Despite U.S.-backed Israeli massacre

Palestinians resist

Under mass pressure, Arab League to send aid

By Leslie Feinberg

Washington’s Nov. 11 veto in the United Nations Security Council blocked an Arab-backed resolution censuring Tel Aviv for the massacre of civilians in Beit Hanoun. This veto proves that not a single Israeli artillery shell could slam into a Palestinian neighborhood without U.S. imperialism providing political cover, military supplies, virtually unlimited bankrolling and monopoly media manipulation.

Gaza protest in Ramallah Nov. 4 against Israeli aggression.

Yet the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, sovereignty and the right to return to their historic land continues to rage, igniting fiery solidarity throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

Anger at the bloody Israeli siege of terror that began Nov. 1 in the northern Gaza Strip is building—from Sana’a to Alexandria, Nablus to Los Angeles—and it is volatile.

Fifteen hundred unarmed Palestinian women broke an Israeli military siege in Beit Hanoun on Nov. 3, despite taking casualties when troops opened fire.

The day after Israeli tank cannons fired a prolonged barrage of shells into a residential neighborhood there on Nov. 8, tens of thousands of Palestinians marched through the narrow, rubble-strewn streets, hoisting the bodies of loved ones—babies and children, men and women, wrapped in fabric flags of Palestinian nationhood and resistance. They fired gunshots to punctuate the fury of their chants against Tel Aviv and Washington, as two Israeli military drones buzzed the funeral procession overhead.

Palestinians protested across their homeland that weekend, despite the intensified mobilization of occupier military and police forces. In the West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli occupation forces fired gas and stun grenades at Palestinians who reportedly fought back by hurling concrete blocks and bottles.

Several hundred Palestinian youths skirmished with police Nov. 10, when they tried to march to the Haram al Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) in east Jerusalem, to demonstrate solidarity with Beit Hanoun.

Protesters in Alexandria, Egypt, show solidarity with the heroic resistance in Beit Hanoun.

In the face of such resistance, and the anti-imperialist anger burning like a wildfire in the Middle East, even imperialist politicians were forced to pay lip service to civilian lives lost on Nov. 8.

The White House and State Department called for restraint—by the Palestinians. Bush expressed “sadness” about the deaths. The European Union said it was “appalled” but declined to chastise Israel.

Attributing the artillery strike on the neighborhood to a technical glitch, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s statement resounded clearly as a threat: “I think it would not be serious to promise that it may not happen. It may happen.”

Olmert arrived in the United States Nov. 12 for a five-day, post-election meeting with the White House. The agenda, according to an Associated Press report, included “U.S. policy on Iran and Iraq.”

Protests were set to meet Olmert in Los Angeles on Nov. 14. There an impressive coalition of Arab, anti-war, anti-imperialist and community groups planned to demand: “Free Palestine, end the colonial occupation now, stop the killings in Gaza, no U.S. aid to Israel, the right of return for all Palestinians, and free Palestinian political prisoners!”

Collective punishment

The atrocity at Beit Hanoun did not begin on Nov. 8. Nor did it end there. More than 50 Palestinians had already been killed and hundreds more wounded since the Israeli military had opened its siege, dubbed Operation “Autumn Cloud,” on Nov. 1.

These lives lost were part of an overall 450 Palestinians killed since June in an even wider military offensive against Gaza nicknamed “Summer Rains.” (The Observer, Nov. 12)

Tel Aviv, with the backing of the United States as senior imperialist power, is unleashing economic strangulation and shock-and-awe terror in order to force a “regime change.”

This is collective punishment carried out against the Palestinian people for daring to elect Hamas to lead their government almost 10 months ago.

Palestinians are being killed at a drastically higher rate since the national elections on March 29, despite the low number of Israelis killed during the same time period.

During the second Intifada—Palestinian uprising—from Sept. 29, 2000, almost four Palestinians were killed in relation to every one Israeli. But since the elections, Palestinians have been killed at a ratio of 26 to every one Israeli.

Since July, that ratio has shot up dramatically, to 76 Palestinians for every Israeli.

Since the Hamas election victory, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have suffered in the grip of an international economic sabotage and blockade, not unlike imperialist attempts to economically choke Cuba and Iraq. U.S. finance capital has engineered an international cut-off of hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid and other revenues to the Palestinian Authority.

