during the last 18 months? And who will face the International Tribunal for the illegal settlement of occupied Palestinian Lands, and the disobedience of UN decisions for more than 35 years?�[5]

II. What Constructs the Suicide Bomber?

Having undertaken a comparative analysis of the violence by all actors in the conflict, it is clear that the vast majority of acts of terrorism are committed by the State of Israel against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The mass terrorisation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli Defence Force far outweighs in scale and impact Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel. As Ben Gurion University Sociologist Dr. Lev Grinberg notes: �Suicide bombs killing innocent citizens must be unequivocally condemned; they are immoral acts, and their perpetrators should be sent to jail. But they cannot be compared to State terrorism carried out by the Israeli Government�

�The former are individual acts of despair of a people that sees no future, vastly ignored by an unfair and distorted international public opinion. The latter are cold and �rational� decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.

�Yet in the public debate, State terrorism and individual suicide bombs are not even considered as comparable cases of terrorism. The State terror and war crimes perpetrated by the Israeli Government are legitimized as �self-defense�, while Arafat, even under siege, is demanded to arrest �terrorists�.

�I want to ask: Who will arrest Sharon, the person directly responsible for the orders to kill Palestinians? When is he going to be defined a terrorist too? How long will the world ignore the Palestinian cry that all they want is freedom and independence? When will it stop neglecting the fact that the goal of the Israeli Government is not security, but the continued occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people?�[6]

It is absurd to imagine that such a grueling and brutal occupation that consists not only of military violence, but also of socio-economic repression, can continue without the indigenous population resisting that occupation with military force. Violence breeds violence, and terrorism against a civilian population under occupation will elicit a military response as a matter of that population�s attempt to defend itself and repel the occupying invader. The brutal policies of the apartheid regime in South Africa, for example, inevitably created a climate conducive to black resistance, which faced with violent police-state repression quickly and predictably responded in kind with violent protest, accompanied by numerous assassination attempts, ambushes, attacks on civilians, and so on. This is not a matter of justification � it is a matter of scientifically establishing the causal and contextual connections between violent repression and terrorist retribution.

The point has been articulated well by Ali Abunimah, a leading commentator on Middle East and Arab-American affairs who has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Ha�aretz, among others: �As long as Israel chooses violence as its only way of addressing the Palestinians, then there will always be some Palestinians who choose violence in response. The only way to break this devastating cycle is a political process that quickly ends Israel�s occupation and gives the Palestinians their freedom.�[7] But this is exactly what Israel refuses to do. The leading American Jewish journalist Ellen Cantarow - who between 1979 and 1989 reported for the Village Voice, Inquiry, Mother Jones, and other U.S. newspapers from Israel and the West Bank � describes how during those years she witnessed �on the ground the rapid growth of Israel�s settlements and the seizure of Palestinian land and water for them: today over half the West Bank�s resources now are in Israel�s hands. (About a third of Gaza�s resources have suffered the same fate.) �

�I conducted in-depth interviews with ultra-right-wing settlers and settler-leaders whose cry was: �Let them bow their heads, or let Israel expel them�. I interviewed Palestinian villagers who had suffered settler vigilante actions and read accounts of these by Israeli-Jewish reporters of conscience in Ha�aretz and other Israeli papers.

�These vigilante actions ran the whole gamut: wanton destruction of property and crops, rampages through villages with cries of �Death to the Arabs� and smashing of car windows, casual in-the-street humiliation of Palestinian civilians, beatings, murder. Within Israel I witnessed the increasing polarization of Israeli society by the occupation; the growing, virulent racism of new generations. Take, for instance, the Moroccan Jews in Kiryat Shemona, members of Menachem Begin's voting base about whom I wrote for the Village Voice in 1982 and who most commonly told me, �The only good Arab is a dead Arab�.

�Throughout Israel�s 34 years of occupation, collective punishment for the alleged acts of individuals have been the order of the day - for example, 23-hour-a-day curfews lasting for weeks on end; the bulldozing of homes.�

Most shocking of all, Cantarow reports that the IDF is administrating a system of institutionalised racial discrimination � an apartheid system � in the Occupied Territories:

�On all my stays in the West Bank I personally witnessed the casual, daily humiliation of Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints; the casual landscape and social scenery of apartheid (the most obvious and continual manifestations were the checkpoints with differing treatment of Palestinians on the one hand; Israeli Jews and internationals on the other, and the different color of license plates - blue for Palestinians, yellow for Israelis). I interviewed villagers whose homes had been blown up and/or bulldozed by Israeli soldiers. I heard accounts by men and women jailed, abused, and tortured in Israel�s prisons.�[8]

It is this brutal and repressive system of apartheid occupation, continuing and intensifying for decades, which has increasingly aggravated and provoked tensions among a suppressed people � the Palestinians � whose last, most devastating available means of responding to the massive technological violence of the Israeli military onslaught is the simple suicide bomber. It is a matter of record that Palestinian military resistance has intensified in direct response to the escalation of Israeli State terrorism against Palestinian civilians. As numerous respected commentators have observed, the intensifying resistance to Israel�s illegal apartheid occupation is a direct consequence of the continuation and intensification of that occupation. Cantarow observes:

