The Information Minister of the PA, Yasser Abed Rabbo, termed the offensive "a disguised form" of Israeli control and occupation. "We believe the Israeli army intends to reoccupy the Palestinian cities, and all of the West Bank, for a very long period," he said.

In the three weeks of the offensive to date, Israeli troops have killed 36 Palestinians, seven of them children and at least 17 of them unarmed civilians.

By mid-July, the Israeli forces had virtually completed the military operation that they launched on June 20. After conducting systematic mass detentions and interrogations of thousands of Palestinians, the Israeli forces are holding some 1,800 people "suspected" of involvement in violent attacks.

Israeli troops have clamped a military vise on Jenin, Nablus, Qalqiliya, Ramallah, Tulkarm, Bethlehem, and Hebron. Jericho, the remaining Palestinian city, has escaped being overrun by virtue of its "flat and isolated desert location [that] makes it easy to seal off and monitor," reported the Financial Times.

The curfews directly affect one-third of the 2.1 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank. Residents of villages around the cities also suffer the consequences as they find themselves unable to reach the towns to attend schools or workplaces, or to shop for needed supplies.  
 
‘Two million people are imprisoned’
The occupation "means that 2 million Palestinian people are imprisoned," observed the Palestine Monitor, a news organization that functions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "Most of them live under 24 hours imposed curfew and face the hardships that this entails."

From Ramallah, Gregory Myre of the Associated Press noted on July 13 that "as an air of semi-permanence sets in, Israeli and Palestinian officials are talking about easing the restrictions, and curfews have been lifted more often in recent days, with troops pulling back from the city centers in the morning, and then returning in the afternoon."

Even with occasional relaxations, the curfews impose a new burden on a people who already face the ubiquitous presence of Israeli policemen and soldiers, and are fighting against rapidly sinking levels of economic devastation.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates that the official poverty level has risen from 25 percent before September 2000--the point at which the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israeli occupiers sharply escalated--to 60 percent today. The 130,000-strong Palestinian workforce in Israel has fallen to 30,000 undocumented workers over the same period. There are virtually no Palestinians legally employed in Israel.

"We are being choked, and we have to live. There is no work in Palestine," said Khaled Amriyeh, who works picking cucumbers at a prosperous kibbutz in Israel. Amriyeh sleeps in the fields to evade the Israeli police.

Official unemployment among Palestinians stands at 40 percent and rising sharply. The governor of Bethlehem told the Israeli government the occupation had caused a growing humanitarian crisis. "Thousands of residents have lost their jobs," he said, "hundreds of others have been arrested, and about 1,500 are without shelter after destruction of their homes."  
 
‘Cops in olive drab’
As more reserve soldiers are called up to provide reinforcements for the open-ended occupation, the role of the vaunted Israeli army in carrying out the functions of jailer and policemen in the West Bank, as well as the Gaza Strip, is being daily reinforced.

In an eyewitness report of one military patrol "across a patch of rugged hills, canyons and picturesque Arab villages tucked between the cities of Tulkarm and Nablus in the northern West Bank," Newsweek magazine commented that the troops are, "in effect...well armed cops in olive drab."

Amid less than unanimous applause for the reoccupation among Israeli politicians and other ruling-class mouthpieces, the government of Ariel Sharon points to its "success" in pegging back the growing Israeli death toll. One Israeli soldier has been killed since June 20.

Raanan Gissin, the spokesman for Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, said that the government can only prevent suicide bombings "when we are there...capturing them at the doorstep of their homes, not at the doorstep of the bus."

Along with other armed Palestinian attacks that reflect the deep-going Palestinian resistance, suicide bombings have taken a heavy toll in Israeli lives--a little over one-third the losses inflicted by Tel Aviv’s military escalation. As of July 12, the death toll over the previous 22 months stood at 1,443 Palestinians and 549 Israelis.  
 
Unease among Israeli rulers
"Until there’s a better alternative, I expect this is what we’re going to see. For Israel, it’s the least bad option right now," said a political analyst at Tel Aviv University, in a typically lukewarm endorsement of the operation.

Noting the rapidly increasing levels of poverty and joblessness among Palestinians, the Christian Science Monitor reported from the Israeli city of Tamra that "Israeli authorities are growing concerned that mounting desperation could explode into unrest in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

In a cabinet debate over whether to issue 30,000 work permits that would allow Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to enter Israel, minister David Levy warned that easing restrictions would open up more attacks, and "create more graves." In the end, the cabinet agreed to issue 5,000 permits for workers from Gaza.

"Israel says it doesn’t want the burden of civil administration of Palestinian areas," wrote AP reporter Gregory Myre, "though it’s not clear how the Palestinian government will be able to function effectively if the current restrictions remain for months."

Palestinian officials explain that the occupying troops insist that all government offices must close by 2:00 p.m. each day.

On July 8 U.S. president George Bush gave the occupation Washington’s stamp of approval, telling a news conference that--in the words of the New York Times summary--"Israel was justified in occupying the West Bank until ‘security improves.’"

Five days later, PA minister Rabbo criticized Bush for "neglecting the reoccupation, the military curfew, the siege imposed on the Palestinian people."

Several top Israeli army officers appealed to General Moshe Yahalon for a partial withdrawal of forces, Israeli public TV reported, because the curfew had left the occupied cities on the "verge of a volcanic eruption."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home