Israel continues to withhold some $60 million a month it owes the Palestinian Authority from tax collections.

Gaza is surrounded by Israel on three sides. Tel Aviv determines when the fourth border, with Egypt, is open or shut. “Gaza is a big prison,” says Professor Ali Jarbawi of Bir Zeit University, “and Palestinians are squeezed inside.”

Faced with rising fury among their own populations at the massacres in Gaza, and the U.S. veto of the Arab resolution in the UN Security Council, the Arab League met in Cairo, Egypt, on Nov. 12.

Arab diplomats from 11 countries voted there to defy the United States by rescinding the financial blockade. For the first time since the Hamas election to government, Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar was invited to attend the meeting.

Up until now, as the AP noted in a Nov. 13 report, “Arab banks have not transferred funds to the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority for fear of U.S.-led sanction. The United States and European Union list Hamas as a terrorist organization and take steps against those who transfer funds to such groups. It was not immediately clear whether Arab banks would immediately begin transactions in response to Sunday’s decision and whether sanctions would be imposed if they did.”

Kuwait’s foreign minister pledged that his country would immediately send $30 million to the Palestinians. Bahrain’s foreign minister said Arab countries would begin contacting international financial institutions to ready transfer of monies.

Mohammed Awad, secretary general of the Palestinian Cabinet, said that $52 million should become quickly available for transfer based on the Arab League vote and demand that banks follow their government directives. (AP, Nov. 12)

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said the vote to break the economic blockade against the Palestinians was a message to the United States. “Our message is loud [and] clear to those who take unfriendly positions against Arabs.”

‘Long live Palestine!’

The imperialist media has locked down coverage of the Gaza military offensive as tightly as the Israelis have shut down the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Virtually all the coverage makes it seem as though Israel is on a defensive mission. A Nov. 9 Associated Press article summed up this political line: “Israel again expressed regret for the deaths, but blamed the tragedy on Palestinian violence that has forced Israel to defend itself.”

In historical reality, Israel is the occupier. Palestinians are occupied, in their own land.

Palestinian resistance began six decades ago when Zionist colonizers, backed by the world’s imperialist behemoths, occupied historic Palestine by force of arms, sheer terror and bottomless financial support.

For almost 60 years since, the resistance of the Palestinian people—in historic Palestine and throughout the forced diaspora around the world—has proved indomitable.

Jameela al-Shanti, an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for Hamas, was a leader of the Nov. 3 march of some 1,500 Palestinian women who took the lead against Israel’s bloody assault in Beit Hanoun.

In a Nov. 9 article in the British Guardian she decried the dawn air force raid on her home that killed her sister-in-law—who was the sole caretaker of eight children. She described the artillery shelling of the residential district, adding: “This is Israel’s 10th incursion into Beit Hanoun since it announced its withdrawal from Gaza.

“We still do not know what has become of our sons, husbands and brothers since all males over 15 years old were taken away last Thursday. They were ordered to strip to their underwear, handcuffed and led away. It is not easy as a mother, sister or wife to watch those you love disappear before your eyes. Perhaps that was what helped me, and 1,500 other women, to overcome our fear and defy the Israeli curfew last Friday—and set about freeing some of our young men who were besieged in a mosque while defending us and our city against the Israeli military machine.”

She continued: “We faced the most powerful army in our region unarmed. The soldiers were loaded up with the latest weaponry, and we had nothing, except each other and our yearning for freedom. As we broke through the first barrier, we grew more confident, more determined to break the suffocating siege.”

She watched two close friends—Ibtissam Yusuf abu Nada and Rajaa Ouda—killed in cold blood by troops, and other women badly wounded.

Jameela al-Shanti concluded: “We are being starved and suffocated as a punishment for daring to exercise our democratic right to choose who rules and represents us. Why should we Palestinians have to accept the theft of our land, the ethnic cleansing of our people, incarcerated in forsaken refugee camps, and the denial of our most basic human rights, without protesting and resisting?

“The lesson the world should learn from Beit Hanoun last week is that Palestinians will never relinquish our land, towns and villages. ... The women of Palestine will resist this monstrous occupation imposed on us at gunpoint, siege and starvation. Our rights and those of future generations are not open for negotiation.”

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