�During the time I was reporting, stone-throwing and street demonstrations were what brought collective punishment [by the IDF]. Suicide bombing is a post-Oslo phenomenon triggered by the doubling of settlement population after the accords were signed and by the dawning realization that Oslo consolidated a South African-style plan for permanent Bantustanization of the West Bank.�[9]

In other words, the rise of militancy among Palestinian resistance groups is a direct consequence of the provocation provided by daily Israeli terrorism � and the scale of such militancy is barely enough to rival the scale of Israeli terrorism. New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges, former Jerusalem-based Middle East Bureau Chief for the Dallas Morning News from 1988-1990 and former Cairo-based Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times from 1991-1995, noted that:

�If Oslo had led, as many had hoped, to a two state solution, and thereby given Palestinians some glimmer of a better life, it is a fair bet that Hamas would be a marginal force in Gaza. But Israel�s occupation and Arafat�s mismanagement have made it only a matter of time before the militants come to power� Hamas is primarily known outside Israel for its suicide bomb attacks against Israeli civilians. The Sheikh tells me that Hamas orders suicide bombers, under its military wing, Iz al-Din al-Qassam, to attack Israeli civilians targets because Israeli troops and armed settlers routinely attack Palestinian civilians. �As long as they target our civilians we will target their civilians,� he says. �When they stop we will stop�.�

Hedges further notes that the Hamas policy of targeting Israeli civilians within the recognised borders of the State, did not exist for over a decade during the occupation. In fact, this policy emerged in the aftermath of consistent Israeli terror attacks on Palestinian civilians. �From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements. It began to attack individual Israeli civilians after a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down twenty-nine Muslim worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.�^[10]

The fact that the real roots of Palestinian militancy are embedded in the consistently brutal nature of Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories has been further elaborated in an authoritative study by the U.S. Library of Congress� Federal Research Division (FDR), The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?. The FDR is essentially a relatively autonomous U.S. government research body that performs directed research at the request of other federal agencies of the U.S. government, to prepare studies, reports and translations for the latter. The FDR has served the U.S. government in this capacity since 1948. The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism, commissioned in June 1999 by the National Intelligence Council and presented in September 1999, draws from the work of numerous experts on terrorism, both inside and outside of government. The FDR study discusses the activities of Hamas in some detail, citing the work of Israeli terrorism expert Professor Ehud Sprinzak of Hebrew University:

�The most persistent image of Hamas in the Western media is that of a terrorist group comprised of suicide bombers in the occupied territories and a radical terrorist faction in Damascus. However, Hamas is also a large socioreligious movement involved in communal work within the Palestinian refugee camps and responsible for many civic-action projects.�

Indeed, this provision of socio-communal services to Palestinians is what grants Hamas its popularity, rather than anything else. The FDR study observes that Hamas �runs a whole range of cultural, educational, political, and social activities based on mosques and local community groups�

�In 1996 most of Hamas�s estimated $70 million annual budget was going to support a network of hundreds of mosques, schools, orphanages, clinics, and hospitals in almost every village, town, and refugee camp on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Consequently, Hamas has massive grass-roots support.

�In 1993 Hamas�s support reportedly varied from more than 40 percent among the Gaza population as a whole to well over 60 percent in certain Gaza refugee camps, and its support in the West Bank varied from 25 percent to as much as 40 percent. Hamas was reported in early 1996 to enjoy solid support among 15 percent to 20 percent of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to Professor Ehud Sprinzak of Hebrew University, Hamas is so popular among 20 to 30 percent of Palestinians not because it has killed and wounded hundreds of Israelis but because it has provided such important community services for the Palestinian population. Moreover, Hamas activists live among the poor and have a reputation for honesty, in contrast with many Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) activists. Hamas supporters reportedly cross both tribal patterns and family patterns among Palestinians.�

Citing Professor Sprinzak who is also dean of the Lauder School of Government, Policy, and Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, the FDR study reports that the Hamas strategy of suicide bombings against Israeli civilian targets is not a consequence of the organisation�s opposition to the peace process, nor because Hamas resolutely rejects the legitimacy of Israel�s existence. Rather, this strategy has been adopted in direct response to Israeli policies of violence and repression that have led to widespread despair, frustration and misery among Palestinians. The FDR thus concludes, like Israeli terrorism expert Ehud Sprinzak, that the only way to prevent Hamas suicide terror attacks against Israel, is for Israel to desist from its own policies of aggression and expansion in the Occupied Territories:

