U.S. president William Clinton, who orchestrated the negotiations in Egypt between Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat that declared the October 17 cease-fire, has invited them to meet again in Washington for further talks. Arafat is the president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which exercises limited authority over the Gaza Strip and some West Bank towns. As of October 25, neither political leader had responded.

"The clear thrust of the call [inviting Arafat to the White House] was that we need to see more progress on getting the Palestinian security forces to stop the violence," said a U.S. government official. Clinton has backed the Israeli government's repressive actions, consistent with Washington's decades-old policy of massive military, financial, and political backing to the Zionist settler-state and opposition to the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination.

Washington, aware that Tel Aviv's policy of brutal force has failed to crush the Palestinian national liberation struggle, seeks to pressure the Palestine National Authority to keep working people in line in the West Bank and Gaza. In the week that has followed the cease-fire, the number of Palestinians killed has risen to more than 120, while thousands more have been wounded by Israeli troops. In contrast, eight Israelis have died so far.

Israeli troops fired three tank shells into a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank October 24, claiming they had come under fire. The same day they destroyed an olive grove in the Gaza Strip, alleging that the trees had provided cover to Palestinian fighters.

The Israeli forces maintain 24-hour curfews in many Palestinian areas. In the West Bank city of Hebron soldiers enforce a rigorous curfew, confining Palestinians to their houses for all but a few hours in the week. Zionist settlers, on the other hand, are free to go about their business.  
 
Barak calls negotiations for new gov't
Seeking to strengthen his position at home, Barak has engaged in talks with Ariel Sharon, leader of the rightist Likud Party, with the aim of forming a coalition government. Barak called for a "timeout" in negotiations with the Palestinian representatives at the urging of Sharon, who publicly opposes the 1993 Oslo accord on limited Palestinian autonomy, and who has criticized Barak for offering too many concessions in negotiations earlier this year.

Some prominent political Israeli figures have expressed concern about aspects of Barak's rightward shift, while uttering not a word against the ongoing military repression. Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami opposed Barak's "time-out." Other cabinet ministers have expressed unease with his overtures to Sharon, including Regional Cooperation Minister Shimon Peres. Former prime minister Peres is worried that such moves will only heighten the political volatility in the region.

Barak has publicly ordered government officials to draw up a plan for "unilateral separation" from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestine National Authority information minister, Abed Rabbo, termed Barak's announcement "an apartheid plan."

"In its narrowest form separation would be a kind of extended border closure, in which the Palestinian areas would be sealed off, checkpoints reinforced and the movement of goods and labor severely restricted," wrote Deborah Sontag in the October 22 New York Times.

Israel's armed forces clamped such a "closure" on areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority at the beginning of October. The measures have cut the number of Palestinians who cross daily into Israel for work from 120,000--an estimated two-thirds of whom lack official documents--to 25,000.

Tel Aviv treats the West Bank and Gaza Strip as reserves of cheap labor power. Israel's capitalist rulers, despite some moves to reduce their dependence on Palestinian labor by replacing it at similar wages with newer layers of Jewish immigrants, and by shifting some of their operations to other countries in the Middle East, continue to draw in labor power through the normal functioning of the capitalist economy.

On October 21 and 22, government representatives gathered at a summit meeting of the Arab League criticized "the Israeli practices of aggression and its siege of the Palestinian people," pledged $1 billion in aid to the Palestinian National Authority, and suspended diplomatic contacts between member states and Tel Aviv. The meeting stopped short of breaking off ties with the Israeli government, which the governments of Egypt and Jordan had established in 1977 and 1994, respectively, easing the diplomatic isolation of the Zionist regime.

Mass demonstrations have been organized in countries throughout the region in support of the Palestinian struggle and against Israeli brutality. While different governments in the Middle East have generally allowed these mobilizations, the capitalist and landlord layers they represent fear the impact of the struggle of the Palestinians on workers and peasants within their own borders.

On October 24, Jordanian police used water cannon, clubs, and tear gas to break up a march of 10,000 that approached the country's border with Israel. Palestinians, who make up more than half the population, were in the front lines of the action.

On the day the Arab League convened its summit, the United Nations General Assembly condemned Tel Aviv's "excessive use of force." The representatives of 92 governments supported the resolution, while five voted against it. One of the five, U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, sanctimoniously called the motion a "resolution that would undermine peace efforts."

At the other end of the Persian Gulf, Washington has sent 3,000 military and civilian personnel to the Middle East as part of "Task Force Determined Response" to investigate the explosion that hit the USS Cole October 12 in Aden, Yemen. U.S. officials and the big-business media have attributed the blast to "Islamic militants," speculating that it was directed by Saudi exile Osama Bin Laden, whom they also accuse of organizing the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Washington is moving to prosecute several individuals it has arrested in connection with the 1998 incidents. On October 20 Ali Mohamed, a former intelligence officer in the Egyptian armed forces who spent three years assigned to a Special Forces unit of the U.S. army, pleaded guilty to involvement in the Kenya bombing. After arranging a plea bargain with the prosecutor, he asserted in a federal court in Manhattan that Bin Laden directed the bombings. U.S. officials hope to use Mohamed's testimony against five others they have dragged into U.S. courts.
 
 
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