The Palestinians Don't Even Have Weather
by
Tanya Reinhart
Dissident Voice
March 11, 2003
To
the extent that the recent military acts in the territories are debated in
Israel at all, the debate almost solely revolves around the question whether or
not it is possible to end the Palestinian terror this way. The Palestinians, as human beings, simply do
not exist.
A few days ago it snowed in
Jerusalem. On Tuesday, February 25th,
the cold wave featured in all Israeli papers as the main news. Even in my heated home in Tel Aviv it was
cold. My thoughts wandered to my
Palestinian friends - colleagues from Bir Zeit University. How does the snow
fare with a family that still has a home, but not that much money to heat it?
And what's with those who no longer have a home? It snowed in Jenin as well. How did the Jenin refugees survive
the cold, and those who were recently made to flee from Hebron? And what about
the old people, for whom the cold is particularly dangerous? Where did the new homeless of Gaza spend the
night - those whose homes were destroyed that same day? Is UNRWA still able to provide them with
blankets and tents? At the beginning of
February, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the
Near East (UNRWA), renewed its emergency appeal to the international community
for urgent contributions for the first half of 2003. They stated that without these contributions, which have
decreased lately, their budget would end in March (1).
The heart seeks answers, but
the papers tell you nothing about that. Across the fence, outside the media,
outside of consciousness, the Palestinians don't even have weather.
That same day, however,
Ha'aretz reported a new campaign, launched by the Israeli security echelons, to
confiscate funds that are transmitted to the Palestinians through Israeli banks
- "tens of millions of dollars a year…mainly from charity organizations in
the Arab countries and in Europe". (Amos Har'el, Hebrew edition
only). While UNRWA is on the verge of
collapse, the Palestinians should be deprived also of the charity funds that
help them survive.
This is not an isolated
incident, but one more step in a systematic Israeli policy of economic
strangulation. Already in June 2002,"internal conclusions of the security
echelons, following operation 'Defensive Shield', assessed that… the financial
reserves of the Palestinian authority are reaching the bottom... In a future
not far off, the majority of Palestinians will only be able to maintain a
reasonable life through the help of international aid." (Amos Har'el,
Ha'aretz, Hebrew edition, June 23, 2002).
At the same time, Israel, aided by the Jewish Lobby in the US congress,
opened a campaign to restrict international aid, and demanded a
"reconsideration" of UNRWA's operations in the occupied territories:
"Israel has begun a campaign in the United States
and the United Nations to urge a reconsideration of the way the UN Relief and
Works Agency, which runs the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and
Gaza, operates. Israel charges that UNRWA workers simply ignored the fact that
Palestinian organizations were turning the camps into terrorist bases and it is
demanding the agency start reporting all military or terrorist actions within
the camps to the UN.... Meanwhile, Jewish and pro-Israeli lobbyists in the U.S.
are waging a parallel campaign ... American Jewish lobbyists are basing their
efforts on the fact that the U.S. currently contributes some 30 percent of
UNRWA's $400 million a year budget, and is therefore in a position to influence
the agency: A congressional refusal to approve UNRWA's funding could seriously
disrupt its operations." (Nathan Guttman, Ha'aretz, June 29, 2002).
Malnutrition of Palestinian
children in the occupied territories already equals that of Congo and Zimbabwe (2), but Israel "launches a campaign" to prevent
even the little left to keep them nourished.
Genocide is associated in
our minds with mass graves, or convoys of population transfer. The slow death
inflicted on the Palestinian people has, perhaps, no name yet, but still, how
does it happen that the Israeli society seals its heart and its eyes from
seeing it? Part of the answer is that
evil is wrapped in words about "war against terror". The security
sources announce that UNRWA "ignores" terrorist activities (as if
UNRWA is a police force), or that the charity funds to the Palestinians are
"millions of dollars to terror" and the media just circulates their
prophecy. No further proof is ever needed.
Following the confiscation of charity funds, which started in East
Jerusalem banks, "the region commander, Levi, refused to disclose precise
details concerning the terrorist activities in Jerusalem that were funded with
these [confiscated] funds" (Arnon Regular and Amos Har'el, Ha'aretz,
February 28, 2003). The primal Israeli
instinct to believe that the IDF (army) never lies, will do the rest.
Israel's persecution of the
Palestinian people is not war against terror.
The Palestinian suicidal terror has a simple solution - get out of the
territories and give the Palestinians reasons to live. The war against the
Palestinians is over the 'Promised Land' of Sharon, the army and the settlers.
In this kind of war, one needs to lie constantly, because (according to the
polls) most Israelis don't care about the territories and they are willing to
get out of there tomorrow. Left to
themselves, people won't seek out ways to starve, torture and abandon in the
cold millions of other people. To get them to accept that, one has to cultivate
their fears. In the same way, the half
of the American people that supports the war on Iraq believes that if they
don't immediately eliminate the Iraqi people, Saddam Hussein will eliminate the
US.
Tanya Reinhart is a Professor of Linguistics at Tel
Aviv University. She is the author of Israel/Palestine:
How to End the War of 1948, (Seven Stories, 2002). Visit Reinhart’s
webpage: http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart
NOTES
(1) The text of the UNRWA
Emergency Appeal for 2003 can be found at http://www.un.org/unrwa/emergency/pdf/5th-appeal.pdf
(2) Chris McGreal, The Guardian(UK), Feb 11, 2003.