�Sprinzak points out that Hamas�s opposition to the peace process has never led it to pursue a strategy of suicide bombing. Rather, the group has resorted to this tactic as a way of exacting tactical revenge for humiliating Israeli actions. For example, in a CBS �60 Minutes� interview in 1997, Hassan Salameh, arch terrorist of Hamas, confirmed that the assassination of Yehiya Ayash (�The Engineer�) by Israelis had prompted his followers to organize three suicide bombings that stunned Israel in 1996. Salameh thus contradicted what former Labor Party prime minister Shimon Peres and other Israeli leaders had contended, that the bombings resulted from a strategic decision by Hamas to bring down the Israeli government. According to Sprinzak, the wave of Hamas suicide bombings in late 1997, the third in the series, started in response to a series of Israeli insults of Palestinians that have taken place since the beginning of 1997, such as unilateral continuation of settlements. Similarly, Sprinzak notes, Hamas did not initially pursue a policy of bombing city buses. Hamas resorted to this tactic only after February 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli physician and army reserve captain, massacred 29 Palestinians praying in a Hebron shrine. The professor�s policy prescriptions for reducing Hamas�s incentives to commit terrorist atrocities against Israel are to recognize that Hamas is a Palestinian fact of life and to desist from aggressive policies such as unilateral continuation of settlements and assassination of Hamas leaders. Hamas thrives on the misery and frustration of Palestinians� The harsh Israeli blockade of Palestinian areas has only strengthened Hamas.�[11]

Thus, an analysis of the pattern of Hamas waves of suicide bombing inside Israel demonstrates that every such wave is perpetrated in response to Israeli aggression, and never occurs unsolicited.[12]

It should be noted that despite the increasing popularity of Hamas as an organisation providing important socio-communal services to Palestinians, the majority of Palestinians do not endorse Hamas� specific ideological scruples with the State of Israel. Aaron Mate of Concordia University, member of the Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation, visited Israel and the Occupied Territories in June 2002 as part of a fact-finding Canadian delegation sent by the Montreal-based NGO Alternatives in order to assess and monitor the living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip:

�It was embarrassing to hear almost every Palestinian that I met having to explain to me that their people really do love life, that their mothers really do love their children, that their struggle was only against Israeli occupation, not the Jewish people. Their nearly automatic need to disavow what are essentially racist assumptions - that they do not value life as much as we do, that the intifada is not a struggle for national liberation, for a state of their own but a jihad to drive the Jews into the sea - is, I think, a sad reflection of the discourse that occurs over here on their plight. Although it is right to condemn the terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, we have chosen to stereotype an entire community based on the actions of its extremists, ignoring the deplorable and humiliating conditions that could possibly help us understand why human beings could commit such atrocities.�[13]

There is, moreover, a broader crucial context to the rise of Palestinian militancy, rooted in the failure of the U.S.-backed Oslo �peace process�, which thanks to Israeli intransigence has only served to consolidate the Israeli apartheid occupation. It is due to Israel�s exploitation of Oslo in order to expand and empower the occupation that the Palestinians have increasingly come to feel that in the absence of a genuine political horizon, military resistance is the only viable option to repel the occupation. Michael Ben Yar, Israel�s Attorney General from 1993 to 1996, has thus lamented that �we enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft� and thus establishing an �oppressive regime [that] exists to this day.� The Oslo �peace process� was an integral dimension of this �oppressive regime�. According to Israeli scholar Schlomo Ben Ami, who later became Israeli Foreign Minister under Ehud Barak and his chief negotiator at the Camp David peace talks in July 2000, the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO �were founded on a neo-colonialist basis.� Their �economic protocol�, he explained, �imposed almost total dependence on Israel�, ensuring that �when there will finally be peace between us and the Palestinians, there will still be a situation of dependence, of a structured lack of equality between the two entities.�[14]

Jerome Slater, Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York, argues convincingly that in this manner, it is Israel rather than the Palestinians that bears primary responsibility for the grim course of the Israel-Palestine conflict: �[T]he historical record since 1967, and especially since the Oslo agreements of 1993, makes it clear that the longer �the peace process� is stretched out, the more Israel takes advantage of its unconstrained power to preempt the outcome of negotiations by creating facts on the ground�

�That is the central problem in the argument that Arafat should have agreed to continue the negotiations indefinitely, or settle for some kind of partial or �interim� accord, which continued to postpone definitive agreements on the major issues: borders, settlements, Jerusalem, water, and the right of return. In short, any criticism of Arafat, if it is to be taken seriously, must face up to the fact that the Israelis - certainly including Barak and now Sharon - have given the Palestinians every reason to believe that an interim or transition period would not be one toward general peace and a fair compromise, but rather toward a deeper and more irreversible Israeli consolidation of its occupation.�[15]

In doing so, Israeli policy of itself has guaranteed the rise of Palestinian militancy, and the suicide bombings that have come with it, by rendering political dialogue ineffective and meaningless with respect to Palestinian rights. Simultaneously, the collective Israeli political consciousness, under government influence, has virtually erased all memory of how Israeli policy has contributed to the very brutal socio-economic conditions that are conducive to creating a psychology of despair, misery and desperation, which can eventually lead to Palestinian acts of terrorism. As Ha�aretz points out, the causes of the rise of Palestinian militancy are primarily socio-historical, and relate directly to Israel�s consolidation of its repressive military occupation, both during the defunct Oslo �peace� process and in terms of escalating Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians: �Israelis conclude that the suicide attacks are the result of a murderous tendency inherent to the Palestinians, their religion, their mentality. In other words, people turn to bio-religious explanations, not social or historical ones. This is a grave mistake�

�If one wants to put an end to the terror attacks in general, and to the suicide attacks in particular, one must ask why the majority of the Palestinian population supports them� The Palestinians support the attacks, even the cruelest ones, because they are convinced that they, their existence and their future as a nation are the real targets of the Israeli regime - both when it applied rule-by-deceit tactics during the Oslo period, and now, when it uses tactics of military escalation and siege.

