Palestine Papers Index | Sonoma County Free Press Home Page

Issue: April, 1991

Authors' note: At deadline time the military component of the Gulf War is coming to an end and the next phase is about to begin. Progressive political analysts tell us that war will probably last for the next 100 years. Regardless which European or Asian power ultimately assumes the mantle of the dying American Empire. the trauma and devastation wreaked on two nations, Iraq and Kuwait, will reverberate for decades. And regardless which power steps to the throne in the future, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict will still require a just resolution. Throughout this bloody atrocity the Palestinians in the occupied territories have been locked away under house arrest, with little or no sanitation facilities, electricity, food or medical care. Their suffering has been almost totally ignored not only by mainstream media, but by alternative media as well. We want to break that wall of denial, and call on our friends at the Middle East Justice Network, who provide us with a graphic portrayal of life under house arrest in Palestine. The intensity of the conditions described below continued for a full six weeks and at deadline time is only being loosened slightly. - Marianne Torres, Palestine Papers The following is excerpted from their editorial in Breaking the Siege, Feb-Mar. 1991. Their mission statement: "The Middle East Justice Network was formed by Americans drawn together by a common concern about our government's role in supporting the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Our goal is to pressure our policy-makers and elected representatives to be evenhanded in their treatment of Israel and Palestine, to recognize the justice of Palestinian claims to statehood and to work for an end to all occupations." Contact them at P. O. Box 558, Cambridge, MA 02238

"LUBANA QABAH MADE THE MISTAKE OF HER LIFE THIS WEEKEND. Seconds after walking onto her balcony with her 3-year old son to hang some wash, the Palestinian woman lay gasping on the floor with a bullet through her chest. She died in an ambulance about an hour later, leaving her husband, the son who saw her shot, and a 25-day-old baby" (USA Today, January 21, 1991).

Lubana Qadah was killed by the Israeli Border police who fired without warning because she set foot on the balcony of her Nablus home. She was one of nearly two million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip who have been under strict house arrest since the war began and are threatened with gunfire, beatings, arrest, imprisonment of up to five years and fines as high as $15,000 for the crime of "curfew-breaking".

ENTOMBED IN HOMES
When the US launched the first "alliance" air sorties against Iraq, Gaza Strip residents and many Palestinians in the West Bank were already confined to their houses. A curfew had been imposed on January 15th after Israeli soldiers killed three people in Gaza and wounded 198 others who were protesting the murder of PLO leader Abu Iyad and two of his colleagues in Tunis. Few of those ordered inside with only moment's notice could have been prepared for the long siege to come.

Immediately after the war began, a round-the-clock curfew was imposed on the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip and many of the neighborhoods of "annexed" East Jerusalem. Since then, conditions have become increasingly desperate. Food and medicine are scarce, and medical attention almost non-existent. In refugee camps, whole families with young children have been confined for days on end to poorly ventilated rooms, often with no electricity or running water and rudimentary sanitation facilities.

The curfew has been lifted for only a few hours a week in selected areas to allow residents to search for food in stores which are often empty because of the breakdown of the distribution system. Meanwhile, field and greenhouse crops are dying from lack of irrigation and livestock faces starvation. Families which depend on daily wages now have no income and have reportedly been forced to sell whatever consumer durables they possessed to pay for food. The economy of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has ground to a halt with estimated losses to the population of up to $50 million per week.

CIVILIANS TREATED AS ENEMIES
Under the double cover of curfew and war, how many victims are there like Lubana Qadah? Israeli Police Minister Roni Milo had announced that in a war situation civilian Palestinian resistance would be regarded as an enemy attack and dealt with as such. But with the West Bank and Gaza declared closed military zones—off limits to visitors, including journalists—it has been difficult for human rights groups to follow up on reports of widespread shooting and beating by the army, of arbitrary arrests and the teargassing of people in their homes.

According to (the Palestine Human Rights Information Center, based in East Jerusalem) Gaza hospitals have reported 150 injuries from gunfire, beatings and teargas during the January 16-29 period; figures for West Bank hospitals are incomplete. Children have been injured when the army has thrown sound grenades and tear gas bombs into their homes.

The curfews have provided no respite from other forms of collective punishment. The Palestine Human Rights Information Center says that two families in Gaza were notified that their homes would be demolished because of the arrests of their sons prior to January 16th.

MODERATE JAILED; EXTREMIST ELEVATED
Meanwhile the Israeli government persists in its determination to eliminate, rather than talk to, "moderate" Palestinians. On January 30th Bir Zeit University philosophy professor Sari Nusseibeh was arrested and imprisoned for six months (later reduced to three) without trial or formal charges for allegedly passing on information about SCUD missile attacks to Iraq. The day before his arrest, during a brief break in the curfew, Nusseibeh had met with two members of the Israeli Peace Now movement and, according to a New York Times editorial on February 1st, "had promised to issue a statement condemning Iraq's use of terror missiles and reaffirming his support for a negotiated settlement between Palestinians and Israelis."

Government hard liners got an infamous new recruit when extreme right-winger General Rehavim Zeevi became minister without portfolio after Shamir signed an agreement with his racist Moledat party on February 1st. Moledat champions the idea of "transfer" - expelling the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza.

ENDURING DOUBLE STANDARDS
The US media, which has dwelled at length on the ordeal of Israelis forced to don gas masks and go to sealed rooms when air raid alarms sound, has said little about Palestinians entombed day and night in their houses. In many of these houses a "sealed room" is not a refuge but a room which has been permanently cemented shut by the Israeli army as punishment for a stone thrown by a child.

Few Palestinians under occupation have gas masks and there are no air raid warnings systems in the territories. On the eve of the war, the Israeli High Court had denounced as a "scandal" the government's refusal to distribute gas masks to Palestinians in the territories and ordered it to provide this protection immediately. But at the end of January, only 29,000 of the 173,000 masks which the government says it still has in stock have been made available to Palestinians, although settlers in the territories are well supplied and Soviet immigrants receive them at the airport on arrival. No masks have been distributed to children - more than 50% of the population of the territories. Nor has the Israeli government made any provision for the safety of the thousands of Palestinian detainees crowded in flimsy tents behind barbed wire.

INTERNATIONAL LAW VIOLATED
According to the January 27th report of the New York-based Middle East Watch, the Israeli government's failure to protect a population under occupation represents a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Three weeks earlier the UN Security Council had passed a resolution critical of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians for the fourth time in four months.

Today, despite its refusal to abide by the Geneva Convention and UN Security Council resolutions, Israel is basking in the good will of the western "allies" and promises of material aid. As a mark of appreciation for Israeli restraint under Iraqi missile fire, the European Community has even lifted the sanctions it had imposed to protest the (still ongoing) three year long closure of Palestinian universities.

International law and Security Council resolutions may serve to underwrite as "just" the US—led war against Iraq, but they remain a dead letter where Israel is concerned.

About the Authors

Comments? Questions? Email the author(s) of Palestine Papers at mtorres@icehouse.net

URL of this page:http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/palestine/homepris.html