Gaza
as
Laboratory
The
Great
Experiment
by URI AVNERY
Is it possible to force a
whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?
That is, certainly, an
interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation
with Europe,
are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain
a
definitive answer.
The laboratory for the
experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a
quarter
Palestinians living there.
In order to meet the
required scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare
the
laboratory.
That was done in the
following way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements
that were
stuck there. After all, you can't conduct a proper experiment with pets
roaming
around the laboratory. It was done with "determination and
sensitivity", tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed and embraced
the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli army is
the
most-most in the world.
With the laboratory
cleaned, the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were
hermetically
sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world
outside.
That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have
prevented
the building of a harbor in Gaza,
and the Israeli navy sees to it that no ship approaches the shore. The
splendid
international airport, built during the Oslo
days, was bombed and shut down. The entire Strip was closed off by a
highly
effective fence, and only a few crossings remained, all but one
controlled by
the Israeli army.
There remained a sole
connection with the outside world: the Rafah border crossing to Egypt.
It could
not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian
regime as
a collaborator with Israel.
A sophisticated solution was found: to all appearances the Israeli army
left
the crossing and turned it over to an international supervision team.
Its
members are nice guys, full of good intentions, but in practice they
are
totally dependent on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from
a
nearby control room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli
kibbutz
and can reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.
So everything was ready for
the experiment.
* * *
THE SIGNAL for its
beginning was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly
democratic
elections, under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter.
George Bush
was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East was coming true.
But the Palestinians
flunked the test. Instead of electing "good Arabs", devotees of the United States,
they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush felt insulted.
But the
Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas victory, the Americans
and
Europeans were ready to take part in the experiment. It could start:
The United States
and the European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the
Palestinian Authority, since it was "controlled by terrorists".
Simultaneously, the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.
To understand the
significance of this: according to the "Paris Protocol" (the economic
annex of the Oslo
agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli customs
system. This
means that Israel
collects the
duties for all the goods that pass through Israel
to the Palestinian
territories - actually, there is no other route. After deducting a fat
commission, Israel
is obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.
When the Israeli government
refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it
is, simply
put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs "terrorists", who
is going to complain?
The Palestinian Authority -
both in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip -
needs this money like air for breathing. This fact also requires some
explanation: in the 19 years when Jordan
occupied the West Bank and Egypt
the Gaza Strip, from 1948 to 1967, not a single important factory was
built
there. The Jordanians wanted all economic activity to take place in Jordan
proper,
east of the river, and the Egyptians neglected the strip altogether.
Then came the Israeli
occupation, and the situation became even worse. The occupied
territories
became a captive market for Israeli industry, and the military
government
prevented the establishment of any enterprise that could conceivably
compete
with an Israeli one.
The Palestinian workers
were compelled to work in Israel
for hunger wages (by Israeli standards). From these, the Israeli
government
deducted all the social payments levied on Israeli workers, without the
Palestinian workers enjoying any social benefits. This way the
government
robbed these exploited workers of tens of billions of dollars, which
disappeared somehow in the bottomless barrel of the government.
When the intifada
broke out, the Israeli captains of industry and agriculture discovered
that it
was possible to get along without the Palestinian workers. Indeed, it
was even
more profitable. Workers brought in from Thailand,
Romania
and other poor countries were ready to work for even lower wages and in
conditions bordering on slavery. The Palestinian workers lost their
jobs.
That was the situation at
the beginning of the experiment: the Palestinian infrastructure
destroyed,
practically no means of production, no work for the workers. All in
all, an
ideal setting for the great "experiment in hunger".
* * *
THE IMPLEMENTATION started,
as mentioned, with the stoppage of payments.
The passage between Gaza
and Egypt
was closed in practice. Once every few days or weeks it was opened for
some
hours, for appearances' sake, so that some of the sick and dead or
dying could
get home or reach Egyptian hospitals.
The crossings between the
Strip and Israel
were closed "for urgent security reasons". Always, at the right
moment, "warnings of an imminent terrorist attack" appeared.