�Israeli society did not pay heed to Palestinian warnings during the Oslo period, that an imposed arrangement would lead to disaster. Neither did Israeli political consciousness listen at the beginning of the intifada when the Palestinians pointed to the excessive use of Israeli military force against the first demonstrations. Now, 22 months later, one can here and there find comments by journalists and politicians who in hindsight admit that under Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz, excessive use was already made of lethal methods. If there was indeed a desire to control the whirlpool of violence, that harsh military response was a mistake. But this excessive use of force has not been erased from the Palestinians� consciousness. And why should they forget their children, who were killed just because they threw stones at armored jeeps, tanks and fortified outposts? Why should they forget the civilians killed by IDF fire at roadblocks and in their homes, not during gunfights?�[16]

London Guardian correspondent Ewan MacAskill provides further insight into this by noting how the gruelling conditions of everyday life for Palestinians toiling under Israeli occupation have produced a psychological state of utter despair: �Palestinian children have suffered disproportionately in the uprising�

�Many of them have been shot by the Israeli army while throwing stones at tanks or at soldiers. But it has been rare for children to attempt to repeat the activities of Hamas and the other armed Palestinian groups, such as Islamic Jihad and the military wings of Fatah.

�Tawfiq Salman, a psychiatrist in Bethlehem who works with children and carried out a survey, said: �Ninety per cent of Palestinian children suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of the Israeli closures and the shootings.� Fadel Abu Heen, a psychologist, said many children were severely traumatised by seeing and hearing of Palestinians, especially children their own age, being killed by the Israelis. �It is despair, despair and more despair. Children are unable to cope with the sad reality,� he said, adding that child suicide attackers were motivated more by an overwhelming sense of hopelessness than surging nationalism.�[17]

Palestinian militancy, including the willingness of some to embark on suicide bombing missions inside Israel, is thus a response to routine, daily Israeli terrorism in the Occupied Territories, coupled with Israel�s transparent attempt to exploit the Oslo process to increasingly consolidate its occupation while diminishing the possibility of the emergence of a viable independent Palestinian state. It is only as a consequence of this that hard-line militant factions such as Hamas, which reject the legitimacy of the Israeli regime partly under the impression that Israel rejects the Palestinian right to self-determination, have become more and more prominent. Again, this is not a matter of justification, for none of these facts justifies suicide bombing � it is, however, a matter of scientifically establishing the causal and contextual connections between violent repression and terrorist retribution. As Jewish American political scientist Stephen Shalom records:

�Hamas and a few other, smaller Palestinian groups object not just to the occupation but to the very existence of Israel. But the Hamas et al. position is a distinctly minority sentiment among Palestinians, who are a largely secular community that has endorsed a two-state settlement. To be sure, Hamas has been growing in strength as a result of the inability of the Palestinian Authority to deliver a better life for Palestinians. If there were a truly independent Palestinian state, one can assume that Hamas would find far fewer volunteers for its suicide squads.�[18]

So how can the rise of Palestinian militancy be stopped? Only by isolating and eliminating its root cause and context. As noted by Gal Luft, former Lieutenant Colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, in Foreign Affairs: �If history is any guide, Israel�s military campaign to eradicate the phenomenon of suicide bombing is unlikely to succeed� [N]o military solution will solve the problem�

�Two-thirds of Israelis, according to recent polls, support the removal of [the dozens of] isolated and indefensible [Jewish] settlements [on the West Bank]. But despite such views Ariel Sharon has reiterated his refusal to dismantle a single settlement� If there is any way out of this dilemma, it may lie in convincing the Palestinian public that its constructive goals can be achieved only by its relinquishing its destructive strategy� The rewards will have to be tangible and meaningful. Israel could, for example, offer the PA the removal of a number of small hilltop settlements in exchange for a period of non-belligerency and unequivocal renunciation of suicide bombing. This cooling-off period could then set the stage for renewed talks on a final-status agreement. Such an approach would indicate to the Palestinian population that Israel is serious about peace and ready to pay the necessary price for it, not only in words but in deeds� Before this intifada, a large majority of Palestinians opposed attacks against civilians inside Israel. They hoped to achieve their aspirations for independence without resorting to terror.�[19]

