After thoroughly devastating major Palestinian population centers on the West Bank, Israeli forces announced they were "withdrawing" from Jenin, Nablus, and parts of Ramallah, though their troops remain stationed on the outskirts of these areas and have imposed blockades around these towns.

The announced Israeli withdrawals are a "big deception," stated Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator.

Israeli troops remain stationed around the main compound of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, in effect cutting the city in half. They also surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem where dozens of Palestinian fighters, who are standing up to the Israeli ultimatum to either surrender or go into exile, have been holed up, along with some 200 other people, for the past three weeks. Israeli soldiers in tanks and armoured personnel carriers continue to enforce a round-the-clock curfew on this city of 100,000 people.

Secretary of State Colin Powell praised what amounts to Israel’s redeployment of its troops in the West Bank and at the same time issued a stern public warning to Palestinian Authority president Arafat. "Now is the time for you to make a choice," Powell stated on a Fox News appearance April 21. "I’m not interested in statements. We’ll be looking at actions in the weeks ahead... we’ve been disappointed many times in the past." Arafat remains under siege by Israeli soldiers stationed outside his compound in Ramallah, much of which has already been destroyed by Israeli firepower.  
 
‘He met the timetable’
President George Bush April 18 called Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon a "man of peace." When asked by reporters about the Israeli government’s defiance of his April 4 call for a withdrawal "without delay," Bush said, "History will show that they responded. [Sharon] gave me a timetable and he’s met the timetable."

While declaring "this stage" of its offensive at an end, Sharon for his part made clear that the assault by the Israeli colonial-settler state against the Palestinians is far from over. Israeli tanks and soldiers remain stationed on Palestinian territory and attacks against Palestinian resistance fighters are continuing.

Just over the past few days, for example, an elite undercover Israeli unit moved into the Kalandia refugee camp on the edge of Ramallah, arresting 13 Palestinians. Another 35 were seized in predawn raids on the outskirts of Bethlehem and Ramallah. The Israeli military sent its tanks and troops into the Gaza Strip, near the town of Rafah, April 19 where they battled Palestinian fighters, killing at least three civilians and wounding six others. Tel Aviv’s policy of targeting Palestinians for assassination resumed April 22, with the a helicopter-launched missile incinerating the car driven by Marwan Zaloum.

Over the course of their three-week military occupation of virtually every Palestinian town on the West Bank, Israeli forces arrested 1,500 people, detained nearly 3,000 others, killed at least 250 Palestinians, and left thousands homeless. Palestinian resistance fighters in Jenin succeeded in killing 23 Israelis soldiers and wounding 75. Another six were killed in fighting elsewhere.

Photographs depicting the devastation wrought by Israeli forces in the Jenin refugee camp and Nablus have begun appearing in the capitalist media. As Israeli troops pulled their tanks out of these cities, Palestinians who had been subjected to 24-hour curfews for all but a few hours over the past three weeks began telling their stories. Many described outright thievery and vandalism to which their homes and businesses were subjected by the occupying Israeli forces.

At the Ministry of Public Works in Ramallah, Israeli soldiers blew up the building from the inside, leaving the offices in shambles. According to an article in the April 22 Washington Post, "Office managers said computer equipment had been stolen. Shop owners said their businesses had been vandalized. Residents alleged that soldiers had taken money or valuables from their homes. Attempts were made to break open the safes at a bank."

Abdul Jawal Salah, a former city official in Ramallah, said that residents of many of the houses entered by Israeli forces "say they are missing gold, jewelry, or money." A dress shop owner, Qusay Abu Hommos, told the Post reporter that Israeli "troops forced 21 members of his extended family into two bedrooms while they used the rest of their residence as a post. He added that the soldiers took a mobile phone, about $200 in change, some antiques, and his son’s GameBoy."

In Jenin, residents began returning to areas where their houses were obliterated by Israeli tanks and bulldozers to search for their belongings and for remains of family members and friends. So ‘this is the civilization of the 21st century," commented 36-year-old Abu Ala, upon returning to the site of his father’s house.

The Sharon government is now stepping up its effort to set up "buffer zones" along the West Bank, using fences, electronic surveillance equipment, and patrols in an effort to stop Palestinians from entering Israel.  
Assaults on Iraq
Meanwhile, Washington is keeping up its military pressure on Iraq. In mid-April U.S. aircraft patrolling the U.S.-imposed "no-fly" zones in the northern and southern parts of the country launched two bombing attacks, the first since February. Further U.S. attacks are in the works, as the Pentagon announced that the Iraqi military has recently moved surface-to-air missiles into both of the "no-fly" zone areas.

Prominent columnists and capitalist politicians in the United States urged Bush to renew the drive to launch a military attack on Iraq. The Wall Street Journal editors are urging the Bush administration to get on with this assault. "We believe the best chance for peace in Palestine, and for stability throughout the entire Middle East, goes through Baghdad," they wrote, adding, "The advice Mr. Bush is now getting, to throw himself into the middle of the Palestinian-Israeli war is a counsel of paralysis."

The editors of the National Review expressed similar laments. In an article titled, "Lost. A disastrous policy," the editors wrote in their May 6 issue that the "Bush administration’s three-week foray into peace-processing...has only made the prospect of an Iraqi invasion seem all the more distant."

They added that on "some days recently, it has been possible to imagine the unthinkable: that the war on terrorism might have already seen its greatest success and will gradually peter out in a series of far-flung military-advising missions (the Philippines, Georgia, etc.), while the main event--transforming the Middle East--founders on Arab opposition."

Urging the Bush administration to made "a clean break from its current path," the article says, will make it possible for Washington to "concentrate again on a benefit to the region that it actually has the power to deliver--the fall of the Baathist regime in Iraq."
 
 
Related article:
75,000 rally in U.S. to back Palestinian struggle
Hundreds in New Zealand condemn Israeli aggression against Palestinians  
 
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