Palestinian agricultural products destined for export rot at the
crossing.
Medicines and foodstuffs cannot get in, except for short periods from
time to
time, also for appearances, whenever somebody important abroad voices
some
protest. Then comes another "urgent security warning" and the
situation is back to normal.
To round off the picture,
the Israeli Air Force bombed the only power station in the Strip, so
that for a
part of the day there is no electricity, and the water supply (which
depends on
electric pumps) stops also. Even on the hottest days, with temperatures
of over
30 degrees centigrade in the shade, there is no electricity for
refrigerators,
air conditioning, the water supply or other needs.
In the West Bank, a
territory much larger than the Gaza Strip (which makes up only 6% of
the
occupied Palestinian territories but holds 40% of the inhabitants), the
situation is not quite so desperate. But in the Strip, more than half
of the
population lives beneath the Palestinian "poverty line", which lies
of course very, very far below the Israeli "poverty line". Many Gaza residents can only dream of being considered
poor in
the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.
What are the governments of
Israel and the US
trying to
tell the Palestinians? The message is clear: You will reach the brink
of
hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the
Hamas
government and elect candidates approved by Israel
and the US.
And, most importantly: you must be satisfied with a Palestinian state
consisting of several enclaves, each of which will be utterly dependent
on the
tender mercies of Israel.
* * *
AT THE
moment, the
directors of the scientific experiment are pondering a puzzling
question: how
on earth do the Palestinians still hold out, in spite of everything?
According
to all the rules, they should have been broken long ago!
Indeed, there are some
encouraging signs. The general atmosphere of frustration and
desperation
creates tension between Hamas and Fatah. Here and there clashes have
broken
out, people were killed and wounded, but in each case the deterioration
was
halted before it became a civil war. The thousands of hidden Israeli
collaborators are also helping to stir things up. But contrary to all
expectations, the resistance did not evaporate. Even the captured
Israeli
soldier has not been released.
One of the explanations has
to do with the structure of Palestinian society. The Hamulah (extended
family)
plays a central role there. As long as one person in the family is
working, the
relatives, too, do not die of hunger, even if there is widespread
malnutrition.
Everyone who has any income shares it with all his brothers and
sisters,
parents, grandparents, cousins and their children. That is a primitive
system,
but quite effective in such circumstances. It seems that the planners
of the
experiment did not take this into account.
In order to quicken the
process, the whole might of the Israeli army is now being used again,
as from
this week. For three months the army was busy with the Second Lebanon
War. It
became apparent that the army, which for the last 39 years has been
employed
mainly as a colonial police force, does not function very well when
suddenly
confronted with a trained and armed opponent that can fight back.
Hizbullah
used deadly anti-tank weapons against the armored forces, and rockets
rained
down on Northern Israel. The army has
long ago
forgotten how to deal with such an enemy. And the campaign did
not end
well.
Now the army returns to the
war it knows. The Palestinians in the Strip do not (yet) have effective
anti-tank weapons, and the Qassam rockets cause only limited damage.
The army
can again use tanks against the population without hindrance. The Air
Force, which
in Lebanon
was afraid to send in helicopters to remove the wounded, can now fire
missiles
at the houses of "wanted persons", their families and neighbors, at
leisure. If in the last three months "only" 100 Palestinians were
killed per month, we are now witnessing a dramatic rise in the number
of
Palestinians killed and wounded.
How can a population that
is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive
hospitals
and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out?
Will it
break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy? Or will it find
inhuman
strength and stand the test?
In short: What and how much
is needed to get a population to surrender?
All the scientists taking
part in the experiment - Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice, Amir Peretz
and
Angela Merkel, Dan Halutz and George Bush, not to mention Nobel Peace
Price
laureate Shimon Peres - are bent over the microscopes and waiting for
an
answer, which undoubtedly will be an important contribution to
political science.
I hope the Nobel Committee
is watching.
___________
Uri
Avnery is an Israeli writer and
peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent
and Refusal. He is also a
contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.