Jewish American Middle East expert Henry Siegmen of the Council on Foreign Relations further observes that �an Israeli strategy of countering terrorism that relies solely on counterterrorism and greater repression (which also targets innocents) will not produce greater security for Israel�s citizens�

�To the contrary, such a limited strategy will predictably produce only greater losses of Israeli lives. To state this truth is not to condone terrorism but to note the obvious fact that this government, with its focus on violent retaliation entirely unrelated to a political process which offers a viable alternative to violence, is putting its citizens at vastly increased risk. It is to argue the political and moral bankruptcy of policies pursued in the name of greater security which in fact achieve the very opposite. And it is to argue that policies which reinforce the despair of Palestinians by killing their hope for an end to the occupation will inevitably fuel escalating violence.�[20]

In an earlier commentary for the International Herald Tribune, Siegman thus concludes that the only way to end the violence is to eliminate the root of the problem � Israeli colonisation of the Occupied Territories. Siegman points out that �no Israeli government can provide that security as long as it persists in its efforts to maintain its presence beyond Israel�s pre-1967 borders and to retain territories inhabited by 3 million Palestinians�

�The expectation that a Palestinian government will provide Israeli settlers the security they need to live undisturbed lives on those lands suggests an arrogance echoing colonial sensibilities of an earlier age that Western democracies - one hopes - now find an embarrassing memory. There is only one way out of the current spiral of violence. It requires that Israel limit its national sovereignty to areas within which it can on its own assume responsibility for its citizens� security. This means a return to Israel�s pre-1967 borders.�[21]

III. Torpedoing the Peace Process

Paralleling Israel�s policy of systematic aggression is the ongoing policy of rejecting a meaningful and just peaceful solution to the conflict, which is reviewed here in detail. In November 1988, the PLO officially accepted a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first significant agreement between the PLO and Israel consisted of the Oslo accords of September 1993, which called for the mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO. The accords also instituted a 5-year transitional period during which Israel would gradually withdraw its troops and administrative structures from the major Palestinian population centers. The Palestinian Authority (PA), the Occupied Territories� interim Palestinian government, would take the place of these structures until the establishment of an independent state. The climax of this transition period would herald the agreement on a permanent settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. These resolutions order Israel to completely withdraw its forces from the Occupied Territories conquered in 1967. Arafat�s side of the agreement involved ending anti-Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories, along with direct cooperation where necessary with Israeli security forces. There is no doubt that the Oslo accords, within the framework of international law including United Nations resolutions, were supposed to result in a just two-state solution, thus entailing the emergence of a viable and independent Palestinian state.

Nevertheless, the entire Oslo process � which consisted of �Letters of Mutual Recognition� and a Declaration of Principles - had commenced on an entirely unequal footing. Arafat recognised in his letter Israel�s right to exist, accepting various UN resolutions and officially renouncing any resort to terrorism or armed struggle. In his corresponding letter, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed only to recognise the PLO as the representative of the Palestine people and to begin negotiations with it - but there was no Israeli acknowledgement of the legally binding implications of UN resolutions, nor any reference to any official recognition of the Palestinian right to a state.

But two years after the Oslo accords had been signed, Yitzhak Rabin announced in detail Israel�s plans for a permanent and final settlement: Israeli forces would remain in the Occupied Territories, and there would be no return to the pre-1967 borders; Israel would retain exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem as a whole, including the Zionist settlements in East Jerusalem; the majority of Zionist settlements in the West Bank and Gaza would remain under Israeli sovereignty; Israel would retain unimpeded access to and military control over the settlements; this control would be ensured through the establishment of a network of new roads stretching throughout the territories. By Rabin�s own admission, Israel aimed to retain effective military control over the Occupied Territories, and to ensure the non-existence of a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state. He admitted, for instance, that Israel�s security border �in the broadest meaning of that term� would be the Jordan River. In other words, Israel would retain settlements and military bases deep inside the Occupied Territories in the Jordan River valley. Thus, the Palestinians would receive only an �entity�, acting as a �home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank... We would like this to be... less than a state.�[22]

Indeed, as was recorded in March 1999 by Joel Beinin - Professor of Middle East History and Director of the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University, as well as contributing Editor of Middle East Report, the authoritative journal of the Washington-based Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP): �The Oslo process consigned Palestinians to an inferior status for at least the five-year interim period and established no countervailing mechanism to prevent Israel from taking unilateral measures to extend its domination indefinitely�

�The Declaration of Principles did not specify the establishment of a Palestinian state. Most importantly, it did not require Israel to seek a relationship of coexistence with the Palestinians on the basis of equality of status. The problems of this arrangement were to be resolved by enhanced capital investment, access to regional markets and expanded opportunities for profit. However, continuing Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, land confiscations and the construction of bypass roads have undermined the economic promise of �New Middle East�. The boundaries of potential Palestinian Bantustans are now clearly visible. Even if the Oslo process advances beyond the current impasse, the territorial basis for establishing a Palestinian state capable of exercising significant sovereign powers may no longer exist.�[23]

