From Ghettos to Frontiers
What Will Happen After Israel's Withdrawl from Gaza
By NEVE GORDON
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon05192005.html Frontiers and Ghettos:
State Violence in Serbia and Israel
by James Ron,
University of California Press.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520236572/counterpunchmaga/002-0701808-0319246In what direction are Israeli-Palestinian relations heading? Will the
imminent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip lead the two parties closer to a
peace agreement? Or will the fighting between the two peoples reemerge
with a vengeance once Jewish settlements have been dismantled and
Israeli troops redeployed? In order to gain insight into what lies
ahead, it is important first to analyze the use of violence in the
region, asking ourselves why the employment of force was less lethal in
certain areas than in others. This is precisely the question James Ron
asks in his daring and groundbreaking book Frontiers and Ghettos.
<snip>
Ron begins, however, by reminding his readers that in 1948 "Jewish
troops participated in the often forced removal of some 750,000
Palestinians over international borders in a campaign that today would
be termed ethnic cleansing." He goes on to show that Israel has employed
much more lethal methods on its frontier -- Lebanon -- than it has in
the Occupied Territories. In the fifteen-day operation dubbed Grapes of
Wrath (1996) the Israeli air-force carried out 600 sorties, the military
fired 25,000 artillery shells, killed 154 civilians, and displaced
400,000 Lebanese. Three years earlier, in Operation Accountability,
Israel killed 120 civilians and displaced 300,000 more. Ron traces these
operations to the 1970s, showing how the more recent military campaigns
are no different from operations Israel carried out in June 1974 and May
1975. He also discusses the Litani operation of 1978, as well as the
Lebanon war and its aftermath, highlighting some of the similarities to
the Serbian experience in Sand ak, particularly Israel's use of the
Phalange militias and the South Lebanese Army.
<snip>
As we will see momentarily, the more recent process whereby the Sharon
government has been turning the Occupied Territories into a frontier
entails a qualitative change in the kind of violence Israel uses. Here,
though, it is important to underscore that the regulations Israel set up
in the territories served as the nuts and bolts of a controlling system
until the Oslo process. And while Israel used harsh and painful
violence, its actions were subordinate to the "rule of law" and
therefore constrained. As Frontiers and Ghettos underscores, the Israeli
security forces employed "police style" methods in their attempt to
quell the first uprising, incarcerating tens of thousands of
Palestinians while subjecting thousands of them to torture; Israel
refrained, however, from employing the kinds of methods it used in
Lebanon. Ron's theoretical model accordingly helps explain why, despite
Israel's overwhelming firepower and the constant confrontations between
demonstrators and the military during the first Intifada, "soldiers
killed only 204 Palestinians between December 9, 1987, and November 15,
1988, the most intense phase of the uprising."
<snip>
Changes in the Gaza Strip occurred earlier than in the West Bank and
have been more dramatic, particularly following Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's decision to withdraw from the area. According to B'tselem, the
level of violence has increased dramatically. In the first ten months
after the official decision to dismantle the settlements and withdraw
from the Strip, Israeli forces killed 563 Palestinians in Gaza, while
during the previous ten months period 264 were killed. But even before
Sharon's decision to pull out of Gaza, Israel's repertoires of violence
were modified and in no way compare to those used during the years
preceding the Al-Aqsa Intifada. If in the thirteen year period between
December 1987 and September 2000, 1359 Palestinian civilians were killed
by Israeli security forces, in the four and a half years that followed
over 3,100 have been killed.
To be sure, the fact that in this Intifada the Palestinians have been
using firearms and suicide bombers has had an impact on the level of
violence, but forms of Palestinian resistance only partially explain
Israel's violence. Moreover, in June 2004, Ha'aretz journalist Akiva
Eldar revealed that the top Israeli security echelons were interested in
"fanning the flames" during the Intifada's first weeks. He cites Amos
Malka, who was the military general in charge of intelligence at the
time, as saying that during the first month, when the uprising was still
mostly characterized by non-violent popular protests, the military fired
1.3 million bullets in the West Bank and Gaza. The idea was to intensify
the levels of violence, thinking that this would lead to military victory.
Israel now regularly uses F-16 jets, apache helicopters and tanks to
bomb Palestinian cities, a form of violence that was hardly -- if ever
-- utilized in the West Bank and Gaza in the past. Extra-judicial
executions have become common practice as have massive demolitions of
houses. In the Gaza Strip alone Israel has destroyed 2,548 houses since
the beginning of the second Intifada, leaving over 24,000 people
homeless. The southern Lebanese peasants could, at least, flee
northwards, a non-existent option for the inhabitant of Gaza.
<snip>
Israel is now less interested in penetrating and
managing the lives of the Palestinians and is more willing to employ
brutal violence to quell any resistance. Insofar as this is the case, it
is likely that at least in the near future the violence in the West Bank
and Gaza will only become more ferocious.
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