From SEARCH's Annual Report for the Year 2003

US Policy and Palestinian-Israeli Violence

by Edmund R. Hanauer

The Israeli invasion and reoccupation of West Bank towns since April of 2002, coupled with continued expansion of Jewish settlements, indicates again that the root cause of the cycle of violence in Palestine/Israel continues to be Israel’s effort to force Palestinians off their land and out of their homeland. These Israeli goals necessitate massive violations of Palestinian human rights and of international law.

Suicide bombing and other acts of terrorism by Palestinians are inhuman and must be condemned. Nor does terrorism help achieve Palestinian freedom. However, President Bush, almost all members of Congress and most journalists have failed to condemn Israeli state terrorism - violence Palestinians have endured for over 50 years. Since the Intifada began in September 2000, Israeli violence has included the killing of close to 2,000 and the wounding of many thousands of Palestinians, mostly civilians, by the Israeli military, the continuation of attacks on Palestinians and their property by armed Jewish settlers, and the torture of Palestinians. Israel has destroyed thousands of Palestinian homes and tens of thousands of olive and citrus trees, confiscated much land, diverted precious water resources, and inhibited access for Palestinians to medical supplies, jobs, schools, and food.

Given Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian Authority’s infrastructure, including its security forces, Yasir Arafat’s ability to stop Palestinian violence is extremely doubtful. However, the violence of Israel’s army, Jewish settlers, and prison authorities, which is the direct result of Israeli policies, could be ended immediately. These Israeli actions are destroying Palestinian society. They are not required to fight terrorism; indeed, they elicit Palestinian violence!

The above Israeli policies are violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and, in some cases, war crimes. Although Israel denies the applicability of the Convention, 114 signatories of the Geneva Convention, meeting in Geneva in December 2001, confirmed that the Convention applies to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and that numerous Israeli policies, including Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, violate the Convention. Israel and the US, both signatories, boycotted the meeting.

In the last year, more Israelis have spoken out against the brutality of the occupation:

In early 2002, 52 army reservists signed a statement declaring that “We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people.” By the end of 2002, over 500 reservists had signed. (www.seruv.org.)

In December 2002, Israeli holocaust survivors and their descendants began circulating a petition which, while deploring Palestinian terror as “a despicable crime,” criticizes Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes, olive trees, and orchards, and asserts that the “domination of another people against its will contradicts the lessons of the Holocaust, morally, humanely, and politically.”

Michael Ben Yair, the Attorney General in Yitzhak Rabin’s last government, wrote recently that after the 1967 War, Israel “chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft, and finding justification for all of this.”

.Given the extreme pro-Israeli position of President Bush (who called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a “man of peace”) and of Congress (which is more supportive of Sharon’s hard-line than are US Jews), it is heartening that a 2002 in-depth opinion survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (www.pipa.com) found Americans seek a fair US policy which supports Palestinians as well as Israelis.

The US has given Israel over $3 billion in annual military and economic aid for years. Now the US is considering an Israeli request for $12 billion in aid and loan guarantees. This largess, in the absence of US insistence that Israel abide by UN resolutions, highlights the importance of SEARCH’s work for a US policy toward Palestine/Israel which upholds international law and reflects American public opinion and democratic values.