Oslo, in other words, due to its ambiguity with regards to the crucial issue of a Palestinian state, had granted Israel a cover of legitimacy to maneuver outside the requirements of international law. Gaping holes in the Oslo accords included lack of agreement on the legitimate borders of the Palestinian state-to-be; the problem of the illegal Israeli settlements; the status of illegally occupied Jerusalem; the legally binding right of return of Palestinian refugees; and the division of water in the West Bank. Operating under the ambiguous Oslo framework, Israel not only violated the terms of Oslo, but violated the requirements of international law by exploiting the holes of that agreement � specifically on the issues of borders, settlements and the right of return - to extend its occupation of Palestinian territories. This essentially constituted the decline of the Oslo process almost as soon as it had been agreed upon, and the legitimisation of an apartheid system under that process. Israeli political analyst Avi Shlaim of Oxford University records that subsequent to the assassination of Rabin, �the decline of the Oslo peace process was caused more by Israeli territorial expansionism than by Palestinian terrorism. Israeli settlements on the West Bank, which Sharon�s government continues to expand, are the root of the problem.�[24] The American-born Israeli attorney Allegro Pacheco, Peace Fellow at Harvard University�s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, elaborates in the New York Times that: �On the harsh ground of everyday reality in Gaza and the West Bank, the false optimism of Oslo quickly faded when the Palestinians realized that the interim agreement had not significantly changed the conditions of the Israeli occupation�

�Since 1994, Palestinians have seen the influx of 50,000 new Jewish settlers into the West Bank and Gaza, the paving of more than 400 kilometers of roads on confiscated land, demolition of more than 800 Palestinian homes, a threefold increase in unemployment in the territories and a 21 percent decline in their gross domestic product, the arrest of 13,000 Palestinians, and complete curtailment of freedom of movement�

�[In September] I was part of a group of 60 Israeli peace activists issuing a warning that resonates today. �We believe that the negotiations currently being conducted between representatives of the State of Israel and Palestinian representatives under the supervision of the United States will likely frame the basis for future war,� our warning said. �The establishment of a Palestinian state truncated by a massive system of bypass roads, encircled by Israeli settlement blocs, subject to closures and restrictions on freedom of movement and commerce, with no control of its borders or natural resources, will only create a reality of apartheid; a Palestinian state as a Bantustan�.�[25]

U.S. specialist on the Israeli-Palestine conflict Jerome Slater � University Research Scholar in Political Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo � has discussed in detail how Israel engineered the corruption of the Oslo process even in Rabin�s era. Under Rabin�s peace plan, Dr. Slater reports, �the Palestinians would end up with a series of isolated enclaves on less than 50 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, cut off from each other and surrounded by Israeli settlers and military bases�

�Jewish settlement in an ever-expanding Jerusalem continued, including in Arab areas, and the massive road building project got under way, often requiring the confiscation and destruction of Palestinian homes and orchards. Astonishingly, under Rabin the growth of the Jewish settlements was greater than it had been under the previous hardline Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir. And even the most fanatical settlements, located in the heart of heavily populated Palestinian areas and presumably destined to be removed in a permanent agreement, were maintained. Rabin rejected the recommendation of his own cabinet to remove the small settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron, following the massacre by a Jewish fanatic of twenty-seven Palestinians praying in a mosque.

�Even the letter of the Oslo accords was often disregarded by the Rabin government: Palestinian prisoners that Israel had committed itself to release remained in jail; the promised Palestinian air field in Gaza was delayed; detailed provisions for free Palestinian passageway between Gaza and the West Bank, as well as free movement of people, vehicles, and goods within the territories, were often violated by Israeli closures that caused great personal and economic hardship; Palestinians living outside Jerusalem were often prevented from attending services at the Muslim mosques on the Temple Mount; Israel often did not comply with scheduled partial troop withdrawals; and tax and custom revenues that were to have been transferred by Israel to the Palestinian Authority were frequently held up.�

Indeed, in contrast, the Palestinian Authority did its utmost to comply with its obligations under Oslo, despite Israeli intransigence with regard to the same:

�Yet, throughout the Rabin period the PA complied with its obligation to do its best to end terrorism, perhaps excepting a brief period following the Hebron massacre. And it did so with great (though not total) success, as the Palestinian security forces under Arafat worked hand in hand with Israeli security forces, often in joint patrols, to identify and jail extremists and suspected terrorists, some of them from lists drawn up by the Israelis.�[26]

The policies of Rabin�s successors were even worse. In March 1997 for instance, Yossi Beilin, an adviser to Prime Minister Shimon Peres, has observed that despite his policies, Rabin did envisage a limited Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. But his successor Shimon Peres, in contrast, wanted Palestinian sovereignty to be limited solely to Gaza, coupled with joint Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian rule over the West Bank.[27] Peres� successor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively brought the Oslo process to an end. According to the leading Israeli military analyst Ze�ev Schiff, �not one promise made to the Palestinians has been fulfilled� by Netanyahu, who has instead constantly subjected them and the PA to �humiliation and degradation.�[28] Jerome Slater reports that:

