On March 16 in southern Gaza Rachel Corrie, 23, a student from Washington State, was crushed and killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to stop it from destroying a Palestinian house. Corrie was one of a group of international solidarity activists.

As the Israeli forces repeatedly attacked, Washington restated its support for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, as long as it comes into being on U.S. imperialism’s terms. The announcement by U.S. president George Bush was aimed at dampening popular anger against Washington among the majority Arab nations in the Middle East and northern Africa, as U.S. imperialism headed toward war on Iraq.

"A Palestinian state must be a reformed and peaceful and democratic state that abandons forever the use of terror," Bush said. "The government of Israel, as the terror threat is removed and security improves, must take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable and credible Palestinian state and to work as quickly as possible toward a final status agreement." Bush said his administration will unveil its "road map" towards such a Palestinian-Israeli settlement once the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) confirms the appointment of a prime minister. This new PNA officer will serve alongside Yasir Arafat, the PNA’s president. Both Bush and Sharon have stated they refuse to hold further talks with Arafat.

Meanwhile, using the cover of "antiterrorism," Tel Aviv went full steam ahead with its offensive in the occupied territories. The day of Bush’s press conference, Israeli forces shot dead five Palestinians in the city of Jenin, bringing to 10 the number of Palestinians killed in the northern West Bank in less than 24 hours. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli assaults spread.

Home to 1.2 million Palestinians and 7,000 Israeli settlers, Gaza covers 360 square kilometers (139 square miles), less than one-fifteenth the area of the West Bank. Tel Aviv has built a security fence around it. Although Israeli armed forces have staged frequent attacks, until this recent escalation they had not targeted the impoverished area for the same kind of systematic occupation that has been seen in the West Bank.

Israeli officials claim that the trigger for the Gaza offensive was the destruction of an Israeli tank by fighters belonging to the Muslim organization Hamas. Four soldiers died in the February 15 strike.

On February 19, Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians. Two weeks later, on March 6, another incursion took 11 lives--eight in a single explosion. Witnesses said that a tank had fired a shell at a crowd watching firefighters douse a blaze in a furniture store.

That night Israeli forces began entrenching themselves in the Jabaliya refugee camp and the adjacent town of Beit Lahia, home to thousands of Palestinians. Officers declared the "security zone" would prevent rocket attacks from the area. The forces would remain, said commander Col. Yoel Strick, "until the Palestinians understand this launching has a very high price."

They have also cited the March 5 suicide bombing in Haifa, on Israel’s northern coast, to justify their escalation. That explosion killed 16 people.

Israeli officials have also vowed to continue their campaign of assassinations. "No terrorist chief, with the emphasis on Hamas, will be immune," said Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz. He spoke the day after helicopters blew up a car in Gaza, killing four people, including prominent Hamas member Ibrahim al-Maqadma.  
 
Destruction of Palestinian homes
The devastation of the occupied territories by such attacks was registered in a report by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. In the two years prior to October 2002, Israeli assaults demolished or damaged beyond repair a total of 639 houses in the Gaza Strip, said the UN report.

The impact of such destruction is compounded by the economic collapse in the occupied territories. According to a World Bank study, 60 percent of Palestinians, or almost 2 million people, are living on less than $2 a day. More than half of the Palestinian population is unemployed. A UN study reported that many Palestinians have turned to subsistence farming to survive.

The onset of a capitalist depression, and the war, is also taking a toll on the Israeli economy. Tel Aviv announced March 11 that average wages had dropped 5.6 percent. "Wages fell in every sector of the economy and all four quarters of the year," noted the Ha’aretz daily. Employment in construction and food declined by 4 percent.

The "economic crisis...is ripping Israeli society apart," said Sharon during negotiations to form a coalition government. "The differences between us are dwarfed by the murderous hatred of the terror organizations," he said, and "by the threat of war in the gulf and strikes against Israel."

With 68.5 percent of eligible voters casting ballots, the January 28 election had the lowest turnout in Israeli history. Sharon’s Likud Party increased its haul from 19 to 37 seats, while the Labour Party, whose representatives had walked out of the previous government, precipitating the election, dropped from 25 to 19.

Likud’s coalition partners include the National Religious Party, which calls for expanding the settlements in the occupied territories.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that "some leaders of the ultranationalist National Union Party"--another coalition partner--"advocate annexing the West Bank and forcing Palestinians into Jordan."

Sharon himself has frequently spoken in support of just such a "solution," describing Jordan as the future "Palestinian state."

The threat of the "transfer" of whole populations--the time-honored answer of the Israeli colonial-settler state to the inhabitants of Palestine--"hovers over all the discussions" among Palestinians, wrote Israeli journalist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery in a March 8 report for the Gush Shalom, or Israeli Peace Bloc.  
 
Palestinians: Israel will use Iraq war
Avnery observed that many Palestinians are convinced that the Israeli rulers will use a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to try to deal them a more lasting blow. Palestinians talk about the threat of being forced into Jordan, he said, or of being deported from "one part of the occupied territories to another."

The Sharon government has backed the U.S.-led march to an invasion of Iraq, as well as Washington’s preparations for war against Iran. According to an article in the February 27 New York Times, the Israeli defense minister stated that "after Iraq, the United States should generate ‘political, economic, diplomatic pressure’ on Iran. The article continued, "Israel regards Iran and Syria as greater threats and is hoping that once Saddam Hussein is dispensed with, the dominoes will start to tumble." U.S. officials have said that they would allow Tel Aviv to retaliate if an Iraqi missile strike were to take Israeli lives, reported the March 7 Los Angeles Times. "The American shift" on the issue, Paul Richter wrote, is a sign "of how much more closely the U.S. and Israel are coordinating in the buildup to an increasingly likely war than they did the last time around."  
 
 
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