BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Undaunted by the Israeli regime's
military might, thousands of Palestinian youth have taken to
the streets over the past several weeks in renewed protests
aimed at reasserting their dignity and right to an independent
Palestinian homeland. The demonstrators are demanding the
release of the more than 2,100 political prisoners held in
Israeli jails. Meanwhile, the regime of Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu teeters on the brink of collapse, as an
impending no-confidence vote in parliament threatens to topple
his coalition government.
Protests erupted in virtually every city of the occupied West Bank on December 9 to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the 1987-93 uprising by Palestinian youth known as the intifada. Thousands of Palestinians fired slingshots at helmeted Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas, live rounds, and rubber-coated steel pellets. A 17-year-old Palestinian, Jihad Iyad, was killed near Ramallah and at least 87 others injured in clashes there and in Bethlehem, Nablus, and Jericho.
Several days earlier, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners demanding to be freed from Israeli jails launched a hunger strike that has been joined on the outside by family members. In every Palestinian town and in East Jerusalem, the prisoners' relatives have set up tent camps for fasting and organizing demonstrations against the Israeli military presence. Nearly every family has had members jailed by the Israeli regime during the 30 years of occupation of the West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians have participated in protests demanding the prisoners' releases.
Asis Barghouti, 21, who was shot in the arm by Israeli troops during clashes near Ramallah, said he took to the streets because his father, like so many other Palestinian prisoners, has been held for three years without charges. His uncle has already served 21 years of a life term for an attack in which Israelis were killed. "If Netanyahu does not release the prisoners, this will be the situation every day," Barghouti said from his hospital bed. Barghouti's grandfather, Salah, 74, said he backed the protesters. "I was out there with them, collecting rocks and giving them to the young men," he said.
Accords don't bring land or peace
The Israeli regime had promised to release 750 political
prisoners as part of a deal signed in October by Palestinian
Authority president Yasser Arafat and Netanyahu at a meeting
organized by U.S. president William Clinton at the Wye River
Plantation in Maryland. The first batch of 250 inmates set free
in November included hardly any political prisoners, fueling
the latest round of Palestinian protests.
The Wye agreement is a continuation of the process begun with the accord reached between the Israeli government and the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Oslo, Norway, in 1993.
That accord registered the failure of the Israeli government to suppress the struggle of the Palestinian people for self- determination. But it was as much a product of the increasingly bourgeois character of the PLO leadership, headed by Arafat, which over the previous 15 years had turned its eyes further away from the ranks of the Palestinian masses inside and outside Israel. While the intifada drew a new layer of youth into the struggle, it did not forge a new leadership strong enough to replace the PLO apparatus.
Under the Oslo accord, Tel Aviv has turned over control of the Gaza Strip, which had become nothing but a headache for the Israeli rulers to try to control, to the Palestinian Authority, along with a patchwork of towns in the West Bank. Both regions have been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
The Wye agreement calls for Israel to withdraw its troops from an additional 13 percent of the West Bank, to be carried out in three stages over the following three months. The Palestinian Authority was also allowed to open an airport in Gaza. Israeli forces, however, will remain a presence in this area for "security" purposes.
About 14 percent of West Bank territory that had been under joint Israeli-Palestinian control will pass to the full control of the Palestinian Authority. Prior to this agreement, the Palestinian Authority controlled 3 percent of the West Bank. Another 24 percent has been administratively run by the Palestinian Authority with full control belonging to Tel Aviv.
After withdrawing from another 2 percent of the West Bank as agreed to under the Wye accord, Netanyahu vowed to cancel further troop pullbacks until the Palestinian Authority halts what he claims are acts of incitement and violence and abandons plans to declare an independent state in May 1999.
In return for the promised withdrawals, Arafat agreed to take further steps to clamp down on activists protesting Israeli rule. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will be in charge of "supervising" the arrests and punishment of Islamic militants and confiscation of weapons. In addition, an expanded meeting of the Palestinian National Council and other organizations on December 14 reaffirmed a previous decision to revoke the clauses in the Palestinian National Charter of 1964 calling for the destruction of Israel.
In response, Netanyahu said the Israeli government still wouldn't carry out the land withdrawal scheduled for December 18 until more of their demands are met.
Following the agreement, Palestinian Authority police began rounding up several hundred leaders and rank-and-file members of Hamas. Hamas is a bourgeois nationalist opponent grouping that has won support among workers and youth in the struggle for Palestinian national rights.
A week after the Wye agreement was signed, U.S. officials announced that Clinton and Netanyahu had also signed a pact to increase Washington's military assistance to Israel. The agreement calls for a joint strategic planning committee to recommend ways to upgrade the U.S.-Israeli military relationship. Currently, Washington provides Israel with $2.9 billion in military and economic aid every year.
In mid-November, shortly after Netanyahu's cabinet narrowly approved the accord, the Israeli prime minister announced that he would proceed with a plan to build more than 1,000 homes as part of a Zionist settlement in the midst of Arab East Jerusalem. This plan evoked massive Palestinian protests when announced in early 1997.
Tel Aviv has also begun expropriating Palestinian lands in order to build a dozen new bypass roads - more than 50 miles worth in all - for Zionist settlers living in the West Bank. "What kind of peace is this?" declared Imad Salim, 25, a Palestinian farmer living just south of Jerusalem. "If peace means losing our land, what good is it?"
Israeli regime in crisis
After 31 months in office, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu
faces the biggest political crisis of his regime. "Netanyahu is
under attack from the right for signing a peace accord with the
Palestinians and by the left for not moving swiftly enough to
implement it," states a December 8 article in the Washington
Post. A motion of no-confidence is expected to be voted on by
the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on December 21. If Netanyahu
loses this vote new elections would have to be held within 60
days.
In an effort to salvage the Wye Plantation accord, U.S. president Clinton visited both Israel and the Gaza Strip, headquarters of Arafat's Palestinian Authority, December 12-14. In a speech upon landing in Jerusalem, Clinton stated that he had come "to reconfirm America's unbreakable ties, unshakable commitment to Israel's security." Clinton announced that he is submitting a request to Congress for an additional $1.2 billion to meet Israel's "security" needs related to the Wye accord. Clinton also addressed the Palestinian National Council meeting in Gaza.
In an effort to defuse protests while Clinton was in town, the Palestinian Authority canceled a December 14 general strike called to show solidarity with the prisoners' hunger strike. In response to a request from Arafat, the Palestinian prisoners agreed to suspend their week-long hunger strike December 13.
Meanwhile, pressure continues to build for the Israeli army to withdraw from the nine-mile-wide strip of land it has occupied in southern Lebanon since 1985. Despite massive bombing attacks by the Israeli forces, the group Hezbollah has continued to lead resistance to this occupation and has inflicted increased casualties on the Israeli troops stationed there.
Brian Williams is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 2609.