�� by May 1999, when the transition process was supposed to have been completed, the Israeli occupation over most of the West Bank and Gaza was still in force, Netanyahu had reneged on any further troop withdrawals, the settlement process was continuing, Israel was tightening its grip on East Jerusalem, the road network was expanding, economic closures of the territories had become more draconic and more frequent, and Netanyahu refused to enter into the Oslo-required negotiations for a permanent settlement. By the time Ehud Barak took office in 1999, not only were Israel �s actions nullifying the Oslo process, but they had also gravely undermined Arafat �s position among the Palestinians, who were now in worse shape - politically, economically, and psychologically - than they had been when the agreements were signed in 1993.�[29]

It is conventionally assumed that Prime Minister Ehud Barak had offered the Palestinians an unprecedented generous settlement, which if accepted, would have led to the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state. New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman, for instance, argues that the Palestinians could have had an independent state without having begun the current Intifada, because in July 2000 Clinton brokered the Palestinians a peace plan that would have ended the occupation. In this imaginary series of events, Arafat is blamed for turning down a generous and just Israeli offer. This widespread notion is only the latest in a long line of myths surrounding the inherently flawed U.S.-backed �peace process�, a process that has largely ignored the binding requirements of international law and attempted to impose a pro-Israeli solution on the Palestinian people. This solution was designed to consolidate the apartheid system and extend the occupation, granting Palestinians insignificant pockets of land under continued Israeli domination.

Robert Malley, President Clinton�s Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs and a member of his negotiating team at Camp David, rubbishes the latest myth. He notes that before going to Camp David in July 2000, during his year in office, then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had violated various agreements with the Palestinians, and increased the number of Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories. Malley explains why the Palestinians were wary of so-called Israeli peace offers, thanks to six years of the defunct U.S.-brokered Oslo process during which �there were more Israeli settlements, less freedom of movement, and worse economic conditions.� At Camp David Barak offered to give the Palestinians unspecified land � to be chosen by Israel - equivalent to 1 percent of the West Bank, in return for 9 percent of the West Bank housing settlements that would divide the West Bank into separate regions. In fact, Malley notes that Barak�s �offer� was never made in writing, nor articulated in any meaningful detail. The consequence was that �strictly speaking, there never was an Israeli offer.�[30] Indeed, it is a myth both that �Israel�s offer met most if not all of the Palestinians� legitimate aspirations� and that the �Palestinians made no concession of their own.� Malley defends his assertion by listing the relevant facts in detail:

�Many have come to believe that the Palestinians� rejection of the Camp David ideas exposed an underlying rejection of Israel�s right to exist. But consider the facts: The Palestinians were arguing for the creation of a Palestinian state based on the June 4, 1967, borders, living alongside Israel. They accepted the notion of Israeli annexation of West Bank territory to accommodate settlement blocs. They accepted the principle of Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem - neighborhoods that were not part of Israel before the Six Day War in 1967. And, while they insisted on recognition of the refugees� right of return, they agreed that it should be implemented in a manner that protected Israel�s demographic and security interests by limiting the number of returnees. No other Arab party that has negotiated with Israel � not Anwar el-Sadat�s Egypt, not King Hussein�s Jordan, let alone Hafez al-Assad�s Syria - ever came close to even considering such compromises.�[31]

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was deeply involved in the Oslo process and who is now Israeli Foreign Minister, admitted that the failure of Oslo was because it had been intrinsically flawed from the very outset, since it had offered only limited autonomy within an overall framework of Israeli military control: �Today we discover that autonomy puts the Palestinians in a worse situation�, he stated. Indeed, he went so far as to acknowledge that the second Intifada could have been avoided if the Palestinians had been granted an independent state from the outset: ��We cannot keep three and a half million Palestinians under siege without income, oppressed, poor, densely populated, near starvation,� he said, adding that without a visible political horizon the Palestinians will not make peace with Israel.�[32]

The Palestinian Authority under Arafat�s leadership had collaborated with Israel by negotiating within the boundaries of Israel�s extremely unjust offer. Arafat�s aim, it seemed, was to rule over any sort of Palestinian regime, regardless of whether the conditions of that rule in relation to Israeli occupation were unjust. Long-time observer of the Middle East conflict Stephen R. Shalom, Professor of Political Science at William Paterson University in New Jersey, observes that: �The peace process agreed to by Arafat and Rabin called for the redeployment of Israeli troops from most areas of dense Palestinian concentration to other parts of the West Bank, but not for their full withdrawal from the territory�

�Israeli settlements - whose presence even Israel�s closest ally, the United States government, had always considered a violation of international law - were to remain in place. Israel retained authority over most of the land, and all the settlers, roads, water, and borders, while the Palestinians gained civil control - not sovereignty - over a tiny portion of the West Bank, which essentially meant that they became responsible only for maintaining order over a population seething in grueling poverty and despair. While Israeli analysts saw this arrangement as more manageable than direct Israeli military rule over masses of Palestinians, it was clear that a peace process that did not provide justice and self-determination to a long-suffering people was unlikely to provide much peace either.

�Why did Arafat accept this raw deal on behalf of his people? It appears that Arafat was more interested in being the ruler of a Palestinian State, whatever its condition, than in continuing to seek a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Since his return to Palestine in the wake of the Oslo process, Arafat has ruled the Palestinian Authority with a brutally authoritarian fist and, despite some public posturing, has made further concessions to the Israeli government - most notably giving up the refugees� right of return, something demanded by the U.N. since 1949, and the Palestinian claim to any part of Jerusalem. In so doing, Arafat has further alienated himself from the Palestinian people, who no longer see him as a brave freedom fighter but as a corrupt collaborator.�[33]

Many Israeli commentators were fully cognizant of the unfairness of Barak�s proposals, as well as the fact that the latter precluded the emergence of a viable independent Palestinian state. Ha�aretz concluded, for example, that thanks to Barak�s flagrant violations of the Oslo agreement, �above all� the relentless expansion of the existing settlements and the establishment of new settlements, with a concomitant expropriation of Palestinian land... in and around Jerusalem, and elsewhere as well�, the Palestinians had been �shut in from all sides� the prospect of being able to establish a viable state was fading right before their eyes. They were confronted with an intolerable set of options: to agree to the spreading occupation... or to set up wretched Bantustans, or to launch an uprising.�[34] Under Barak�s plans, not only would the West Bank and Gaza be divided apart by Israel, both these areas would be sub-divided by a network of interconnected Israeli settlements, bypass roads, and military bases into disparate isolated enclaves. As a consequence, Palestine �would always be at the mercies of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces and the settlers.�[35] Michael Lind � former Assistant to the Director of the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs at the U.S. State Department, former Executive Editor of the National Interest, and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation � observes that �most Americans do not know that the Palestinian state offered by Barak consisted of several Bantustans, criss-crossed by Israeli roads with military checkpoints.�[36]

Israel�s biggest mass-selling daily newspaper Yediot Ahranot, commenting on a report by a fellow leading Israeli daily Ha�aretz, exposed the reality of Barak�s unjust and oppressive �peace� proposal in an article aptly titled �Land for Apartheid�: �Barak went to the summit with a magic formula: 10-90. 10 percent annexation, and in the rest - a Palestinian state. No previous Israeli plan ever offered so much land to the Palestinians. Where do these numbers come from? �

�The newspapers of March uncover the mystery. The current plan was formed then, but was postponed due to the Syria and Lebanon events. �State for annexation�, said the main title of Haaretz on 10.3.00, and the subtitle explained: �The prime minister�s 10-40-50 plan - 50 percent of the west bank for the Palestinians, 40 percent under debate, and 10 percent to Israel�. The plan includes a third redeployment which will increase the A area from 42 to 50 percent, in which the Palestinians will be able to declare a state with a capital in Abu Dis.

��The proposal will leave the status of about 40 percent of the west bank unresolved as well as Jerusalem and the right of return�, said the text. Meaning, in return for his consent to the formal annexation of the whole center of the west bank by Israel, Arafat will be allowed to declare a Palestinian state on 50 percent of the west bank, and to sell to his people that the rest of the problems are still being discussed.

�The plan itself is all too well known: it is one of the versions of the Alon plus plan, or the Sharon plan, which robs the Palestinians of half of the west bank lands. (The �debated� 40 percent are lands which have already been confiscated from their Palestinian owners since 1967). The only real thing in this plan is that 10 percent will be annexed now, and, thus, will finalize the disconnection northern half from the southern half of the west bank for good.

�What changed since March is only the packaging. 90-10 sounds a lot more convincing than 50-40-10. Instead of emphasizing the debated 40 percent, vague ideas about �leasing, for now� are thrown in the air, and to enable Arafat to sell this to his people, these areas are not distinguished by a different color in the published maps. With the right propaganda tricks, any product can be sold these days�

�[Barak�s supporters] are marching in support of the leader. Many of them were, until 1993, among the objectors of the occupation and believed that its end requires the dismantling of the settlements and return of all confiscated lands. But today they gather to convince the world, the Palestinians and themselves that it is possible to establish a Palestinians state without land-reserves, without water, without a glimpse of a chance of economic independence, in three ghettos surrounded by fences, settlements, bypass roads and Israeli tanks. A virtual state which serves one purpose: separation - apartheid. �We are here and they are there� - behind the fences, as Barak put it.�[37]

At best then, as Jerome Slater concludes in a Political Science Quarterly research paper evaluating the Oslo peace process: �Barak�s take-it-or-leave-it proposals would not have allowed the Palestinians to have a truly viable or independent state, and his actions on the ground, especially the ongoing and even escalated expansion of the settlements and military road-building, would have perpetuated, consolidated, and made even more irreversible the Israeli occupation over much of the West Bank and Gaza.�[38]